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The Lake Theater and Cafe, the elegant pub and movie theater located in Lake Oswego, is known for making mischief with its marquee.
It all started during the pandemic, when the theater’s general manager, Jordan Perry, indulged in a bit of dark comedy: putting “Portrait of a Lady on Fire Was Really Good (It’s on Hulu)” on the marquee, which caught the attention of The New York Times.
The theater’s latest bit of marquee mischief concocted by the theater’s bar manager, David Thompson? Billing Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon as a film “Starring Lily Gladstone (And Some Other Guys).”
While the movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro as a pair of real-life 1920s Oklahomans conspiring to commit genocide against the people of the Osage Nation, Gladstone (Siksikaitsitapii/Nimíipuu), who plays Mollie Burkhart, is widely credited with delivering the finest acting in the film.
“She’s being praised for her performance,” Perry tells WW. “[The marquee] is a little humorous thing to give her the credit she deserves.”
The marquee message is also a savvy way of acknowledging the discourse surrounding how the film handles Gladstone’s character (in his review, WW’s Chance Solem-Pfeifer wrote, “In the film’s only glaring flaw, Eric Roth and Scorsese’s script leaves Mollie, its most important Osage character, wanting for moments of dynamism amid her suffering”).
The theater’s tribute to Gladstone has been well received, but Perry has learned the hard way that his marquee has the power to elicit wrath from patrons. He was recently besieged with angry responses when the marquee read “We’re Not Getting the Taylor Swift Movie Because Her Music’s Not Even Good.”