Counterfeit Cities: Spacial Celebriphilia and Film's Whoring of Place How Tax Payers Subsidize Hollywood's Production Costs BY: DIzzIE [antikopyright 2007] In case you can't be bothered to read two pages of text (I know it's hard to, you know, read, so my apologies in advance that this isn't a Youtube video), here's the short version: Why aren't movies often filmed in the locations that the narrative takes place in? Because movie studios can fuck over tax payers by giving them the 'privilege' of footing the production cost bill by filming in other cities. Now then... I was watching Mr. Brooks (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780571/) the other day, a fun little mash-up of American Psycho and The Thomas Crown Affair that's indeed quite enjoyable so long as you fast forward through any scene that has the decrepit Demi Moore monster in it. But more to the point, Mr. Brooks is a film that establishes itself as ostensibly being set in Portland, Oregon in the first minute or so, and yet a curious odour of translocality begins to seep in almost immediately. Whilst Mr. Brooks is driving on a highway in the night, at about 8 minutes and 22 seconds one can see a topmost corner of a building appear in the top right of the shot, darkened save for the glowing Morgan Keegan sign. Doing a little bit of online sleuthing, one can discover that Morgan Keegan is a "premier regional investment firm offering full-service investment banking, securities brokerage, trust and asset management." (Source (http://www.morgankeegan.com/MK/Ourstory/default.htm)) So who gives half a fuck? Well, the thing is that there are no Morgan Keegan branches in Portland. Looking at Morgan Keegan's convenient online branch locator (http://www.morgankeegan.com/MK/Ourstory/Locations/BranchLocator.htm), one sees that not only are there no MK branches in Portland, but there are no branches west of Texas, with corporate headquarters being in Memphis, Tennessee. Hold that thought, and now fast forward through the movie, past all of the end-credits with the trendy film score, and just before the screen goes black, the following message appears: "The Filmmakers wish to extend their personal thanks to The Spirited Citizens of Shreveport and Bossier City, Louisiana." And lo and behold, there is indeed a Morgan Keegan branch in none other than Shreveport, LA (http://www.morgankeegan.com/MK/Ourstory/Locations/default.htm?state=L A&city=Shreveport). In case you still don't give a fuck, the question that now arises is why in the world would a movie that claims to be situated in Oregon be (at least partially) filmed across the country in Louisiana? This is where things get a little more interesting... In order to entice wealthy movie execs to film their oft-recycled Hollywood bowel movements in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere, state film commissions all too often offer the movie studios a variety of dangling carrots (rubbed in Vaseline a la Palahniuk), namely tax credits. The film's production company schlops together a list of proposed expenses, adds it all up, and passes it over to the state's film commission, which then grants the production company a tax credit that's X% of the total expenses. The fun thing about tax credits is that they are what are known as liquid assets, which means that they can be sold for cash (for instance to specialized credit brokers or even to individual residents, which would mean that those who actually gave the production companies the credits in the first place now have the privilege of buying those credits back!). The other fun thing is that the initial pre-application is presented to the commission before any of the proposed expenditures are actually spent. But the fun doesn't stop there :). As it so happens, Louisiana's (former) film commissioner was charged last month with accepting $50,000 in bribes (http://blog.nola.com/times- picayune/2007/08/former_state_film_commissioner.html) in return for increasing the tax credits given to film production companies, such as the ones that produced Mr. Brooks and indeed only a few days ago he has recently plead guilty to accepting close to $60,000 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/09/07/AR2007090701283_pf.html). In the specific case of Mr. Brooks, Malcolm Petal, the chief executive of the Louisiana Institute of Film and Technology (LIFT), which was the production company behind the film, gave the money to a middleman, the lawyer William Bradley, who in turn passed the cashito along to Lousiana's film commissioner, Mark Smith. Smith then cast a lenient eye on the amount of tax credits that LIFT received. Remember that part where I said that production costs are submitted not based on any sort of audit process but by using simple expenditure forms that list how much the production company expects to spend? The initial expenditure proposed for Mr. Brooks was a hefty $34.1 million. The actual production cost? $18.5. And as you may have guessed, the film commission issued the tax credits based on the preliminary figure. Of course, the key point here is that tax credits allocated to the production companies have to come from somewhere. Sure, the state's bribed film commissioner is the motherfucker that actually signs the credits over, but where exactly do those credits come from in the first place? From the local tax payers. This essentially means that the denizens of Louisiana paid the production company behind Mr. Brooks $5.1 million (http://blog.nola.com/times- picayune/2007/08/former_state_film_commissioner.html). To further rub some shit over the bludgeoned whore's face, Lousiana's old tax credit policy actually forced its citizens to give tax credits for all expenses incurred by the production company, even those outside of Louisiana. This serves to explain why some of Mr. Brooks does indeed appear to be shot in Portland (some of the locations like the Cup & Saucer Cafe (http://portland.citysearch.com/profile/8470170/) and the Wentworth Chevytown (http://www.wentworthchevrolet.com/) are clearly local Portland businesses). Why not go ahead and shoot in the location the film is actually meant to be in if you can get the suckers in that other place to grant you some 'generous' kickbacks irrespective of where you're actually incurring expenses? Here's how shit goes down: the production companies bribe the sate film commissioners, who in turn overlook certain inflations in proposed expenditures so as to allow the production companies to garner higher tax credits. In other words, the production companies and state officials reap the financial benefits, while the tax payers get skullfucked. Thus not only may you end up paying the film industry to do its movie in your town, but you get the added benefit of having restricted movement in your city as whole streets are cordoned off for the purposes of film production, all while your town not only isn't even mentioned in the film, but is actually dressed up to look like a wholly different city altogether. The alleged thinking behind these cutbacks being offered to the movie studios is that the revenue generated by new expenses resulting from having everyone associated with the film present in the town will outweigh the costs of granting the production companies the tax credits in the first place. As others have already pointed out (http://jeffsadow.blogspot.com/2005/03/lights-camera-corporate- welfare-for.html), these alleged benefits are pretty fucking far from guarantees. What's more, is that the cunts behind these programs also claim that whoring out your city provides 'intangible' benefits along the lines of exposure of the locale, that can then apparently generate tourism or some such jazz. That's all well and good, but it brings us back to the fact that the Mr.Brooks' diegesis is explicitly meant to be situated in Portland. How then, pray tell, may a city reap any sort of 'intangible' benefits if the city portrayed in the film is labeled as another locale altogether? It is as if the city's film commissioner turned pimp not only whored out the city to be (ab)used any which way, but the whore was then ordered to dress up like a favourite celebrity as it gets dicked in the ear. Nothing about Portland is pivotal (or for that matter of any significance whatsoever) to the plotline of Mr. Brooks, and yet the producers felt the urge to transform Shreveport into a counterfeit city, an apparently cheaper version of Portland. Imitation creates the impression of the necessity of veneration, that some cities are thus worthy of being imitated, whilst others can only aspire to be imitators (and must indeed compete for the perceived privilege by offering competitive kickbacks), thus granting that which is imitated an undeserved worth at the expense (and this is to be taken quite literally, recall whose taxes are paying for the film's production) of the locale in which actual filming takes place. Thus, next time you notice that the film's location may not be the one claimed in the narrative, keep in mind that this is likely due to the fact that the film's producers have found a convenient smaller city in which they can bribe their way into making that town's residents subsidize the movie's production, while at the same time thus perpetuating a filmically constructed inequality of locality that indeed spills over outside of the screen. The officials get bribed, the production companies get kickbacks and tax credits, and the citizens foot the bill as they're getting fucked over. To then finally return to the question posed at the outset of this textifle, this is why a movie that claims to be situated in Portland, Oregon was actually (partially) filmed in Shreveport, Louisiana. It's fun to learn things, isn't it? :) - Comments? Get in touch: xcon0 @t yahoo \/d0t/\ c||o|m (or call +1 (610) 887-6072) For more knowledge check out www.rorta.net and www.dizzy.ws