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Overview:
“She’s like Eleanor Roosevelt,” said one Eugene resident who went to see the documentary about first lady Melania Trump on its opening day.
As protesters gathered Friday, Jan. 30 in Eugene and Springfield with signs and speakers and local businesses shut their doors for the day, another group gathered elsewhere, driven by their belief in what America should look like.
At Cinemark Eugene-Springfield 17, the opening day of “Melania” — the new documentary about the first lady of the United States in the lead-up to her husband Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration — brought in Trump supporters looking for a way to support the couple all the way from Oregon.
“Melania” as a film does not offer much psychological insight into what it takes to be first lady, or into what Melania Trump thinks about her husband’s politics; it is largely focused on her aesthetic decision-making, including gowns, coats and interior decoration, before Donald Trump reentered the White House in 2025.
But, revealing portrait or not, fans of the Trumps in Eugene and Springfield flocked to buy tickets to the documentary’s opening day.
“I think it’s very sad that Eugene is not really a Republican stronghold, and so I’m proud to stand up for what I believe is right,” said Jan LeBleu, a 70-year-old resident of Eugene.
At Cinemark, 168 tickets across seven screenings were sold ahead of the documentary’s first showing at the theater. That includes two screenings with at least 40 tickets in a 68-seat theater, strong turnouts for a documentary on a Friday afternoon. (Sales at the other theater in town screening “Melania,” the Regal Valley River Center, were thin in comparison. By the same time, only 10 tickets across four screenings were sold for the opening day.)
“Melania” is expected to collect about $8.1 million at the box office over the weekend, according to The New York Times, which would be the best start for a documentary (excepting concert films) in 14 years. Still, Amazon MGM Studios paid $40 million for the rights to the movie, and an additional reported $35 million on marketing expenses.
Timing is also a factor weighing into that box office math. The documentary opened during a moment of wide political unrest as anti-ICE protests continued in Eugene and nationwide, as opposition to the Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement intensified after the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
But protests in both Eugene and Springfield didn’t deter moviegoers from trekking to the Cinemark in Springfield’s The Shoppes at Gateway on opening day.
A midday showing of ‘Melania’
The noon screening of “Melania” at Cinemark was well-attended for a 68-seat theater, with 41 tickets sold ahead of the screening and even more picked up at the box office right before the show.
“We got the last two seats together in this theater when we booked yesterday,” said Rose Ann Coe of Springfield.
Coe, 68, and her husband, Bob, said they wanted to come see the movie on opening day to support both Melania and Donald Trump.
“America is split, and there’s going to be people that wouldn’t give it the time of day,” said Bob Coe, 72, of Springfield. “There’s other people that would go to it just to support her, just to support Trump. That’s really why I wanted to see it.”
Shari McDonald, a 72-year-old resident of Scottsburg who watches a movie in theaters about once a month, said she saw evidence of that split as she was preparing to watch “Melania.”
“When we were in line at the ticket stand, we said what movie we wanted, and two ladies behind us made a very snide remark,” she said. “I thought, ‘This is the first time we’ve ever come to a movie here that there’s more than 20 people, and that place was filled.’”
Lynn Taylor, an 82-year-old resident of Falcon Wood Village, came to see the documentary with LeBleu as well as neighbors and friends from the Eugene retirement mobile home community. She said Melania Trump was an impressive person, and is a fan of her work as first lady.
“She’s like Eleanor Roosevelt,” she said.