 WIZARD UNIVERSE WEEKLY FEATURES |  | [IMAGE SPOTLIGHT:] TALES OF THE STARLIGHT DRIVE-IN | | Michael San Giacomo discusses his epic graphic novel following various stories from the Starlight Drive-In and the many lives and adventures of the people who attend over the course of 50 years. | | | By Kevin Mahadeo | | Posted 5/27/08 | |  | | ![[IMAGE SPOTLIGHT:] TALES OF THE STARLIGHT DRIVE-IN](http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/wizarduniverse_2058_1952750187)
On June 4, head over to the Starlight Drive-in—a fictional theatre with over 50 years worth of stories to tell.
Michael San Giacomo's Tales of the Starlight Drive-in contains various short stories all taking place at the Starlight Drive-in from 1955 to 2008. While the stories can each be read independently, they all tie together to form a much larger story about the drive-in as a whole and create a heartwarming story about the rise and fall of drive-in theaters and how one place can touch the lives of so many.
We chatted with Giacomo about how he came up with the unique idea, watching naughty movies at the drive-in, and being terrified of the living dead.
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To start off, how'd you first come up with the idea for Tales of the Starlight Drive-in?
I guess it was 2004. I was at the San Diego Comic Con with Phantom Jack, and I was walking around and talking with different publishers about some ideas. I can't remember who it was—some foreign graphic novel publisher whose name I can't recall—but we were talking about what they were looking for and he said, "I want something completely unique, something that has never been done before, and something that's uniquely American." I said, "Oh. Let me think about that." I walked away and I thought about it for a few days. I don't know what inspired me, but I just came up with the idea of a series of stories set in a drive-in theater over a half century. I thought that would be kind of interesting and that has never been done before. So, that was how it generated. That's how it started. Then I started thinking about the individual stories at that point.
Are you a fan of drive-ins yourself? I've always wanted to go to a drive-in myself, but I never know where one is.
When I was kid, I worked at a drive-in for a summer or two. When I was young, in the '60s, we used to go to the drive-in all the time. That was the big thing for us. It was a dating culture. You go to the drive-in and take your girlfriend there, have fun, sort of watch the movie. So, in my youth, drive-ins were big. Then, I think like most people, I just gravitated to the inside theaters. Here in Cleveland, believe it or not, we have nine drive-ins within 70 miles of the city. We probably have the most drive-ins of anybody in the country. They're popular. In a new, strange way, they've become a big family thing. Just this weekend, my sister and brother-in-law were in and we went to see "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and "Iron Man." There's something really nostalgic about it. You see the couples and kids in footie pajamas and everybody has coolers of beers and chairs. It's very much like a tailgate party now. They've become much more of a social phenomenon rather than two people in the car watching the movie.
Since you mentioned this, what did you think of Indy and Iron Man?
I love them. I loved them both. I'd seen "Iron Man" before, and it lost none of the power from the theater to the drive-in. You tune into your own stereo in your car. So, you have really nice sound. The screen was perfect. It was a nice starry night.
| |  The book contains quite a number of characters. Where did most of these characters come from? You said Neil is sort of based around yourself. Did you base other characters of off people you know?
I kind of made them all up, but there are a few characters in the book that remind me of people I've known over the years. The character of Walt, one of the early managers, he was sort of like the manager I had when I was a kid working at the drive-in. That gruff, grouchy guy who assumed everyone was stealing from him all the time. [Laughs] But most of the characters came out of my head.
You've said Neil is your favorite character. Any reason why?
If there's anybody in the book who is the heart of the drive-in, it's Neil. He is there all the time, and he sees the drive-in as sort of like life. And for just a few hours when the people are there and he's playing the music for them, he feels like this is his universe. He tries to subtly influence people with the music he plays, which is what I think we writers do. I'm a reporter and when you write reviews, you're doing that. We try to subtly nudge people. "Here's what I like, and I hope you like it, too." Neil's politics are similar to mine, actually. [Laughs] He's very left-winger, anti-establishment kind of guy. And the guy has such a heart. Whenever he does something in the story, he's always doing the right thing. I don't think there's a point in the book someone could look at him and say, "That was the wrong thing to do."
There's so many diverse stories in this book. Where did they all come from? Were any based on real experiences?
A few of them, embarrassingly enough, were based on my own experience. [Laughs] Most of them came from just my imagination. For instance, the "Night of the Living Dead" one where the four stoned guys go see "Night of the Living Dead" and get freaked out by it—that's sort of true. [Laughs] We went there one night, didn't know what to expect, and we were a little wasted at the time, and it scared the hell out of us. It wasn't quite as dramatic as the book. The Mongoose story was sort of ripped right out of reality. The 1960 Plymouth Fury was the car I had growing up in the late '60s. The whole story about somebody punching out the fins used to happen all the time. It used to drive me insane because I'd have to go buy them. They were only like five bucks each, but it was a pain in the ass. So, that sort of came out the frustration of my youth and confronting the person doing it, even though I never really knew who was doing it. There were a lot of other stories that I planned. I tried to have a story for every genre of film. I made a mental list of what all my favorite movies were from each genre, and then just try to fit to them that would fit into the entire novel. Each story had to reflect the movie being played, it had to be able to be read by itself and perfectly understood, and it has to be part of whole so that if you read the whole thing you'd get a novel out of it. It took some time, but I think it worked out pretty well.
This might be a hard question, but do you have a favorite story in the book?
I got to say 1985 "Lost in America" is my favorite. The story of the family who takes advantage of the sign that says, "Buy one ticket, stay as long as you like." They pull in with their RV and they won't leave. [Laughs] I love that story. If you put a gun to my head, I'd have to say that was my favorite story.
| |  A lot of these stories were drawn by different artists. The most interesting one to me is that you got a person in prison to draw the story about a person in prison. How'd that come about?
That was interesting. As a reporter, I do a lot of crime reporting, and I get a lot of mail from prisoners. Al Cleveland had sent me some of his artwork and some samples, and asked if I'd like to do a story about him some time. I looked at that and thought it was interesting. And when this project came up a year later, I wanted to do something on "Shawskank Redemption." Al was a nice, good guy. He did the story in record time. When I hired Al, I said that I wasn't going to do his story because I wanted to separate myself. I wasn't writing a story about his innocence because I didn't want to cross that line. But, behind-the-scenes I started looking into his case and I was kind of appalled, frankly, about how little they had on the guy. Poor Al's been in jail 16 or 17 years.
Originally, this story ended in 2005 because the book was supposed to come out then. You went back and wrote a new final story for 2008. Was it difficult going back and writing that story?
That was tough. It ended so cleanly in 2005. I don't know. Somehow everything just came together. We had sent Neil off in 2005 to discover America, which is what he always wanted to do but was afraid to do. And what he found was that America was gone. America is all the same now—shopping malls and McDonalds. So, bringing him full circle and giving him a drive-in again just felt right. And when I started writing, it just sort of wrote itself. I just started typing and I didn't know how it was going to end, to be honest with you. It just came to me. It put a true ending to the story.
As a personal question, do you have a favorite drive-in memory from your youth?
[Laughs] Oh god, I have plenty. The most fun one was that I went to the drive-in with my parents. I guess I was about 7, maybe 8. It was a double feature, and they used to have weird double features. One was a Disney movie, and the other half of the bill was "Never on Sunday." It was an R-Rated film about prostitutes going on strike. [Laughs] I remember my parents saying, "Well, you can watch the Disney movie and then you can go to sleep." And I was like, "Oh yeah. Absolutely." I remember distinctly sitting there watching "Never on Sunday," an almost softcore porn thing, and it changed my life forever. I was enthralled. I was like, "Oh my god. It's a naked woman. I've never seen one of those before." [Laughs] My parents would look back and were like, "You're not watching this, are you?" And I'm all, "No. no. My eyes are closed." That's one of my strongest memories.
What's coming up next for you? Is there anything else you're working on?
I have one more flash of Phantom Jack left. There's a Phantom Jack book that's done. It's a 110 pages, and it's the final adventures of Phantom Jack. It's no surprise from the cover, he dies. That's coming out from Atomic Pop Art Entertainment, and it's due to come out in June. It's not getting much press because it's a small company, but I’m really proud of that. Phantom Jack is a reporter that can turn invisible, and in the first series you see that he's kind of a coward that's slowly becoming more a hero. Beyond that, I have a couple of other things. I have a character called Chalk. Basically, a priest is murdered, and you know how the police draw a chalk outline of the body? Well, they use chalk they find at the scene, which turns out to be blessed chalk from the Pope. And the chalk thing comes to life and avenges him.
[Laughs] That's awesome!
Yeah. It's kind of cool. It goes after the gang members that killed the priest. It's fun. That'll be my next project if I can find some artist who is willing to work for very little money. [Laughs]
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Giacomo plans on attending a number of signing at Drive-In theaters across the US.
The first takes place on June 6 at the Aut-O-Rama Drive-in in North Ridgeville, Ohio.
Be sure to check out the STARLIGHT WEB SITE for information on future signings and the read about the history of the graphic novel.
Also be sure to check out ATOMIC POP ART for info on Phantom Jack.
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