March 15, 2010--Snowbirding: Andy Griffith Comes to Florida
One of the good things about wintering in South Florida is that we get to see a lot of movies. Virtually all those that eventually are nominated for best-picture because they tend to get screened late in the year so they will linger on the minds of critics and Academy members when it comes time to do the voting. This turns out to be perfect timing for us.
And so we saw A Serious Man (my favorite), Up In the Air (my second choice), Hurt Locker (third on my best list), Precious, Blind Side, A Single Man, Inglorious Bastards, District 9, An Education, of course Avatar (at the local IMAX), and even Up. This one we watched on DVD. I couldn't handle the possibility of being spotted by any New York City friends going to see a movie made for five-year-olds!
Uncrowded theaters is another plus. That is unless one of the retirement community buses shows up and disgorges 35 hard-of-hearing seniors who invariably wind up watching our film, sit right behind us, and spend the entire movie asking, sotto voce, "What? What did he say?"
With 18 screens at the Delray Regal you would think they could have made other plans--Dear John is also playing and they probably would have liked that more than A Single Man or District 9. But oh well, at $5.50 for an early-bird ticket there's not much I feel entitled to complain about.
Except for an article I spotted in the New York Times about the state of Florida Film Commission, or whatever it's called, trying to get the legislature to modify the amount of the tax rebate money Florida gives to production companies who make a feature film in the state. (Linked below.)
Many others are doing this these days--if you make a film in New York City, for example, the state and the city chip in with a 35 percent tax credit to help offset production costs, feeling that by attracting filmmakers they will create good jobs. And jobs are the name of the game these days. Especially in Florida where 1.1 million are officially unemployed and the general economy is in a state of virtual collapse. So I was expecting to see ober-generous tax credit percentages. If Texas offers 17.5 percent and New York 35 percent and Michigan a whopping 42 percent, surely Florida would put a competitive tax offer on the table.
In fact, as one would expect during hard time, the recommendation does call for an increase; but in a very unusual, very Florida way.
The current rate here is 20 percent, modest in comparison to many states, but Florida's Republican leaders, friends of the private sector as one would imagine, want to increase that by an additional 5 percent. But, and this is not an insignificant but, this would be only for "family-friendly" films. As the bill's sponsor, Representative Stephen Precourt put it, by family-friendly he means to encourage "film making akin to The Andy Griffith Show."
As a result, Bait Shop (whatever that is or was) was rejected by the Film Commission for the supplement because too much booze flowed in the script and Confessions of a Shopaholic also was banned because it included too many shoe fights. Truly. I suppose it was deemed to be too fetishistic.
Mind you, in Texas, where they just voted to include anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly in the state's required social studies curriculum and remove any mention of "the separation of church and state," family-unfriendly films such as Robocop and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and its two sequels got the full 17.5 percent.
As a part-time resident in South Florida and one who has become committed to doing whatever I personally can to stimulate the local economy, including going to the movies at least once a week (though I refuse to spend more on popcorn than the cost of a ticket) and having a number of film producers among my friends who have taken advantage of the Texas and New York tax credit programs, while working my way through the 10 best film nominees, I wondered how many of them might have qualified for the Florida family-friendly bonus.
None. As in zero. Let me take you quickly down the list:
My favorite, the Coen brothers' A Serious Man, would obviously not qualify. Not only does the main character's wife dump him unceremoniously for a neighborhood friend, but it is entirely too Jewish for some upstaters to feel comfortable with.
Up In the Air has some of the same problems. Of the three main characters, only Alex, played brilliantly by Vera Farmiga, is married with children; but mainly we see her hopping from bed to bed with someone not her husband. George Clooney. This is very far from anything one would expect to see on The Andy Griffith Show. So, no extra tax credit for Up In the Air.
Hurt Locker is full of violence and, though there is a tender family scene at the end when one of the bomb squad soldiers comes home for a few weeks before being sent back for another year in Iraq, while in Iraq, in addition to defusing bombs or getting blown up (sent to the "hurt locker"), the soldiers spend most of their time cursing and, worse these days, smoking cigarettes. Therefore, no 5 percent for the eventual Academy Award winner.
The characters in Precious represent the very opposite of a "traditional family," and so this would have been an easy one for the Film Commission to turn down. It's all about child abuse and out-of-wedlock pregnancy. I'm sure if Oprah, the producer, still wanted to make the film in Florida she wouldn't have even bothered to fill out a tax credit application.
Blind Side is a closer call, but I suspect the filmmakers would also have been turned down if they had filed for the extra 5 percent. Though it is ultimately a feel-good movie (which may be half the reason Sandra Bullock was so honored this year), the family it portrays--which centers around a white southern woman who adopts a hulk of a football-playing black kid--is not I am sure the kind of family behavior the legislators up in Tallahassee want to encourage.
Avatar never really had a chance of being named best picture. Academy members undoubtedly felt that grossing more than $3.0 billion worldwide was award enough. But still it is a stunning film. Perhaps one of the two or three most remarkable films ever made. Since it cost at least $300 million to produce, one would have thought that with Disneyland in Orlando, the Florida Commission would have been eager to attract at least some of the production action and thus would have showered tons of tax credit dollars on James Cameron. But in the film there is that anti-war, ecology thing to contend with. And of course all those galloping half-naked Na'vis. Does this make you think Andy Griffith? Not exactly. So Florida took a pass and the film was made in Los Angeles and friendlier Wellington, New Zealand. A full one thousand people worked on the film. That's a lot of jobs.
A Single Man and Inglorious Bastards cases can be dismissed in a sentence--the former is about a closeted gay guy and the latter has title problems. No need to say more. The Quentin Tarantino film also has Nazi issues, but the "Bastards" alone would have been enough to get it defunded. I'm half surprised that there wasn't a big outcry about its title being displayed on movie marquees around the state. I would have expected it to run in parts of Florida with an alternative name. Maybe something like Inglorious SOBs would have worked.
District 9 is so full of violence and extraterrestrial cyborgs as to call its family-friendly credentials, and thus its tax status, into question. In addition, it is only a thinly disguised tract about the hateful South African Apartheid regime and it barbarous ways. Films that look at race issues in such a frank manner are not of the sort that Republican members of the Florida legislature would want children to see. It might encourage them to ask questions about things closer to home.
And speaking of children, the last of the ten nominated movies was Up; and, as I confessed, we watched this one on DVD. It is a pixilated film and quite stunning in its effects. On the surface it seems an ideal candidate for all sorts of tax incentives from the Florida Film Commission. In fact, according to the commission's guidelines, the only films eligible for the 5 percent bonus must be "suitable for a five-year-old," with "cross-generational appeal" (whatever that means), and offer "a responsible resolution of issues." Up appears to meet all of these criteria and then some.
But the deeper I got lost in the film, and transported by it I surely was, the more I wondered if the creators came up with their best ideas while high on some sort of mind-altering, non-prescription drug. If Alice In Wonderland is psychedelic, Up is a close second. And so do we really want to encourage our children to see something this perverted?
So what are we left with? In addition to Rebel Without A Cause having been shot in Florida in 1955 and Midnight Cowboy, the first X-rated feature film, in 1969, more recently there was Big Boob Bikini Bash (1993) and in 2003 Blood of the Beast. None, I suspect, received an official sanction much less any tax credits. And thus film making will drift to New Mexico where you can get 25 percent for anything that employs local electricians and grips and drivers and food service folks.
Or you can make your movie in Wisconsin where much of the Johnny Depp film, Public Enemies, was shot. The film crew was there for more than a month. The movie, about the life of John Dillinger, was filmed in Oshkosh, Columbus, and Madison and received $4.6 million in state subsidies, including payments that offset much of the $5,625 paid to Depp's hairstylist, $16,490 for his makeup artist, and $38,771 for his two chauffeurs. All good jobs, but, still, more than $5,000 seems like a lot of taxpayer money to blow dry Johnny's hair.
And so we saw A Serious Man (my favorite), Up In the Air (my second choice), Hurt Locker (third on my best list), Precious, Blind Side, A Single Man, Inglorious Bastards, District 9, An Education, of course Avatar (at the local IMAX), and even Up. This one we watched on DVD. I couldn't handle the possibility of being spotted by any New York City friends going to see a movie made for five-year-olds!
Uncrowded theaters is another plus. That is unless one of the retirement community buses shows up and disgorges 35 hard-of-hearing seniors who invariably wind up watching our film, sit right behind us, and spend the entire movie asking, sotto voce, "What? What did he say?"
With 18 screens at the Delray Regal you would think they could have made other plans--Dear John is also playing and they probably would have liked that more than A Single Man or District 9. But oh well, at $5.50 for an early-bird ticket there's not much I feel entitled to complain about.
Except for an article I spotted in the New York Times about the state of Florida Film Commission, or whatever it's called, trying to get the legislature to modify the amount of the tax rebate money Florida gives to production companies who make a feature film in the state. (Linked below.)
Many others are doing this these days--if you make a film in New York City, for example, the state and the city chip in with a 35 percent tax credit to help offset production costs, feeling that by attracting filmmakers they will create good jobs. And jobs are the name of the game these days. Especially in Florida where 1.1 million are officially unemployed and the general economy is in a state of virtual collapse. So I was expecting to see ober-generous tax credit percentages. If Texas offers 17.5 percent and New York 35 percent and Michigan a whopping 42 percent, surely Florida would put a competitive tax offer on the table.
In fact, as one would expect during hard time, the recommendation does call for an increase; but in a very unusual, very Florida way.
The current rate here is 20 percent, modest in comparison to many states, but Florida's Republican leaders, friends of the private sector as one would imagine, want to increase that by an additional 5 percent. But, and this is not an insignificant but, this would be only for "family-friendly" films. As the bill's sponsor, Representative Stephen Precourt put it, by family-friendly he means to encourage "film making akin to The Andy Griffith Show."
As a result, Bait Shop (whatever that is or was) was rejected by the Film Commission for the supplement because too much booze flowed in the script and Confessions of a Shopaholic also was banned because it included too many shoe fights. Truly. I suppose it was deemed to be too fetishistic.
Mind you, in Texas, where they just voted to include anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly in the state's required social studies curriculum and remove any mention of "the separation of church and state," family-unfriendly films such as Robocop and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and its two sequels got the full 17.5 percent.
As a part-time resident in South Florida and one who has become committed to doing whatever I personally can to stimulate the local economy, including going to the movies at least once a week (though I refuse to spend more on popcorn than the cost of a ticket) and having a number of film producers among my friends who have taken advantage of the Texas and New York tax credit programs, while working my way through the 10 best film nominees, I wondered how many of them might have qualified for the Florida family-friendly bonus.
None. As in zero. Let me take you quickly down the list:
My favorite, the Coen brothers' A Serious Man, would obviously not qualify. Not only does the main character's wife dump him unceremoniously for a neighborhood friend, but it is entirely too Jewish for some upstaters to feel comfortable with.
Up In the Air has some of the same problems. Of the three main characters, only Alex, played brilliantly by Vera Farmiga, is married with children; but mainly we see her hopping from bed to bed with someone not her husband. George Clooney. This is very far from anything one would expect to see on The Andy Griffith Show. So, no extra tax credit for Up In the Air.
Hurt Locker is full of violence and, though there is a tender family scene at the end when one of the bomb squad soldiers comes home for a few weeks before being sent back for another year in Iraq, while in Iraq, in addition to defusing bombs or getting blown up (sent to the "hurt locker"), the soldiers spend most of their time cursing and, worse these days, smoking cigarettes. Therefore, no 5 percent for the eventual Academy Award winner.
The characters in Precious represent the very opposite of a "traditional family," and so this would have been an easy one for the Film Commission to turn down. It's all about child abuse and out-of-wedlock pregnancy. I'm sure if Oprah, the producer, still wanted to make the film in Florida she wouldn't have even bothered to fill out a tax credit application.
Blind Side is a closer call, but I suspect the filmmakers would also have been turned down if they had filed for the extra 5 percent. Though it is ultimately a feel-good movie (which may be half the reason Sandra Bullock was so honored this year), the family it portrays--which centers around a white southern woman who adopts a hulk of a football-playing black kid--is not I am sure the kind of family behavior the legislators up in Tallahassee want to encourage.
Avatar never really had a chance of being named best picture. Academy members undoubtedly felt that grossing more than $3.0 billion worldwide was award enough. But still it is a stunning film. Perhaps one of the two or three most remarkable films ever made. Since it cost at least $300 million to produce, one would have thought that with Disneyland in Orlando, the Florida Commission would have been eager to attract at least some of the production action and thus would have showered tons of tax credit dollars on James Cameron. But in the film there is that anti-war, ecology thing to contend with. And of course all those galloping half-naked Na'vis. Does this make you think Andy Griffith? Not exactly. So Florida took a pass and the film was made in Los Angeles and friendlier Wellington, New Zealand. A full one thousand people worked on the film. That's a lot of jobs.
A Single Man and Inglorious Bastards cases can be dismissed in a sentence--the former is about a closeted gay guy and the latter has title problems. No need to say more. The Quentin Tarantino film also has Nazi issues, but the "Bastards" alone would have been enough to get it defunded. I'm half surprised that there wasn't a big outcry about its title being displayed on movie marquees around the state. I would have expected it to run in parts of Florida with an alternative name. Maybe something like Inglorious SOBs would have worked.
District 9 is so full of violence and extraterrestrial cyborgs as to call its family-friendly credentials, and thus its tax status, into question. In addition, it is only a thinly disguised tract about the hateful South African Apartheid regime and it barbarous ways. Films that look at race issues in such a frank manner are not of the sort that Republican members of the Florida legislature would want children to see. It might encourage them to ask questions about things closer to home.
And speaking of children, the last of the ten nominated movies was Up; and, as I confessed, we watched this one on DVD. It is a pixilated film and quite stunning in its effects. On the surface it seems an ideal candidate for all sorts of tax incentives from the Florida Film Commission. In fact, according to the commission's guidelines, the only films eligible for the 5 percent bonus must be "suitable for a five-year-old," with "cross-generational appeal" (whatever that means), and offer "a responsible resolution of issues." Up appears to meet all of these criteria and then some.
But the deeper I got lost in the film, and transported by it I surely was, the more I wondered if the creators came up with their best ideas while high on some sort of mind-altering, non-prescription drug. If Alice In Wonderland is psychedelic, Up is a close second. And so do we really want to encourage our children to see something this perverted?
So what are we left with? In addition to Rebel Without A Cause having been shot in Florida in 1955 and Midnight Cowboy, the first X-rated feature film, in 1969, more recently there was Big Boob Bikini Bash (1993) and in 2003 Blood of the Beast. None, I suspect, received an official sanction much less any tax credits. And thus film making will drift to New Mexico where you can get 25 percent for anything that employs local electricians and grips and drivers and food service folks.
Or you can make your movie in Wisconsin where much of the Johnny Depp film, Public Enemies, was shot. The film crew was there for more than a month. The movie, about the life of John Dillinger, was filmed in Oshkosh, Columbus, and Madison and received $4.6 million in state subsidies, including payments that offset much of the $5,625 paid to Depp's hairstylist, $16,490 for his makeup artist, and $38,771 for his two chauffeurs. All good jobs, but, still, more than $5,000 seems like a lot of taxpayer money to blow dry Johnny's hair.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:15 AM
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