Monday, July 9, 2007

142

Today I learned about drive-in movies, although I got a couple of kind of differing accounts. The basic point is that the drive-in movie was invented in 1933 by Richard Hollingshead. He plopped a projector on the top of his car and started showing movies on either his garage door or a screen that he nailed to some trees. Other people took interest and he started a company. The movies didn't really catch on as a fad/widespread thing until the 50s and 60s, though.

One reason that drive-ins fell off was the growing cost of real estate; the theaters could really only operate at night and during the warm months, and it was just too expensive to keep that big empty plot of land open for that.

You know what I think would be a good idea? They should have drive-ins in big parking lots during the summer. Think about it: over at Easton or somewhere like that, everything shuts down by 10 or 11 at night. Why not have people fill up one of those big lots and show the movie on the side of Macy's or something? The place is just sitting there empty. Might as well use it. I dunno, I'd go.

No comments: