Drive (18 page)

Rather than promoting dangerous driving, some car movies are content to wallow in nostalgia.
American Graffiti
takes place on a Saturday night in the late summer of 1962 in a small town based on Modesto, California, where director George Lucas grew up. Several teenagers—two of whom are college-bound—cruise the strip, listen to Wolfman Jack on the radio and look for action. One of the characters becomes obsessed with a beautiful blond woman in a white Thunderbird; another must drive a preteen girl around in his yellow deuce coupe; and a third borrows a friend's ride and meets a girl, but can't quite live up to all the possibilities promised by the car. When the movie came out in 1973, it filled
theatres, earned five Academy Award nominations and sparked a revival of music from the late 1950s and early 1960s as well as a renewed interest in cruising.

TO ME, THE 66 DRIVE-IN
was not just another roadside attraction on a route that had more of them than we could ever hope to visit. Drive-ins have always been more about the car than what was on the giant screen. After all, from the beginning they offered poor picture quality, worse sound and a dubious lineup of movies. Even now that the picture is better and the sound comes through short-range FM radio, going to the drive-in often means sitting in an automobile on a hot, mosquito-filled night and watching a movie through a windshield—not exactly the ideal conditions for the film aficionado. On the other hand, a car offers a level of privacy and freedom no indoor theatre can match.

I'd gone to a drive-in for the first time the previous June, which I guess is a weird thing for someone my age to admit. Shortly after 7 p.m. on a Saturday, the cars were already lined up when Paul Peterson, the owner of the Mustang Drive-In, swung his battered black Toyota T-100 pickup onto the ten-acre property just outside Picton, Ontario, a town of about 4,500 people a couple of hours east of Toronto. Summer solstice was only a few days away, so nothing would be showing on either of the theatre's screens for at least two hours, but no one seemed worried about that as they waited for the box office, which is actually an old bus, to open.

The cargo bed of his truck was jammed with tools, supplies and junk, and the cab was an even bigger mess. Peterson, who admits to being “a bit of a slob,” looks the way Jerry Garcia might have if he'd been a member of ZZ Top instead of the Grateful Dead. A big guy with long grey hair and a grey beard, he wore blue shorts, a large blue shirt, a paint-splattered blue Tilley-type hat and white socks with his running shoes. Normally a gregarious showman, he was suffering mightily from the flu, so he wasn't out
mixing it up with his customers—many of whom he knows by face, if not by name—or helping out in the canteen. We sat in the new projection room for the back screen on the just-added second floor of the white building that sits in the middle of the property. The drywall remained unpainted and film spools were scattered everywhere. A weak and weary Peterson sat on a stool as he rewound the films from the night before.

The Mustang opened in 1956, the same year Peterson was born. He and his wife Nancy bought it in 1988 when they were still social workers with the Children's Aid Society. “I had always gone to the drive-in, but this was not
Cinema Paradiso
or anything,” he told me, making a reference to the 1990 Italian film about a boy who befriends a projectionist and falls in love with the movies. “We were going by this one and saw it was for sale and I thought, ‘Man, that would be so cool.'”

The property was in bad shape and the theatre had a reputation as a place for young people to get drunk and, he learned later, there had been a small riot on the last night of the 1987 season. Worse, the Petersons knew nothing about running a drive-in. “We painted the screen and put some money into the place,” he said, “but it still looked awful.” Fortunately, he had a knack for promotion and an ability to entertain people. He also realized he had to convert the party palace into a place that would attract families. At first, instituting a “zero tolerance on alcohol” policy didn't seem so smart because the theatre made a lot of money from the partiers, especially during the all-night shows. But he'd worked with kids in crisis and what he saw disturbed him, especially because so many were actually arriving drunk. Revenues fell fifteen thousand dollars the first year, and attendance at the all-nighters plunged from as many as 700 people down to 150 on a good night. “It would have been easy to second-guess myself,” he admitted, “but I knew it was the right thing to do—ethically, professionally and all that. It was hard for a seasonal business, but it worked because word got out: it's not a dump anymore.”

Today, the all-nighters—when four movies run—regularly attract a thousand people. His adult children help run the drive-in and the two indoor theatres the family now owns in nearby towns. In 2002, he added the second screen, giving the place a capacity of four hundred cars and increasing his programming flexibility, but he refused to follow advice to play his best movie second to increase concession sales because he didn't think that was fair to his customers.“It should be fun,” he said as the rewinding film slapped around the reel. “These movies aren't going to change your life. Go to the drive-in, get eaten by some mosquitoes, eat way more stuff than you should and then go home.”

During intermissions, he leaves the front-screen projector on so children can make shadow puppets; on some nights, there are thirty or forty kids up there. He shows three movies on Saturdays in the summer, holds all-nighters on long weekends and hosts special events, such as the popular annual pyjama night. “We're branding with memories.”

Apparently, some of those memories will be the same as they were back in the heyday of drive-ins. When a young couple drives up to the ticket booth and asks what a movie is about, Peterson is tempted to say, “What difference does it make?” Sure enough, the morning light invariably reveals condoms and bits of clothing on the ground, especially in the back row. He knows a drive-in is “a cheap room for the night,” and just laughs about it. “To me, the one thing that is sacred is what you do in your car is your business. If it spills over and starts to offend people or get in the way of them enjoying what they're doing, then I'll step in, but until then …”

Downstairs, there was a long line at the canteen. It's the kind of place that proudly displays a sign that says, “Fudge. Not just for breakfast anymore.” Outside, cars, vans and pickups—mostly from GM, Ford and Chrysler—were covering the lawn in the rows that are still marked by bent and tilting speaker stands even though the theatre moved to radio sound several years ago. Some teenagers lounged in the back of a pickup while a family dangled
their legs over the back of a van with the rear door up. Nearby, a man used Windex to clean the windshield of his Montana van. Some people listened to the sixth game of the Stanley Cup final on their car radios; others walked their dogs, while still others just hung out. Children played on the swings and slides at the playground; soon some of the younger kids would be in their pyjamas.

The mercury had hit thirty degrees Celsius that day and even though the air was cooling as the sun dropped in the sky, it was still warm and humid, so the inside of a car wasn't the most comfortable spot. Facing the main screen, where
The Breakup
and
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
would soon play, four teenagers sat in camping chairs beside a rusty white Cutlass Supreme. Seasonal campers at a nearby campground, they visit the Mustang every second week in the summer. Fifteenyear-old Josh has been going to drive-ins all his life and, even though he can't drive yet, said it's more about the car than the movie. Nineteen-year-old Caitlin, who has been a regular for six years, agreed: “I'm more likely to see a movie at the drive-in because it's a better experience.”

Meanwhile, in front of the second screen, which would soon show
Over the Hedge
and
The Da Vinci Code
, Rob and Shana watched their four kids play beside a Safari van. The family, from Trenton, about thirty miles away, goes to the Mustang at least four times a summer. They especially enjoy the all-night shows, though the two youngest stay home for those. Rob first went to a drive-in when he was three or four and has been going ever since. As a teenager, he and Shana spent a lot of time there. “We didn't watch the movies too much though,” he said as they both laughed. Rob added that they would always go to drive-ins. “As long as we've got a car,” he declared, “we're coming.”

By 9:25, the sky had grown dark enough to start and Peterson got on the public address system. He greeted the crowd, announced some birthdays and talked about the movies, admitting that
The
Breakup
falls apart about two-thirds of the way through. Then, as usual, he asked his patrons to make some noise with their horns. Some also flashed their lights. According to regulars I was with, this wasn't exactly a vintage performance from the showman. But he did have an extra treat in store for them: he passed the mic to a young blond man named Scott, who proposed to his girlfriend Emily. “We've had a lot of special time together at the drive-in and it's a part of our life,” he said in his preamble. There was another round of honking, and then Peterson wryly warned Scott: “Once you get married, you come to the drive-in to watch the movie.” Scott left the projection room and Peterson finished up by saying, “Here's the movie. Thanks for coming, folks. Have fun. We'll see you at the intermission and, remember, there's no point taking money home with you.”

I asked him, “Do you get a lot of proposals?”

“Well, I do, yeah,” he deadpanned. “I mean, look at me.”

We all found out at the intermission that Emily had said yes. Later, Peterson, who was having projection problems on the second screen, was hand-feeding
The Da Vinci Code
onto the film reel. “Hopefully they'll have a happy life together,” he said, “and we'll have the next generation of drive-in kids.”

CHRIS AND I TRAVELLED
beside the interstate and mocked the drivers who had to contend with the huge trucks and heavy traffic. When I took a turn at the helm, I was tempted to see if I could go as fast as the people on the superhighway; Chris, on the other hand, was wiser because he relished the opportunity to slow down to the pace of a Sunday driver. Either way, we'd figured out that driving Route 66 is part road trip and part road rally, so while one of us took the wheel, the other juggled our growing collection of guides and maps to figure out our next move.

Sometimes our route just ended in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes we needed to be on the north frontage road, running along the interstate; sometimes we needed to be on the south
road. Sometimes the way all but disappeared, or so it seemed, as we drove into towns. And since what was Route 66 is not called that anymore, the name of the road we wanted to be on changed frequently. Whenever we saw the distinctive brown-and-white “Route US 66” sign, we felt triumphant, but too often we couldn't see one when we needed it most. (Theft and vandalism, particularly graffiti tags, mean volunteers are always playing catch-up in the battle to improve the signage.) And because the route changed in places over the years, we occasionally had to contend with different alignments. Navigational errors, which were unavoidable, usually meant we had to double back or ended up on the interstate or actually had to ask for directions. We'd figured out that between our mistakes, the slowdowns in towns and our stops to take photos or visit a point of interest, a distance that would take an hour to cover on the interstate took us twice that. We called it Route 66 time and happily settled into it. The sun came out as we left the 66 Drive-In, so we opened the sunroof and cranked up the iPod.

From the earliest days of the automobile, musicians have sung about cars and what people do in them. After the publication of the first car song—“Love in an Automobile”—in 1899, almost two hundred others appeared in the next decade. The most popular one was “My Merry Oldsmobile,” but others included “The Automobile Kiss,” “In Our Little Love Mobile” and “Let's Have a Motor Car Marriage.” The connection between cars and sex would become more explicit: in 1936, blues legend Robert Johnson released “Terraplane Blues,” a double entendre–filled song in which an inexpensive sedan made by Hudson is a metaphor for a woman. When the “car “won't start, Johnson assumes she has been unfaithful and sings, “Who been drivin' my Terraplane for you since I been gone.” Johnson may not have been the first to use this literary device—and he certainly wasn't the last because nowadays cars and sex often seem like pretty much the same thing in popular music.

It's not all sex, though. When folksingers such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger started singing about Route 66 in the 1930s, their interest was primarily political. Guthrie, in particular, travelled the Mother Road frequently, but the most famous song about the road is Bobby Troup's “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.” A 1946 hit for Nat King Cole, it helped build the legend of America's Main Street. The simple lyrics—which mention St. Louis, Joplin, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Gallup, Flagstaff, Winona, Kingman, Barstow and San Bernardino—advise taking “the highway that's the best” to California. An unabashed romanticization of car travel, the song became a pop standard covered by many artists, ranging from Bing Crosby to the Rolling Stones to Asleep at the Wheel.

When rock 'n' roll first crackled onto the airwaves in the 1950s, car culture was also exploding, so perhaps the strong connection between the two was inevitable. Sex continued to be a major theme, but musicians weren't afraid to sing about automobile tragedies; two of the best known are Mark Dinning's “Teen Angel,” which topped the charts in 1960, and “Dead Man's Curve,” a huge hit for Jan and Dean in 1964. The Beach Boys had a more upbeat message, with infectious good-time pop tunes about wheels, girls and surfing that sold young people around the world on California's car-filled endless summers. At the same time, with the gathering storm of generational rebellion, a ride and the road also began to represent a new kind of freedom. In the 1970s, New Jersey's Bruce Springsteen began singing darker songs about cars, but even if the mood was more desperate, that didn't mean he wasn't glorifying the automobile just as much as the Beach Boys did.