Making Movies Isn’t the Government’s Job

Monday, January 4, 2002

Page 7

AFFAIRS OF STATE (Column)

Making Movies Isn’t the Government’s Job

By DAVID KLINE

The motion picture industry is a huge part of California’s economy, so of course the government cannot be inattentive to its condition. Still, there’s a limit on what the government should do to help a private industry, and the state Legislature is perilously close to exceeding that limit.

Lawmakers are in the process of developing a plan that would use $10.2 million in tax dollars to help independent film makers finance their work. The idea is to have the state guarantee loans for film production, with the film producer posting a bond or collateral to secure the state’s help.

The special assistance would go to films that cost no less than $4 million and no more than $10 million, thus likely weeding out low-budget porn films that would embarrass the politicians and blockbusters that don’t need the help anyway.

The plan is contained in Assembly Bill 502, known as the California Film Finance Act. Not surprisingly, the bill was suggested by the American Film Marketing Association. It is being carried by Assemblyman Dario Frommer, a Glendale Democrat who also sits on the California Film Commission.

Frommer’s bill has good intentions. The film industry does more than just support ultra-rich superstars like Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. It also feeds the families of camera operators, lighting technicians, caterers, hair stylists, special effects wizards, stunt drivers, screenplay writers, film editors, foley artists and more. And that’s just during the making of the movie. After a film is released, it helps butter the bread of magazine writers, newspaper ad reps, television critics, high schoolers who serve popcorn and a host of others.

Eventually, the film reaches the video stores, where another crop of minimum wage high schoolers rents it out.

Keeping this cash river flowing is a worthy goal, indeed. But it’s not a job for tax dollars.

Government exists to take care of essentials that people cannot provide on their own, to protect our liberty from those who would take it away. It properly pays for things like highways, courts, law enforcement agencies and prisons.

Even under the loosest definition, though, movies are not essential. The movie industry is important, it employs many Californians, it is one of the state’s claims to fame, but it is a private industry in which government has no legitimate role.

If independent film makers are having trouble producing their product, let them do what other private industries do—turn up the ingenuity a notch and find a way to make things work.

Even those who don’t believe it’s wrong to use tax dollars to bail out a private industry should be concerned about another sticky situation raised by Frommer’s bill. That is, there are no restrictions on the types of movies that would receive the state’s help, because language that would have prohibited loan guarantees for obscene films was amended out of AB 502.

With no safeguards, your tax dollars could help make a film glamorizing street gangs, promoting drug use, encouraging teen sex, blaspheming your religion or who knows what else. Even though it’s your money, you wouldn’t have a say over how it is used. It could even be used for a political propaganda film that flies in the face of your beliefs—you would be supporting the enemy and would have no recourse, with the possible exception of going to prison for tax evasion.

There are ways to help the film industry prosper without creating new agencies and using $10.2 million in tax dollars. The state could reduce the minimum wage, make workers’ compensation insurance more affordable, reduce the cost of filming permits, reduce taxes that add to production costs and take other steps to cut the cost of making a movie.

As an added benefit, these same changes would help other private industries, so we’d all have more money to spend on tickets, popcorn and chocolate-covered raisins.

— Capitol News Service