Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

It’s Not The End Of The Road Despite Dwindling Theaters, Families Flocking To Movies Outdoors

To kids growing up with the Internet and 65 channels, with a Super Nintendo, VCR and every animated feature Disney ever produced, an outdoor movie is as peculiar as an outdoor toilet.

The drive-by they know about.

The drive-in?

It’s as etched in my movie-going past as James Dean and Elvis, but to first-graders who’ve never seen a drivein, the whole idea is stranger than fiction.

Like Friday night, when I told the kids we were headed to the drive-in.

“The driveway?”

“Nah, the drive-in, the movie. You park the car out on the grass and watch movies all night.”

The youngest, who turned 6 this week, stared blankly as the information was processed.

“It’s a place where you run around before the show starts,” I said. “The movie gets going at dark and you stay up as late as you want in the car, watching with pizza and popcorn and pop.”

“Coooool.”

He fled next door to clue in a 7-year-old friend, who listened as long as 7-year-olds listen before finally breaking in:

“There’s no such a thing!”

Think of it his way. A movie - outside - with sleeping bags and pajamas?

Get serious.

In a few years he might be right. The drive-in is an endangered species.

Luckily, there are pockets where they thrive. Closest is the Auto-Vue between Colville and Kettle Falls, technically the Auto-Vue Drive-In and Mini-Storage where the rule is at least five cars, or no movie.

We were the first ones to show up on a recent Friday night for “The Rock” and “Twister,” a double-bill that can hold you until the final credits threaten to run to sunrise.

It stirred pleasant memories of a simpler time, to the drive-in boom of the 1950s.

Fueled by cheap land on the outskirts of towns and cities, drive-ins were special to a kid with a black-and-white TV that pulled in three channels. They have, of course, given way to the increasing value of the property they occupied.

The economy of the drive-in was simply overrun in Seattle, Spokane and Tacoma, where the last of that city’s outdoor theaters - the Starlite - closed one year ago.

Survivors are hard to find. They include the Samish in Bellingham, Puget Park in Everett, Your Twin in Longview, Valley Six in the Kent-Auburn Valley and the Rodeo Triple Drive-In and Swap Meet in Gorst, near Bremerton. There are none in North Idaho.

They offer what drive-ins have offered for more than 50 years. A cheap date. Privacy. Comfort.

The operators, Steve and Karen Wisner, who charge $4 for adults (children are free), run the family-owned Auto-Vue and the remodeled indoor theater in Colville, the Alpine. A Wisner has been in the movie business for three generations, starting with Steve’s grandfather in The Dalles, Ore.

At age 10, Wisner was repairing speakers for 50 cents an hour.

Wisner, 44, took his first customers of the night - us - on a guided tour.

“That’s Rattlesnake Ridge over there,” he said, sweeping a hand at the hills behind the screen. “Don’t worry, though. You never find snakes on this side of the road.”

Sneaks, yes.

“Nothing ever changes,” Wisner said. “One night a guy came in in a Chevy Citation. When he gave me the money his palms were wet.

“When they opened the trunk two guys got out, both about 6-2. How the hell they fit in that small trunk was amazing.”

Anything to save $4 a head, huh?

“It was $2.50 then,” he said.

Wisner laughed. “If I don’t catch them it’s no big deal. They’ll probably spend it in the snack bar anyway.”

The Auto-Vue is not pretentious. The screen went up when it was built in 1953. Credits sometimes run off the screen. There is no playground equipment. There is room for only 220 cars.

But it’s friendly. The sound - FM radio in place of speakers - is rich and the movies are first-run.

With FM radio (and AM, too) Wisner doesn’t have to watch the customers heading off into the gathering fog with the speaker still attached to the driver’s-side window.

Despite industry trends, the business, he says, has grown with the area.

“Our marquee blew down in ‘83,” Wisner said by way of deep background. Seven years later it was rebuilt.

You’ve got to like the pace.

As the area flourishes, traffic builds and the location is no longer as remote - which means the land is worth more and in time the return on investment of a drive-in will be challenged here, too.

Victoria Hawker of Northwest Diversified Entertainment in Seattle books movies for 120 screens, including the Auto-Vue.

“In his situation there’s one indoor screen (his, the Alpine),” she said. “If he had an eight-plex it might not be quite as busy at the outdoor theater. But with only two screens in the market and good weather, it works where it might not work as well in other places.”

Like the Starlite in South Tacoma, the River View in Pasco also shut down last year, Hawker said.

“Every year or so another one bites the dust. Most of the time drive-in property eventually sells to become something else.”

An ominous threat is what she calls “methods of presentation.

“Theaters are going to more technologically advanced sound systems and other attractions,” she said. “Drive-ins aren’t equipped to move forward with the new technology. Eventually you have to think they’ll be a thing of the past.”

Still, Hawker hopes for the best.

“I cherish the outdoor theaters I book and pay special attention to them,” she said. “When you talk to people who run drive-ins they all have stories. They get closer to the patrons out there, with waking them up to go home or starting their cars or interrupting an altercation - there’s just a different, closer relationship between the operator and his customer.”

Wisner agreed. “It beats working for somebody else,” he said. “It’s amazing how much traffic is going up and down that road (Highway 395) now. We get kids from Colville, Kettle, Chewelah - the whole county.

“There used to be a theater in Republic but it burned down, so I draw them from Loon Lake to Republic.”

Even when blue skies fade to black, movie-goers still can see the impressive wooded hills that surround the Auto-Vue.

Customers come with Windex and folding chairs. There’s a neighborly campground feel to the place.

A dead battery is sometimes the price paid for a night with the radio on. Wisner is never too far away from battery cables.

“I was giving this guy a jump one night,” he said. “We let it charge. I turned off my headlights, revved it up and my battery cables melted.”

If the car doesn’t fire?

“I’ve given people rides home,” he said. “The longest drive was to Onion Creek, about an hour round-trip.”

All in a night’s work.

“When I talk to him he sounds exhausted,” Hawker said.

Whatever the attraction - whether it’s the novelty, the weather, the movies, the pizza - Wisner is a long way from his last picture show.

“We’re as busy as we can be,” he said. “I’ve actually had to turn people away. I hate doing that, but there are nights when business is that good.”

There’s a social dynamic at work, he suggests.

“I think there are more families now than 10 years ago,” he said. “There’s a whole new family lifestyle, seems to me. Everybody seems to have kids who want to go to the show.”

Want to?

I know my kids. They’re going to insist.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo Map of area.