New on DVD--to me anyway-- is the movie House, a horror flick I ran across without realizing the story takes place in Alabama. At least the couple who end up being terrified in a strange hotel in the woods say they are in Alabama, and they look at a map early in the flick that shows the word Alabama, but it's actually Florida they're showing...the panhandle. And besides, the entire flick was shot about as far from Alabama as you can get...in Poland. I'm not sure why. Maybe Poland offered better tax breaks*. Anyway it's OK as a horror film with decent acting. And it's a kick to hear one of the characters describe herself an an Auburn Psychology student. Never realized how much the pine-filled woods of Poland look like South Alabama till now.
[*NOTE: State incentive programs to attract movie makers don't always work as planned. Consider the case of Wisconsin, which paid millions to attract the Johnny Depp film "Public Enemy". The filmakers hired mostly out of state workers and any increase in tax collections was all but wiped out by the incentives cost.]
Now... aren't you glad your Alabama tax dollars DIDN'T go to that production company? *LOL* (but, kinda' seriously...)
ReplyDeleteWhile I advocate for the arts, I am opposed to our legislature's current infatuation with providing tax breaks/forgiveness/incentive for filming in Alabama for the very reasons you cited in the Wisconsin case.
Further, film making is - by it's very nature - a transient enterprise.
And talk about "brain drain"... what greater drain could there be than to fund Alabama's higher education institutions to teach flim... er, film making? Learn your craft, movie... er, move out of state.
Oh! By the way... Depp's film ignores the historicity of John Dillinger's origination of significant criminality in Bluffton, Ohio where he robbed a bank, was captured, imprisoned to await trial, then was sprung by criminal collaborators who killed the guards.
Later, of course, Dillinger was killed by FBI agents acting on a tip from a reliable informant - an illegal alien prostitute facing deportation hoping to strike a deal to stay - that he would be attending a movie house (to see Clark Gable in "Manhattan Melodrama"), gunned him down after he fled and first fired upon them as he ran down an alleyway attempting to escape.