North Carolina, dubbed “Hollywood East” by doubling
as a set for Forrest Gump, The Green Mile, and
many other motion pictures, on Tuesday affirmed traditional
marriage by an overwhelming majority at the ballot box. Hollywood
West vented its displeasure on Twitter accounts.
Mia Farrow, who became pregnant with twins as their
father remain married to another woman, tweeted, “Oh North Carolina
— the disappointment we feel now is nothing compared to the
bewilderment & shame your children will
feel.”
Andy Richter, longtime sidekick to late-night host
Conan O’Brien, opined Tuesday night: “Tonight the voters of NC
bravely threw themselves under the steamroller of history.” But
history is what we have experienced and not what we wish for.
Thirty-two states have voted on marriage. Thirty-two states have
affirmed marriage as between one man and one
woman.
Which side, really, has thrown itself “under the
steamroller of history”?
Echoing Democrat threats to move the party’s
national convention from Charlotte, Roseanne Barr tweeted,
“[H]ollywood withdraw your productions from NC!”
Hollywood, which didn’t withdraw from California
after it rejected gay marriage in 2008, has long since withdrawn
Rosanne Barr from its productions. This, more than anything voters
on the other side of the country did, best explains the rant. Barr
last appeared on the silver screen in the mid-1990s, and since the
cancellation of her hit television show in 1997, roles on the idiot
box have been scarce, too. It’s been six years since she last made
a guest acting appearance on primetime
television.
North Carolina, on the other hand, served as the set
for this year’s bestselling movie. In Cleveland County, the set of
The Hunger Games’s “District 12,” 17,779 voters supported
Amendment 1 and just 4,406 opposed. More relevant than those
figures is this one: 618,574,650 — the number of dollars filmgoers
worldwide have forked over to see the movie.
An even more relevant number to understanding why
filmmakers shot The Hunger Games entirely in North
Carolina is $15 million. That’s the estimated tax credit the makers
of The Hunger Games will reap from the Tar Heel State.
Don’t expect Hollywood to return the tainted money anytime
soon.
Hollywood hasn’t been generous to North Carolina in
the wake of Tuesday’s vote. But North Carolina has been quite
generous to Hollywood.
The state offers one of the nation’s most enticing
tax-incentive programs to production companies. Last year, Tar Heel
taxpayers forked over $5,071,322 in tax credits to Journey 2:
The Mysterious Island. In its three-season run, the HBO series
Eastbound and Down has siphoned $3,740,884 from North
Carolina. The CW Network’s One Tree Hill has drained a
whopping $27 million from the state’s coffers over the last five
years.
Even Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment
body-slammed the state for $135,401. That was its reward for
shooting Raw and Smackdown at arenas in Charlotte and Raleigh in
2010.
WWE? WTF?
Hollywood welfare, like actual welfare, overflows
with abuse. Last month, a Massachusetts court found filmmaker
Daniel Adams guilty of defrauding the Bay State out of more than $4
million in tax credits by inflating his costs on The
Lightkeepers and The Golden Boys. The offenses
included a claim by Adams that he had paid Richard Dreyfuss six
times his actual salary of $400,000. If you haven’t seen, let alone
heard of, The Golden Boys or The
Lightkeepers, you’re not alone. They appear to have been made
as much for tax subsidies as for box-office
receipts.
“In fiscal year 2010, the forty-three states that offer
film subsidies spent $1.5 billion of your tax dollars subsidizing
film and TV production,” Jason Mattera writes in
Hollywood Hypocrites. “Let’s put that in real terms.
Hollywood’s 2009 welfare payments would have been enough to pay the
salaries of 23,500 middle school teachers, 26,600 firefighters, and
22,800 police patrol officers.”
But cash-strapped state officials nevertheless
remain blinded by the glare of the stars. “You can’t buy a
billboard this large,” Aaron Syrett, director of the North Carolina
Film Office, said of The Hunger Games to a Raleigh
television station. “It will have a tremendous tourism impact for
years to come.” Why a movie set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia will
make tourists want to visit, rather than avoid, North Carolina
wasn’t explained.
North Carolina’s vote may alienate Tinseltown. Given
the state’s loose-handed silver-screen subsidies, Hollywood staying
in California may prove a boon rather than a bust for North
Carolina.
