They are just trying to help make sure that those businesses are still there when all this is over.” Tillotson says they sell between 250 and 400 buckets a night. We’ve figured out how to keep everybody safe.” “We don't touch their money, they put it in a bowl. “We wear a mask and gloves,” Leah Tillotson says. Hood Theatre in Gresham, where they sell their popcorn on Saturday nights. In the first weeks of the sale, cars sometimes waited up to an hour to pay their $5.

On Friday nights they sell buckets of popcorn to customers who line up in cars. Owners Leah and Lance Tillotson have figured out another way to generate income while their theaters sit empty. Helens, Oregon, a long line of cars snaked down the main drag, headed for the Columbia Theatre. These virtual screenings don’t bring in much money – nothing like filling theatres with a paying audience. “So it's a little bit of revenue for us,” Whyte says, and “it's good for the distributors because we're shooting out their movies to our audience who are the people who are wanting to see it anyway.” Many other theaters have also embraced the virtual screening model. Customers rent the film from the Hollywood website, then screen at home.

To generate income during this down time the Hollywood has begun hosting virtual screenings like the recent Ashland-produced film, Phoenix, Oregon. Even so, they still have monthly bills to tackle. They’re a nonprofit with over 4,000 paying members, and they own their building. In many ways the Hollywood Theatre is an exception. Even before the pandemic many were barely getting by, so shutting down for months is a big blow. Movie theaters operate on razor thin margins. But since mid-March all indoor cinemas have been shut down, putting their futures in jeopardy. Portland has more independent movie theaters than any city in the country, and historic movie houses are dotted across the state.

“We need to keep an eye on this 1926 historic movie palace,” he said, to make sure “the building has not been tagged or vandalized, that there are no leaks or plumbing issues.”

Whyte, executive director at the Hollywood, was there to make his daily rounds. On a recent Wednesday morning Doug Whyte unlocked the heavy wooden doors to the now empty Hollywood Theatre.

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