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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 - Comments Off on 'Made In NY' Money All But Gone; City Council Rides to Rescue
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'Made In NY' Money All But Gone; City Council Rides to Rescue


Also today in Variety, Andrew Barker contributes the latest update about the “Made in NY” tax incentive program’s wild success. While his colleague Addie Morfoot had pretty much the same story last December–explaining that the $50 million trough was just about empty–Barker’s version arrives with a weird sense of forboding that implies no good deed goes unpunished:

Less than a year and a half after incentives began, the city has reached the $50 million limit allocated to the initiative.

“Productions which shoot in New York can still take advantage of the state’s 10% tax credit,” says Katherine Oliver, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater, and Broadcasting. “Mayor Bloomberg supports a continuation of the program, and the next state legislative session will determine its future.”

Applications are still being accepted for the 5% credit, although it is unclear when or if the city’s coffers will be refilled.

Enter City Council members David Weprin, David Yassky, Vincent Gentile and Domenic Recchia (representing Queens and Brooklyn, natch, home to three separate studios) who extracted their cheerleader outfits from the closet yesterday for the Daily News:

Saying it will generate more jobs, a group of City Council members called yesterday for $30 million a year in tax credits for film and television production in the city.

Under a law passed two years ago with the backing of those Council members, the city now spends $12.5 million a year on giving a refundable 5% tax credit to filmmakers who produce 75% of their work within the city.

“You’re not really just benefitting Hollywood,” said Councilman David Weprin (D-Queens), one of the prime boosters of increasing the film production tax-credit pot. …

They’ve also expressed concern that some of the tax-break money is going to production companies that would have worked in the city even without the tax breaks. …

“It’s too soon to say ‘Cut!’ to the film tax credit,” (Yassky) insisted. “We can’t let the tax credit end up on the cutting room floor.”

Insert groan here. The NYDN’s Frank Lombardi goes on to report that the councilmen atribute the delay to political snags in Albany, where budget squabbles have paralyzed the plan’s advance. Meanwhile, the current funds are locked up through 2008, so do not go thinking Ethan Hawke has relinquished your parking space just…quite… yet.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon