Interview: “Back to the Drive-In”

Like many people during COVID, I went to my local Drive-In to see movies and get out of the house, as safely as possible. The Mission Tiki Drive-In outside of Los Angeles was one of the shining lights in 2020, and now that & many other Drive-Ins are featured in the new documentary “Back to the Drive-In” by April Wright, a follow up to her 2013 documentary about Drive-Ins. And while Drive-Ins may have been in the news a lot during COVID, Wright’s film shows that COVID hurt Drive-Ins just like everything else, and they are struggling to stay alive in 2022. I interviewed Wright for her previous documentary “Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace,” and I was happy to chat with her again about this latest project.

You previously made the documentary “Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American Drive-In” back in 2013. What was the idea to make a follow-up documentary?

Well, that’s why I called the new one “Back to the Drive-In” [laughs]. I made that one because I went to drive-ins growing up and I had noticed over the years that there were less and less of them. There were some that were still kind of abandoned at the time when I was younger, that the land had not been developed yet. So I couldn’t figure out why are these sitting there. Why are they not open? We still like cars, we still like movies, what’s going on? And so I looked into it, everybody had said real estate, but I realized that was not the only issue. So I wanted to go further, and that’s how I made the first documentary. And I traveled to every state except Alaska. They had drive-ins there, I just haven’t made it to Alaska yet. So I was very thorough and I covered the whole history, but I realized over the years that there was still a slow decline in the total number of drive-ins. And I realized that they were all family owned and that they, that each drive-in kind of reflected the family that owned it, that they very much were small family owned businesses. Even if a company had multiple locations, it was still a family owned company that had more than one location. And that that it was just really hard to keep ’em going, and this was even before COVID, that it was just a struggle to keep ’em going, but they all had their hearts in it. And because they were family businesses, they really cared about their communities and what it meant for kids and for families to be able to come to the drive-in and they wanted to keep that going.

So I wanted to go behind the scenes and show how much these families work to keep these places alive and how the only way that they do keep going is if the communities support them and go to it regularly. And so that’s what I wanted to do. So I had gone to the driving owner’s conference in Florida in February of 2020 right before COVID hit. And I told him I wanted to make this documentary and would any drive-ins be interested in letting me come visit and follow them around? And a few were interested. And also around that time, Brad Pitt had just won the Oscar for his Once Upon time in Hollywood performance and in his acceptance speech, he talked about going to drive-ins growing up. So we’re like, okay, well, Brad Pitt is talking about drive-ins. Can we somehow, you know, leverage that, can that help bring attention on these remaining authentic drive-ins to let people know they’re still out here, there’s still drive-ins, you can go to ‘em! There’s not as many as there used to be, but can you can find drive-ins and you can go to ‘em.

And what happened when COVID hit?

Well, cut to a month later with COVID and everything shutting down, and drive-ins were kind of the only thing that were still open as a venue that you could go to because the social distancing was built in to the business. Suddenly drive-ins were everywhere and they were national news and they were international news. And so there was all this buzz and attention on drive-ins and a lot of pop-ups that happened temporarily. But I knew for a bunch of reasons, even though it looked like drive-ins were booming, and it was good to be doing something during COVID, I knew it was still hard on them.

I knew they were at reduced capacity. They had to have extra employees to make sure people parked appropriately. They had to keep cleaning things. Some of them had limitations on what they could do in their snack bars. So there was just a lot of hindrances to running the normal business that most of ’em felt like, even though there was more attention on drive-ins, in terms of actual financials, they were actually doing worse than they would in a normal year. So seemed like they were doing awesome, like printing money, and that was not the case. So the story I already wanted to tell about how hard drive-ins struggled just had an extra layer added with COVID and there was so much perception that they were back and that they were thriving.

But the realities that a lot more drive-ins have been closing lately or selling or changing hands. And so I got on the road last summer to make this, and I called it “Back to the Drive-In” because a lot of people did go back to the drive-in during COVID. And now that we’re coming out of COVID, people need to keep going back to the drive in. And also for me, personally, as a documentary subject, I went back to the drive-in to revisit it and to give this deeper, behind the curtain view that’s not historic at all. So the first one I made was all historic. This one is all present.

Did you revisit a lot of the same Drive-ins from your first documentary, or visit new ones?

Mostly new. D. Edward Vogel from the Bengies Drive-In was in the first one, and I think he’s the only overlap, if I’m not mistaken. I tried to pick different and diverse points of view. So I tried to pick drive-ins in different parts of the country. I tried to pick ones that were brand new. One was only a few weeks old. The Quasar, when I got there, had just opened several weeks prior. And I picked others that had been open for many, many decades or had had the same owner for 37 years. I tried to pick some that were single screens. Some that had up to seven screens, some that were near cities, some that were really rural. So I took care to pick all different types of drive-ins and different types of owners. And the interesting thing to me, I thought they might have different issues depending on those different factors, but it turns out they did not, they were all struggling from the same set of challenges. So that was really interesting to learn. I didn’t know it would be so similar when I got on the road.

It was great to see that there are also new Drive-ins opening across the country.

Yeah, I knew there were new ones, and that’s cool, and also old ones reopening, being brought back to life. So yeah, there’s a lot of that, but the total number is still going down because there’s still a fair amount being sold or closing for various COVID related reasons. So we’re optimistic and there is a little bit of new generation taking over some of them, which could be really cool. Um, yeah, I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful. I think they’re gonna do really well this summer and that they’ll keep going.

It definitely seems like Drive-ins, just like other independent businesses, are struggling to find a new generation to take over when the current owners want to retire.

100 percent. It’s hard. So if they don’t have people in the family that wanna take it over, like Jennifer at the Brazos, then who can she find? I compared her once, I was talking to somebody, I’m like, it’s kind of like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory [laughs]. Willy Wonka wants to find that person who will run his factory the same way that he would in the way that he wants it run, and it’s kind of like, that’s how these owners are. They don’t want to sell them to be developed if they can help it. They wanna find somebody who wants to love the drive-in and put as much into it as they have. That’s what they’re looking for. And it’s a hard person to find.

After visiting all of these Drive-ins, what kind of person typically runs a Drive-In?

Well, that’s a great question. I think you see it in the film, that even though they might be different, they just really have a passion for doing something good, making a contribution, providing something that’s a family entertainment, family experience. They all get a lot of joy out of giving the kids something fun and letting them create good memories. Usually it’s because they had good memories of it growing up. So they wanna recreate that and keep giving it to the community. So it’s just, it’s just a lot of good will towards families and passion, that they really care about the experience that families and kids are having. And I think that’s so important, especially now because we have been very isolated. And I think that a lot of fabric within communities is gone and people are more separate. And I don’t think that it’s necessarily been good for communities. So things like this, family entertainment, family gathering places where you can go with family and friends, have a good time, just something to do that creates a good memory, I think the more places like that, that we have the better off we are as a society. And they kind of see that as their little contribution to that big picture.

It was cool to see that each Drive-In had their own unique features, like how one Drive-In uses segways to get around.

Yeah, that was a cool thing that I didn’t know exactly what it would be when I was set out to do it and when I went to shoot them, but when I got into the edit, I kind of realized that each drive-in, like you just said, had its own unique story, had it had its own unique arc that it was about. So like the Wellfleet with the fear of the fog, you know, that’s an obvious one and that’s kind of a nail biter for everybody who watches it throughout, like what is gonna happen, and it’s a thing that happens. So that’s an obvious one, but places like, as I said, Jennifer, at the Brazos theater, her whole arc is about the nostalgia because she’s at the point where, where she’s ready to retire.

And so she’s very nostalgic about the whole experience and you know, how romantic drive-ins are and all the things like that. So she really represents that romantic, nostalgic aspect of the drive-in and then somewhere like the Harvest Moon, that represents sort of that expanding family business, cuz they have one son, well, first off it’s two sons that took it over from their dad. So it’s already the second generation, but then within the sons, one has a pretty new wife who has married into the drive in business and is now realizing that that’s their life. And then the other has a brand new little daughter who’s growing up in the drive in. And so there’s this, the expanding family, and then D Edward Vogel in Baltimore, he’s really about the rules. And I think the thing about that is because his father was a famous architect of drive-ins. So he makes a couple little comments about that, that he really wants to preserve the experience so that people have a real authentic drive-in experience. So that’s why he’s a real stickler about how the place looks and the rules and really preserving the way it was designed is so important to him. So each drive-in in the movie has a unique storyline that they’re about.

So you started planning the documentary before COVID, but how did COVID affect the film?

I think it added a layer of complexity, of something to explore. But it also delayed it, I probably would’ve shot it the summer of 2020, but I wasn’t sure, the rules were changing so rapidly then state to state as far as what could be open or whatever, cuz that was just a couple months into it. And so I didn’t wanna get out on the road cause I wasn’t sure what I would find. And we also weren’t sure how bad it was or how contagious it was or whatever, we didn’t know very much then. And so I had to kind of wait a year and then as last summer was coming upon me, actually there was a reporter who I had talked to about drive-ins who was doing a COVID drive-in story.

And she said, oh, are you still gonna do that follow up movie? And I was like, oh yeah, I better get on the road, it’s almost summer. If I don’t shoot it now, a lot of drive-ins only have a summer season. So I was like, okay, I better go do it. So it delayed making the film a little bit, but it added this additional layer of what they were dealing with and how they’re gonna push through and come out of it, which they’re starting to do now this summer, but with a lot of challenges. I wanted people to know what those challenges were and why they’re important and be respectful when you go, you’re not the only person. And also just to support the drive-ins cuz they really care a lot about the communities.

So I want their communities to care a lot about them. And even though I went to specific drive-ins, it really applies to everybody’s local drive-in. The stories add up to the same thing; even though the people are unique, the story’s the same. So it just changed my timing basically. And the one thing it changed too initially I was only gonna follow maybe three different drive-ins and really get more into depth just about their operation. But when COVID hit that’s when I felt like it was important to show a bigger cross section to show that all different types of drive-ins in all different places, all different sizes, that they were actually all the same. They were all going through the same struggle. So I felt like I needed a broader example to show that. So that did change a little bit instead of following three or four, I ended up following 11.

How long was the shoot? Did you go from one Drive-In to another in one long trip?

Yeah, I drove from LA out to the Dallas area and then north up to Nebraska and then east through Illinois and Ohio and then up to Buffalo and Greenville, New York and over to Cape Cod and Baltimore. And then of course in LA I did the Mission Tiki. So yeah, I took a long cross country road trip. I shot it all myself. I learned how to, I got a drone and became a drone pilot and the drone photography was also one of the reasons why I wanted to make another film cuz when I made my first one, we didn’t have drones accessible. And I just knew that that would show the drive-in from a different perspective that would be really cool to see. And so that was important for me for this new film, that that technology existed.

And I could really show the drive-ins in a different way. So yeah, I drove by myself, it took five weeks. I went across the country and back and I spent one night at each drive-in. As you see in the film and I wanted people to know too that, they come in at two or three in the afternoon and they work all the way till two in the morning. People don’t realize that it’s like, we go to the drive-ins for a couple hours, but they’re doing so much preparation and you know, you just, I wanted to show all the work they do.

Have you considered making a documentary about Drive-Ins in other countries?

So, what I realized when I made my first documentary, it predominantly was an American thing because we had over 5,000 at one time. The next behind the us was Canada, which had something like 2000. I can’t remember the numbers. I used to know ’em back when I made that film, but like a much smaller number than the US. And then Australia was the third with under a thousand. And so those were the three biggest countries that had drive-ins and they’re kind of similar, from sort of a land aspect and that type of thing. So they had ’em the most, but there were also back in the day, some in Italy, some in what other countries. Germany had some. They weren’t really in the UK. So there were a sprinkling in other countries, but they were not a huge thing. And same thing now, although there were pop-up drive-ins that opened in England during COVID and in Saudi Arabia and I think Korea, a couple different Asian countries had drive-ins. So under COVID, they did pop up in more places around the world, not permanently built drive-ins, but rooftop drive-ins or that type of thing. So there were more in the world that that came about because of COVID and I don’t know if any of those will stick around, but that was kind of interesting.

Were the Drive-In owners optimistic about the future, or more pessimistic?

Well, I think it comes across in the film. I keep saying that at the end of the day, it really is a story of resilience. And I think there’s a fair amount of sort of just American spirit in it too, because they are they’re entrepreneurs and it’s a family run business, and the drive-ins always kind of represented freedom, when they were first built, this idea of, get in your car and go somewhere and have an experience. And so I think that the resilience of everybody, even though you can see at times that they’re annoyed or things are happening that shouldn’t, whether it’s the weather, whatever it is, all these factors that are obstacles, but you can tell they all love it. And they’re all very determined and they’re all very optimistic. And so I think that that emotion of their resilience really comes through by the end of the film.

Since COVID is still ongoing, when did you know the film was finished and ready to screen?

Well, for this one, I didn’t wanna wait too long because it is a point in time. And so I shot it last summer and I knew I wanted to get it out this summer. So we already had a screening at 20 different drive-ins in 14 states on June 6th for drive-in day. And it did pretty well. I was like the number 16 film in the box office that day.

That’s great!

So it was well received. A few drive-ins got rained out, but the other ones where it played at did pretty well with it. So yeah, I didn’t wanna wait too long. It is a current story. So I wanted to get it out there and from what I hear, they are having a better summer because there’s a lot more new movies coming out. So of course everybody’s done well with top gun. The minions just did really well the last couple weekends, so hopefully they’re getting out of the woods a little bit this year.

You’ve made several “Going Attraction” documentaries now, about Drive-Ins and Movie Palaces. What other films do you have in the pipeline?

Well this one I didn’t put under that branding because to me, this is not about the going attraction aspect. It really is about people need to go back to the drive-in, so this is really current present, not history, but when I was on the road last summer to shoot the drive-in documentary, I also shot as much B-roll as I could for three other going attractions topics. So they are roller ranks, which was my family’s business growing up, my family had a roller rink that I grew up in, and those are going attraction that there are less and less, but also there’s a new resurgence and popularity of skating from COVID. So that’s an interesting one. And the other one is bowling alleys, also a going attraction. And the other is family owned or local amusement parks, which there used to be a ton of ’em before everything was six flags and Disney, almost every city had had their own little amusement parks or in some cases, many amusement parks. People don’t realize that. So I shot as much as I could of rinks and bowling alleys and amusement parks as I was traveling the country last summer. So I gotta do the interviews for those films, but those will be coming.

I can’t wait to see them!

Yeah, and they’ll be the definitive, I hope, exploration of the whole history of those three topics. So I’ll get in deep with those [laughs].

“Back to the Drive-In,” directed by April Wright, will be opening in select theaters & Drive-Ins on August 12th.