BUTLER, Pennsylvania — Last Monday was supposed to be a celebration, a coming together across the ages and across the country to mark the day in 1984 that Ghostbusters debuted, a film that made movie executives cringe but won the hearts of moviegoers, and it was going to be shown at drive-in theaters from coast to coast.
John Mason, the owner of the Starlight Drive-in Theater, said he was thrilled to be part of the first-time-ever simultaneous showing of the iconic film in drive-ins. To get into the spirit of things, he even booked a local group that was going to come out in full ghostbusting gear to add some kitsch to the local version of the nationwide event.
“They even had their own Ecto ambulance,” Mason boasted of the iconic 1959 Cadillac, the vivid entrance of which when the firehouse doors burst open and the ECTO-1 license plate flashes across the screen remains a fan favorite.
All that changed when the official Ghostbusters Facebook page announced the event had been canceled, with hopes of rescheduling, the reason being given that “it does not feel like the time for celebration right now,” a reference to the protests across the country in reaction to the death of George Floyd in police custody.
“They felt that, in light of the recent riots and everything, it was just not a good timing for the event,” he said of the organizers, which included the studio and a national drive-in association.
“I’m disappointed. The drive-in itself has been doing well. Up until we turned green this past Friday, we were one of the few social events that were permitted,” he said.
After three months of isolation, job losses, illness, and death under the vengeful eye of a pandemic that collapsed a robust economy, stole lives not fully lived, and robbed people of the dignity of work, people were already on the brink of emotional collapse when Floyd was killed.
The riots that followed that caused destruction to families and communities in the way of their wrath have left us exhausted and looking for small bits of solace and hope or just silly fun, like going to the drive-in with your family or friends to escape the fire.
Canceling that event or any other community event just as people are allowed to go out and start living their lives just might not be the best way to help us heal, Tom Maraffa argued.
“We can both grieve from the effects of the pandemic, support the protests, and still go to a drive-in movie,” he said.
Maraffa, professor emeritus at Youngstown State University, pointed to the space launch two weeks ago as one of those moments, when millions of people gathered in front of their televisions at home with their spouses, children, grandchildren, and neighbors or stopped what they were doing and pulled the event up on their phone.
“NBC’s Lester Holt even made the point that, yeah, all the problems you’re having, it’s good to sit back and celebrate a great achievement,” he said.
The public loves to be part of something bigger than themselves, whether it’s a space launch or everybody watching a goofy movie from the ’80s together, said Maraffa.
“Throughout tragedy in our history, there was a conscious effort to do things that were celebratory, from the World Series after 9/11 to playing football after the Kennedy assassination,” he said. “People looked at other aspects of their life and didn’t just stop doing things that brought them joy or comfort.”
Prior to the country starting to open up, drive-in theaters were one of the few places people could go out and enjoy some sort of entertainment with their families and friends and not violate the strict guidelines of the pandemic.
When some enterprising churches and parishes started utilizing them for religious services, the people in this country who had forgotten about their charm were quickly reminded that there was one not that far from their home, and the utility of drive-in theaters was celebrated.
“Doing social distancing is easy to do with cars. We would put in a food app so you can order from your car, and then we text when your order’s ready for pickup. Last weekend, we had a graduation for Slippery Rock High School on Sunday,” Mason explained.
Mason and his wife bought the Starlight Drive-In five years ago. It wasn’t on a whim. It was based on love and personal experience at the iconic theater that has sat in a lull surrounded by the rolling Allegheny Mountains for what seems like forever to locals.
“We attended it very frequently, and it was almost every weekend. We went like 3 out of 4 weekends a month just to unwind from a busy work week. And we just kept talking amongst ourselves, saying, ‘Oh, if we owned it, we’d do this differently. We’d do that differently.’ And it became available, and so we bought it.”
Then they set about doing things differently. They made 3 of the 5 screens digital projectors, eliminated the other two because they didn’t hold enough cars to handle the $70,000-per-screen investment to go digital, rewired the screening, updated the cooking equipment and the interior of the food stand, “including the bathrooms. When we bought it, they were using port-a-potties because the old owners didn’t fix the toilets,” he said.
“It has been a huge investment, time and money. People will constantly second-guess for saving the drive-in and keeping it open, but I think, in the past few months, people have started to understand our value,” he said, adding, “We’re getting a lot of first-timers, and we’re getting grandparents bringing their grandkids for the first time.”
There are 305 drive-in theaters, with 549 screens located across America, according to the United Drive-In Theater Owners Association; Pennsylvania and New York are tied with the most at 23. Alaska, North Dakota, Delaware, Louisiana, and Hawaii are the only states to have none.
New Jersey is the home of the first U.S. drive-in theater, which opened in the summer of 1933 in the middle of the Great Depression and on the eve of Europe being torn apart in war.
Drive-ins, in many ways, are a symbol of Americana, an invention of pure necessity; it gave middle-class families an affordable way to see a first-run movie and to eat some great diner food with their sometimes noisy children without having to hire a sitter.
Canceling Ghostbusters Day is not going to cause the country to collapse, nor is it going to halt our march forward to find things to pull us together as long as we, as a culture, continue to understand that the best way forward is together, and having a little popcorn and a side helping of some mindless fun isn’t going to diminish that march.
