Under the Stars

Auburn’s Finger Lakes Drive-In was
supposed to celebrate 60 summers of outdoor movie entertainment in
2009. The ozoner’s owner, Kevin Mullin, was heralding this milestone
earlier this season as part of his weekly messages regarding his
current movie lineups on the box office’s recorded information. Then
somebody informed Mullin that a Web site devoted to drive-in trivia had
newspaper advertisements for the Finger Lakes’ opening dating back to
July 15, 1947. Oops!

Now armed with this belated history
lesson, Mullin will throw a 62nd birthday party on Wednesday, July 15,
timed to open with one of this summer’s potential movie blockbusters, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Accompanying the Hogwarts gang will be an 8 p.m. performance near the
concession stand area with Moreland the Magician, plus slabs of
birthday cake, balloons and flick-related giveaways, followed by the 9
p.m. screening of Half-Blood Prince.

Any business that’s still in operation
62 years later must be doing something right (Mullin, 50, says that the
drive-in’s original owner, Paul Field, turns 96 this year), and the
Finger Lakes has managed to stick around while hundreds of other
drive-ins nationwide have either been abandoned or demolished to make
room for condos and storefronts. Comfortably nestled amid scenic
pastures on Routes 5 and 20 (Clark Street Road, to the locals), the
well-maintained drive-in is two miles away from the giant Bass Pro
Shops destination at Finger Lakes Mall. The lot holds about 300
jalopies (there’s an old Dodge from the 1940s near the roadside
marquee), a screen that Mullin guesstimates is 30 feet high and 60 feet
wide, and a relaxing color scheme of baby blue for the concession stand
and speaker poles.

Octogenarian Frank Feocco ran the
drive-in before Mullin (a 1994 column by ozoner aficionado Joe Bob
Briggs claims that the Finger Lakes handed out lollipops to kids during
Feocco’s reign), then Mullin took over the theater around 1995
following Feocco’s passing and proceeded to make overdue renovations.
Back in the 1950s “the screen was widened on one side only for
CinemaScope movies,” Mullin reveals, “but it created a keystone effect
on the screen. So we redid the concession stand and projection booth to
center the movies properly.”

Out went the single-reel, carbon-arc
projectors of yesteryear and in came a new platter system that holds
several features on one projector setup, as well as an improved FM
radio frequency for broadcasting the film soundtracks. (It’s at 90.7 on
your dial if you’re cruising by.) The cherished in-car speakers are
still working if you’re in an old-school mood, although Mullin
champions the stereo mix that the drive-in can funnel through car
radios or personal ear buds.

Mullin has spent much of his life in the
exhibitor business, starting as a teen usher for a bijou in his
hometown of Rutland, Vt., in 1976. He also had a hand in establishing
multiplexes in Auburn and Oneida. During the drive-in season Mullin
regularly shuttles between neighboring Vermont, where he has served as
a state senator from Rutland County since 2003, and his Auburn
residence, which happens to be next door to the drive-in. Most weekends
Mullin can be seen selling ducats at the gate, although there are now
three box-office windows available to prevent traffic from tying up
Clark Street Road.

Mullin acknowledges that the drive-in
habit mysteriously dwindles after Labor Day (maybe it’s the cooler
nights that force Central New Yorkers into pre-hibernation mode), yet
he intends to stay open through Columbus Day this year, as long as the
pipeline of Hollywood product and fair-weather patterns hold out. Yet
he’s also amazed that there are some hardy moviegoers who stay right
until the bitter end of his bang-for-your-bucks triple bills, even
during the weeknights. “More than half leave after the first movie
because they start late in the summer,” he says, “but they know they
could have stayed if they wanted.”

The Finger Lakes Drive-In has tentatively scheduled My Sister’s Keeper and The Hangover as co-features with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; for booking updates, call 252-3969 or visit the new site www.fingerlakesdrivein.com. The drive-in is currently running Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs at 9 p.m. and The Proposal at 10:40 p.m. through Tuesday, July 14. Admission is $7 for ages 12 and up, $2 for ages 5 to 11, and free for kids under 4.