My Two Drive-In Movie Experiences

Have you ever been to a drive-in movie?

I've been to two of them, and I thought I'd reminisce just a little about those experiences.  My friend Quiggy is hosting Celebrate the Drive-In Week over at his blog, The Midnite Drive-In, and that seemed like the perfect time to look back at these two separate occasions.

I was born in 1980, so I missed the wondrous days of drive-in movie theaters being common.  The summer I was eighteen, my dad learned that there was a drive-in movie theater in eastern Tennessee about three hours from our home in western North Carolina.  He decided he should take our family to that because drive-ins were going extinct, and he wanted my brother and I to experience one.

So, we drove three hours through the Appalachians to go see Godzilla (1998).  And then left when the movie was about half finished because we had to drive three hours to get home again.  It was summer, the movie didn't start until about 9:00pm, and, well, there was that long drive ahead.  So we only stayed for half the movie.  Which didn't really bug me, because I wasn't into Godzilla anyway.  In fact, I really have no memory of the movie itself.  I do remember sitting in our car to watch it, and being excited to get to see a movie at a drive-in.  

I vividly remember getting to see the trailer for The Mask of Zorro (1998) there -- I was already very excited for that movie to come out, and seeing the trailer for it at the drive-in was way more exciting for me than anything to do with a giant lizard.  But it's nice to be able to say I saw a monster movie at a drive-in, since they are kind of the essential drive-in fare, I think.

My second time at a drive-in theater was at the Big Sky Drive-In in the Wisconsin Dells.  This venue is still operating!  I'm hoping I might be able to take my teens there this summer, actually.  If there's anything good playing.  (They're playing really good stuff right now and I am mad that we aren't taking our family vacation right this minute, sigh.)

Anyway, my husband and I went on a date to the Big Sky Drive-in to see... Cars (2006).  And if you think that watching Cars while sitting in your car at a drive-in theater must have been about the most perfectly meta movie-going experience you could ever get... it was.  It was fantastic.  The part during the credits where all the cars are watching movies at a drive-in, and we were watching that at a drive-in -- I mean, it just does not get any cooler!

Plus, Cars is actually a really good movie.  I love it.  I've seen it umpteen times, because my two oldest kids were absolutely besotted with it when they were very small, but I still love it.

Don't forget to check out the blog party!  I'll be reviewing The Outsiders (1983) for it later this week.