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Whether it’s Cinema 21 in Northwest Portland, Sellwood’s Moreland Theater, or the Bagdad on Southeast Hawthorne, many Portland neighborhoods have at least one independent movie theater that locals love and support. That might have made sense 100 years ago in the boom era of silent film (when all three of those theaters were built), but in 2024? When people can stream thousands of films at home and most of Hollywood’s money is pouring into television miniseries? It’s remarkable.
While many Portlanders have worked to preserve our indie theater community over the past 50 years, one key moment came in 2010.
The Hollywood Theatre opened in 1926 on Northeast Sandy Boulevard, a 1,500-seat silent movie palace and vaudeville house with an ornate Spanish Baroque façade. It had huge ups and downs in the intervening century, including falling into disrepair and going nonprofit, before being brought back from the dead in 2010 when Doug Whyte came from the public radio world in St. Louis to take over as executive director and overhaul the theater’s programming and its building. Today, the Hollywood hosts first-run movies, 70 mm screenings, and unique events such as live film scoring with the theater’s still-functioning Wurlitzer pipe organ.
“Portland almost lost the Hollywood,” says Dan Halsted, the theater’s head film programmer. “But people wanted the movie palace back. All of this happened because of the community’s response.”
The Hollywood stepped up again in 2017 when a beloved video rental store on Southeast Belmont Street cried out for help. Home to more than 90,000 titles in a variety of formats, Movie Madness boasts one of the largest and most in-depth physical media collections in the world, not to mention display cases of film costumes and props, such as the knife from Psycho. When owner Mike Clark was ready to retire, he and Halsted cooked up the idea to bring Movie Madness under the Hollywood’s nonprofit umbrella. They launched a Kickstarter campaign in the fall, raising north of $300,000.
“I saw multiple people cry thinking Movie Madness could go away,” Halsted says. “It was cool to see how passionate people are.”
Today, both institutions have auxiliary screening rooms: Movie Madness’ on-premises miniplex and the Hollywood’s microcinema at Portland International Airport. Distributors and studios often ask Halsted what the secret is to the Hollywood’s success. He cites the city’s independent, artistic spirit, yes, but also something more logical: “Portland is a big movie-watching city because it rains all the time.”
Keep our movie scene strong: Make a locally owned screen your first choice for moviegoing. The tap list is probably better too.
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