The appeal of the drive-in movie these days is clear: What other entertainment so tidily joins the thrills of going out with the safety of staying in? Once a charming diversion of decades past—for many, a passage in the movie Grease is likely to blame for that—the drive-in has returned with a force over the last few months, popping up outside a diner in Astoria, on the waterfront in Greenpoint, and attracting a crush of new patrons in states like Iowa, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, where a few theatres have remained in operation all along. (Over the decades, the format had fallen out of favor for a few different reasons; among them the costs associated with projecting digital film, and the rise of mall culture—which allowed patrons to shop, eat, and catch a movie all in the same place.) Embracing the trend, Tribeca Enterprises announced a new “Tribeca Drive-In” series, rolling out across venues in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Seattle, and Arlington, Texas over the next month. (A portion of the programming’s proceeds will go to Black Lives Matter.) “The Tribeca Drive-In series is a tribute to movies and the shared experience of watching them, even if from our cars,” Tribeca Enterprises co-founder Robert DeNiro said in a statement.
Adventureland, an amusement park in East Farmingdale, Long Island, also launched a drive-in series this year, more imaginatively called “Quarantainment Nights.” Temporarily shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic, the park—which first opened in 1962—has shown a movie every Monday since May, the tickets to which include dinner and a pre-show round of bingo. “This was kind of the first out-of-the-box idea we had,” says Jeanine Gentile, a manager at Adventureland. “We were throwing some ideas around, you know, What can we do to keep our name out there and to kind of bring the community together? I think [this week] was our eighth Quarantainment Night, and each one keeps getting better and better.” With room to accommodate some 150 cars, Adventureland has charmed both young and old with family favorites like Cheaper By the Dozen, Toy Story, and Dr. Doolittle. (Still to come are screenings of Night at the Museum and The Sandlot.) “We’ve gotten, I think, [everyone from] babies in car seats to grandparents,” Gentile says. “And we’ve had people from all over the Island—from Queens, from the city, from Farmingdale, Commack, which is exactly what we usually have during the summer. It’s really cool to see them still coming out during all of this ... you know, from Montauk all the way here.”
While film studios and theatre chains nervously calculate the odds that people love Christopher Nolan more than they fear death, a large screen propped up in an empty parking lot has never seemed so clever—or, indeed, so welcoming. “It’s just really an awesome night to see everyone, even just us to keep us going,” Gentile continues. “It’s so fun to be able to give these families something to do and somewhere to go during these difficult times.”
