“A Night at the Drive-In During a Pandemic Summer”

From Belt Magazine, A Night at the Drive-In During a Pandemic Summer: 

A night at the drive-in remains an attempt at unfettered escapism, if we can keep the bumper stickers out of our lines of sight and numb our minds to the occasional too-apt scene. For a moment tonight, as Rocky carries Dr. Frank-N-Furter to the top of the RKO Pictures tower, it works and something happens at the drive-in. For a second, all of us are together, totally. We are seeing exactly the same thing, all at once. It feels so foreign now, this kind of shared experience in real time—and sacred, like a solar eclipse or an inside-the-park home run.

But then, without sympathy, the lights come up, and we are all right back here somewhere in 2020—amid a pandemic summer, in a country fraying at the seams.

The time warp is over.

The Brackley Drive-in has been open all summer with a COVID-accommodating setup; we haven’t been yet, simply because none of the “classic” double bills they’ve programmed have caught our eye. But maybe we should go regardless, for that rare gift of a shared experience.