Runaway Film Production
Re your editorial (Feb. 13), “Pay for the Privilege”:
In the last few years, runaway production has become a serious problem to the tens of thousands of Southern Californians who earn their living in the motion picture industry. One big reason for the runaway is that other states have realized the enormous economic benefits from having movie companies work in their areas. They have set up very effective state and local film commissions, which spend big bucks advertising in Hollywood trade publications to lure even bigger Hollywood bucks to their doorsteps.
They roll out the red carpet in every possible way to woo our film industry away from California. They provide free location scouting services, one-stop filming permit services (or no permit requirements at all), cheap or even free police and fire protection. In short, they do everything possible to make the industry feel welcome and to make it easy for films to be made. They have done a very good job of it too! But, ironically, they have received much free help from our own state and local governments, due to the kind of restrictive attitude expressed in your editorial.
Pay for the privilege, indeed! The privilege is California’s, and particularly Southern California’s. The film industry is the third or fourth largest industry in the state. It has brought and continues to bring untold riches and status to our area. It is a clean, environmentally safe, high-tech industry, which takes little or nothing from our great natural resources (unlike oil and agriculture), yet it gives back so much in terms of dollars, employment, and prestige. But it is often treated with callous disregard by a people and a government who have grown jaded by its presence.
Your editorial is fundamentally wrong in its assumption that the film industry is not likely to go on location outside of California, or that it has to spend prohibitive extra amounts to do so.
Unlike the old days, films can be made cheaply on location today, and when Hollywood companies go out of state to make pictures, they don’t take many of the local talent pool with them. That means that in addition to a great loss of direct revenue there is a huge additional loss from the unemployment of local film personnel.
Hollywood has been going out of town in a big way in the last few years, and the trend accelerates in direct proportion to how hard we make it for Hollywood to work in its own back yard!
CHARLES L. BARBEE
Woodland Hills