Runaway myths

Just because other states are trying to grab Hollywood production dollars doesn't mean the entertainment industry is ready to abandon L.A. That's the basic point in my December Los Angeles magazine piece on runaway production. Certainly, there's been a loss of local jobs because of on-location shooting in New Mexico, Massachusetts or wherever. But there's also been plenty of production taking place in L.A. - much of it on soundstages that never get included in the quarterly production statistics that are released by FilmLA. That's the problem with trying to figure out the Hollywood economy - the data has a way of being incomplete, unavailable and misleading. Having a $500 million state incentive program to keep filmmakers in California seems a bit cockeyed, not to mention unnecessary. The piece is not yet online, but here are a couple of key sections:

When a film or TV show gets made somewhere else, a local cameraman or makeup artist doesn't work--and that has outraged the Industry's rank and file. Even now, there are gripes about the state not offering enough. Of course we are talking about Hollywood, where mythmaking has always been second nature. In this instance, the fiction spun by city officials, union leaders, economists, and the media centers on how runaway production threatens to undercut L.A.'s dominance as the movie and TV capital of the world. It really doesn't. Los Angeles has the biggest workforce in the entertainment business; produces the largest number of movies, TV shows, and commercials; and is home to more soundstages, back lots, postproduction houses, casting agencies, payroll firms, and honey wagons than anywhere else--and by a substantial margin. L.A.'s showbiz infrastructure is massive. It took decades to build and is almost impossible to re-create in another locale, with or without incentives.

For all the hand-wringing, the entertainment industry had 122,200 payroll jobs in Los Angeles County as of September. That's more than the annual average of 120,000 jobs for the period between 1990 and 2008 (the monthly numbers tend to bounce around the 120,000 to 135,000 range). Those payroll figures do not include the tens of thousands of writers, actors, technicians, and other workers who operate on a contract or freelance basis--nor do they cover the thousands of businesses that service the Industry, from equipment rentals to flower arranging. When reporters glom on to the sharp drop in on-location shooting, they usually fail to mention the work that happens each day on soundstages and back lots--a big omission because more producers are opting for nonlocation shoots to save money (studios won't release those figures). "California has never had 100 percent of production, just the lion's share," says Lisa Rawlins, former director of the California Film Commission and now a Warner Bros. executive.

Fears of runaway production go back go back a ways. In 1957, a coalition of Hollywood unions commissioned a report that found a sharp increase in the number of productions filmed overseas. In 1961, Charlton Heston told Congress that foreign subsidies were doing damage to the U.S. film industry, and he urged lawmakers to "fight subsidy with subsidy." They passed.