Runaway Tax Credit

Neither Gov. Gray Davis’ recently announced proposal of tax incentives for the film industry nor the similar proposal announced last month by Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn are going to be much help as long as the incentives are limited to films budgeted under $10 million. Most projects in this range are made with small, usually nonunion crews often working on deferments (which means ultimately for free), increasingly on video.

Where these incentives would really be beneficial is for projects in the range of $20 million to $40 million, especially genre films, which require a standard crew and can afford to at least pay them scale. Being able to make more films of this type here would provide the economic benefits to both the industry and the local infrastructure the politicians claim to be trying to help.

This does not solve the problem of actually getting the financing for films in this range, the biggest stumbling block to increased production. A way of doing this, with a requirement that production and postproduction be done locally, would be the biggest benefit of all.

RICK MITCHELL

Los Angeles

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I hate to sound ungrateful to Gov. Davis, but I am. His new proposal to offer tax credit to low-budget film producers to lure them back from Canada is like trying to get the fox back into the henhouse.

Why draw the tax-credit line at low-budget productions? Why bring back the worst of what film production has to offer? So-called low-budget producers have already received major contract concessions from nearly all of the state’s film and television unions.

The workers that Davis is using as a base for his tax credit already have given producers nearly 25% of what they normally would make. These workers do not expend 25% less energy. They don’t lift and move things that have agreed to be 25% lighter or less dangerous.

These workers will not benefit from Davis’ tax credit; it will merely allow them to be taken advantage of more often.

DON TOMICH

Glendale