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In my previous Corrupt California article, ‘Gov. Newsom’s $750M Gift to Hollywood Donors’, I chronicled how California’s latest destroyer and aspiring presidential candidate is cutting costs and giving more cash to Hollywood.
California has a $68 billion deficit, and Gov. Newsom is proposing $375 million in budget cuts for the California State University system, $68 million in cuts for wildfire prevention (even as LA is recovering from the worst fires in history) and doubling Hollywood’s tax credits to $750 million
Hollywood, which already benefits from $350 million in breaks, will get $750 million in tax credits even as money is being cut from education, public safety and even wildfire prevention.
The entertainment industry would be able to recoup up to 35% of their spending, up from the current 20%, and the subsidies would cover everything from sitcoms to reality shows.
The California Production Coalition, whose members include the umbrella trade group for Disney, Amazon, Netflix, Sony, Universal and WBs, has a list of demands that include lifting the $100 million cap on expenses, and, even more controversially, “above the line” costs of salaries for movie stars, directors and other talent which can run into the tens of millions of dollars.
Hollywood figures think that still isn’t enough. They’d like even more taxpayer money. More and more.
The latest industry figure to whine about how little taxpayer money Hollywood gets is Ben Affleck.
Asked on the film’s red carpet Wednesday about California‘s film and TV tax incentive program, the actor-producer told AP that state officials “came to take this industry for granted a little bit.”
While Affleck acknowledged that Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed more than doubling the state’s present level of support from $330 million a year to around $750 million annually in fiscal 2025-2026, the actor observed that “the percentage of what you get back in terms of the actual budget doesn’t compete with places like England, which is why you see a lot of these big, huge movies shoot in the U.K.”
Affleck also rattled off a litany of other states that have “better exchange rates or tax rebate deals,” including Georgia, New Jersey and Louisiana.
Let them go film in the UK or Georgia.
Tax credits for movies don’t create nearly enough jobs in proportion to the cost. They’re done as
- a favor for special interests and donors
- a way to mingle with celebrities
- glamour and image
All of those are different ways of saying that they benefit politicians, not the people. All sorts of countries and states will hand out ridiculous tax credits to Hollywood, promising to build a “local film industry.” The only thing they ever build is tabs at local bars. Shooting in California is more expensive because of its cost of living issues. No amount of tax credits will fix that. Taxing the public to give the money to Hollywood to shoot locally will still run up against the hard realities of life in a state that everyone who isn’t Ben Affleck is being priced out of. And no amount of money will ever satisfy Hollywood anyway.
Should working people, already struggling, be subsidizing Ben Affleck?
The numbers, as I wrote, never add up.
Even the vastly inflated Hollywood estimates of jobs created and money spent is in the thousands (unless you also count their absurd numbers of ‘background performers’ or extras) compared to 130,000 truck drivers, whom California Democrats have been chasing out of the state, and over 4 million small businesses of which a third were shuttered by pandemic restrictions.
Gov. Newsom had no problem destroying all these businesses. He’s not giving Hollywood $750M to help create jobs. The amount of taxpayer money going to Ben Affleck should be zero.
Hollywood is not an NGO. If they can’t make a profit in a D state (because they all vote D), asking adults to save them from their own policies is just stupid. But they’re actors, so…
Affleck does make good movies. We have to give him credit for that. I think he grew up in Boston, though, so it’s a miracle he isn’t a retard.
Kirk Douglas made some good movies.
By the way, who is Ben Affleck?
To make good cinema, you must not have rejected poetry.
Ry Cooder Paris, Texas
Poetry is the essence of art, and without it there is no story.
So what is poetry?
Poetry is when you are able to write about the joy you feel when you look at your child.
Ry Cooder has done some good movie soundtracks.
“Southern Comfort” is a good movie and a good soundtrack. He did “Extreme Prejudice,” too.
Maybe they should try giving us better movies. I haven’t seen a movie made this century that I liked. Except one Jeff recommended, except it made me sad, because part of it was filmed in my former neighborhood, seeing sights I saw countless times, taking them for granted, but which I will never see again.
“Maybe they should try giving us better movies.”
The problem is that Gary Cooper is dead.
Do not forsake me, oh, my darling:
“Horizon: an American Saga” part one is really good. It’s on Netflix and it’s so good I watched it twice, even though it’s three hours long. Part two is finished but I haven’t found it yet. Maybe Netflix is teasing me. Kevin Costner is good in Westerns. He seems to have gotten a lot better with age, like Clint Eastwood.
Trust me, you’ll like it. I forget the other movie I recommended to you but I’m glad you liked it. “Gladiator” with Russell Crowe is great. Semi accurate historically but the story is so sweeping and grand with so many themes of classic storytelling you can’t help but love it. And it’s beautifully filmed. Ridley Scott is more than a bit PC but he’s a great director.
And watch “Memento” “The Proposition” and “The Catcher Was a Spy,” all with Guy Pierce in them. Boy is that guy a good actor. Those Aussie actors seem to blow the doors off the American ones. “Memento” is very weird but by the end of the movie all is revealed. Paul Rudd is the star of the Catcher movie set in WWII based on real events. He’s a likable guy. And Greenfield would like him because he’s a member of the tribe, LOL!
The Christopher Nolan Batman movies are fun, too. All three are on Netflix right now.
If they would make any more other then some stupid Heist Movies(Hurricane Heist, Dead Presidents)or something without Leftists Liberal Propaganda just remember last years biggest film was THE SOUND OF FREEDOM(Ignored by the Rigged Oscars)then maybe we would go back into the Theaters again like they did when Star Wars came out in 1977
The Sound of Freedom” is great. It’s Mexican director, Alejandro Monteverde, who looks like a leading man, also made “Cabrini,” which is also excellent.
The two “Extraction” movies with Chris Hemsworth are great and so is “The Equalizer 3” with Denzel Washington. Action movies done right. “Land of Bad” with Hemsworth’s brother Liam is great. It’s on Netflix buried under all the crap, but it’s there.
Paul Newman made good movies.
Tom Hanks makes good movies.
Alfred Hitchcock made great movies.
Ben Affleck❓—–> 🌽, 🧀, 🫘 …
“Argo,” “The Town,” “Gone Girl” and especially “Triple Frontier” are all great.
Argo. Rhymes with Clutch Cargo.
The story behind Argo is great. The film is ….ok I guess
Watch “Triple Frontier.”
Affleck dies in it so you’ll probably like it.
Producing a product that people will pay to see should be the imperative. No customers no money.
If Hollywood can’t make enough of a profit to support itself that’s not our problem.
Is there any hope that the once beautiful state of California will some day excise the blighted cities on its Pacific Coast and regain freedom for occupants to enjoy the weather, the scenery, and the natural benefits of that state?
It seems that all momentum opposes recovery. The businesses that once provided a good living for employees are hamstrung either by regulation or by boneheaded leaders. The government is run by lobbyists and tax-grubbing special interests. And the importation of millions of foreigners to do low-cost labor has vitiated the middle class.
Alas, there seems to be no improvement on the horizon.
I don’t see how Californians can get it from under the D-Bags.
There’s a Tsunami every 500 years or 1000 years or so that wipes out formerly beautiful coastal cities like San Francisco. I figure that’s why God moved me inland (well, one of the reasons 🙂
The last Tsunami was probably shortly before the Spanish arrived which is probably why there is no record of it.
It’s the earthquakes which will get me. I live on the fifth floor in San Jose fault city. Why did I ever move here?
I think about that sometimes. I’m old but I don’t want to die. I actually like my dissipated retired life. Of course, I was even worse when I was young…….
Ben Affleck is not in the cinema; he is outside the cinema. Buster Keaton is in the cinema.
Afflec is your typical arrogant show biz stooge who thinks his line of work gives him special privileges. But he is right about one thing. The movie business makes up a significant sector of the LA work force. However, they live all over LA County and beyond. And as long as they’re getting paid, they have little interest in the politics of Hollywood, which is not a city, but merely a neighborhood of the greater LA County.
Who isn’t arrogant in the art world? That’s not the problem. The problem is that American cinema is dead. And it died not because of any arrogance, it died because it forgot that it is nothing without poetry.
Give Hollyweird more money? Is that fruit loop for real? Hey numbnuts, get a real job you worthless lazy phuque!
Your industry took us for granted, Ben. You fed us hatred, violence, perversion, pedophilia, evil, abhorrent
belief. Our communities are immersed with vile filth. Hollywood’s incarnation of “entertainment” can die a slow and agonizing death in my estimation. Poison is poison whether it is seen, heard, tasted, breathed or consumed. Hollywood supplies a slow and agonizing death that most certainly is final and inescapable.
If people only knew the extent of the perversity and deviancy that goes on in Hollyweird. There are no normal people in that industry and anyone who thinks otherwise is as naive as a 10 year old.
The so-called casting couch has been around since the beginning of the movie industry and many of the biggest names in the industry then and now were and are notorious homosexuals, lesbians, pedophiles, womanizers and Jezebels.
The entertainment industry has a well earned reputation for attracting those types of people. It’s the old “birds of a feather flock together” thing. Ben Affleck was once married to Jennifer Lopez. A well known entertainment industry harlot who screwed her way to success in Hollyweird. Kim Kardashian is a shameless (and talentless) entertainment industry whore and has a lower “body count” than “J-Lo.”
It’s said that if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything. With that in mind, Ben Affleck would be wise to keep his semi-illiterate yap shout and his asinine opinions to himself. Better to let people think he’s a stupid than open his mouth and confirm it.
I have an IDEA!! Why don’t all those MULTI-MILLIONAIRES take a PAY CUT so the “little people” can make a decent living and produce MORE movies?? Oh, and try to make movies that people other than insane leftists want to watch – try not to disrespect over half of the Nation!
The free enterprise system created Hollywood. The free enterprise system requires Hollywood to compete with the rest of the world. If it cannot, it will fail. If it can only compete with government money sucked out of the taxpayers who are also the customers, it will also die with the freedom behind its creation and become a government agency.