I cannot tell you the last time I went to a drive-in theater before 2020. I can tell you it was definitely with my dad, and I was probably around 8 or 9 years old. He had the pickup truck then, a little silver Toyota. When weather and time permitted, he would throw the mattress in the bed of the truck, and we could lie under the stars while watching the movie.
Then, as now, I got a little vertigo staring up at the night sky. The vastness overwhelms me, and I consider the improbability of existing on a tiny rock, so distant from the other rocks, and if I look up too long, I fear I will fall off this one. So I keep my eyes on the movie screen. It is the safer way to confront the enormity of our existence.
In the late ‘90s, drive-ins were already on the way out. The cineplexes had won. Who wanted to hear the new blockbuster on those crummy old speakers that hung off your window when you could be surrounded by THX? A distant screen with questionable picture quality, particularly if some ill-mannered patron forgot to turn off his headlights, or a crisp, clear, bright wall directly in front of you? Perhaps the drive-in was always kind of a novelty, its one true advantage the ability to seal yourself away from others. Enter 2020.
The drive-in industry, such as it is, was not likely prepared for the vital role it would play in the cinema landscape. I attended in-theater screenings pretty much up to the last moment it was safe to do so, but as soon as that was over, I was looking up the drive-in. No shade at either the programmers or the filmmakers, but in those first couple weeks, there was not much worth seeing, even just for a night on the town. They caught on quickly.
Our drive-in journey began in May with an IFC Films double feature of Drew and Brett Pierce’s horror thriller The Wretched and Coky Giedroyc’s coming-of-age charmer How to Build a Girl. Both films were lovely in their own ways, despite the tonal mismatch of being shown together, and it was just nice to be back at the movies. Snack bars were not open again yet, so we brought our own popcorn and drinks. It was the first thing that had felt semi-normal in a while.
Prior to the pandemic, I had planned to spend my mid-July birthday at the Alamo Drafthouse in Downtown LA, catching a screening of Ghostbusters: Afterlife. It was to be the big movie opening that week, and it was meant as a fun personal nod to spending my birthday in 2016 seeing the then-new Ghostbusters movie. Instead, a couple days after my birthday, we were back at the drive-in for an ‘80s double feature of Goonies and, yeah, Ghostbusters. The Richard Donner kids “classic” Goonies has never been my cup of tea. Still isn’t. But Bill Murray and Co. battling the spirit world? Give it to me all day.
As it got later into the year, the drive-ins started booking more of the kind of movie I would traditionally be catching in theaters, films like Sean Durkin’s The Nest and Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal. You will read more about those films in this space as the Year in Review rolls on, but suffice it to say, both are tremendous accomplishments that should not be lost in the weirdness of this year.
There were other nights at the drive-in, such as a showing of Cooper Raiff’s sweet but unfortunately titled Shithouse or Max Barbakow’s time-loop comedy Palm Springs. The latter featured a Zoom Q-and-A with cast members Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, and Peter Gallagher. If you had told me in January 2020 I would be attending something called a “Zoom Q-and-A” at the drive-in, I would have had a lot of questions.
Our final trip to the drive-in in 2020 was around mid-December. We caught a screening of Nancy Meyers’ rom-com par excellence The Holiday. My wife and I own the film. We had seen it four times already in 2020, once prior in December even. But, the chance to see it on a big screen, that we could not pass up. It is the ultimate comfort movie. It is among my favorite types of movie, rare in any age but especially now, in that it depicts almost exclusively kind people being kind to one another.
Reflecting on the year past, kindness, as it perhaps always does, stands out as the quality more necessary and more welcome than any other. Kindness reminds others to be kind. The more we give it, the more we receive it, and the more we see it, the more of it there is in the world. That is a better world. It may seem silly, but The Holiday reminds me of that, which is why we watched it five times this year and why it felt so important to see it on the big screen.
It was a comfort, much like the drive-in experience itself. In a year so full of disquiet and unease, the drive-in was a place that felt normal. It remains a throwback to the past -- though they ditched those old speakers; now, you can tune in on your car radio -- and in times of uncertainty, a throwback can be just what we need. I am not under the delusion that it is preferable or that the old times were better simply by virtue of being old. I will be there when the theaters reopen their doors to the world, but I will not forget how much the drive-in meant to me in 2020 and how much it has always meant.
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