Hollywood South

In 1896, William “Pop” Rock opened Vitascope Hall, the first movie house in the United States, to start the era of mass film exhibition in the United States. Located on Canal Street, New Orleans, the theater was short lived but led to a renaissance of nickelodeons and movie houses up and down the street. Showing five-minute reels rented from local distributors, the first film economy in the city was based on the growth of the exhibition venues.

In New Orleans, two exhibitors, Josiah Pearce and Sons and Herman Fichtenberg, dominated the local market. There were a variety of distribution licensors and equipment rental companies as well, including Metro and Consolidated Supply Company.

In this time of wildcat speculation, several attempts were made to establish film studios in the city. The first prominent producers, including Selig, Howe, Lubin, Lasky, and Kalem, were drawn to the city in order to establish winter quarters away from the central shooting locations in New York and Chicago. A number of homegrown companies also sprung up. The most prominent operations, Nola Film and Diamond Film, went bankrupt due to the lack of national distribution networks as well as questionable business practices.

By 1920, Hollywood had become the media capital of the U.S. as well as much of the globe. New Orleans declined as a theater capital as production and distribution companies clustered in Southern California.

After failing to start its own indigenous film economy, Louisiana continues to figure prominently into Hollywood films. From the golden age of film, through the introduction of television, cable TV, and then the Internet, Louisiana becomes used primarily as a filmic place. In films ranging from _A Streetcar Named Desire_, _King Creole_, _Easy Rider_, and even _Abbott and Costello Go to Mars_ (they go to carnival in New Orleans), the city of New Orleans figures prominently as a character in the film narrative.

In the clips below, New Orleans as a film character is usually caught between binaries that represent New Orleans as the opposite of “American,” unable to be assimilated into the rest of U.S. history and culture. Sometimes portrayed as the traditional Old South and other times as the exotic Caribbean, New Orleans in Hollywood films was always more/less traditional and more/less exotic than elsewhere.

At this time, local municipalities were known to provide incentives to major film producers, but there was little concerted effort to create a standardized incentive package for production.

The beginnings of film tax incentives came from two directions. On one hand, Louisiana policymakers wanted a film industry to boost the economy in the region, which had suffered over the past 30 years from the flight of jobs in manufacturing, oil, and shipping industries. On the other hand, film companies looked to locations outside of California where production budgets could be reduced. Louisiana looked at the policies driving Hollywood production to British Columbia, Canada, and decided to devise their own homegrown policy. Vancouver, which was known as “Hollywood North,” would now compete with New Orleans as “Hollywood South.”

In the first iteration of the policy in 2002, policymakers constructed the film industry as a special category of economic driver, one that would perfectly harmonize the cultural recognition of the region with its economic revitalization. Every two years, the policy has been revised and extended. See the link below for the current provisions of the law. In 2012, the “temporary” policy was extended permanently and encompassed virtually every industry involved in the production of entertainment.

The state incentives cost some $170 million in lost tax revenues in 2010. This money comes from a state that is perpetually strapped with budget shortfalls. The report by the Louisiana State Budget Office has claimed that each job created by the incentives cost some $60,000 in taxpayer revenue.

The debate over Hollywood South often pivots on the idea of how jobs are created. What is less clear is how many jobs and what kinds of jobs are created by location film production.

The context for this debate is the decline of film production jobs in Hollywood over the past 50 years. Some reasons for the decline are the reduction of overall film studio budgets, placing more burden on independent production houses to raise their own capital. In addition, new technologies and offshore competition in technological specializations (such as animation) have put downward pressure on both numbers of contracted employees and wages. The control of labor costs are a major part of any production’s overall budget, some 85% of the total expenditures, so Hollywood producers look to Louisiana location shooting to help make their bottom line with less resources.

In Louisiana, both the state and the major labor union for film, the International Association of Theatrical and Stage Employees, say that tax incentives have successfully brought new jobs to the state and have created a new workforce, particularly in the film trades (also called “below-the-line” work), such as electrical, set construction, and lighting. Further policy boosters say that there are residual positive impacts on local service and tourism economies, though it is unclear how this can be factored into job growth. Finally, critics of the policy say that most film jobs are increasingly based on a precarious workforce that must be both mobile and flexible in terms of their employment, with less guarantees of stable work or benefits. In others words, they say these jobs are ephemeral when tied to incentives; they will disappear when the incentives do.

How has the new political economy for film production in the region impacted local culture and representations of the region? Although the incentive policy began in 2002, leading to the filming of _Ray_ and _The Curious Case of Benjamin Button_, the boom of film productions has made this question more pressing in the years since New Orleans flooded in 2005.

Unlike in previous periods, the storylines in most films shot in New Orleans have no connection to the region. Blockbusters, such as _Planet of the Apes_ or _The Green Lantern_, use the city as a backdrop for a generic urban environment, transforming the landscape with set design and special effects. In many productions, New Orleans actually stands in for another U.S. city, such as Memphis or New York.

However, post-disaster recovery has been directly invoked in some film and television narratives. Many talk shows and reality programs since 2006 have landed in New Orleans to assist in home rebuilding, the provision of basic supplies, animal recovery efforts, and the “makeovers” of public spaces. These programs remind national audiences of the disaster and suggest private solutions to what has been a failure of public agencies and services. Some fictional film and TV productions have also promoted the city’s recovery. Although the television series _K-Ville_ was widely panned by television critics for its lack of realism, the program’s producers made public overtures that filming in the city would help boost the recovery efforts through its local investment.

In 2010, _Treme_ received critical praise and public accolades for its authentic and realistic portrayal of life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Director David Simon, producer Eric Obermyer, and a star-studded cast received regular press coverage both for their economic investment over four years and their sustained coverage of cultural production in the city, in particular music, food, and public culture. Public screenings and donations, charity events to support local musicians, and local hires have contributed to the series’ aura as a “positive” contribution of the film economy to the city.

What do you think?

Here are a list of readings to help students learn about local production in the context of a global film and media economy.

Doris Baltruschat (2010), Global Media Ecologies: Networked Production in Film and Television, London: Routledge.

Arlene Dávila (2012), Culture Works: Space, Value, and Mobility Across the Neoliberal Americas, New York: NYU Press.

Allen J. Scott (2009), On Hollywood: The Place, The Industry, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner, Eds. (2011), Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique, London: Routledge.

Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, Ting Wang, Richard Maxwell (2008), Global Hollywood: No. 2, London: BFI.

Greg Elmer and Mike Gasher, Eds. (2005), Contracting Out Hollywood: Runaway Productions and Foreign Location Shooting, Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield.

Susan Christopherson and Jennifer Clark (2009), Remaking Regional Economies: Power, Labor and Firm Strategies in the Knowledge Economy, New York: Routledge.