This just in from Jon Hewitt (director of Acolytes)!
The leads of ACOLYTES are teenagers - Hanna 16, Seb 17 and Josh 18 - but it was a shock for me when I said we were gonna shoot some scenes in a drive-in and they said "wha?" They didn't know what I was talking about!
For someone who grew up in the 60s and 70s in Australia, the drive-in was a regular place of worship and transcendence much better than church. At least once a fortnight we'd load up the FC Holden station wagon with pillows and blankets and Mum, Dad and the three kids would drive to the Wodonga Skyline about 2 miles from our front door to scope the weekly changing double feature. Later as a teen gang we'd sneak through the fence with beer and pot and sit on blankets around a speaker, or two of us would pay and drive thru with four others crammed in the boot. My most significant movie experiences were invariably at the drive-in - discovering VANISHING POINT on a double-bill with TRUE GRIT. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and CLEOPATRA JONES on the one ticket! Watching the psycho in TARGETS sniping people at a drive-in at a drive-in is a celluloid experience you never forget! And the all-nighters - Horror and Porn, Dusk to Dawn! Horny, Porny, Zip-Busting Action!
Back to April 2007 - we're shooting the kids wandering around, getting high and goofing-off at the Yatala Drive-In, a twin screen about an hour from Brisbane and one of the last remaining drive-in theatres in Queensland. Check it out here:
While we were there, the old manager/projectionist showed us the bio box - nice and neat, well maintained Cinemaccanica projectors. In the corner in a brand-new cardboard box were the flats to a new movie called SOLDIERS. Huh, haven't heard of that? The old guy tips his nose and gives us the low down - it's a new fill-um in disguise, pirates you know, can't trust the freight companies - it's 300 and it starts in two weeks!
Two weeks later we've got the station wagon stuffed with blankets and pillows and me, my sister Amree (my invaluable assistant on the shoot), my dog Kransky and the three kids drive down to Yatala and experience 300 on the giant screen. We've got the FM tuned to the frequency AND two speakers hanging off the windows! We talk, eat, drink, goof-off and experience a knockout movie under the stars, bugs flaring in the projector beaming overhead.
Kransky snored. Hanna, Seb and Josh thought it was cool. Amree and I loved it!
-Jon Hewitt
Be sure to check out Not Quite Hollywood, featuring clips from Australian horror film, Dead-End Drive In, tomorrow night at midnight.
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