![]() ![]() A lot of people like to sit in the back of their pickups to watch the film. With any drive-in theater, weather is the biggest determinant of turnout. We're out in rural Idaho, so we're situated near cornfields, there are a lot of weeds to maintain, and the wind takes a toll on the fence. ![]() My biggest thing is keeping the grounds looking nice. ![]() That comes with any business - but we're only open in the nighttime hours, so scheduling repairs can be a pain. That's when we'll see that the freezer went down, or the Coke machines sprung a leak. Our business heavily relies on concession purchases.Įach week, we come in after being away for four days because we only run Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. We have to plan on something malfunctioning or breaking down, and just roll with it - whether it's the projection equipment, the 70-year-old popcorn machine, or the freezers. The challenges aren't that different from other businessesįor our specific drive-in, there are always repairs. I don't often get to see a lot of movies in their entirety when you're working at a theater, you end up seeing the same scene night after night. When " Top Gun: Maverick'' was released, Paramount unlocked the digital print for us to pre-screen the night before opening, which was a lot of fun. We're allowed to pre-screen if there's a big movie coming out. If it comes down to more of a family-friendly film versus a more adult one, I always go with the family-friendly one. I watch previews and look at reviews to see what people are anticipating - I use IMDb, Screendollars, and Box Office Mojo - and also ask friends and family which films they think will attract the most people. I communicate with the studios every week and lay out our calendar. We only have one 60-foot screen, so I have to be really selective about what we play and choose the ones I think will bring the biggest crowd, which can be really difficult. Some people assume we just pop in a videotape or a DVD, but we have play-date agreements and contacts at each of the major studios: Universal, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, and Disney. I didn't ever think that I would come back and be the one running it.īringing new films to the screen is definitely not as simple as people might think. My parents had sold their indoor theaters over the years, so the drive-in was the last one my mom was still operating. When I was younger I never imagined I'd run my family's drive-in theater one day - but I couldn't let my mom sell it I worked in restaurant management and then I switched to working sales at trade shows, so that I could work for myself. Soon after that, I went off to college and moved out of state for about 22 years. ![]() As a teenager I worked at one of our indoor theaters, so I didn't spend much time at the drive-in at that point. Of course when you're young, you don't realize how special something like our drive-in really is.īy the time I was 10 years old, I was in the cleanup crew, picking up trash and doing the recycling. My parents owned two indoor theaters and the drive-in. I was involved in our indoor theater businesses quite a bit as a kid. I grew up 20 miles from Parma in Caldwell, Idaho. That makes me the third generation owner-operator as of 2019 - so I'm new to the scene. My grandfather built the drive-in, Parma Motor Vu, in 1953, and in 1976 my parents took over operations and ownership. ![]()
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