Author Archive

One of the more interesting subplots in the world of state film incentives has been the issue of state censorship or the prospect of film commissions being in the unenviable position of acting as morality police.  Censorship may not be the best word, however, because there is no threat of any state or jurisdiction...
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Thanks to politically active Santa Barbara doctoral student Lauren Copeland for sending the following story about the “California Cows” commercial controversy, which I covered HERE and HERE.  In what should have been a “no-duh”, California is about to pass a bill that requires state tourism and agriculture commercials to shoot in California.  Why is...
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I just added Stephen Friday’s wonderful and extensive case study about the film industry and incentive programs in Shreveport, Louisiana (and Louisiana in general) to the Report Library.  Stephen is a masters student at the University of Amsterdam and was kind enough to cite my recent working paper on runaway production and utilize some...
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I had the privilege to speak yesterday with TheWrap’s Brent Lang, who just posted an excellent article on state film incentives HERE.  Brent was kind enough to plug this site and although he got the site address wrong (it’s stop-runaway-production.com with the dashes, not stoprunawayproduction.com), it was still very much appreciated. I told Brent...
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Looks like there is some good news for Iowa, whose “two for one” 50% production incentive was, briefly, the most generous incentive in the US.  Sadly, the gravy train was short lived because the people in charge of running the Iowa film office had no idea what they were doing (and that’s being kind…...
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So it turns out Michael Moore is putting the “corporate welfare” money he received from the Michigan film incentive program to good use.  I posted about this story some time ago HERE, where Moore’s stance on the credits is discussed.  According to an AP article, Moore is doing the following: TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. —...
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I’ve never had much respect for USA Today, but their August 2 article about the film industry in Louisiana made me cringe.  It’s rife with problems…. Let’s start with the article’s second & third sentences: In the 1990s, filmmakers often traveled to Canada.  But that eventually became less fashionable, and these days the industry...
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I’ve been posting quite a bit about California lately and new numbers coming out about the effectiveness of the states one-year-old film incentive, which is rather modest.  And certainly, while I have called the modesty of the California film incentive a pretty smart move, I have also written about tweaks to the program that...
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On July 27, Kathy Bergen of the the Chicago Tribune wrote an excellent article about the Illinois film incentive and the efficacy of film incentives generally.   Bergen spent time talking to academics (including Susan Christopherson, who is a friend of this site) and other experts who have been critical of film incentives generally: One...
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The Santa Monica-based Milken Institute, an “independent economic think tank”, released an excellent “must read” report on how runaway production is impacting California called “Film Flight: Lost Production and its Economic Impact on California”.  The 46-page report has been added to the Report Library HERE.  I thought the report was excellent and well worth...
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Over the weekend, Joe Sutton’s radio show in Los Angeles, “The Heart of Hollywood” (on AM 1260 KGIL), featured a can’t miss hour-long discussion about runaway production, the importance of Hollywood to California and L.A., and efforts to keep the industry from leaving California.  It’s a wonderful exchange loaded with very thoughtful discussion from...
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There was a significant report released last week by FilmL.A.  First, I want to say a few things about FilmL.A.  As far as I am concerned, they are the gold standard for how industry-community relations should be handled.  The film production reports produced by FilmL.A. are an exquisite source of information, the accuracy of...
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 Bob Poole’s June 29 article in the Los Angeles Times caught my attention.  Framed as an nostalgic issue of the Hollywood “landmark” being demolished in favor of development company behind movie studios in New Mexico and elswhere and, therefore, partly responsible for runaway production, the owners of the stand seem to have an emotionallly...
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Below is an excellent video from Wisconsin about the debate concerning that state’s film incentive program, which was cancellled some time ago.  While the video is not new, the debate offered is basicly the same one taking place in many states around the nation.  On balance, I think each side makes some excellent points. ...
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Almost a month ago I made a post about the MPAA’s “State by State Statistics”, which is available on their site HERE.  I raised some accuracy concerns and had some questions about the source(s) of their data.  During a conference call today, those concerns were fully addressed and the MPAA went out of their...
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Rather than making the previous entry on this issue even longer, I elected to put my most recent exchange with Mr. Hiltzik in a shorter post.  If you have not read the earlier post and exchange, please do so as this is a continuation thereof.   This has proven to be a wonderful exchange and...
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UPDATE: Micheal Hiltzik sent me an email this morning in response to my post below.  His email and my response are at the end of this post. Ed Gutentag’s “Shoot Movies in California Blog” had an interesting post about a recent column in the June 16th edition of the Los Angeles Times by Michael...
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Below is an excellent commercial produced by Brian Bedell for the Shoot Movies in California organization.  In addition to being very funny (especially the last sip of coffee), I think this commercial is brilliant for recognizing the ignorance or apathy of many Americans not working in the entertainment industry.  It’s not that these people...
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Below is the promotional video produced by the Illinois Film Office.  Several states have done these now and I have yet to see a bad one.  The short made by the California Film Commission about the devastating impacts of runaway production on the state is sobering and heartfelt, not to mention its also somewhat...
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This will be the last Michigan post today, I promise.  But these two stories were too entertaining to pass up.  While I just lauded Michigan for taking quick action to increase transparency and accountability in the state’s film office, which is great, the film office itself has made a few fumbles of late. On...
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