"Massachusetts towns get boost from Hollywood movies" by Dan Adams | Globe Correspondent, July 07, 2012
When the state started doling out tax breaks to attract big-name films in 2006, it seemed natural that Boston would take a star turn in the flurry of movies that followed....
But this summer, Hollywood crews are also deployed across the suburbs, with three major projects currently filming in smaller Massachusetts communities. For businesses and residents in those towns, playing host to a movie production offers more than the chance to glimpse a star or two – it can also provide an economic boost on a hyperlocal level....
Massachusetts Film Office director Lisa Strout said, “It has an interesting multiplier effect on the economy.”
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But some people aren’t starstruck by the state’s tax incentives for filmmakers, which provide an exemption from the sales tax and a 25 percent credit for production and payroll costs.
I'm not only not starstruck, I'm a little sour.
Why, you may ask?
Well, I feel a LITTLE $WINDLED on the sales tax hike for starters. There is also the picking up the stars' salaries with taxpayer dollars. I'd rather they keep a couple of teachers around, thanks.
“These anecdotal stories are wonderful for the individuals involved, and it’s great that that’s happening, but it’s not a good strategy for the state,” said Jim Stergios, executive director of the Pioneer Institute, a conservative research firm in Boston. “We are getting very little out of focusing hundreds of millions of dollars on the film industry.”
Those appear all the time in my paper.
Strout, of the state film office, said the benefits of the tax credit can be hard to measure in the short-term.
When they say that it means it is a failure.
“If you’re building a sustainable local film industry, you have to build up the workforce and vendors, and then infrastructure starts to come in,” she said. “That’s really the key to longevity and return.”
For Nancy Mantilla, who said business at her Marblehead flower shop, Flores Mantilla, jumped by about 40 percent when Adam Sandler’s “Grown Ups 2” arrived in May, however, the trickle down effects of Hollywood’s presence have been immediate....
That is ECONOMIC POLICY in LIBERAL MA$$ACHU$ETT$?!?!
Yeah, $OMEONE is being more than trickled on, dear fellow citizens; we are being $hat on.
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Oh, I'm so happy Kate Winslet was in Shelburne Falls.
I can just imagine my neighbors to the west arriving home to encounter this:
"the cinch-tight security around the set and surrounding neighborhood. Streets in the area were closed to all but resident traffic, and police stood sentry, quizzing drivers."
Is that what taxpayers are paying them to do?
Yeah, I think the enthusiasm for the stars and the sign would start to fade pretty quick.
And they will really explode when I tell them how much tax loot they lost:
"Calculating the cost of tax breaks in Mass.; Report says state incentives top $770m in 2012, more than double the amount in 1996. But even as the total grows, there remains little consensus on the value of such deals" by Todd Wallack | Globe Staff, August 07, 2012
The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center report found nearly all the growth in the cost of the economic development incentives since 1996 has come from more than a dozen new subsidies, such as the film tax credit program and the so-called single sales factor tax breaks for mutual fund companies, defense companies, and manufacturers.
Under the film tax credit program, the state offers companies $1 in tax credits for every $4 they spend making movies, television series, or commercials. In 2011, for example, Columbia Pictures Industries received $11.6 million to film the movie “Here Comes the Boom” and a Los Angeles production firm received $9 million to make the movie “Ted.”
What could your community have done with $20 million dollars last year? Or a "mere" one million for that matter?
The film tax credit program has been particularly controversial because many economists say the economic activity it generates comes at too high a cost. The state Department of Revenue estimated it costs more than $142,000 per job for local residents.
Hey, getting a glimpse of the stars co$t$ $omething.
Proponents, however, argue the program has helped bring a surge of feature films to the state, bolstering the economy and tourism....
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We gave away $770 million last year alone, and the tax code costs us $4 billion (yeah, that's with a b) a year?!?!?! People 'round h're ain't gonna like that.
Here come the reviews:
"We don’t want this kind of publicity" by Alan Wirzbicki | August 01, 2012
Massachusetts is full of anti-Semitic children, creeps, ugly women, and uninhibited prostitutes.
Oh, I get that a lot.
It's not true; it simply means you are telling the truth.
Or at least, that’s what the Commonwealth gave Seth MacFarlane $9 million to tell the world in his new hit movie, “Ted,” a comedy about a foul-mouthed teddy bear that was set in the South End and filmed at locations across the state.
I haven't seen Ted, and I don't plan to. In fact, I never go to the movies anymore. I'm just not that into anything they are putting out. If anything, I'll catch it on cable later. Ever since Avatar was dissed I've been $our on Hollywood.
Six years into the state’s film tax credit program, the Commonwealth has spent more than $300 million subsidizing dozens of films — many of which have returned the favor by portraying Massachusetts as a haven of meatheads, criminals, Ben Affleck, and worse.
I want my money back.
See: Happy Halloween From the Boston Globe
Immune to Globe's Bulger Coverage
Another movie I won't be seeing, although I did like Damon in Inside Job. That's required viewing, readers.
Presumably, viewers know it’s all fiction — nobody here really talks like Mel Gibson in “Edge of Darkness.”
Oh, that is so interesting. I know Mel has been butchered by the Jewish media and Hollywood because of the drunken rants and phone messages; however, one also needs to look at Mel's progression of films.
He puts out "Signs" where the key part of the film has nothing to to with aliens. It is when he asks his brother Merrill whether he believes in signs (or fate). The movie came out in 2002, after 9/11. It is my belief that Mel was signaling that 9/11 was a sign, but an earthly event that we alone must confront. God will not help us there.
He followed it up with "Edge of Darkness" where the plot at bottom is an American nuclear weapons manufacturer designing a bomb to foreign specifications, and further suggesting that it could then be used to implicate other parties. Yes, Mel, a false flag nuclear explosion is indeed on the edge of darkness.
The drunken, "anti-Semitic" rants only illuminate in my mind that Mel may be a 9/11 Truther and realizes what promoting that view would do to his career. At the same time he is obviously a politically passionate person so submerging the truth and it's stress upon the soul would be difficult.
Still, if one of the credit’s purposes is to burnish the state’s image, the release of “Ted” is a good opportunity to ask whether the public is really getting its money’s worth.
Related: MSM Monitor Movie Matinee
Oh, seeing as Hollywood makes BILLIONS per YEAR in PROFITS I'd say no.
You can enjoy MacFarlane’s raunchy style of comedy, laugh at the jokes about Quincy and Swampscott, and get a thrill from recognizing local landmarks like Fenway Park and the Zakim Bridge — and still conclude that the $9 million in state funds would have been better spent elsewhere.
Yup.
It’s hard to imagine a family watching the movie and deciding to vacation in Boston, or a business choosing to relocate here because they were impressed by the movie’s depiction of, say, the city’s produce options.
“Ted” accounted for roughly a quarter of the $37.9 million in film credits issued in 2011.
Only because they didn't make as many movies here.
A Department of Revenue study last year showed that, as an economic development program, the credits have been a dud, costing $142,000 for every Massachusetts job created.
But once it's ensconced in tax law it's untouchable -- unlike collectively bargained health and pensions.
But there’s also a fuzzier argument: Boosters assert, almost as an article of faith, that simply showcasing the Commonwealth in movies like “Grown Ups,” “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” and “Grown Ups 2” has got to be worth something.
In fact, it’s possible to put a rough price on the value of movie appearances: in Hollywood, that’s called product placement. Carmakers and electronics companies routinely reach deals with filmmakers to feature their products.
But according to Jay Newell, a professor at Iowa State University’s journalism school who studies product placement, those deals are often surprisingly small. Advertisers are so skeptical of their value that it’s frequently a barter arrangement, with no cash changing hands....
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(At this point in the post the blog editor needs to use the rest room, much the way he used to run out of Kong just as search party for Ann took five minutes)
"We can’t buy this kind of publicity" by Nick Paleologos | August 01, 2012
Nick Paleologos, former executive director of the Massachusetts Film Office, is the executive director of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Related: Patrick Cuts Paleologos
Think of it as a plot twist.
It’s more than the 6,154 new jobs created in the middle of a crippling recession, more than the billion dollars of new spending that came pouring into the state’s private economy. The film tax incentive was signed into law by a Republican governor, and later expanded by a Democrat.
Another Romney legacy.
Because, politics aside, it works.
For $ome.
So the next time you hear somebody criticizing this particular program as “corporate welfare,” remind them that corporate welfare is when Evergreen Solar skips town after pocketing $58 million in state assistance, or when Fidelity Investments receives $136 million in tax credits for the mutual fund industry and then says “thank you” by shipping 1,100 Massachusetts jobs out of state.
Related: Evergreen Turns Brown
Actually, they are going red.
Also see: Fidelity Been Cheating On Massachusetts
Stealing, too.
Movie companies get their tax credits the old-fashioned way. They earn them. Producers can’t even receive a tax credit until after they hire people and after they spend their money here, not before. Tax breaks based upon empty promises are corporate welfare. A tax break based on proven performance is economic development — a very big difference.
There are many ways to measure the cost of film tax credits. But few have described their benefits better than Scott Plath, the owner of Cobblestone’s Restaurant in Lowell. “For our community to be respected,” he said, “and to be sought after by major motion pictures and by movie stars and directors and producers coming to our city to do their work . . . I can’t imagine what would have a bigger impact. What could create better press and more favorable light than the big screen?”
What do you mean I can't go this way, officer?
Value? Priceless.
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I was never that crazy about Globe reviews anyway.
I suppose there has to be a good movie out there worth the co$t:
"Work to start on studio at Devens" by Evan Allen | Globe Staff June 25, 2012
New England Studios will break ground on Tuesday on a film and television studio at Devens, a former military base in Central Massachusetts managed by the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency.
Yes, readers, I suppose I would rather have a movie-making studio than a military base.
The project has the potential to bring between 800 and 1,000 jobs to the region, according to a press release sent out by MassDevelopment last year when the $104 million project was proposed....
Yes, but those are a ways down the road.
The project is envisioned as a one-stop film-making enterprise that will bring Hollywood to Massachusetts....
What if we don't want them here?
The MassDevelopment Board of Directors also authorized a tax increment financing agreement that will reduce the studio company’s local property tax on the improvements that it makes, according to the press release last year.
Think of it as the ticket price.
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I'm into reruns now, readers:
"Convicted filmmaker gets up to 3 years, told to repay state" May 11, 2012 | Beth Healy
Daniel Adams, the Cape Cod filmmaker convicted of fraud for illegally obtaining $4.7 million in state film tax credits, was sentenced Thursday to two to three years in state prison.
Maybe someone will make a movie about it.
See: Producer leaves Cape feeling fleeced
I'm neither enamored or laughing.
Following his release, Adams faces 10 years of probation. He was also ordered to pay $4.4 million in restitution to the state under the sentence imposed by Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Carol Ball.
Adams’s lawyer, James Greenberg, called the sentence fair, given that his client had no prior criminal history.
“He accepted responsibility from the outset and cooperated with the Department of Revenue and the attorney general,’’ Greenberg said.
But it is unclear how Adams, 51, will pay back the state. He was unable to post $100,000 bail after his arrest in December, and remained in jail until April, when he entered a guilty plea and Ball released him on $10,000 bail, with the condition that Adams wear a GPS bracelet.
I don't think you are going to be getting that money back.
Greenburg said Adams wants to eventually return to making movies....
Making comedies?
The state awarded $276 million to 556 film projects, from 2006 through 2010, according to the Revenue Department.
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“He accepted responsibility from the outset and cooperated with the Department of Revenue and the attorney general,’’ Greenberg said.
But it is unclear how Adams, 51, will pay back the state. He was unable to post $100,000 bail after his arrest in December, and remained in jail until April, when he entered a guilty plea and Ball released him on $10,000 bail, with the condition that Adams wear a GPS bracelet.
I don't think you are going to be getting that money back.
Greenburg said Adams wants to eventually return to making movies....
Making comedies?
The state awarded $276 million to 556 film projects, from 2006 through 2010, according to the Revenue Department.
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"Plymouth Rock Studios founder loses in judgment" by Christine Legere | Globe Correspondent, June 23, 2012
PLYMOUTH — The former leader of the Plymouth Rock movie studios project is on the losing end of a multimillion-dollar judgment after a Los Angeles jury found that he and others defrauded a Brazilian businessman into investing and losing millions in their Christian media company.
David Kirkpatrick and his founding partners in the entertainment company called Good News Holdings were ordered to pay $2.25 million, along with $450,000 in punitive damages, to investor Washington Umberto Cinel, who lost his money when Good News Holdings folded in 2007.
Kirkpatrick is known on the East Coast as the founder and former president of Plymouth Rock Studios, which made waves several years ago when it announced plans to buy the Waverly Oaks Golf Club in Plymouth and build a mega movie production complex on the property. The company is still looking for financing to move forward with a smaller movie-making facility.
Who would willingly give their money to a thief?
Kirkpatrick’s partners in Good News Holdings, which focused on producing Christian faith-based entertainment, are also known in the entertainment industry....
As opposed to other kind of faith that controls Hollywood.
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Related: That's a Wrap, Plymouth!
Also see:
3 stabbed, 1 fatally, near film shooting
MBTA bus collides with movie truck in Roxbury
Maybe they ought to make the movies somewhere else.
It's COSTING LIVES, too!
Time to roll the credits: Massachusetts Lets Hollywood Roll Credits
Did you SEE the FINE PRINT and the EXTRA $CENE$ that were not mentioned in the articles I presented you, dear readers?
