Tag Archives: film incentives

Bailout or Bust – Film Incentives under threat

There’s an interesting article on the new pressure on Film Incentives (or “Bail-outs for Hollywood,” if you’re on the other side of the aisle) in todays International Herald Tribune.

Tax credits for Hollywood were recently expanded in Florida and North Carolina but are under fresh scrutiny in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Mexico, all of which have new Republican governors reviewing film subsidy programs that were begun under Democratic predecessors.

No big spender has yet pulled out of the subsidy business, though Arizona, Iowa and Kansas have suspended or dropped their relatively small programs. In Missouri, meanwhile, a bipartisan review of all the state’s tax credits recommended that a film incentive be dropped…

Even New Mexico – which has arguably scored just about as big as anyone from their aggressive offering (really, does anyone actually think it’d have become so meteorically successful otherwise?) – is talking seriously about ditching their program.

Now, I’m no great fan of incentives which I think catapult participating territories into a bidding game that will only end when we’re agreeing to pay in full for movies that shoot in our homelands. But incentives have shown, time and time again, that they do actually work, stimulating jobs and direct local spend – at least in the short term. But in the current economic climate there’s really a horrid sense of inevitability to this discussion that doesn’t bode well for Hollywood.

Nearly Nailed by Political Interference

In the greater scheme of things, how an interfering official in the State of South Carolina dealt with the filming of the new Jessica Biel, James Marsden, Jake Gyllenhaal movie Nailed is a lesson on how not to engage with the film industry.

In Nailed, Biel’s character Alice is a sweet, small-town waitress who gets a nail lodged in her head in an accident, and begins acting in an erratic and outrageous (read sexual) manner as a result. Uninsured, she heads to Washington to fight for better health care and ends up falling for a clueless new congressman (Gyllenhaal) who must summon the political courage to save her.

 

South Carolina was selected as the location for filming largely due to a competitive incentive programme driven by the South Carolina Film Commission. (The incentives are in the form of a cash rebate, paid to the production company within 30 days of final audit. How it differs from tax credit-based incentives is clarified here.) But according to Mattheus Mei at the Leonardo’s Notebook blog, the State’s unpopular Commerce Secretary, Joe Taylor, actually tried to block filming in the State, because he didn’t like the sexual content of the script. 

‘It actually took maneuvering around the Secretary and confronting the legislature directly that was crucial in landing the film in Columbia. It was so bad that last week the Senate apparently had to have a committee meeting calling members of the Film Commission, the Commerce Department and the film itself to count before it to discuss the film – including the Film’s Director.’

Now anyone who has worked at the intersection between government and film knows that there are a whole heap of objections (some valid, some entirely spurious) to the efficacy and applicability of incentives. And it really depends on the creativity of the sitting politicians to grasp – and manage appropriately – the economic potential thrown up by the film sector.

But as I discussed at the last AFCI Cineposium in New Mexico, there’s a little thing known as the Law of Unintented Consequences that always comes back to bite you: in this case, the self-important opinions of an (elected?) official.

Sadly, it looks like it’s adding up to a fairly lousy experience for the producers. Inspite of a production that involves at least two of the most beautiful people in film - AND features the luminescent Catherine Keener to boot – this hasn’t been an easy shoot.  Veteran actor James Caan apparently left the film set three weeks ago in a dispute with the director over the way his character should choke on a cookie (I kid you not) And then on Friday, the South Carolina State newspaper reported that The Screen Actors Guild had called all its members, including Gyllenhaal and Biel, on strike, after film producers did not keep enough money in accounts to pay actors. They’re back at work now, apparently, but my, I’m sure the producers will all have really fond memories of Columbia, SC……..

Friday Night Lights

OK, so it’s been hectic and there’s not been a lot of time for movie watching. Instead, I did see the first couple of episodes of Holly Hunter’s first foray into TV, the oddly bi-polar Saving Grace. It’s part Walker, Texas Ranger, part Touched by an Angel. Though the drunk and wayward cop thing has been done to death elsewhere, it’s entertaining enough. The religious stuff, by contrast, is horrible, horrible, horrible. Fortunately I’d tivo-ed it, so I could fast forward through the crap bits – which is basically whenever the guy with wings appears. It’s set in Texas, though – which is really the reason for this post.

I came across this fantastic review by Sara Mosle on Slate.com, of the high school football drama, Friday Night Lights. It’s set in the fictional West Texas town of Dillon, and based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger’s book about small-town Texas life.  Now, FNL is a show I haven’t ever seen, haven’t ever wanted to see, mainly because, American Football is not really big news anywhere other than, say, America, and too much “U-S-A, U-S-A” sporting testosterone makes me nauseous. But it would seem as if I’ve misjudged FNL…..  Says Mosle:

Friday Night Lights is….Texas as it’s seldom been seen—which is to say, as it really is. Virtually no one in Dillon wears a cowboy hat, and certainly no one under 30 does. The show has yet to show a single character on a horse. The only person depicted as remotely connected to an oil well is a businessman from Los Angeles, briefly passing through, representing faraway interests…..

….Hand-held cameras follow actors around on location, as they go about what appears to be their actual lives—to the gas station, to the grocery store, to the local diner, into one another’s homes. The cameras even ride in the car, like passengers, staring out at the passing scenery.

The show shoots in and around Austin, using city locations rather than sets, in order to build authenticity. (though this was a close call; filming nearly moved to New Mexico when much-hoped-for Texas film incentives were initially not forthcoming.)

If only for the realistic portrayal of modern America, I really think I must check this series out…..

(If) Only in America

In an article entitled: Bush challenges America to produce the perfect Romantic Comedy, cutting-edge newshounds at The Onion report a remarkable US federal incentive proposed for the movie industry:

Dubbing his romantic-comedy initiative “Operation Meet-Cute,” Bush proposed that Congress earmark $20 billion to aid Hollywood in creating the film. He called on studio heads to “put aside differences and pull together for the common goal,” urging executives to “take the long view, and think of the sequel.”

Bush proposed adding a special “romcom tax” to all movie tickets, in order to allow all Americans to “do their part for Hollywood and for their country.”

Rom Com

The president also urged all able-minded citizens to “join the fight” by pitching ideas for humorous and touching scenarios.

If only in America…….