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I can’t say I am sorry to hear this. From today’s Boston Herald: Nick Paleologos, executive director of the Massachusetts Film Office, has been told “there’s no position for him” at the Office of Travel and Tourism, where a variety of marketing programs, including film, are slated to be condensed and streamlined. “We think...
I am very happy to announce that The University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Journal of Business and Labor Law (formerly the Journal of Labor and Employment Law) has accepted my recent law review article and will be publishing sometime early summer. The article, “Down the Rabbit Hole: The Madness of State Film Incentives as...
A brand new report authored by Robert Tannenwald, formerly of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and current Senior Fellow at the liberal Washington DC think tank, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, offers yet another unbiased and credible review of incentives. And like other serious studies not produced for film commissions, the report...
A brand new report from the Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency (authored by economist David Zin) offers a sobering and critical assessment regarding the efficacy of the state’s massive film incentives. I just added it to the “Report Library” and you can read it HERE. First, there is no doubt that the Michigan incentives have...
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…...
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. —...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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. ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
I have to give to credit to Michigan for taking swift action in response to the lack of oversight and transparency in their film office, which was not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests from news outlets and other organizations. The bills Michigan is considering would remedy these issues. Recent allegations of shady...
Richard Corliss of Time Magazine wrote an interesting piece on the poor box office performance so far this summer. I don’t often write about such articles, as they are not about runaway production or film incentives specifically. However, the overall economic health of the industry is important to those issues, naturally, and I am...
Variety.com – H'w'd and D.C.