Some Like It Spot

The new GEICO commercial is nearly a home movie for us, having traveled five times to this exact setting in Arizona-Utah's Monument Valley, our favorite American destination.

"GEICO: The Roadrunner and the Coyote: The Gecko's Journey" via YouTube  We didn't meet these big time celebrities along the way, sadly, but the video may explain my desert headaches.

Meep.

Happy Birthday, Ozoners!

Seventy-nine years ago tonight, the world's first drive-in theatre or ozoner, as we in the motion picture exhibition business call them in-between making fun of the idiots paying our ridiculous snack prices, opened.

Wikipedia tells how moon movies flicked forth:

Richard Milton Hollingshead, Jr. (February 25, 1900 - May 13, 1975) was the inventor of the drive-in theater.

In the early 1930s, he was working as a sales manager in his father's auto parts company, Whiz Auto Products. According to one story, his mother was a large woman who was uncomfortable sitting in a regular movie theater.[1] So he began experimenting at his home in Camden, New Jersey, using his car, a 1928 Kodak movie projector, and two sheets nailed between two trees for a screen. Eventually, he came up with a ramp in each parking space, so that patrons could elevate the front of their cars to see the screen without being blocked by other vehicles.[2] He applied for a patent on August 6, 1932[2] and was granted number 1,909,537 on May 16, 1933.

With three investors, his cousin John Smith, Edward Ellies, and Oliver Willets, he formed a company called Park-It Theatres, Inc.[2] Their 400-acre (1.6 km2) "Automobile Movie Theatre"[3] opened on Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Camden on June 6, 1933. RCA Victor provided three six foot (1.8 m) by six foot speakers to go with the 40 foot (12 m) by 50 foot (15 m) screen. The first movie shown was "Wives Beware," starring Adolphe Menjou. The charge was $0.25 per person and $0.25 per automobile, with a maximum cost of $1. Hollingshead sold the theatre in 1935 and opened another one.

Park-It Theatres licensed the concept to Loews Drive-In Theatres, Inc., but had trouble collecting royalties in 1937. Eventually, after Loews was taken to court, Hollingshead's patent was ruled invalid in 1950.

And thanks to same Mr. Hollingshead, Jr., lifelong funding efforts for my global countryside chain of pogo stick-in theatres have come to, basically, nil.



More: Mike's Video: "Scenes From a Drive-in Movie"

Hubie and Bertie's Mouse Chronicles

Forget "Gone With the Wind." Forget "Star Wars." Forget "The Lord of the Rings." The greatest of all movie sagas follows the adventures of Hubie and Bertie, cartoon mice.

The boys' seven classic 1943-51 animated episodes, based on the sacred books of "The Mew Testament," my cat Morty tells me, are coming to Blu-ray home video later this summer.

I've pre-ordered "Looney Tunes: Mouse Chronicles" because Hubie and Bertie are terrific and overdue for a renaissance. I want to do my part to help and subliminally cue the wife to serve cheese.

Here's a shining example of director Chuck Jones' rambunctious rodents hard at work in "Mouse Wreckers" (1948).



"Mouse Wreckers" via YouTube
Hubie and Bertie's Warner Bros. colleague and fellow mouse, Sniffles, is also seen in this two-disc set. All nine of his cartoons offer something to sniff at.