That was Friday night, but here's a headline that appeared in the London Times earlier the same day: "Why Hollywood could be the new Detroit/It’s a town built on one industry. So what happens when everyone realises it’s cheaper and easier to film in Hertfordshire?"
So you can see the need to "shit" on Detroit. It's a city with one iconic industry, and it lost it and went into severe decline. It pithily expresses the threat to L.A.
In that Bill Maher/"Overtime" clip, Adam Schiff says that because the movie industry is a "prize economic and cultural driver of the United States" — and he loves movies — the U.S. needs to offer tax incentives.
In that Bill Maher/"Overtime" clip, Adam Schiff says that because the movie industry is a "prize economic and cultural driver of the United States" — and he loves movies — the U.S. needs to offer tax incentives.
The other guest, Bret Stephens asks: "But why should it just be for Hollywood? It should be for normal people. It should be for any kind of entrepreneur, not just celebrities... whose pictures and whose faces you know.... It shouldn't just simply be a favorite industry — Oh, we can't lose our our movie stars!"
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73 comments:
serious Question:
does anyone know of any film or tv productions STILL made in California?
I can't think of any..
Most things are made in Canada or Georgia.
My cousin is a hairstylist for Hollywood, she's done hair Oscar winners..
She Lives in Atlanta
"So you can see the need to "shit" on Detroit. It's a city with one iconic industry, and it lost it and went into severe decline."
Democrat mayors and Democrat influence from Lansing are what lost Detroit. And those Winters (Nov. to April).
Clint Eastwood made Gran Torino in Detroit and surrounding areas.
News to Adam Schiff, other states are offering tax incentives.
The UAW helped lose Detroit. The car engineering centers are still in Detroit. The manufacturing plants are what got closed down. There are now an only a small fraction of the number of assembly plants and supply chain manufacturing plants in Detroit and outskirts, than there used to be. And the plants were the blue collar jobs that went away, not college educated engineering jobs, which mostly remained.
“Frankenstein, Part II” will be shot in England. Emily Blunt and Hugh Jackman will star.
Schiff is just shilling for his peeps.
One of Mahr's best shows. He got Adam Schiff to admit on Democrat air that Democrats are assholes.
Our youngest, before he returned to college, was in the TV/movie gig industry. He was doing pretty well in Birmingham, Alabama of all places. If he had continued he would have moved to Atlanta where business is booming.
One issue with California, besides the tax issue is the limits on gig workers. California makes it almost impossible to do those jobs as a career.
Now layer on onerous union rules...
California leads the way.... down.
It won't help if they keep churning out shit.
Hollywood is a money and propaganda machine for the Dems. They don't want to lose that. Maybe it would be better for the industry if it was more geographically, culturally and politically diverse, but it wouldn't be better for the Democrats.
Detroit's new elevated rapid transit in 1980 was immediately dubbed "the mugger mover" by JP McCarthy on WJR, which used to be an area premier radio station and is now low powered junk.
Schiff sounds like Newsom here. They both point out long term problems in California. They bemoan the problems. They even give lip service to real (largely conservative) solutions. Like, hey, we have a housing shortage. I know my NEW idea is to build housing. But 1) they NEVER take responsibility for their decades of contributing to the problem, and 2) they never do things to change the way California is committing slow motion suicide.
They even give lip service to real (largely conservative) solutions.
How is States subsidizing the film industry a "largely conservative" solution?
Bullschiff and Stephen’s… Together Again!
Movie and TV production has become big business in and around Atlanta. Most of it is south of the city center, with the biggest operation, Trilith Studios,in suburban Fayette County. It was originally Pinewood Studios Atlanta, a joint venture of Pinewood Studios in England and a Cathy family trust. The Cathy's founded and own Chick-fil-a. They bought out Pinewood and expanded the facility, which now includes an adjacent town with hotels, retail, and restaurants. Disney uses it a lot, I think all the Marvel series of movies are made there, but many other movie makers use it as well. Tyler Perry acquired the Ft. McPherson property in Atlanta after it was closed by the Army and built an entirely new studio there except for the parts that remain on the National Register (the old HQ, parade grounds, staff housing, old hospital, and barracks). Some of the final seasons of "Walking Dead" were filmed there. My wife and I recognized many of the locations because she lived there when we were in high school. But moviemaking takes place all around the Atlanta area. "Ozark" on Netflix was filmed on lakes Lanier and Altoona north of Atlanta, not far from where we live now, not in the Ozarks. She has not done it lately but I believe my sister has appeared as an extra in a crowd in several TV or movie productions.
Hollyweird Vampire
suicidal death spiral
a Thing to behold
"Bill Maher snaps, "Well, there's no need to shit on Detroit in the question! Detroit's a fine city. Detroit!"...
No, Bill. Detroit was a fine city - before policy makers decided it would be best to export manufacturing labor elsewhere, and Detroit collapsed under the weight and expense of relentless Progressive Democrat leadership, into the dry rubble it is today. While this prominent Progressive Democrat pencil neck bemoans its condition, and then looks around to see if he can spot who did it, and is confused about who is busily doing it to his home state.
They forgot one party democrat rule.
Adam Schiff and Bret Stephens. Was it slime-ball night?
Chick-Fil-A started out as the Dwarfhouse. It was fueled by airport workers and others involved in aviation. We used to run somebody over from Dixie Bag to pick up sandwiches. It was there a long time before they opened up a place on Tara Boulevard And now they bought out PINEWOOD Studios. Shoulda held onto my house a couple more years.
Also Mountaiman, I believe Perry bought Shannon Mall, razed it and built a complex of studios right there.
I've lived in Metro Detroit since 86. All I can say is Detroit is improved greatly in the last 10 years, and mayor Duggan has been a godsend. That being said it's still got another 20 years to go until it's holistically better
As a native Detroiter who hasn't actually lived in Michigan in about 40 years but still wears a Lions hat every day, I look forward to the day when Detroit finally climbs back out of the bowl of lazy examples to offer up of failed cities. C'mon now. We've got so many other, more current cities that are far more exciting who are watching their productive population leave, or want to leave. Cities where they actually have governmental offices charged with monitoring and picking up the human feces from the streets. Or others that specialize in aiding homeless addicts- not by giving them shelter and help to quit their addiction, but by giving them regular payments of cash AND utensils to do more drugs.
By these comparisons, Detroit is outright enlightened. (PS- the downtown of Detroit is making a serious comeback. Just not sure how many generations it'll take to get back to the 2 million it once had living inside the city limits versus the 600,000 or so that live there now.)
Hollywood is making movies all over the place now. And frankly, given the state of the scripts that get green lighted, and the array of awful actors, there's not much to bring adults back into the theaters. Taxes in California are one thing. Quality of the product is an entirely other thing.
California is such an awful place to do business I am sure, if they were not so entrenched, physically, financially, and personnel-wise, the tech giants of Silicon Valley would have left CA by now. They're keeping the state afloat as is by the tax revenue they represent.
There in not a more loathsome f*ckhead in our government than Adam Schitt.(D)
F* him. F*ing liar.
Maher must be feeling the heat. Better slide back into full bloom leftist ball sucking - or big trouble ahead for you buddy. Calling you a Nazi is just for starters.
Hollywood sucks because they do not know how to make anything original anymore.
Movies are vapid.
Pittsburgh was a one industry town, but they found a way to adjust. There's every reason to shit on Detroit. Within a generation, a great city collapsed. I think Coleman Young might have something to do with it, but only the mistakes of auto execs can be mentioned.
“Adam Schiff says that because the movie industry is a "prize economic and cultural driver of the United States" — and he loves movies — the U.S. needs to offer tax incentives.“
No, no, it does not. Hollywood’s going through a correction. It needs to live or die by its own hand.
Clues a Hollywood movie will suck:
• Cigarettes as props to "be cool"
• Too much swearing and foul language (I should talk)
• Too much reliance on CGI
• Vapid &/or angry dialog
• Super-hero Redux
• Poorly made sequels... built purely for the dedicated fan who will endure/ pay for any amount of crap.
• Woke and leftist gender studies
• Climate change fear-mongering cultism
• Leftist lectures/ male-hate/White male-hate/ racism/ Christian values hate
• Leftist virtue signaling
• Lack of creative stories and lack of uplifting stories
• Full saturation of lame genre: super-hero/ dark dreck.
• more cigarette props.
If only everyone had a tax break! Wait - we thought tax breaks were bad? Oligarchy!
How are tax breaks for SoCal movie studios to incentivize people making movies in Hollywood different from tariffs on foreign goods to incentivize manufacturing things in America?
Bret Stephens and Adam Schiff- Bed Bug and Dung Beetle.
Sam Raimi filmed Oz The Great And Powerful in a former GM truck facility in Pontiac MI.
A Detroit hometown genius.
Peachy @9:11AM…
When you’re right, YOU. ARE. RIGHT.
When life hands you lemons.... Why not a movie about an out of work Hollywood actor, recently divorced, who still pretends to be heading to the studio every day? His Tesla is vandalized, and he's forced to walk, filled with rage at everyone in his path? I understand Michael Douglas is free, but we could go for a feminist angle, maybe Markle?
With all the rock-bottom cheap housing, Detroit was going to be the new Brooklyn, a mecca for artist and other "creatives." Did that not happen yet? Or are artists not much of a plus for cities?
It seemed like most of the shows we used to watch when we had cable were filmed in Canada or in the South: Georgia, Virginia, Louisiana, or the Carolinas. Now without cable, I watch mostly foreign stuff. If LA's in trouble, maybe it's time to go back to making airplanes, or bite the bullet and build a few new refineries.
To manage a city, you need to be Machiavellian. That's why John Lindsay was such a disaster in New York. Chicago and Pittsburgh were able to make transitions because the Daley machine and Pittsburgh's industrialists were hard-headed realists. I suppose Coleman Young was also Machiavellian but in a way that hurt the city, rather than helped.
I live in Georgia. I'm not crazy about state subsidies for movie production, even though my daughter-in-law works in video/TV/movie production. The most obnoxious aspect of the system, to me, is that the state gives taxpayer money to Hollywood-based producers who then turn around and threaten to 'boycott' Georgia or move production somewhere else unless state laws (limits on abortion, mostly it seems) are changed to suit their tastes. The 'stick' in this power play is the threat that Georgians will lose their jobs.
(To be fair, Delta Air Lines joins in these demonstrations, even though there is no possible way they could move their operations or physical plant out of the state. But they put on a show.)
The funny thing is that Cocaine Bear was set in Georgia but filmed in Wicklow, Ireland. Ireland must have great tax incentives.
The Democrats are control freaks and puritans that movie directors hate. California's government has become a modern day Edison Trust that movie makers are fleeing from.
Hollywood is killing itself just as California is. Most of the rest of us don't care, because they don't care about us.
Yes, Hollywood was a cultural driver of the US, and therefore, the world. That was cool forty years ago. Hollywood has ramped up it's depravity, and most of the rest of us, in America and the world, are not fond of what they produce.
Consumers are moving away from movies and TV for entertainment, and movies and TV are moving away from Hollywood as a production location.
Nobody is coming to save Hollywood.
Bret Stephens is correct. If they want to turn California around, it can't be just for the movie industry. These pundits won't take responsibility for the damage they've done to the state.
So we have balanced discussion between a Leftwing Trump hating Jew , a Neo-con trump hating Jew, and a Leftwing Jew who dislikes Trump but had dinner with him. Wow, fascinating. And diverse!
As for Hollywood and Detroit. People don't want to talk about the real reason Detroit is a dump. It wasn't because the Auto Industry moved production elsewhere. And LA is a lot more than Hollywood. Well to do people from all over the world want to live there. Its just like SF Bay area. Only with less Fog.
Given the type of people who run Hollywood, I wouldn't want them in my town. So, stay in LA guys!
Hollywood was riding high when industrial plants were closing down and production was being outsourced. Movie folk weren't much concerned with deindustrialization. We had entertainment, tech, and finance. What could go wrong? Now, offshoring comes for the movie industry.
Bill Maher is sort of the poor man's Dick Cavett. But that's okay. We don't take the kind of people Cavett had on his show as seriously as we once did. Compare what we might have thought of a US Senator and an NYT columnist 50 years ago with Schiff and Stephens today. It's clown world all the way down. Was it always that way and we're just realizing it now?
Adam Schitt(D) is a toxic liar.
That anyone would have him on ANY show - is a complete disgrace.
In the 1950’s Detroit was the richest city in the US. There is a lot of ruin in a big city, but eventually bad policy triumphs.
I'm originally from southern California and in all the time I was there, I never knew anyone involved in "show business". In 35 years, I don't remember ever thinking of or being concerned about what might be going on in Hollywood. If any of my family or friends were, they never said anything to me about it.
Except for those whose lives/jobs would be directly impacted, I find it hard to imagine that its [Hollywood's] disappearance would matter to anybody in SoCal.
I've lived in Los Angeles since 1976. When I arrived, it was explained to me that, during the 1940s, LA County had more agricultural output than any other county in the US. By 1976, agriculture was gone. Since 1976, Los Angeles has managed to lose aerospace, home construction, insurance, oil, banking, and a big percentage of its manufacturing. For retention of the entertainment business, tax incentives won't work because so many other cities, states, and nations want a piece of the entertainment business. And your income is going to be taxed heavily, your purchases are going to be taxed heavily, you are going to deal with heavy regulatory burdens, public schools will be bad, housing costs will be high, labor unions run the place, corruption is real, and you are going to live in a social milieu that is transitioning from midwestern high trust values to urban low trust values. But it's still a beautiful place with outstanding weather.
LA will never be Detroit. Not enough Negroes.
One industry town?
Didn't used to be.
Per Grok, in the late 50s over 100,000 people were employed in the LA area just in Aerospace. Almost 50m just at Douglas (now Boeing)
Movie & TV employed 10-20m
John Henry
"Bret Stephens asks: "But why should it just be for Hollywood?"
Bret Stephens, who once pretended to be a conservative, wants tax subsidies for literally everyone.
The sooner we lose them, the better off we will be
Of course, Detroit's story is so dystopically non-PC that to even mention the statistics is to flirt with accustions of racism. I will flirt anyway. In 1950, Detroit had a population of 1.85 million, of whom people of pallor constituted 83.6%. By 2020, its population had declined 60% to 639,000, and white people were 9.5% of the population. It is no wonder that our wise and just Democratic leaders would prefer that we avert our gaze from the fate of solidly Democratic Detroit.
The last Republican mayor of Detroit was Louis Miriani. His term ended in 1962.
"Bret Stephens asks: "But why should it just be for Hollywood?"
Bret Stephens, who once pretended to be a conservative, wants tax subsidies for literally everyone.
So, he wants to cut taxes? And that isn't conservative?
Darkisland said...
in the late 50s over 100,000 people were employed in the LA area just in Aerospace..
Yep! between
Aerospace industries
USAF bases
Army bases
Marine bases
Navy bases
California USED TO BE, an ACTUAL one company town..
That was back when it was a reliable red state.
What do people in Cali DO, now?
There's SOME people in Silicon Valley (not that many, percentage wise)..
There are STILL some Navy and Marines (NOT MANY!)
But what about the other FORTY MILLION People?
what do THEY do? oh, that's right; they're
homeless
illegal
welfare recipients
What a GREAT STATE! Coming SOON, to a state NEAR YOU!
Quite a bit is still filmed in L.A. - NCIS and both 911s are/were. But one irony is that Cobra Kai the Youtube/Netflix Karate Kid sequel series used Atlanta to substitute for...the San Fernando Valley.
Los Angeles is in the process of getting reconkeisterd.
L.A. is definitely in the process of getting keistered, not that there is anything wrong with that.
A WSJ/NYT Libertardian pundit and a Democratic™ sociopath.
Both from special tribe of people too. Fuck em both. Good & hard.
"Take him to ...Detroit!" - Dr. Klahn in Kentucky Fried Movie
Having lived and run a business in L.A. for decades, I can tell you that L.A. is not Hollywood. Hollywood is a highly visible, but small and shrinking industry and tourist attraction. Most don't realize that L.A. is really a highly industrialized city. Imported materials and components first hit the nation there, and thus make it ideal for industries. The government has become a huge impediment to them all, but before that happened it had already grown into a huge industrial base. In L.A. you can find multiple sources for any material, product, or service you can imagine. Most cities don't have that.
Adam Schiff recognizes tax incentives. For his state only, of course. What a fraud.
Ninety percent of what I watch comes out of South Korea or China. Hollywood could cease to exist, and I would barely notice.
Peachy @9:11AM…
When you’re right, YOU. ARE. RIGHT.
I love it when a testy old broad uses the term ball sucking. Quite lovely, really…
If tax incentives are good for the film industry they’re good for every industry…
I don’t want Los Angeles to be Detroit. It needs to be Atlantis. A city of fable and myth and doesn’t exist (anymore).
California: Love it or leave it.
The left are prepared to subsidise Hollywood not because it generates profits, but because it controls the narrative.
This is what happens when your new Senator / former House member lives in Maryland while claiming to represent California. Not only is Schiff a liar he is defrauding the voters of California and should be expelled from the Senate.
Making movies is a 20th century thing, just like making cars. For LA to thrive, it has to latch on to a 21st century industry.
The story of Detroit is absolutely not what is generally believed. Detroit started shrinking after the 1950 census, and experienced some of its worst declines during the domestic auto-industries strongest years -- the infamous Detroit riots that had a major impact of the future of the city happened in 1967. And the metro area as a whole has not shrunk, nor has the auto-industry ceased to be a major industry in SE Michigan. If the film industry abandons Southern California, that will be much different than SE Michigan, where the industry mostly just moved out of the core city. But basically, the problems of the city of Detroit are largely independent of the various ups and downs of the auto industry. Factories DID leave the city -- but factories moved out of every big city everywhere (including Chicago and New York). Blue collar workers living in neighborhoods surrounding a multi-story urban factory was an antiquated model by the middle of the 20th century. NYC, Chicago, and other cities had much more successful transitions to services-based economies than did Detroit. But NO big city in the US remained successful because it maintained its original big industrial base.
Here in Georgia, idiot legislators of our crooked, now-dead GOP Speaker's mafia, hand-in-hand with Democrat urban legislators, handed out tax credits so large that movie studios sold them to each other because the free money often exceeded production costs. They shipped in workers rather than create many promised jobs for Georgians. The minute the money pot of tax credits -- free money handed to them, not lowering taxes -- began to empty, they did precisely what the movie industry did to other states that had similarly showered them with free money: they began to move productions out of the state, leaving us with useless film production departments at our universities, students with massive debt and broken promises of work, vast financial losses, and a lot of lies from everyone involved. Before Georgia, they did the same to at least North Carolina, Louisana, and South Carolina. So, all you folks talking about our great movie industry, prepare to be very disappointed.
They didn't call it Day of the Locust for nuthin.
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