Distance and a movie Manitoba's two drive-in theatres are picking flicks and popping corn in advance of opening for an isolated audience By: David Sanderson Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Monday, May. 11, 2020

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This article was published 10/05/2020 (1593 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A funny thing happened on the way to the movies after the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in North America in January.

While indoor cinemas across Canada and the United States were forced to park their projectors to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, most drive-in theatres were not. That quickly led to a resurgence of film buffs watching movies under the stars, from the comfort of their own vehicles.

For example, in March, the Showboat Drive-In near Houston, Texas, noticed a 90 per cent increase in attendance versus that period of time last year. Owners of the Tiger Drive-In in rural Georgia have heard about people hopping in the car and driving as long as three hours to attend open-air screenings of whatever is showing, regardless of whether they’ve seen it already or not.

A bit closer to home, as the northernmost drive-in theatre on the continent, neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor hail has prevented Flin Flon’s Big Island Drive-in Theater from operating every spring, summer and fall since its inception in 1957. And in what should come as welcome news for residents of the mining city of close to 5,000, theatre owners Dawn and Dan Hlady never intended to let a worldwide pandemic halt that streak, either.

“If we’d have been allowed to, we would have been open the last Friday in April,” Dawn says when reached at home in Creighton, Sask., the border community near her hometown. “I’m sitting here talking to you right now with a copy of Trolls World Tour in my hands, all ready to go.”

Following Premier Brian Pallister’s April 29 announcement of Phase 1 of Manitoba’s restoration of services, the Hladys contacted “everybody we know” to seek clarification, after noticing there was no mention of drive-ins on the province’s list of non-essential businesses that would be allowed to reopen effective May 4. The couple already had a plan in place to maintain social distancing, which in Dawn’s mind seemed simple enough “given I can literally keep people in their cars.”

“Except some of the conversations I had were beyond frustrating, especially the ones where people answering the phone didn’t seem to know what a drive-in (theatre) even was,” she says.

On May 5 the province contacted the Hladys to let them know they had reversed their decision and that the theatre, located just east of town near Big Island Lake, would be good to go, beginning Friday, May 15.

Provincial officials also reached out to Marlene Nelson, co-owner of Manitoba’s only other drive-in theatre, the Stardust Drive-in in Morden, to share the good news. Moments after media outlets jumped all over the story, Nelson was fielding calls from as far as away as Winnipeg from people anxious to know when she would be firing up her popcorn popper.

“Everybody who got in touch mentioned how they’ve been looking for a tiny bit of normalcy in their day-to-day lives, and how a night out at the movies would go a long way towards achieving that goal,” says Nelson, part of a family partnership that purchased the 57-year-old icon in 2002.

If 2020 had been a “normal” year, the Stardust Theatre would have begun welcoming its first customers of the season this weekend, Nelson says. That date has been pushed back at least two weeks for a pair of reasons.

For one thing, Nelson, who grew up on a property directly adjacent to the drive-in, and her business partners still have to come up with a plan to maintain social distancing protocol when movie-goers line up for snacks at the concession stand or use the washroom facilities. Secondly, they have to figure out what movies they’re going to show between now and Labour Day, when they typically close for the year, now that Hollywood has delayed the release of surefire summer blockbusters such as No Time to Die, the latest James Bond thriller, and superhero flick Black Widow, starring Scarlett Johansson as the title character, owing to COVID-19.

“It’s going to be challenging for sure, but luckily we have a fantastic booking agent out of Toronto who’s already been in touch with various film companies, and is starting to provide us with a list of what’s available,” Nelson says. “At this point I’m not even sure if it will make a difference whether we’re showing a movie that’s relatively new or a classic from 20 years ago. I think people are going to be happy just to get out and enjoy whatever.”

“Everybody who got in touch mentioned how they’ve been looking for a tiny bit of normalcy in their day-to-day lives, and how a night out at the movies would go a long way towards achieving that goal.” – Stardust Drive-in co-owner Marlene Nelson

For her part, Dawn Hlady says it was a dream come true in 2015 when she and her husband purchased the Big Island Drive-in, which can normally hold 200 vehicles but will be accommodating half that number for the time being. Like many of her customers who grew up in the area, she has fond childhood memories of attending movies there with her parents, fighting hard to stay awake through weekend double features.

As for what’s most popular genre-wise with her clientele, that’s an easy one, Dawn says: horror flicks.

‘As a teenager I enjoyed coming here and getting the living bejesus scared out of me and that hasn’t changed,” she says with a chuckle. “Last fall, my husband and I even dressed up as Pennywise the clown when we were showing It Chapter Two and snuck up on cars. That was a lot of fun.”

Now that opening night is days away, Dawn says there is still one hurdle left to jump: for the government to lift or amend the public health order that currently prohibits travel to parts of Manitoba lying north of the 53rd parallel.

“I just received an email from a fellow in Brandon who’s really looking forward to making a road trip up here, just for the drive-in,” she says, adding in years past she’s spotted licence plates from as far away as Quebec and British Columbia when she’s patrolling the grounds on movie nights. “Hopefully we’ll be able to accommodate him sooner rather than later.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca