My gut instinct is to wax nostalgic about drive-in movies, but the fact is, they were already retro when I was a kid back in the ’70s. I do recall, however, a few hulking, fast-becoming-decrepit Detroit-area outdoor screens, with vast, weed-strewn parking areas. We’d occasionally visit them for kicks, usually to watch a b-horror flick from behind a steamed-up windshield. The supporting technology was cumbersome and antiquated – metal contraptions that would hang on the side of the window, pumping in mono and tinny screams from onscreen victims suffering fates ultra-large – I guess I wax nostalgic.
So here we are in Future World where Retro is King and folks’ll go techno-guerrilla en-mob in order to rewind time and culture. MobMov, short for “Mobile Movie,” is an online-based “movement” that teaches and encourages daring and driven movie-bugs to rig their cars to be mobile projectors to create the drive-in experience wherever and whenever they want. According to the website, MobMov is a lot like the flash mob phenomenon in that it’s “organized over the internet, appears for a short time in a random location, and disappears just as quickly as it came.”
The checklist for making mobile movie magic is pretty straightforward. All you need is a projector, inverter, DVD player, FM transmitter (to broadcast sound to your fellow guerrillas), a car with a large, flat windshield and, well, a wall. You can go to the website for a geekspeak tutorial and to learn how to join a MobMov chapter in your city or region.
Each chapter has several “Drivers” (the soldiers who show the films) with the first person to sign up in a particular area designated as the “Lead Driver.” For those of you who just like to watch, once you’re a registered movie mobster you’ll get emails with locations and movie titles the day before “screenings.” And don’t worry about becoming a lone outlaw. According to psfk, MobMov has more than 10,000 members with semi-regular showtimes in more than 30 countries.