Kickstarter

OK, here is the first, very rough, draft of the itinerary for The Great American Drive-in Theater Road Trip. No, it's not an April Fool's joke. That's where the theaters are in the places I haven't gotten to yet. There are a couple of repeats. The Park theater, seen in the strongly backlit picture in the KS presentation, was torn down, but has been rebuilt near Billings, Montana. There are also sections of states already visited where there are more theaters, like southern Idaho, Northern Montana, and southern Ohio.

The trip will head first for Indiana, across southern Illinois to Missouri, then follow the southern loop out to San Diego. Next, up the west coast , then zigzag across the center of the country. That will be more than enough all at once. I'll wait until late summer or early fall to add the far southeastern loop.

On another note, my online resources are failing to get any data on surviving theaters in Canada. The survival rate up north is even lower, but I think there are still some theaters at least in Ontario and Quebec provinces. Anyone have more on that?

The American Drive-in Theater project just got a nice bit of attention at the web site for The Hartford Courant newspaper:

http://courantblogs.com/rick-green/vanishing-drive-in-theaters-carl-weeses-big-dream/

In a little while we'll be off to NY for the AIPAD show, where I'll also be handing out some of these:

With the project at 127% funding and 25+ days to go, a few more backers signed on today. It's great to see interest continuing.

The producer of a new podcast series on Documentary Photography, from Ireland, has been in touch and we'll likely do a Skype connection to put a podcast together sometime soon. More backers have contributed tips about active theaters and offered to send scouting snaps, which is really helpful. The Chief Photographer for a network affiliate in the Midwest is looking around for an appropriate venue (no surviving DI theaters in the immediate area, but maybe a ruin can be found) to work up a feature when I come through near the end of the big figure-8 main route.

A nice new development on the research front, which seems to have changed from as recently as my Midwest expedition last September—when an active theater does not have its own website, it turns out there's very likely to be a Facebook page either by the management or by fans, so I'm finding multiple ways to contact the theaters on the early part of the itinerary soon, well in advance of my arrival in the area. I also found several more theaters than I'd expected in southern Alabama, because a couple are new startups launched in the past decade. I should be able to incorporate them into the far-south/Florida loop which will now likely take place in early fall, after a solid break from the main loop to rest up, begin fulfilling your rewards, and develop the sheet film.

Tomorrow I'll be in New York all day to catch the big AIPAD photo dealers show. It's a good way to keep up with what's going on in the realm of art gallery photography (not so much about documentary work, but a little).

The type looks really rough in this JPEG, but I'll have several dozen 4x6" cards like this, with clean type, and hope to find fruitful ground to sow them.

This is great, some of you are offering to help with the research by making scouting snaps of theaters, which will assist me in planning the trip. Now that we know we're moving forward, I thought I'd mention what the first step will be. A 750 mile ride to Huntington, IN.

I've been here before. In 2002 and also in 2003, but I'm going to begin this trip by returning to the Huntington Drive-in Theater because it's such a great story.

John and Anilda Detzler bought the theater in 2001. To the best of their knowledge it has been in continuous operation since 1950, but was in pretty rough shape when they got it. They immediately began improvements and built back the business. Then in March of 2005, a severe windstorm destroyed the screen tower. With support from the local community, they were able to replace the screen and open for the summer season. Things have gone so well since then that they recently were able to add a second screen.

From there I'll head down to southern Indiana where there are theaters I didn't reach on previous visits, then move on into Missouri which has quite a large number of active venues.

I'm happy to Update you all to the word that The American Drive-in Theater project is featured today at the KS blog. More great news!