Tanner Hale works the box office at Madras Cinema 5. Once the thater is full on active orders of the Mystery Movie Combos he helps fill orders and cleans the cart between customers.

This time last year, Godzilla was rampaging. Elton John was singing. John Wick was shooting. Aladdin was dancing, and audiences were still reeling over “Avengers: Endgame.” It all seems like distant memory now after concerns over the spread of COVID-19 closed all movie theaters for months. The film industry was shut down, halting film and television productions across the board and delaying releases.

An industrywide task force was recently created to determine how productions can resume, submitting their suggestions Monday to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, along with other governments across the country, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

These suggestions include but are not limited to minimizing crowd scenes and discouraging live audiences, virtual writers rooms for the time being, testing upon employment and regular testing thereafter, the introduction of an autonomous COVID-19 compliance officer to oversee testing, limiting scenes when actors are in close proximity and using digital effects or revising scripts.

While the effects of those decisions won’t be known until a much later date, the more immediate effects can be seen right here in Central Oregon.

Gov. Kate Brown ordered all nonessential businesses to close their doors to the public in mid-March. Theaters, not surprisingly, were a part of that group.

But it wasn’t completely silent in the lobbies and offices that run these movie houses. Some took the shutdown as a time to implement new projects or find new avenues of keeping connected to their patrons.

Carrying on

BendFilm executive director Todd Looby explained that the organization sprang into action on ideas that were already in the works.

“Really quickly after we closed the doors (to Tin Pan Theater), we started thinking about things we had been talking about … for the last two years and how this was the right moment to really shift our focus from our regular in-person theatrical experience,” he said, indicating the need to meet the “growing audience and future audience that will be experiencing more things online.”

Forced by COVID-19 BendFilm’s ticketing platform Eventive adapted their system and offered the chance to make previous festival films available online for rent.

Coupled with that, a few independent film distributors also made their films available for Tin Pan fans online.

“They set up virtual Tin Pan theaters, and we set up our own, so we’re able to host really great, cutting edge independent and foreign films,” Looby explained, adding, “we’re opening these things on the same day that they’re opening in New York and LA, the bigger markets, and we couldn’t have done that before at the Tin Pan.”

At the Madras Cinema 5, manager Nate Wescott and his staff were able to provide a more analog version of what Tin Pan and BendFilm were offering: Mystery Movie Combos.

Wescott explained in an email the combos are “Basically popcorn, drinks, candy and a mystery DVD movie that customers can narrow down with either genre and/or rating preferences.”

Business for the theater had slowed down dramatically after the first week, so they limited their hours to Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, which allows a couple of employees to still get a few hours work in.

The DVDs are the customer’s to keep, and can range from a newer release to a classic film.

Customers can order the combos over Facebook messenger, over the phone or by walking up to the box office. More information on what goes in these packs can be found on the theater’s Facebook page: bit.ly/MadrasCinema5

In Redmond, Odem Theater Pub owner Ted Eady may not have had his doors open for customers, but they were on his mind throughout. The theater regularly has a full bar and pub menu available during screenings.

“We were going to do takeout that first week everything was closed down,” he said en route to the motel in Gold Beach he plans to open soon, “but at that point, my knowledge on the coronavirus wasn’t as high as it is now, and I thought it was important to try and contain stuff as much as possible … so we just shut down after one day of takeout.”

Eady says in hindsight he thinks closing after a week was a mistake, saying, “You know those are the kind of things you do when you’re trying to mitigate risk.”

Instead of serving up the Odem’s own Royal with Cheese, Eady was busy making sure the beef for it was well raised. Just before the shutdown, the Odem introduced grass-fed beef to the menu that comes from Eady’s ranch.

“I had some fences built for the cattle we brought in this year for the program,” he said, adding, “ (I) worked up a field and planted 25 acres of oats and grass for finishing some of the winter cattle.”

What’s next

When the tri-counties entered Phase I of reopening as outlined by the governor’s office, both Prineville’s Pine Theater and the Odem Theater Pub reopened on a limited basis.

The Pine Theater screened classic films, franchise favorites from the past decade or recent releases before the shutdown. The Odem has mainly shown a mix of those older films as well as newer releases.

It’s not quite business as usual, though.

A week after reopening, Eady was contacted by OSHA and told that he was “the number one COVID resister in the state,” he said. But he remained open, sighting that his theater pub was no different than the Hideaway Tavern, which features big-screen TVs in separate rooms with a full-service menu available.

“And I told him we were doing the social distancing thing,” Eady said, “And we implemented a new policy of bringing the food in on trays so that we know for sure that they’re sanitized and it’s one of the things that we’re going to try to do.”

Eady went on to send an open letter to several members of the governor’s office explaining his situation, highlighting that by limiting the number of patrons, he exceeds the 6-foot guideline in regards to social distancing as well as the sanitization efforts the staff is implementing.

Eady, his son Evan and their cook are the employees currently working, and they have limited their open days to Wednesday through Sunday.

While Madras Cinema 5 has continued to be open in a sense, as of Tuesday afternoon, Nate Wescott was busy preparing for a possible reopening this weekend.

“Our precautions are keeping auditoriums at less than 1/4 capacity,” he said. “Putting down tape to mark safe distancing in the lobby and in auditoriums, having sanitizer stations in as many places as possible and, of course, keeping everything clean to the extreme.”

He added that after a recent uptick Jefferson County cases, he wondered if they would be able to enter into Phase 2, “But in the meantime, I’ll just keep prepping for re-open.”

He also noted that none of the business that has been happening since the shutdown would have been possible without his staff.

“Without them none of this would work. I’m in more of a support role at the moment trying to make sure nothing slips through the cracks.”

While Todd Looby said there are no plans to reopen Tin Pan theater soon, he did offer insight into this year’s BendFilm Festival, which is still scheduled to happen Oct. 8-11.

“This is something we were planning to do anyway,” he said, “We’ll do as many in-person events as we can … but we will also absolutely have a virtual component.”

Looby acknowledged that some festival-goers may not feel safe by October to sit in a theater with that many people and that the virtual experience would work well for them. But the addition of virtual programming was also a way to “Reach sort of an underserved population or those who were remote, (or) somewhere else in the country and, you know, having them participate in our festival.”

If Phase 2 is approved more theaters may edge toward reopening like the Odem and the Pine Theater have done, with limited crowds and limited hours. As of this writing, Redmond Cinemas and Regal Cinemas Old Mill 16 & IMAX have not indicated when they may reopen.

Sisters Movie House, however, plans to reopen in July, opting to wait until new movies are released again, {span}according to their website{/span}.

But it remains to be seen what our movies going forward will look like.

“We’re doing the very best we can to continue using our form of films to bring people together,” Looby said, “To create conversations, to create understanding and you know we still want to do that. And I think it’s even more important during these extraordinarily difficult times. … You know that when the times are tough we want to bring people together to have conversations and we’re hoping to continue that and … create an atmosphere where people feel safe … to express their opinions and ideas.”