Andrew. When was the last time you went to a drive in cinema?
Sadly too long ago. I'm going to say fifteen years or so ago, Dramala.
We'll see. That's why they all closed down, from your lack of support.
And a lot of others. It was the video shop that sort of did them in, wasn't it more than anything else? I was old.
I think it was your lack of support. A man who's very angry with you, joins us, now, David Kilderry, who ran the Lunar drive in for years and years and years.
Hello, David gooda Simon good Andrew.
Now David, So tell us movies, drive ins and stuff? Where did that first enter your life? Where did the love of it come from?
Well?
I remember going to the drive in as a little kid, being flopped in the backseat of the family Volkswagen and fighting for viewing space with my brothers and sisters. But the story I like to tell is that in nineteen seventy four, my parents built a second story extension on the family home in Reservoir. My sister chose the bedroom with the view of the backyard, and I got the one that looked out to a drive in screen. So from that point on I was hooked.
See how about that got no sound but you got to see the action.
Well, with the type of movies they were running in the mid seventies andrew that you didn't really need sound. What was going on?
Fairly predictable plots. Yeah, that's intriguing, and you ended up with the controlling the lunar. How many drive ins do you know are still operating around Melbourne or in the greater Melbourne area?
Well, but this two in Melbourne. There's Village Coburg and down at Dremana as well, but there's only twelve left in Australia. And if we were talking just a few months ago, I would have said ten because two of them, one in Queensland and one in South Australia, had their screens blown down and that's a problem. Once they get to fifty sixty years old, the rust and rot starts
to take effect, and storms took them both out. But I'm pleased to save both of those driving one in Cooper PD and one in air back open again and screening now.
So well the Kopa PD drive and there's a thought hell, I just can't imagine, But of course there is obviously one. What would a screen cost a replace?
Ah, well, look, they're upwards of three to four hundred thousand dollars now because they're massive. They're as large as a suburban house block when if you lay the thing on the ground. But of course you need about twenty concrete mixers worth of concrete just to secure the foundations before you start with all the steel work coming up out of the ground.
Well, now that answers David a question that I had for you, because I occasionally go out to the one Turner trash and Treasure place out there, which is on the old one Turner drive in cinema spot, and the concrete base, the big concrete blocks that were at the bottom of the screen are still there and I look at it when I go there, and I go, I wonder why they never got rid of those blocks.
Yeah, well it's like an iceberg. Most of it's below the surface. But you're right. The tragic story with the old hoytz Wan Turner drive in was is that in nineteen eighty two Heints made the decision to add a second screen there and it cost them about a million dollars With all the ash fels and new projection building. So it was a twin screen, but for just one year.
So you mentioned earlier the videos. They had a devastating effect and that driving closed as a twin drive in only after one year of operation with the two screens.
See the heights took a bath there, didn't they financially?
Absolutely, the business changed really fast, Andrew, I was working in drivings in those days and while they were closing faster than we could eat a steak sandwich from the snack bar.
Did you ever try some drive ins? I know did I never actually went to one of them, but had this but there were rock bands sometimes playing before the movie, some drive ins.
Oh look, it was huge our driving at Danning on the Luna when it was village in the seventies. They had Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs play there one afternoon and the sound was so loud they got complaints from two suburbs away. So of course your good friend Pete Smith used to compare Battle of the Bands at the north Land Twin Driving and Denise Dreisdale was one of the go go dances there. So there's been lots of live music at drivings over the years.
We've just had a text coming through. My last trip to the Lunar driving that I went to was to see one of the worst films I ever paid to see, The Flash in twenty twenty two. It's not your fault if the product's not.
Good, though, No, that's right. I'd take a fence if it was the Hamburgers or the donuts. But giving it to the movie, we just show them, we don't make them.
Like the hard Top. There is a lot of money, a lot of profit comes from, of course, the concessions, doesn't it from the hamburgers and the lollies?
Absolutely? Andrew look the concessions as we call them in the industry, whether it be hot food or just the popcorn and the drinks, it's important. But I should point out that there are cinemas where snacks are still reasonably affordable. You can make good profit without charging extortion at prices. And when I go, and I still go to the cinema and drive in quite frequently, when I see prices that I think are over the top, I think that's
just pushing a little bit too far. There's still good money in it without being ridiculous.
Now, so how did you come to run. So you ended up owning the Lunar Driving, didn't you?
We did. Yeah, Look, I'd spent my career working I started at Greater Union Cinemas, working at the Forum, which many of your listeners would remember, perhaps even as the States. So I started there about forty four years ago as an assistant projectionist, then rose through to projectionists, worked at Hoyts, worked in their cinemas, and then went to Village and I got to supervise both drivings and cinemas there. So the natural progression and what I always wanted to do
was to run my own theater. So with a partner and my brother, we reopened the former closed Village daninom Driving as it was over twenty years ago and ran it for over twenty years.
Was it a Was it a good community in that if you're up against Heyts and Village, who were, of course sort of the two big ones, and you're operating as an independent, did they you know they sort of a bit not happy with you? Or was it all a big friendly community?
Well I wouldn't say it was absolutely friendly, but look, given I knew very senior people at both companies, I remember that one company in particular said to me they were very supportive of having strong independent cinemas out there, and plus we were going to hire a lot of films from their distribution arm and that we did. Look luckily, we weren't competing with the drive in against one of theirs.
At the time. Both Tromana and Coburg were equi distant from us at Luna Daninong, So as long as there was a forty five minute drive, we weren't really standing on their toes. And look, some people just prefer the drive into an indoor cinema, and we drew from a large area. And in fact, we said almost every one of our customers had to drive past the cinema to get to us, So they're making a drive in choice rather than a choice on a particular movie or not.
So talking with David Kilderry about drive in movies, and there was a big problem with musicals, view that the drive in for years and years has been it's been fixed now. Of course you can you tune into your car radio, your car sound system too. Here here the
movie soundtrack. But I remember going to see Paint your Wagon at the drive and then you've got this little tiny speaker hooks on your window with and all that eight track sound or whatever sixteen tracks sound, Holly would have gone to the bother of creating for the movie was just reduced to this little tid That was a bit problem Muslim.
All of that beautiful seventy millimeter six track stereo sound folded down into one little insect eat and speaker hang it fright window. Yeah, look, thankfully sound improved.
Andrew.
You know, all are driving since the nineties have used FM stereo sounds. So we used to say that the better your car sound system is, the better our movie is going to sound. So that was a big improvement. Yet people loved the nostalgia of the speakers. They didn't want us to take the speakers away. They wanted them there. They wanted to look at them. They want to use them, absolutely, it's synonymous with the driving, but they didn't want to listen to them. They wanted the better quality sounds.
But then they drive off with it's still attached to the window.
Ah.
Luckily only very few people did that because it did cause problems for us and for them.
There was a Sandringham Drive and I went to it a long time ago, and there was a little section where you could just sit. And these were people who I remember I spoke to them at interval and they just came to the drive in to watch the movie. There was a speaker there and they actually lived only a street away and they just walked up. And did you provide seats out in actual seats for non vehicle people.
We did, and the indoor sections that they had for those people at some of the drivings. Burwood had one as well, and there was one at our driving. They were called walking so they in cinema seats with a big glass wall and a speaker. And that's for people that wanted to arrive on a bike or walk. In fact, I heard even some people arrived on horses to view movies in the early days. That way it driving wonderful.
I didn't realize what a great idea.
It was a good idea. Yeah, Now you.
Do presentations and public speaking and stuff, don't you on this? Is it just on drivings that you do it or no?
I do it on few topics, mostly related to cinemas, but also do some to do with cars as well. But the most popular public talk I do was on the history of drivings and I do that quite often, and I also do quite a few on cinemas as well.
And I've got one coming up at the Brand Mechanics Institute on August the twelfth and that's called the Lost Suburban Cinemas of Melbourne and that's a free talk that's happening there, so you can book online if there's still some seats available and you'll hear all about Melbourne's Lost suburban cinemas.
I've got another thing that really well did the cinema, the driving cinemas in David was the fact that so much of their land became just extremely valuable. The Clayton Drive, it was well, how many acres was the luna to give me.
Some luna was fifteen But Clayton that you mentioned Metro and later Village Clayton across the road from the University, there was on twenty five acres of some of the most prime land. And when you think of two driving up on the hill there onto the Rack Road and Sandringham. As we mentioned, the moment these places started to have marginal operating figures, that was a very easy decision to
sell them and get the profits. And that's the problem with drivings today they're christ out of the populated areas.
It's unbelievable now people, there was a driving in track and that you know what was it, you know, two or three thousand dollars per square footed land or something like that into ITCT and there used to be driving there. Ye, very hard to justify running it as a as a theater.
That's right, yeah, it really. People ask me often, you know, will drivings open again? Will anyone build one? Well? They might, but you have to find an area that's close enough to a population, on a piece of land that is going to have land tax rates that are going to be affordable. And that's one of the reasons we closed that Danninong is the land tax and all the operating costs just just became too high for us to maintain the driving there now.
David Kilderry, Captain Elfie has called in an occasional caller to the programs I believe, with the question for you get a Captain Elfie.
And the greeting sir, and how do you do David? It's fantastic what you're doing.
But what I used to do, but thank you very much.
Yes, okay, if you can just put your mind down to Lawn, back where I used to live and did all my holidays down there at my grandmother's place around the corner from the Lawn Hotel. Well, we had a cinema there, sense I'm saying, from the sixties onwards, and it's I want to they're having a few concerts there and stuff, but it's not the old cinema with those beautiful seats and the chap is down you know, and the chap who did it, who ran it, his nickname
was Mooney. Don't ask me what his real name was, but we always knew him was Mooney. And fortunately I've heard from some of the boys down at Lawn that he did pass away. But it was a classic. And then people want to change it to I don't know, some venue, even units. I mean, my god, it's.
A beautiful feater down at Lawn. I know it very well. And unfortunately it changed hands about two years ago, and they had plans to run movies not just at holidays there but all year round, and unfortunately there wasn't enough numbers to support it. And now, like you said, I heard that it's now doing live performances and various other things.
I just hope that they're able to at least reopen it for the summer holidays again, because there's traditions of generations of people going down to lawn and enjoying that cinema, particularly on a rainy tay in the middle of January.
It's one of those things, is that. Thank you, Captain Alphie. It's one of those things, isn't it, David, And I've always said this. We lament the closing of the local family owned hardware store, yet we all shop at Bunnings. We the closing of our the local butcher shop and the local greengrocer, yet we all go to Coles and Woolli's the only people to blame for the lack of you for changes in these sorts of things. If a cinema closes down due to low patronage, it's the patrons who were to blame.
Yeah, that's right. It's all part of it. And the old song you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Say when it's gone, I wish it was back. But you need to support them while they're there. And you know, often you see whenever you see something mentioned about driving theaters online, often the first or second comment is, oh, I used to be snuck in.
In the boots.
Well, that certainly didn't help things on the finance either.
But it was a right of passage, wasn't it.
It seemed to me. Did you actually find that happened a lot, that people were snucking in boots?
It didn't happen a lot, but it did happen. And we had a rule, my brother and I, if we caught them before the ticket box, if for another customer said hey, there's two people in the boot in the behind us. If we caught them there, we got them out to embarrass them and let them still pay to come in. But if we caught them inside the theater, once they'd done the deception or theft is the police
class it has, they'd be booted out without refund. So you walk a fine line for the people that tried to put that over on us.
Wonderful And now the only bit of cinematic sort of knowledge that I've got when and I think I bring it up every time we ever speak to you, David, I was told once where Village Cinemas got its name from. And if I'm right in remembering this correctly, it was named after the Twin Driving at Croydon, was it not?
Yeah, you're right.
That was the Rock Kirby who was the founder along with his partners Spencer and Alexander. They built that drive in as their first one in late nineteen fifty four and Rock told me he was looking for a name and he couldn't think of a name. And just alongside near the entrances it's where McDonald's is in Croydon now on Runda Highway. But there was an old group of shops that have now gone and they were called the Village Baker, the Village Grosser, the Village milk Bar, and
he thought why not the Village Driving. So that simple name he just took from the shops next to it, and that's the name we know well. It was in twenty countries around the world at the peak as village cinemas today.
Movies and all that. Yes, a big distribution company too. David Gilderry, what an absolute pleasure to talk to you, and I hope we speak again sometime.
It's always great fun. Andrew and Simon, thanks a lot.
And if people do want to see talks, presentations or book you or anything, is there a website or anything they can go.
To Well For the one I've got coming up, they can just go to the paran Mechanics Institute PMI just search it online. It's the Victorian Local History Library. The Cinema and Theatre Historical Society are also big supporters of my presentations and you can search for them online as well.
Fabulous David killed Derry from the lunar, driving Rick Milne up after the break