The Attack of the Alien States

By Gerald Clarke

Everybody is grabbing a piece of California's movie action

To Californians it was perhaps the ultimate insult. In an effort to lure film production eastward, the state of Florida took out an ad in show business trade papers with an illustration of one of the most famous sights in Southern California, the hill that displays the giant sign HOLLYWOOD. But where those nine letters should have been, an artist had superimposed seven different ones: FLORIDA. "Hollywood weather without Hollywood overhead," read the caption below.

What was particularly galling was that there was a certain amount of truth in the gibe. As film making in Southern California has become more expensive and more difficult, other states have moved aggressively to capture a business traditionally synonymous with Hollywood. "We're losing the feature-film business," declares Maureen Kindel, president of the Los Angeles City Board of Public Works. "It's as simple as that. It's a lucrative, non-polluting and glamorous industry, and other states are making a tremendous drive to take it away from us."

Ten years ago, a large proportion of major American pictures were produced in California. In 1981 only half were made there, and in the past two years the number has dwindled to about a third. In fact, of 42 films shooting in the U.S. last week, only nine were being made in California. For the stars, who can find work anywhere, the exodus from Hollywood means little. But for thousands of film technicians and journeymen performers it increasingly signals mass unemployment. According to a study by the Los Angeles Film Development Committee, the state's economy lost $1.6 billion to other states between 1979 and 1982 through cutbacks in movie production.

The state that has gained the most is New York. New York City has long been a film center in its own right, and now has a one-third share of U.S. movie production. In 1983, 66 movies were shot there, including The Pope of Greenwich Village, Ghostbusters and Francis Coppola's The Cotton Club. In the first half of this year,

New York City has been host to 42 films, among them Garbo Talks and Falling in Love with Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro. The next two busiest states are Texas and Florida. Although Florida Governor Bob Graham's goal is to make the state the film center of the world within 20 years, Texas, where 30 feature film and television productions were shot last year, appears to have as good a chance of becoming the "third coast."

There are several reasons for the flight from California. One is the trend, which has been growing since the early 1960s, to use authentic locations, guaranteeing that the camera is actually where the script says it is. Director Mark Rydell opted to shoot the upcoming film The River in Tennessee because he wanted real local color. "Though great things get created on studio back lots, the East does look different from the West," says Barry Levinson, director of Diner, which was shot in Baltimore, and The Natural, which was made in Buffalo. "At one time Hollywood was crucial. But that has changed with better communication, new methods of distribution, lighter cameras and smaller crews."

Perhaps the most important reason for the change is California itself, which until very recently had taken the movie industry for granted, done little to encourage it and much to discourage it. There are, for example, 83 separate municipalities in Los Angeles County, and a producer may have to obtain permits from half a dozen of them before he can shoot. A film crew that is following a car down Santa Monica Boulevard can pass through four jurisdictions in just a few minutes. Labor costs are also very high. Nonspeaking extras, for instance, are paid $87 a day in California; in neighboring Arizona they make only $35. As a result, producers often favor right-to-work states, where they can avoid union regulations. To meet the competition, even New York unions, which used to be as demanding as those in California, have become more cooperative and flexible in the past few years.

Many states, by contrast, will almost give the capitol away to anyone willing to shout, "Lights, camera, action!" All 50 states and several cities have film commissions working hard to lure moviemakers.

Indeed, earlier this month Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis made a trip to Hollywood and gave a party at a posh Beverly Hills bistro to entice film makers to come to the Bay State. In most places the commissions will get all the necessary permits, persuade hotels to offer discounts, scout out locations and even provide someone to take the director's spouse shopping. The Illinois office has a geography expert on staff who can pinpoint the location a script requires and requisition a state helicopter to show it to the director.

"We'll provide anything a film company needs," vows Susie Kellett, managing director of the Illinois film office. "We're all vying for the same business, and we know that every company that calls us is talking to at least five other states. It's guerrilla warfare out there."

Just as worrisome to Californians as the location shooting is the multiplication of out-of-state production facilities. No longer does a producer have to return to Hollywood for editing and other postproduction work. New York City has vastly expanded the Kaufman Astoria Studios, where many silent films were shot in the '20s, and sound stages are being constructed all over the city. The flamboyant North Carolina film producer Earl Owensby who already owns one studio in Shelby, N.C., is building another: an ambitious 426-acre facility in Myrtle Beach, S.C., which also includes a theme park. Texas, which last year yielded a bumper crop of Academy Award-nominated films--Terms of Endearment, Silkwood and Tender Mercies--boasts a new 20-acre communications complex just west of Dallas that has state-of-the-art production facilities. Moreover, ground has recently been broken for what is billed as the largest sound stage in the world, 22 miles northeast of Houston.

California is beginning to fight back. In September, Governor George Deukmejian signed into law legislation creating a new California film office which will help streamline the procedures for the use of state-owned property. Los Angeles itself has been successful in retaining some films that were about to be shot elsewhere. Blue Thunder, for instance, was originally to be shot in Chicago. Some observers wonder, however, whether such responses may be too late. Says Louis Steinberg, president of the Los Angeles Film Development Committee: "Five years from now we may meet and say, 'Hey, when did we throw away the movie business? There was a film industry here, and it was big and good. But now it's gone. Why?""

--By Gerald Clarke.

Reported by Denise Worrell/Los Angeles, with other bureaus

With reporting by Denise Worell, other bureaus