At the end of this summer, take a break from the costly, crowded atmosphere of your local 28-screen megaplex.

Imagine a night under the stars instead, enjoying the company of your friends, the quiet hum of your automobile and the pleasure of seeing two films for the price of one.

By doing so, you'll also be supporting a dying Michigan tradition - of the once more than 150 drive-in movie theaters in the state, less than 15 survive.

"The exhibition business has been forced into (building multiplexes) in a lot of degrees because of the distribution of films and the way studios are," said Gary Ritzenthaler, a Wixom resident and drive-in enthusiast who operates a Web site about historical places in Michigan. "Multiplexes are a financial reality."

The death of drive-ins, Ritzenthaler attests, is mainly a result of major film company control of production, exhibition and distribution. In the past few decades, independent theaters have been forced to take poorer-quality products from major film companies in order to receive big-budget, popular films.

At one time, Ritzenthaler said, theaters were able to change what films they showed several times a week. Now, venues are obligated to keep unsuccessful films playing on screen for up to four weeks at a time.

"You're forced to take a product, and if it dies, you still have to show it," Ritzenthaler said.

Due to such "block booking," operating expenses and film company demand for 70-90 percent of ticket sale returns, most drive-in theaters survive solely on profits from concession sales, said Tom Magocs, who owns the Coldwater-based Capri Drive-in theater with his wife, Sue.

Last spring, Magocs sat in the Capri's box office, selling tickets to the few carloads of people who braved the erratic snowy weather for a double feature of either "The Amityville Horror" and "Sahara" or "Fever Pitch" and "Beauty Shop."

"I'm going in the hole tonight," Magocs said. "If you told me last Saturday that this Saturday it would be snowing, I'd go, 'Yeah right, what are you smoking?'"

Despite occasional bad weather, the Capri has generally remained a successful drive-in theater since it was built by Magocs' parents in 1964.

"It's been in my life so long that I just assume it always will be," Magocs said. "But then again, you never know. It's just like anything else - as long as we have the movies and the weather, we're all set."

For many cars that drove up to the Capri gate, Magocs didn't even need to give them instructions on what to do - a great deal of the Capri's guests are regulars.

"Most people that live in Coldwater don't come to the drive-in," Capri projectionist and Coldwater resident Joel Harman said. "It's always out-of-town people. It's a heck of a lot better deal than the cinema, too, which charges 50 cents more and you only see one movie."

The Capri didn't always have such a strong out-of-town market, Magocs said. Once videocassette recorders and cable television became popular in the late '80s and '90s, less people were coming to the drive-in to see a movie.

"It was pretty slow times," Magocs said. "But we didn't have a high overhead, so we could hold on."

The main factor for revived business at the Capri can be traced to one of Lansing's own morning radio programs, the Tim and Deb Radio Show at WMMQ (94.9-FM).

"Back in the early '90s they did a segment on drive-ins because they were tearing down the last one in Lansing," Magocs said. "People started calling in and telling them about the drive-in in Coldwater, and we got more and more phone calls."

Magocs' father, John Magocs, who worked at the Capri until his death in 1996, was interviewed on the show, and shout-outs to the Capri have aired ever since.

Other outdoor theaters were not so lucky to survive the last few decades, and many closed drive-in lots remain undeveloped, grown over with weeds and often cluttered with the remains of theater materials. Ritzenthaler, who grew increasingly interested in drive-in theaters in the mid-'90s after noticing such lots while on road trips, started to photograph the ruins.

"If I see (a drive-in) that I haven't seen before, it's exciting to know that I've seen it," he said. "But it's sad in a way too, because you realize that's a day gone by. The homogenization of our architecture is happening right before our eyes, and everything that is unique and different is leaving.

"Everything looks like it's from the same cookie-cutter plan. In the past you have these art deco things, these old theaters, and at the time they probably looked cheesy - but you look at it another way and say, 'Yeah, it was very cool, very unique,' because there weren't two alike."

One such closed drive-in, the Lakes Drive-in in Lake Linden, was particularly jolting, Ritzenthaler said.

"I took pictures of what was left of it," he said. "The screen was on the ground, the concession stand was all decrepit, there were projection reels everywhere and even a dog that was following me around. It was pretty eerie looking."

Surviving Michigan drive-ins can be found in Carsonville, Flint, Muskegon and Dearborn, among other locations. All seem worth the drive, and Magocs said, people often make day trips out of them.

All in all, there's something magical about a night at the drive-in, Ritzenthaler said.

"The vibe about being outside - it's more of a unique experience," he said. "Half the time at the drive-in I don't even watch the movie, I just talk to my friends. If the movie sucks, you can just rip on it.

"In a drive-in, you're in your car, nobody cares if you talk. You can eat, you can do whatever you want - you have that advantage that people kind of forget about now."

Emily Buckler can be reached at buckler4@msu.edu