Four things killed the drive-in movie theater, and none of them was a bad movie.

In 1958 there were more than 4,000 drive-ins in America. On a Saturday night you loaded the family into the station wagon, paid one price for the whole car, and hung a speaker on the window. The kids played on the swings under a giant screen before it got dark. The snack bar was open, the double feature ran past midnight, and nobody minded if the baby cried.

Then the clocks moved, so it got dark later. The towns grew out around the drive-ins until the land was worth more than the business. The VCR brought the movies home. And in 2013, Hollywood stopped shipping film, so every drive-in needed a digital projector that cost about $75,000 per screen. Only a few hundred are left today.

This is the full story.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Saturday Night at the Drive-In
1:30 A Bedsheet Between Two Trees
4:13 The Speaker on the Window
5:07 The Postwar Boom
6:32 Carload Night
8:15 Under the Big Screen
10:10 Let's All Go to the Lobby
13:19 The Passion Pit and the Trunk
14:42 The Blob, Corman and Grease
16:44 Force One: The Clock
20:18 Force Two: The Land
22:28 The Giants Fall Too
23:53 Force Three: The Box Under the TV
27:25 Force Four: Go Digital or Go Dark
29:35 Project Drive-In
30:32 The 2020 Surprise
31:21 The Few Hundred Left
32:07 Kid, Teenager, Parent
33:49 Which Drive-In Was Yours?

If you remember the speaker on the window, tell me in the comments which drive-in was yours, what town it was in, and what's standing there now.

#driveinmovie #driveintheater #nostalgia #60snostalgia #70snostalgia #americana #boomer #lostamerica #moviehistory #stationwagon

The chapter times assume a pace of about 155 words a minute, so check them against the finished video before you publish.