In a reprise to his successful guide to the drive-in movie experience, the author again brings his unique redneck commentary to some of the worst, and most obscure, B-grade movies ever produced

The Drive-In meaningfully contributes to the complex picture of outdoor cinema that has been central to American culture and to a history of US cinema based on diverse viewing experiences rather than a select number of films. Drive-in cinemas flourished in 1950s America, in some summer weeks to the extent that there were more cinemagoers outdoors than indoors. Often associated with teenagers interested in the drive-in as a 'passion pit' or a venue for exploitation films, accounts of the 1950s American drive-in tend to emphasise their popularity with families with young children, downplaying the importance of a film programme apparently limited to old, low-budget or independent films and characterising drive-in operators as industry outsiders. They retain a hold on the popular imagination. The Drive-In identifies the mix of generations in the drive-in audience as well as accounts that articulate individual experiences, from the drive-in as a dating venue to a segregated space. Through detailed analysis of the film industry trade press, local newspapers and a range of other primary sources including archival records on cinemas and cinema circuits in Arkansas, California, New York State and Texas, this book examines how drive-ins were integrated into local communities and the film industry and reveals the importance and range of drive-in programmes that were often close to that of their indoor neighbours.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A fascinating portrait of journalism and the people who make it, told through pieces collected from the incomparable six-decade career of bestselling author and longtime New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin “The Lede contains profiles . . . that are acknowledged classics of the form and will be studied until A.I. makes hash out of all of us.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times I’ve been writing about the press almost as long as I’ve been in the game. At some point, it occurred to me that disparate pieces from various places in various styles amounted to a picture from multiple angles of what the press has been like over the years since I became a practitioner and an observer. Calvin Trillin has reported serious pieces across America for The New Yorker, covered the civil rights movement in the South for Time, and written comic verse for The Nation. But one of his favorite subjects over the years—a superb fit for his unique combination of reportage and humor—has been his own professional environment: the American press. In The Lede, Trillin gathers his incisive, often hilarious writing on reporting, reporters, and their world. There are pieces on a legendary crime reporter in Miami and on an erudite film critic in Dallas who once a week transformed himself from a connoisseur of the French nouvelle vague into a fan of movies like Mother Riley Meets the Vampire. Trillin writes about the paucity of gossip columns in Russia, the icebreaker he'd use if he met one of his subjects socially (e.g.: “You must be wondering why I referred to you in Time as a dork robot”), and the origins of a publication called Beautiful Spot: A Magazine of Parking. Uniting all of this is Trillin’s signature combination of empathy, humor, and graceful prose. The Lede is an invaluable portrait of one our fundamental American institutions from a master journalist.

Godzilla’s in a twelve-step program. A soul-sucking Mummy stalks Elvis and John F. Kennedy. Joe Bob Briggs has a moral dilemma: If your girlfriend turns zombie on you, what do you do? And that’s the tame stuff. In this red-hot collection from world-champion Mojo storyteller Joe R. Lansdale, you’ll find his best, most outrageous stories. The high priest of Texan weirdness does it all: horror, mystery, satire, suspense, and even Westerns. Prepare to be offended, shocked, and cackling like a crazed redneck. Featuring five Bram Stoker Award–winning stories, this career retrospective contains some of Lansdale’s rarer work, his nonfiction forays into drive-in theaters and B-movies, and the novella Bubba Ho-Tep, later made into a cult-classic major motion picture. Come on in—the weirdness is fine.

Joe Bob Briggs, the sage of Grapevine, Texas, looks at America, and he doesn't like what he sees.