Brazos faces uncertain future

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WFAA, Dallas’s news leader, provided an excellent report about the funding problems of the Brazos Drive-In in Granbury TX. Not only did WFAA give us this embedded video, the web page with the story also includes some great photos and even linked to the Brazos web site, something that surprisingly few news story pages bother to do. Good job!

According to Brazos owner Jennifer Miller, converting to a digital projection system could cost as much as $100,000. Miller and Brazos manager Brenda Stewart have “teamed up to save the cinema,” WFAA says, though it’s hard to tell exactly what they’re doing to raise money.

The story also says that no matter what happens, the screen and concession building will remain because they “are considered historical.” As Miller put it, “It will look like a drive-in, but there may be 1,000 apartments in the parking lot.”

For the full story and those photos, go check out the story at the WFAA site. I also found another Brazos story from July 2012 by a different WFAA reporter but hosted by KHOU, Houston’s news leader. You might want to go watch that one too.

Blue Grass Drive-In gets okay to build

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It’s been a long time since we wrote about Randy Lorenz, who wants to build a drive-in theater in Blue Grass IA. Back in January, I thought that his ideas sounded nebulous and speculative. Shows what I know. This week, the Blue Grass city council unanimously approved the drive-in, and Lorenz hopes to open it in April 2014.

According to Quad-Cities Online, Lorenz plans to start with two screens with the possibility of expanding to four. The site will include a play area for children and eventually mini-golf. “We have been working on this for six years. We are happy they’ve finally found a home for us,” he said.

There’s also more on the story from WHBF, the Quad Cities’ news leader. In the Worldnow-hosted video delicately embedded here, Lorenz talks about letting patrons text in their concession stand orders. You’ll also get to see glimpses of the drive-in’s layout and map, plus a look at the simple farmland it is now.

For the drive-ins that can swing the digital conversion, a boom time is coming soon. Looks like the Blue Grass is going to be another example on that leading edge.

Two NY drive-ins face uncertain off-season

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photo by arwcheek, used by permission

photo by arwcheek, used by permission

The Daily Mail of Hudson NY recently ran a lengthy, thoughtful article profiling its two nearby drive-in theaters. The Hi-Way (Coxsackie) and Greenville (Greenville) were candidates in Honda’s Project Drive-In, and they were among the over 100 drive-ins that failed to win a free digital projector. Both owners sound ambivalently positive about their prospects for reopening next spring.

Roger Babcock, owner of the Hi-Way, is looking at spending $300,000 to convert his four-screen drive-in to digital. He told The Daily Mail that his bank has approved a loan for that amount, but he hasn’t decided whether to go through with it. Part of the question is when film will no longer be available, really. Babcock said that Fox once announced it wouldn’t produce 35mm copies of its films after September 2012. “And yet I played an awful lot of Fox films this year in 35mm,” he said. “So even though they’re giving us deadlines, they’re not holding to them. A lot of drive-ins are going to hold right out to the absolute end.”

Ed Spannagel, operator of the Greenville, only has one screen and hopes to raise $80,000 for conversion. He’s got also got a Plan B that matches an idea I had – stay with film. “The good news is those 35mm films are still there,” Spannagel said. “So as long as we’re still able to get access to them, technically speaking, we could still run older films next year once 35 is done being produced.”

But a different drive-in operator once told me that this idea of Spannagel’s and mine won’t necessarily work. There aren’t that many film copies of older movies, and the studios aren’t going to make new prints. Each showing of a film is a slightly destructive process, which I used to appreciate when I’d see the accumulated dirt and scratches on a months-old print at a second-run theater. Finally, there’s a question whether the studios are going to be willing to set a fair price on the license to show that movie. So I hope that Spannagel is right, but I’m no longer so optimistic about that particular Plan B.

Anyway, there’s a whole lot more detail and interesting quotes in The Daily Mail’s article, so you really ought to go read it!