Friday, May 28, 2004 11:26 AM CDT
Engaging film: Drive-in proposal gets good ratings
By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer
About a week after they started dating in February 2003, Joshua Wilkes and Kara Hilligoss discovered they both love the "Rocky" films.
This revelation inspired Wilkes to ask Hilligoss -- in jest -- to marry him.
So when the screen at the drive-in movie theater Wednesday night changed from the New Year's Eve scene in "When Harry Met Sally" to the end of the first "Rocky," Hilligoss knew something was up.
Following a half-hour of romantic movie clips and pictures, the next-to-last-frame lingered for several minutes, displaying roses and the phrase, "I have something to ask you ..."
And then she said yes.
"It was perfect," Hilligoss commented later.
For the last month and a half, Eastern Illinois University alumni Wilkes and his roommate, J.P. Swigart, worked feverishly on the movie collage. Charleston resident Wilkes, a film buff, selected the clips, while Leroy resident Swigart, a multi-media buff, edited them on a computer and burned them to a DVD.
"I did all the grunt work," joked Swigart, who just graduated from EIU.
Wilkes had little difficulty talking the owners of the Fairview Drive-in in Newton into playing his video on the big screen.
"I think it's so cute," said Melody McGrath, who owns the theater with her husband, Larry. "It's so unique."
Hilligoss, 21, will finish her student teaching for her EIU secondary education degree next fall. Wilkes, 26, now works in Effingham.
Many of the couple's friends from EIU, along with Hilligoss' family, hid in the projection booth and concession stand of the drive-in.
They said Wilkes paid close attention to detail while duping Hilligoss into thinking they were just going to a normal movie. He even arranged to pay for admission at the gate.
"He's obsessed with films, and that's cute because that's their thing," said Stefanie Peachey, a senior at EIU.
She herself got engaged to another friend of Wilkes and Hilligoss, Sean Moulton. An EIU graduate, he now lives in Greenup and helps pastor a church in Toledo.
In April, Moulton sent Peachey on a scavenger hunt at Fox Ridge State Park, the end of which included a song he wrote, along with a ring.
And Peachey, now no stranger to betrothels, was confident Hilligoss would agree to Wilkes' proposal.
So was Hilligoss' mother, Rhonda.
"He put a lot of thought into it," she said of her future son-in-law.
That careful planning included not one, but two scenes from "Rocky" movies: Silvester Stallone drawling "Adriennnne!" in the first film, followed by his awkward offer of marriage in the second.
But the final image in Wilkes' piecemeal movie simply bore two words:
"Joshua and Kara."
Contact Nathaniel West at nwest@jg-tc.com or 238-6860.
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