States Weigh Cuts in Subsidies for Hollywood (NY Times)

And then there is California, where Jerry Brown, the newly elected Democratic governor, is confronting a $25 billion budget gap. Mr. Brown is proposing to cut social services and state employee pay while extending tax increases that were supposed to be temporary. He has also provoked howls of protest by insisting that state workers return 48,000 cellphones by June 1 in a bid to save $20 million.

But film and television tax credits passed under his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, remain intact at a cost of $100 million a year.

This article looks at many other states in addition to California, and in some cases, it looks like cutting film subsidies would make sense to help bridge budget deficits. But here, I'd have to guess that keeping runaway production in check adds a whole lot more than $100 million to our state's coffers. Unfortunately, as the article points out, studies done on this topic come to conclusions that are all over the place.

But either way, I'm glad I get to keep my cellphone.

Read the full article here.

State Backing Films Says Cannibal Is Deal-Breaker (NY Times)

Among the states that began underwriting film and television production with heavy subsidies over the past half-decade — 44 states had some sort of incentives by last year, 28 of them involving tax credits — at least a handful are giving new scrutiny to a question that was politely overlooked in the early excitement: What kind of films are taxpayers paying for?

The alternative headline for this article was "Before Subsidizing Movies, States Scrutinize the Message" but I like this one much better.

On a more serious note, this is a really interesting article that raises some worthwhile questions about censorship and highlights a whole new set of troubles that indie filmmakers will now have to navigate.

Read the full article here.