Screen of the Heavens: Alien Invasion Weekend, Mahoning Drive-In, May 31-June 1, 2024
Friday: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) with Fire in the Sky (1993)
Saturday: Alien (1979) with Aliens (1986)
by J †Johnson
In Stephen Wright’s M31, if memory serves, there’s a scene where a sky watcher sees not a single UFO, but a sky full of them, in every shape and size. I too want to believe, though not if it means the heavens are just another super highway. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Steven Spielberg seems as interested in out-pondering Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as he is in heralding incoming media technology and the military-industrial apparatus that holds it up. And where Kubrick blows our minds and asks what it means to be human in a posthuman universe, Spielberg gives us dumbfounded suburbanites gawping at the sky going It has to mean something! It was nice to see an often beautiful film on 35mm cast on the Mahoning Drive-In’s giant outdoor screen under a sky full of stars, but Close Encounters is a big yawner that never fucking ends.
1993’s Fire in the Sky is more like it. We’re in those woods, the ones we go to in The X Files and Twin Peaks, lit by flashlights, truck lights, search lights—and you better believe there’s tractor beams out there too. The characters are compelling without being overdrawn, the tensions are thick, the town feels alive, and so is James Garner. We get shadowy bars, smalltown drama, missing persons, a strutting outsider cop, a near chainsaw fight, a satisfying story arc, and a harrowing visit to an alien spacecraft. Holy shit this film rules. Anyone who says it’s mostly boring until the last ten minutes hasn’t seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and probably calls Fire Walk With Me a slow burn.
That was it for Friday night, at least for us—night owls in the lot were treated to a secret feature to take them into the wee hours. A flash of light streaked past screen left at the end of the second feature, a clear sign of approval from the great beyond. Possibly it was a wink from Jeff Mattox, Mahoning’s long-time owner and projectionist, who passed away in April. It’s wonderful to be back at the Mahoning Drive-In, even as we mourn a fellow devotee of that vast screen in the sky. In a lovely tribute, his voice greets us at intermission to assure us that the concession booth is still open.
If you stay for the weekend at Mahoning, the lot’s all yours Saturday morning and afternoon. Time slows, you re-calibrate to the solar cycle, read a few books, listen to some music, catch a nap, take a walk to the marquee at Blakeslee Boulevard Drive East and Seneca Road, and welcome everyone back when the gates re-open and the Mahoning Drive-In Radio 89.3 live broadcast returns.
Saturday night is the real crowd pleaser, and the sold-out drive-in is packed. It’s a gorgeous night on the verge of summer, and what better way to celebrate June’s arrival than two stone-cold classics on 35mm, projected on the biggest screen you’ve ever seen, under all those heavenly bodies.
Ripley, they should have listened to you. And we should have watched Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) back to back before now. Everything you need to know about how horror and horror adjacent franchises get from part 1 to part 2 is here, done about as well as it’s been done. There is both continuation of grand storyline and innovation. Tried and true tensions are amplified and moppets come crawling out of the works. The Company and its avatars still suck, though the new models suck harder. Bill Paxton arrives with the cavalry to up the one-liner quotient and go to war. The monsters get bigger and the metaphor strains to swallow the world. Turns out, in space they can hear you scream, but only if the gunfire dies down—and we’re never out of bullets. Or fire.
Another star—or something else—shoots past the screen.
J †Johnson is the author of Trouble Songs: A Musicological Poetics (punctum books, 2018), and a poetry collection, The Book / Or / The Woods (punctum books, 2021). Their writing has appeared in PEN America, Jacket2, Tarpaulin Sky, and elsewhere. A chapbook, trunc & frag, is at Our Teeth. Most recently, they completed a performative critical investigation of analog-digital interface, language-oriented poetry, digital language art, and experimental electronic music called Janky Materiality. They live in Philadelphia.