When James Bond and Ernie Cureo are being chased by the hoods in the old model Jag in Diamonds Are Forever, they take a detour in hopes of finding a place to hide from their pursuers.
“Keep goin’,” muttered Ernie Cureo. “This’ll get you near the Boulder Dam road. See anything in the mirror?” “There’s a low-slung car with a spotlight coming after us fast,” said Bond. “Could be the Jag. About two blocks away now.” He stamped on the accelerator and the cab hissed through the deserted side street. “Keep goin’,” said Ernie Cureo. “We gotta hide up some place and let them lose us. Tell ya what. There’s a ‘Passion Pit” just where this comes out on 95. Drive-in movie. Here we come. Slow. Sharp right. See those lights. Get in there quick. Right. Straight over the sand and between those cars. Off lights. Easy. Stop.”
The cab came to rest in the back row of half a dozen ranks of cars lined up to face the concrete screen that soared up into the sky and on which a huge man was just saying something to a huge girl.
“Passion Pit” was 1950’s slang for a drive-in movie theatre. Couples could go in the privacy of their own cars, and (pretty much) do as they liked.
Based on the slim descriptions Fleming gives – near Boulder Dam road, near 95, it would seem that he was referencing the Skyway Drive-in Theatre, a facility that was located off the Boulder highway and close to 95. It was closed sometime in the early 1980’s and is now the location of the Boulder Station and Casino.
While the Drive-in is long gone, the original neon sign sits decaying in a “neon graveyard.”
