Sunday Supplemental - There's Trouble at the Drive-In
Schism.
Every fandom has one, most have multiple. Go all the way back to the very first fandom: religion. Whether it’s different interpretations of the Torah leading to Jews and their more conservative Orthodox brethren or the multiple fragmentations within Christendom…to splinters of fandom that have less global impact: Trukk not Munky, the Prequels/Sequels don’t exist, Kirk or Picard, DC Films vs Snyderverse, hell, Marvel vs DC…it goes on and on. Fans disagree with other fans and eventually, a breaking point occurs…leaving some on one extreme side, some on another and a bunch in the middle.
This is where the following comes from: the middle.
You see…with the 2024 Drive-In Jubilee in Las Vegas, it turns out a schism has come to the Drive-In…and Mutants are divided.
Let’s get a little history. Back in 2021, the powers that be behind Shudder’s The Last Drive-In organized the first Drive-In Jamboree held at the Mahoning Drive-In, just northwest of Allentown, PA. At the time, the Mahoning was in danger of shutting down forever and the event was used as a fundraiser and surely enough, plenty of Mutants descended upon the drive-in not only to preserve the landmark, but also to celebrate their fandom of “drive-in movies”, the short-film work of budding horror directors among the fandom, music from the show’s band, John Brennan and the Bigfeet, and, of course, the host of the show himself, Joe Bob Briggs. In spite of the wet weather, no less. For the second Jamboree in 2022, Nashville was selected as the location. Not only were the events from the last Jamboree included, but given the unique locale…as well as Joe Bob’s own disposition…a tour of Graceland…home of the late Elvis Pressley…was conducted in a style typical of both Joe Bob and the current Mail Girl, Darcy. The continued success of these events allowed for a third chapter, this time on the west side of the country and in one of Joe Bob’s favorite cities, Las Vegas, Nevada. Again, everything that had made this event a hit was present, along with a walking tour of the fabled Strip and perhaps most importantly, what would end up being the last public appearance of Exploitation Film director and producer extraordinaire, Roger Corman. This time, the event was filmed and highlights, including the interview with the late Corman, were streamed on Shudder as the opening to the show’s sixth season. As with the past events, this too proved successful and fans were ready for the next Jamboree.
Or were they?
On the surface, everything seemed somewhat normal. Dates were announced, the location would be Vegas again and tickets went on sale. The first signs of something being amiss was that for 2024, mainstay of both the show and the Jamboree, “house band” John Brennan and the Bigfeet would not be in attendance due to “prior commitments”. Those of you that have watch Hollywood for any length of time…or any sort of movie development…know that when the phrase “scheduling conflicts” comes up, or any variation thereof, you know something is wrong with the production and at least one party is leaving. While this doesn’t have the red alert claxon as the “creative differences” delay in production, where it’s pretty much guaranteed that whoever left the production has no love lost for the ones they’ve broken off working with…well, the fact that we have to resort to an overused watch-phrase such as this…it’s not a great sign. Still, of what I’ve seen from Brennan himself, to his credit, when asked about the issue he seemingly remained professional. To paraphrase, his stance was “Hey, sorry I’ll miss this year. Go, have fun and hopefully we’ll be back in the future.” As an outside viewer who has yet to attend a Jamboree, likely wasn’t going to make it to 2024…but still had an eye on going to a future one…this seemed fine. It all seemed fine.
Then came this post on Twitter (I refuse to call it X) from Darcy herself on September 29th, just days before the start of the Jamboree on October 4th:
Warning sign #1: When anyone starts ANYTHING with ‘To whom it may concern…’, no matter the gender, you’re about to be addressed by a drama queen or, at the very least, someone looking to start some shit. What heightened my sensitivity to this is that there’s been A LOT of drama at my job lately and honestly, I’m surprised someone there hasn’t used this tactic yet. Anyway, given what was happening at work, this ‘scent’ was still very fresh in my memory. Given that opening, I was perhaps a bit more scrutinous as I would be, so when she followed that with claiming almost single-handedly putting this year’s Jamboree together and that “Joe Bob had quit”, well, as the old saying goes, “something’s fishy in the state of Denmark”. Now, to give Diana/Darcy her due, it’s obvious that she does do a fair amount of work: The Lost Drive-In Patreon site she runs serves to not only restore old Joe Bob material from either Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel or Monstervision on TNT, but also to make it available to fans, either online or quarterly Blu-ray releases and she was the driving force behind completing the lost acting opus of Mr. Briggs that was Hogzilla [Insert chant here. - Ed.]. On top of that, of course there’s all the fan interaction as well. However, there will be more on that later. So no, it would not be fair to say that she doesn’t do anything with regards to either the show or the Jamboree. I’m sure she does quite a lot, as these sound like a lot of work. Here’s the rub though…if your headliner “quits”, Joe Bob himself…can you in any capacity put together a show? I get that movements can and must outlive their initiator or leader…but with the dude still walking the Earth…again, something about this doesn’t pass the smell test.
Honestly, I didn’t really pay this any mind at the time. Hell, I wasn’t going, who cares about the drama? Diana/Darcy was likely venting during a very high-impact run up to a high-impact event. It happens to all of us before a vital deadline…believe me, I know!
It was a post from John Brennan, production manager of the show and, as already mentioned, leader of the Bigfeet band that gave not only a clear indication that Diana/Darcy’s venting needed to be revisited but that a schism was well underway.
You can partake in the lengthy read that here:
While I have no roots in journalism whatsoever, even though my best friend does, if ever there was a “how do you respond to the allegations…?” moment for Joe Bob & Darcy…this is DEFINITELY it.
[POST-SCRIPT ENTRY: As it turns out, there was a sign prior to the aforementioned post. If you go to Yuki & John’s Podcast Buffet, the latest episode, dated September 30th…the day after Diana/Darcy’s X audio…is titled Ungrateful People. In retrospect, there’s definitely things percolating beneath the surface during John and Yuki’s discussion. It’s worth checking out.]
With, as The Dude would say, this new shit having come to light, I have to revisit not only my own fandom…but also words and feelings I’ve posted on this website. In a past article, I made mention that yes, I have met Joe Bob once, at the Port Orchard Film Festival back in 2018...after his return to TV had been announced by Shudder but before the nature and date of said return were made known. And I’ll stand by what I said, for the brief time I spoke with him, he was as nice as I had hoped…taking a brief moment to talk, autographing a book and posing for a selfie. Perhaps what Brennan’s post refreshes in our collective memory is that anyone under the spotlight, whether it be large and bright like those of Hollywood stars or niche and focused like this particular corner of movie and movie host fandom, these people have their public personas and the personas they have behind the scenes. These are the ones that make the deals that make them money and, ultimately, the ones that cry for the attention they want and feel they deserve. As cinema pundit John Campea says, “It’s not Show Friends, it’s Show Business.” Normally, I know that and I don’t let it get in the way of my enjoyment of the media I love. Take comic legend Neal Adams. He was a big believer in the whole “Hollow Earth” theory nonsense. You can tell how I wrote that how I feel on the matter and I assure you that by knowing that, I think less of him as a human being…yet that makes no impact in my feeling that he’s one of the greatest Batman artists to ever touch the character. That said, aside from seeing him a couple of times at comic-cons, there’s still a distance: he’s a creator, I’m a fan. That’s it. Stark. No contact really needed.
Here's what makes the emerging schism in the Drive-In so difficult for me. I don’t have that level of separation here. My profession has made me move all over the country: first from Ohio to Arizona, then from Arizona to Washington state…and more than likely, I’ve probably got another move in me somewhere. The number of friends I have has dwindled with each crossing…and even with each new home base, just as I have moved, so too do my coworkers and thus…well, I’ve lost some good friends this way…including the co-host of the podcast we tried in the early days of the site. That’s not to say I don’t have any real-live people to take refuge in. Thankfully in both Arizona and in Washington I was able to find love…but well, anyone in a relationship knows that you have likes you share and likes you don’t. With my ex in Arizona, yes, movies were a shared passion…here in Washington with my current girlfriend…not so much. The return of Joe Bob and the start of the Last Drive-In gave me a weekly stand-in friend: someone with an everyman approach to cinema that wasn’t afraid to, in fact rather looked forward to, diving into the cinematic sewer and finding gold there. These circumstances would affect me as they have many people in this current generation of media creation and distribution: you think the face on the screen is your friend…not the public side of a potentially darker persona in the background. Joe Bob and Darcy have been my “friends” to this point. John Brennan has been my “friend” to this point. I’ve gotten great comments on Twitter from both Darcy and John. Me. On my rinky-dink little website. Yeah, that makes you feel special and for that, I have a loyalty to both. Now, they’re on the opposite sides of what looks to be a messy break-up. How does one pick a side?
It's simple. You don’t.
These are not your friends. Never were. They’re amplified personas. They’re aspects of real people, but not the person. In a way, I’m oddly glad for something like this. It pulls me back to reality. If I want friends, I need to go out and find them. Those people need to be active parts of my life…not just a face on the screen. In this age of “content” [God I hate that word. – Ed.], I think we’d all be better in remembering that fact. Yes, I’ll continue to watch The Last Drive-In. It’s entertaining to me. Yes, I look forward to what Brennan and the Bigfeet get up to next…and I’m definitely going to make sure I listen to his podcast with Yumi Nakamura; Yuki and John’s Podcast Buffet. I’ve had more interaction with him on Twitter than other members of the show and as such, while I'm not under any delusions of friendship, he'll always be someone I'm happy to hear from, even if it is just on occasion.
My feelings toward Diana/Darcy are more complicated. And no, not just because I’m a big fan of…ahem…her previous work. As The Last Drive-In has grown, her interactions don’t appear to be as widespread as they used to be. Some online have accused that an hierarchy has emerged in the #MutantFam…and while I’m not sure I’ve seen enough to specifically and with certainty agree with them, I’ve definitely seen some accounts get more attention than others. Now, some of this is rooted in her very noted fandom of AEW Wrestling but also, let’s just face it, any social construct will eventually give rise to some sort of structure, those who are favored and those who are not. It’s human nature. We play to the people we like and occasionally tip our hats to others who we may not know or not know well. I don’t really think this is fair to hold against her. And yet…as a human with human failings and feelings…it stings sometimes when you don’t get a tip of the hat.
Ultimately, everyone likes to think their fandom is united. And for a large part of my life, while not completely united in the examples I gave at the beginning of this opinion, most fandoms I’ve been a part of have been able to look past these differences at times, recognizing that at the core, it’s always been us against the mainstream: whether it was comic books, Transformers, Star Wars or horror movies. In this new millennium, things that were niche find themselves in the mainstream: the success of the MCU, the fact that we’ve had 8 Transformers movies and Star Wars is no longer an independent franchise but now a part of an ‘evil empire’ it spent most of its life fighting against. So too do we find ourselves in a time where there is indeed a mainstream demand for horror. Joe Bob, Darcy and Shudder as a whole would be foolish not to capitalize on this. That’s business. But unfortunately, this is difficult to divorce from the niche, family-like quality many in our fandom still retain, not realizing that our small town isn’t a small town anymore. The friendly guy running the general store is now the franchisee of the local Wal-Mart, reaping the profits from that all the while gradually detaching from the community he was so integral to. I think we in the horror fandom are starting to see this materialize…along with the cracks that come with it.
Divisions are inevitable. Schisms happen. What’s incumbent upon any fandom is to remember what matters: our love for the material. Some ‘friends’ may become shady, stars may rise and fall. But remember, no matter your opinion of the man who coined these words before or after this schism emerged, the Drive-In will never die.