Roll In, Roll ‘Em : Drive-Ins Clinging to Life as a New Generation Mixes Movies and Its Cars

The drive-in movie

Where we’d go

And somehow never watch the

show.

--”Moments to Remember,” The Four Lads, 1955

They stand like headstones in nostalgia’s graveyard, movie screens clinging tolife on 90-foot-tall struc tures called towers.

Say “hello again” to an old friend--the drive-in theater.

And no jokes, please, about all that smooching on the screen taking a, well, back seat to those steamier scenes inside the cars.

You see, that just doesn’t square with management’s idea that drive-ins are supposed to entertain families-- and be a “baby-sitter,” too. And some moviegoers will tell you flatly that drive-ins are no longer, as someone once cracked, theaters with “wall-to-wall car petting.”

“The movies are better now,” says Mike Strange, 21, a Chatsworth construction worker. “The people come here and watch the movies--and then they go home and fool around.”

His girlfriend, Shani Marcus, 20, sits atop Strange’s shoulders beside a friend’s car on a Friday, waiting for one of six double features to begin at Pacific’s Winnetka Drive-In Theatre, which sits on 27 acres in Chatsworth.

It’s one of only two outdoor movie venues remaining in the San Fernando Valley (the other: Pacific’s Van Nuys Drive-In), both bucking a nationwide decline in the number of drive-in screens from a peak of about 4,000 in 1958 to only 870 today, according to the National Assn. of Theatre Owners, based in North Hollywood.

“They used to play just awful movies at the drive-in,” Shani Marcus says, “but now they’re better.”

At dusk, as the big screens light up, one by one, Marcus and her boyfriend join a sellout crowd of customers in cars, pickups, vans, campers, station wagons and motor homes to watch the debut of “Jurassic Park.”

The film’s monstrous hype and hoopla seem appropriate for its plot: dinosaurs invading a theme park and eating people.

*

Play no funeral march for the drive-in movie. Put that obituary on hold. The patient’s vital signs are flagging, but the prognosis is mixed.

To hear some moviegoers tell it, not all drive-ins today are dinosaurs that people kill off by staying away.

“If you listened to some people, you’d think nobody goes to the drive-in anymore,” Terri Hart, 36, of Chatsworth, says in the pre-show twilight at the Winnetka, accompanied by her two sons and one of their friends.

“We go to the drive-in all the time. For us, it’s affordable. You don’t have to spend $50 the way you might have to for an evening at the walk-in. I can take the kids in their pajamas, if I want.”

Drive-in loyalists tend to be working-class young and old, notably baby boomers rekindling the dear old 1940s and 1950s through their children, or the older couple who show up most Friday nights at the Winnetka. “They’re always first in line,” says Kirk Hansen, the theater’s managing director. “They order their large cheese pizza, and he plays the video games while they wait for the show to start.”

To the very young, a night at the drive-in packs novelty.

“It’s amazing to see kids come here and think they’re discovering something,” says Milton Moritz, Pacific Theatres’ vice president of advertising and public relations. “It’s like going to a Johnny Rockets diner, sitting down at the counter and saying, ‘This is something new !’ ”

Meanwhile, as Terri Hart talks above the din of boom boxes and car radios--all sounding like a “battle of the bands” amid a sprawl of tailgate picnics, lawn chairs, playpens and Frisbee games--she, too, remains a confirmed drive-in devotee.

“Out here,” Hart says, “you have a little more freedom to move around and wiggle and not annoy the person next to you.”

To another customer, Bryan Bohannan, 36, of Granada Hills, the price couldn’t be better--especially for a double feature (playing with “Jurassic Park” was “Gremlins 2: The New Batch”). It cost just $4.50 (one adult admission) for Bohannan and his four children. Admission at the Winnetka and the Van Nuys, both Pacific Theatres, is free for youngsters under 12--and $2.50 for children 12 to 15, if accompanied by a parent.

“Instead of spending all the money on seats,” Bohannan says, “I bought three pizzas and soda pop here--and I bring the ice, the popcorn and the candy bars. So basically, I have everything I want to be comfortable.”

As he talks on, his three youngest children--Benjamin, 8; Sara, 5, and Travis, 2--snuggle up in blankets, side by side, atop the roof of his 1980s-model Cadillac Eldorado, waiting for the show to begin.

“The kids like to sleep on the roof and watch the show,” Bohannan says. “I just sit in the car. And they just eat all night long. We like it.”

His oldest child, Adam, 11, eavesdrops nearby, his face lighting up when he’s asked what he likes most about the drive-in.

“Staying up late,” he says. “And the bigger screen, of course.”

Safety considerations, too, rank with comfort and affordability among many drive-in patrons.

As Tyla Jones, 43, a moviegoer from Van Nuys, points out: “The drive-ins are the only place where you can actually control what’s happening around you. You have your own area--and nobody else can get into it. In a way, you feel like you’re protecting your family. We’re talking about anything--even a gang shooting.”

Others say they go to drive-ins because--unlike visits to a walk-in theater--they don’t have to walk at night to and from their vehicles.

But some complain that annoyances such as customers in trucks or vans blocking the view of others in cars sometimes lead to fighting.

“When there’s that kind of stuff going on, you’re afraid to bring your kids to the drive-in,” Colleen Roberts of Sunland says as she and her husband, Dick, wait in line with their two children, the top down in their 1986 Chevrolet Corsica convertible.

Actually, both the Winnetka and Van Nuys drive-ins have remained largely free of disturbances, according to the Los Angeles Police Department, although reports of gunfire (but no injuries) in March, 1992, forced officials at the Van Nuys facility to clear the grounds before reopening the next night.

These reports--and others from walk-in theaters in North Hollywood and Azusa--occurred during the opening of “American Me,” featuring actor-director Edward James Olmos and a strong anti-gang message.

Both police and Pacific Theatres officials say they’ve beefed up their security forces--many cruising the grounds on bicycles--to handle the most extreme emergencies at both Valley drive-ins.

Moviegoer Tyla Jones says her comfort level about drive-in security remains as high as ever. As she clasps a leash, tugged again and again by her 8-month-old French poodle named Peaches, she laughs and says:

“Nobody will want to pay to come into a drive-in and have a gang shooting!”

*

Will all drive-ins ultimately die?

“Never!” say the folks who keep the Winnetka and Van Nuys alive, their tenacity very much a part of the drive-in subculture.

Etna McCoy, manager of Pacific’s Van Nuys Drive-In, has watched the long procession of other Valley drive-ins to oblivion--the Sepulveda, the Reseda, Burbank’s Pickwick and San-Val (where she worked 18 of her 38 years in drive-in management), among others.

“But those had only one feature,” she says. “The trouble with one feature is, if the place is full, the people have no choice but to go home or wait ‘til the next show.”

She sits in her office next door to the snack bar, where customers, as they do at the Winnetka, line up for traditional movie treats such as popcorn and soda but also cooked-to-order pizza.

The salvation of drive-ins, McCoy says, are multiple screens that offer customers more choices, plus Cine-Fi, a sound system that hooks onto a vehicle’s AM radio antenna and is more sophisticated than the old boxes that hung in the windows.

A decade ago, the Van Nuys Drive-In (vehicle capacity: 1,400 on 15 acres) underwent a face lift, expanding from one screen when it opened in 1948 to three, putting up a new snack bar and preserving only the theater’s Art Deco, aqua-and-lavender marquee, which turns heads of motorists along busy Roscoe Boulevard.

The newer and larger Winnetka Drive-In (2,239 vehicles when full) opened with four screens in 1975 on what used to be a corn and strawberry field at Winnetka Avenue and Prairie Street, then added two screens in 1985.

That was before many single-screen drive-ins locally and nationwide fell victim to the video revolution, smaller cars, bucket seats and the inexorable march to suburbia by developers.

“A lot of drive-ins were out in the boonies, but the city caught up with them,” says Milton Moritz of Pacific Theatres. “And a lot of those drive-in properties became so valuable--15 to 30 acres of land in one parcel.”

He contends that drive-ins alone cannot be faulted for their demise.

“A drive-in is like a lot of things,” Moritz says. “They have their popularity, then time passes them by. The small towns thrived in their day, but then time passed them by, too, and people moved away. Are we supposed to say, ‘The town died?’ ”

Although the Winnetka and Van Nuys drive-ins play to sparse crowds on weeknights except Fridays, Moritz says both keep busy enough all weekend to remain cost-effective. He adds, however, that Pacific Theatres, which is privately held, does not release attendance figures.

On slow or busy nights, at least one employee on the Winnetka’s peak-season staff of 45 to 50 maintains a high-energy work pace. He’s the chief projectionist, Dene Hiliard, who scurries among the theater’s six projectors like a short-order cook, making sure that picture clarity, lighting and sound flow smoothly and staggering start times so that intermission traffic doesn’t clog lines at the snack bar.

“Ideally, the customer shouldn’t even know I’m here,” Hiliard says inside the spacious, second-story projection room.

Now and then, the telephone rings. Hiliard answers a call from a field usher who may report, “Horns on (screen) 5.”

“That means I’d better fix whatever’s wrong fast,” Hiliard says. “One minute is a terribly long time.”

For now, some worry that time is fast ticking away for the drive-in movie.

“I think it’s going to die,” Terri Hart says. “It’s sad.”

Not so worried is Milton Moritz, who grew up working in his father’s walk-in theaters in the Los Angeles area and remains a true believer in the drive-in’s immortality. “It might not be in the same numbers--you’ll just have fewer,” he says. “To a lot of people, this is their only choice on how they want to be entertained.”

And don’t ever tell the Van Nuys’ Drive-In’s Etna McCoy, who’s been around since the days when our romance with drive-ins seemed like an incurable crush, that the end is near.

“Listen! There’s always going to be kids,” she says. “And I don’t care what anybody says--they’re not gonna want to sit at home with Mom and Dad, watching TV. Those kids will always want some place to go.”

WHERE AND WHEN

Location: Pacific Winnetka Drive-In, 20201 Prairie St., Chatsworth.

Call: (818) 349-6808.

Location: Pacific Van Nuys Drive-In, 15040 Roscoe Blvd., Van Nuys.

Call: (818) 786-3500.

Prices at both drive-ins: $4.50 general, $2.50 juniors 12-15 when accompanied by a parent, free for children under 12.