The Starlight only has three street lights to contend with, and they are further down the highway and with the high price of land in the Okanagan and all the ongoing development, it's a wonder that the Starlight is still going at all.
STARLIGHT DRIVE IN MOVIE
Along with housing came street lights creating too much ambient light for outdoor movie screens. "Our business model is, keep it cheap, keep it full, because it's way more fun to be watching a movie with a 1,000 people than it is with a hundred."įrom their heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, drive-in theatres started to decline in the 1970s as cities grew and housing took over in the rural areas where drive-ins typically did business. He also painstakingly reproduced the concession stand with original 1960 decore. While some aspects are very high-tech, moviegoers still have to tune-in their car radio to hear the movie and smartphone radio apps have a lag and don't work at the drive-in.Ĭharging just $11 per adult for the double-bill movies, Lindquist also says their concession stand prices are 30 to 50 per cent lower than a multiplex cinema. " we have one of the best projectors in the world in a little hayfield outside of Enderby." Lindquist admits the decision was based on emotion, not business. Lindquist won't say how much it cost, just "it was twice the amount I paid for my first house." Then, two months before the 2012 season was about to begin, a projector was produced. "We thought we will go out with our heads held high," Lindquist said. The only option was to have two projectors closer to the screen at a cost of about $500,000. No digital projector existed that could project a movie 401 feet onto a 6,000 square feet screen. While the transition from 35-millimetre film to digital has ultimately been good for business, giving them more flexibility in showing movies, for a while it looked like it would kill the business. "It took us 10 years to get on our feet," he said.
Lindquist's enthusiasm for the theatre is evident but as a business it's been far from clear sailing. "You can not describe what's going on out there, at the break when you see all these kids coming out of their cars in their pyjamas, it's magical." With every night playing a double bill, it's always a late night at the drive-in. With the movies starting only once the sun has gone down, there are a few hours to kill where families hang-out, kids ride bikes, play frisbee and as twilight approaches the anticipation builds. And on a busy summer weekend, the logistics of getting everyone in place is complex. Moviegoers travel from as far as Kamloops, Penticton and Revelstoke to spent an evening at the drive-in. Lindquist says cars sometimes start showing up as early as 5 p.m. there's an ambience out there that will never be recreated anywhere else." "It turns from an empty field into a celebration of family," he said. Nearly 20 years later, Lindquist is proud of the theatre they've created and what it represents. "In the first year, we lost a lot of money." Lindquist has been in the cinema industry since 1978 and was looking for a theatre, but never considered buying a drive-in. He now runs it with two other business partners. The drive-in theatre just outside Enderby opened in 1996 and had seen three different owners try, and fail, to make a go of it when Lindquist bought it in 2002. Sweat drips off his brow as he wanders the field, picking up the odd bit of garbage and making sure everything is spick and span. "I'm on the field for 110 nights," he said. Even after 18 years in business, Lindquist is still very hands-on. On a stinky hot July afternoon, Lindquist, with his dog Norton in tow, places traffic cones along the dirt road that leads into the drive-in, getting ready for what he hopes will be another busy summer night.
It's one of only three in the province and Lindquist estimates there's probably less than a dozen in the entire country. That fact alone is remarkable, but what's more remarkable is that the drive-in theatre exists at all. The 6,000-square feet screen is the biggest drive-in movie screen in North America. Towering roughly 60 feet into the air - the equivalent of a six-storey building - climbing to the top of the screen is enough to make even the most fearless get vertigo. Standing underneath the mammoth screen, it's not hard to see why. ENDERBY - When the screen at Enderby's Starlight Drive-In Theatre needs a clean or a new lick of paint, owner Paul Lindquist says he won't go all the way to the top.
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