The only little movie screen in the capital of Texas, Ars Technica

Any filmmakers want to still air their stuff at my drive -in? Twenty-plus emails and 20 days later, the Blue Starlite Mini Urban Drive-In opened up its screen this week for the first of four evenings of “SXSocial Distance: A Night of Short Films.” “Originally I was going to put the Facebook post up and, if no filmmakers reached out, I was going to let it go, “Frank, the founder and owner of the Blue Starlite, tells Ars. “But Tim [Norfolk, one of only a handful of drive-in employees] was so enthusiastic about the idea, it made me more enthusiastic — I guess this kind of matters, it’s not a throwaway idea. “So I kind of expected this to happen, but the feature [films] didn’t Write back. Features aren’t going to do a throwaway event because festivals want to say it’s the world premiere or the US premiere. But I started getting emails back from the shorts, which makes sense. Those are the guys that are the most fucked They have the hardest time getting any attention, and this festival and the newsworthiness of that premiere would’ve been huge to them. So they realized it could be salvaged: they could still show their movies in Austin and also do something newsworthy. Maybe they did not get to show at SXSW, but a drive-in offered its screens. ”

, however, the Blue Starlite likely represents something different. Yes, you still tune your FM dials and can find some concessions in a trailer off to the side. But it’s almost as if someone had ample amounts of central Texas ranchland and invited their larger network over to enjoy a backyard projector. Frank rents land tucked away between a newly built neighborhood and a (Moose Lodge and fits in as many screens as he can (the central Austin location currently has three, so there’s a variety of showings every night). Any visions of a few hundred cars packed in on top of each other decidedly isn’t Blue Starlite’s style . Instead, normal capacity for the biggest screen only sits around 51 Cars, and even that have been scaled back for now. “The idea was always to have a drive-in on a human scale — the drive-in as old needed to be big, but the drive-in as new needed to be small so it could fit into the city, “Frank explains. “And it turns out the idea of ​​small, with what we’re going through right now, it’s exactly what’s needed. Not just an outdoor movie. Not just a movie in a car. When you have a drive-in that’s only 30 – 57 cars, everyone that comes in gets to feel it’s their special night. But with what’s going on, small also means people can feel a little more safe, a little comfortable. “          (Listing image by Nathan Mattise