Film on the Rocks at Red Rocks Amphitheater. Photo courtesy Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre

It’s a childhood memory that will never leave me: Huddled under a pile of blankets in the back of our parents’ pea-green station wagon, my older brother and I devoured homemade popcorn and Milk Duds we’d bought with our allowance as we watched Mel Brooks’ off-color comedy Blazing Saddles unfold on the giant screen ahead.

When one particularly crude scene (you know—the one with the baked beans) came on, we steamed up the windows with hysterical giggling as our mortified mom shifted nervously in the front seat, vowing that she didn’t know it was R-rated. Nevertheless, we went back the next week, and the next. Oh, how we loved the drive-in.

Fast forward three decades, and the nostalgic entertainment tradition has all but vanished from the scene, withering from 4,063 drive-ins nationwide in 1958 to fewer than 500 today (10 in Colorado), according to drive-ins.com. But in its place has blossomed a new, more communal version of cinema under the stars, and it has deep roots in Boulder.

“The drive-in has pretty much died and people are still craving those communal experiences,” says Dave Riepe, who helped launch the state’s first outdoor cinema in the parking lot behind the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art 12 years ago, and this year will host what could be its last season. “With this, you are not in a car, sealed off from the person or the group next to you. There is a lot more interactivity.”

A Grassroots Communal Experience

From its humble beginnings as an offbeat gathering of fewer than 100 fans of campy B-movies, the Boulder Outdoor Cinema has grown into a summer entertainment tradition, with 24 shows per summer, drawing crowds of 300-plus to the BMoCA parking lot. Meanwhile, the trend has caught on statewide, with open-air films now shown on summer weekends at Broomfield Commons Park, Red Rocks Amphitheater, a half-dozen parks in the city of Denver, and countless neighborhood block parties, high school fundraisers, and private company gatherings.

“Every city wants to have one now,” says Riepe, whose company, Outdoor Cinema Network, rents its giant inflatable screens, sound systems and event-production expertise to clients across the state. “In a three-month period this summer, we will do about 100 shows.”

In 2005, the Community Financial Credit Union celebrated its 50th anniversary by putting on an outdoor film series on the soccer fields in Broomfield Commons Park. “We wanted to come up with an event to thank the community that has supported us so long,” says Lisa Herman, the credit union’s director of marketing. The event was a greater success than anyone had imagined. The four-show Movies in the Park series has become a summer tradition, with as many as 1,500 people showing up to watch family classics like The Princess Bride and E.T.

Longmont Outdoor Cinema also gears its summer series to families; its seventh season begins June 23 with Happy Feet. “Because it’s downtown—right in Old Town—and really easy to get to, it creates a community-type atmosphere that you don’t always get,” says Maureen McCoy, executive director of the Longmont Council for the Arts. “We sometimes attract 300 people, and do well enough financially to help support our fall film festival, which is more based on documentaries and more serious genres.” Other child-friendly movies planned for summer are Curious George, Flushed Away and Night at the Museum. Musicians or magicians entertain as dusk approaches.

Perhaps the most spectacular, and appropriate, setting for seeing a rock documentary is Red Rocks Amphitheater, which launched its own Film on the Rocks series eight years ago to give people an opportunity to spend time at the scenic venue without dropping $100 on a concert ticket. Today, moviegoers can pay $10 to watch classics like Pink Floyd: The Wall and Almost Famous on a 60-foot-by-20-foot screen, with the moon rising behind it and sandstone cliffs towering beside it. The venue sells beer and provides a fitting warmup band, such as the Pink Floyd tribute band that preceded the showing of The Wall.

Boulder Outdoor Cinema. Photo courtesy Boulder Outdoor Cinema

All Hail Pee-Wee, Napoleon, Frank N. Furter

Locally, the favorite remains the Boulder Outdoor Cinema, where more than 1,100 people showed up last summer for Napoleon Dynamite. Regulars haul in couches to sit on, and don costumes to fit the movie theme as a master of ceremonies tells jokes and plays music. Before a showing of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, a Pee-Wee Herman impersonator graced the stage, and when the 1975 classic Rocky Horror Picture Show is the featured movie, the parking lot bustles with lingerie-clad Dr. Frank N. Furters, and Magentas in French maids’ uniforms. (Friday nights are typically reserved for “cult classics,” while Saturdays are geared more toward families.)

“You walk in, you bump into people you know in the neighborhood, you make new friends, and the kids are running around,” says Riepe. “It’s the community experience that people love. That’s what we saw in the very beginning.”

Unfortunately, Riepe says, the Boulder show is not much of a moneymaker. While his other clients pay him a fee to produce a show, Boulder Outdoor Cinema has been his own labor of love, and the $5 donations collected at the door barely cover the cost to produce it. “This is going to be the last year we do it. There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into the show, and we just break even,” Riepe says, adding that he would like to see a government agency or private or nonprofit entity take over sponsoring the event. Riepe says that his decision to make 2007 his last season was not influenced by early talk of a new downtown convention center in the area, which could ultimately eat up the BMoCA parking lot.

On tap for what could be the Boulder Outdoor Cinema’s grand-finale season are Little Miss Sunshine, Office Space, The Graduate, School of Rock, An Inconvenient Truth, Happy Feet—and, of course, one of my all-time favorites: Blazing Saddles.

I’ll be there, with the popcorn and Milk Duds.

Lisa Marshall is a freelance writer and mother of four who lives west of Lyons and often makes the trek to Red Rocks in the summer to sip beer and watch movies under the stars.