Whenever I drive through downtown Lake Oswego—a suburb of Portland, Oregon that has more of a Stepford Wives vibe than a Portlandia one—I make a point to read the theater marquee at Lake Theater and Cafe. The sardonic, timely, or punny ways the moviehouse advertises its films first went viral during the COVID shutdown in 2020, even making The New York Times.
Now, the marquee is back in the news thanks to Melania Trump.
The theater first advertised its upcoming showings of the Melania documentary (directed by the Epstein files’ Brett Ratner) by quoting Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: “To defeat your enemy, you must know them. Melania starts Friday.” They followed that up with: “Does Melania wear Prada? Find out Friday.”
Turns out Amazon has eyes everywhere, because now the marquee reads, “Amazon called. Our marquee made them mad. All Melania showings cancelled. Show your support at Whole Foods instead.”
The theater’s Instagram post offered more info about the sudden change. A photo of the marquee from Monday is accompanied by the caption, “Got a call that the higher ups (i.e., at Amazon) were upset with how our marquee marketed their movie (i.e., Melania), that, per them, Sunday would be its last day here.”
As first reported by The Oregonian, someone from Amazon/MGM called the booker who works with Lake Theater and Cafe and asked them to pass the message to the theater that the studio didn’t approve of the theater’s marketing.
The Daily Beast has reached out to executives at Amazon Studios for comment.
Amazon wasn’t the only entity displeased. The locals, according to the Instagram post, flooded the theatre with “countless emails and voicemails” wondering “why the hell we had Melania here, or disdaining our disparaging of her.”
Like most of western Oregon, the region is largely liberal. Of the suburbs, Lake Oswego skews wealthy, and with wealth comes conservatism, so it makes sense that there would be a backlash from the mostly Democratic population, as well as the few members of MAGA nation sprinkled throughout the area.
In a separate blog post, the Lark’s general manager, Jordan Perry. explained why he chose to show Melania in the first place and why it is now gone.
For the most part, Perry picked the documentary so that he could make jokes on the marquee. “I thought doing so would be funny,” he wrote. But he did also concede that there were people in the community who might be supporting the film non-ironically. “I try to choose films for the community that they want to see,” he said in the post.
Perry went on to explain, “I imagine more of our patrons lean left, and this affects our programming, and also probably what I feel comfortable putting on the marquee. Despite outward appearances, Lake Theater & Cafe is into being inclusive, kinda/sorta as long as you are too.”
So while Perry thought he was preaching to the choir with his Melania jokes, it turns out there were people on both sides of the aisle who don’t feel like laughing.
We don’t know who snitched on the local indie theatre, but we are Seattle adjacent, so Amazon employees are among us, as are the Republicans that hide behind an evergreen fence of wealth. The Amazon-owned Whole Foods is directly across the street from the theater, and moviegoers are warned not to park in that lot.
The jokes written on the original Melania marquee reached a small, local audience. But the reverberations of the backlash ripple out and point to some larger conflicts.
The blog post says the theater contributed a measly $196 toward Amazon MGM’s reported $7 million gross during its one weekend showing Melania. Even if it had been the full run, the financial gain for Amazon would have been negligible, so why put their foot down about advertising? The company seems intent on squashing any dissent, even if it isn’t causing any quantifiable harm.
The Portland area is extremely on edge at the moment, with federal agents tear-gassing peaceful protesters (including children) just this past weekend.
If anything, Portland has succeeded during the latest rounds of unrest by maintaining its sense of humor through the horror. But no one seems to be in much of a joking mood about Melania—especially not Amazon.
