DRIVE-IN STYLE.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

SUTHERLIN - The new owner of the Hi-Way Haven RV Park doesn't know why no one tore down the 80-foot movie screen at the north end of the 100-space park. After all, it's been 18 years since the sloping property served as the Cloverleaf Drive-In.

"Probably it was just too expensive," Jim Remley mused. "It's steel reinforced - they built that thing very well."

But he's mighty glad it wasn't demolished.

Remley, who grew up in Roseburg, had fond boyhood memories of coming to movies at the Cloverleaf. So, after buying the park in January, he brought movies back for park residents. The site's extended intermission ended last month, with screenings of the original "War of the Worlds" and the Alfred Hitchcock thriller "Rear Window."

Wednesday night it was "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Some residents watched from the warmth and comfort of their RVs. Others did it the old-fashioned way: sitting in their cars and trucks, facing the screen where Remley projected the film using a laptop computer and a 1,600-lumens LCD projector.

"This is paradise!" raved Kathy Copenhaben, 45, watching from the front seat of her minivan because her RV's windows face the wrong direction. "I used to love to come here as a little girl. I never dreamed that I would be living here and watching movies one day."

Larry Schaeffer and Mary Levenhagen had not one but two windows looking out at the big screen. They enjoyed the opening antics of Paul Newman and Robert Redford from their kitchen window as they ate Larry's dinner of pork chops and asparagus. Later, they cuddled up on a plush sofa to watch the rest of the Western through a window in their sunken living room. Like their neighbors watching from their vehicles, they listened to the soundtrack on an FM radio frequency, via Remley's transmitter.

"But in here, we get to hear it in surround sound," Schaeffer said.

Indeed, though that raises the question: Why watch a flickering image outdoors, rather than renting the film on CD and watching a crisp version on a high-definition television?

Schaeffer, 69, credits nostalgia for the social experience his generation associated with drive-ins.

"I was raised in a good time, the 1950s," he said. "Everybody went to the drive-in. We'd have 10 or 15 carloads there. Half the time we didn't even watch the movie, we just congregated."

Susan McMillian, 40, remembers bonding with her family when they went to the drive-in.

"You're like a captive audience, because in that small space, you have to interact with each other," she explained. "It seems like that doesn't happen much anymore."

Remley said he's still working out a few kinks. He plans to bump up to a 5,000-lumens projector, for instance, because this one isn't quite bright enough to outshine such distractions as a jet contrail illuminated by the moon. Still, his drive-in is one of fewer than a half-dozen in the state.

And the perk is a definite hit with his residents.

"We're really looking forward to this summer," Schaeffer said. "We intend to invite friends over, have a barbecue, then sit out in lawn chairs and watch the movie."

CAPTION(S):

Robert Redford looms at the Hi-Way Haven RV Park in Sutherlin during a showing of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" on Wednesday. Wednesday night's film was shown via a laptop computer and a 1,600-lumens LCD projector.