In March, Raul Riveros showed up for work on a Jonah Hill movie when he keeled over in pain and was promptly rushed to the emergency room. He had undergone several surgeries to repair hernias he suffered from lifting large carts containing monitors and computers, and now a mesh implant had become entangled with his intestines.
His recovery kept him out of work for months, during which his disability payments only covered a portion of what he could have earned. He and his wife had the sinking feeling that living in a costly city like Los Angeles no longer made sense.
“We wanted to slow down, go where the mortgage and car insurance was cheaper, where, if I needed to exit the film business, I could survive on getting a blue-collar job,” Mr. Riveros said.
Los Angeles had long been the center of his universe. It was where he was raised and where he met his wife, Suzette, back when she was a lead server at the Hard Rock Cafe. And it was, of course, a mecca for those in the film and television industry.
Mr. Riveros, 50, had managed to stitch together a career in Hollywood as a digital imaging technician, a position in which he helps refine camera footage to improve its appearance.
The work had come with unbelievable highs. The time he was filming in the middle of Red Square in Moscow with Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway. The time, on a break during production, he challenged Adam Sandler to a game of one-on-one on the Lakers’ home court. (“I had one of the best games of my entire life. I smoked him.”)
But it was also a gig economy. When one job ended, it was not clear when the next might appear. No matter how beloved a show was, it could be canceled in a heartbeat.
Mr. Riveros had enjoyed a stream of steady work not long ago, but in recent years found himself saddled with maxed-out credit cards and a lien on his house.
“I basically went from the highest of highs, and then it just completely went off a cliff,” he said.
With three daughters, he had begun to sense that any employment advantage from his location was eclipsed by the cost of his housing and living expenses.
So it happened that on a Sunday night, Mr. Riveros and his wife decided it was time to leave Los Angeles.
Two years earlier, Mr. Riveros had worked on the Netflix action-comedy series “Obliterated” in Albuquerque. The southwestern city of 560,000 appeared uncomplicated — cheap gas, quick commute, few crowds.
It seemed they could create a more manageable life in a state known as the Land of Enchantment. But that life would come at the risk of leaving behind Mr. Riveros’s connections and the epicenter of filmmaking.
‘Got Nothing for You’
It can be hard to muster much sympathy for Hollywood and those lucky enough to work within it. It still gives off a whisper of a golden age to those unfamiliar with its struggles.
But it is a deeply changed industry. Salaries have shrunk, as have the residuals. Streaming services, with their overwhelming choices, give the pretense of a lush field while budgets deflate.
The pandemic shut down productions and heightened the turmoil. Then, in 2023, the writers went on strike, followed by the actors. Around the same time, major studios whittled down their budgets as they pushed to turn a profit.
Movies and television shows are more frequently being farmed out to other cities that offer cheaper settings and better tax write-offs. And studios do not like paying to put up out-of-towners on location. Los Angeles, for many, has begun to feel less like an anchor to the industry and more like dead weight.
The depth of the crisis surfaced earlier this year. Applications for filming permits in Los Angeles approached a record low; informal polls on a popular Instagram page for crew members found that only about a third of people reported having steady work; the art directors guild suspended its mentoring and training program, because why bother?
Lately, even those with a vast network of contacts have found their job inquiries met with demoralizing responses: “Got nothing for you.” “I’m looking for work, too.”
The mantra about town has been, “Survive ’til ’25.” As in, things will (hopefully) get better next year. But for many, the hole has already been dug too deep. Pivoting sooner than later is a must.
The answer for some has been to head to other markets where productions are lured by the magic three: incentives, location and infrastructure.
A state that has them all is New Mexico, a place once seen as an unlikely Hollywood outpost until it became the backdrop for the AMC series “Breaking Bad” in 2008. Originally set in Riverside County in Southern California, the production was moved to the cheaper landscape of Albuquerque. A hit was born, tourists followed and officials recognized the value of having a long-running series on their turf.
State legislators eventually passed what was known as the “‘Breaking Bad’ bill,” a law that increased tax subsidies for those who chose to film in the state.
Producers like Albuquerque for its low cost and versatility. Yes, there are stunning panoramas of a sweeping desert, verdant fields of cottonwood trees and stately mountains. But it has also stood in for cities like Milwaukee and Boston. A building downtown with a porcelain facade became the view from a teahouse in Tehran. A desert plateau near the foothills was transformed into a yurt village in Mongolia.
“There’s a section of the town that’s old railroad housing, it looks like Anywhere, U.S.A.,” said Cyndy McCrossen, the film liaison for the city of Albuquerque, who tries to turn around film permits lightning fast. “So, you can get a variety of locations — it’s not just desert and adobe.”
It helps that it takes about 15 minutes to get from one side of town to the other. The city also offers four seasons and is relatively free from natural disasters.
Ms. McCrossen, who was once a film scout for “Breaking Bad,” has seen constant growth in sectors of the local economy that help support film and TV. The state’s incentives hinged on using local goods and services, which officials say led to production companies setting up brick-and-mortar businesses.
Film productions of “The Avengers” and “Sicario” and the television series “Stranger Things” were drawn to the Albuquerque area. Studios like Netflix established production hubs.
Industry hopefuls looking to put down roots have trickled in over the years.
“It’s always kind of been steady,” Ms. McCrossen said. “We get the knock on the door, the phone call, and I try to tell the folks, ‘It’s a lovely city, but maybe come check it out before you sell your house.’”
Mr. Riveros felt informed by the time he loaded the family into the minivan over the summer and roadtripped from Los Angeles to Albuquerque to meet with a real estate agent. It was the second week of July, and he and his wife ended up making an offer on a six-bedroom home in the Albuquerque metropolitan area listed for $635,000.
It was a steal compared with the four-bedroom home in their Los Angeles suburb that was put on the market for nearly $1.2 million. If all went well, Mr. Riveros figured, he could pay off the new mortgage in a couple of years.
While the family was at lunch, Mr. Riveros received a phone call from a friend with a question: Was he available to work on the Fox show “The Cleaning Lady”? It would film soon in Albuquerque.
“It was one of those moments where you know you’re on the right path and that kind of gave me the courage to leave L.A. — we were full speed ahead,” he said.
The New Kid in Town
The move came with an array of complications.
The old home would not sell, even as Mr. Riveros inched down the price. That left the couple unable to put a down payment on what they called their New Mexico dream house.
They moved in anyway, after negotiating with the owner to rent for the time being. But they soon received an ultimatum: Close the deal by the end of the year or get out. In the meantime, they were left with both a mortgage and rent — not exactly the relief they had expected.
“I can’t overthink it because then I’ll go crazy,” Mr. Riveros said.
By November, Suzette Riveros had stopped unpacking boxes, unsure of what the future held. The last few months, she said, she’d felt as if she had been in a cocoon.
“I feel like I’m healing from a traumatic experience,” she said. “I told my friends, ‘I might not be talking to you much right now.’ I’m focusing on my family.”
Ms. Riveros, 44, is the pillar of the home, accustomed to riding the mercurial wave of the industry. Her husband’s job has often required long out-of-town stints, leaving her alone with the children. Even if he was on location nearby, he usually left for work at dawn and shuffled in late at night, depending on the shooting schedule.
It is impossible for Ms. Riveros to manage a full-time job as she also home-schools their 8-year-old daughter, Sienna, who needs special attention and is on the autism spectrum.
They both had been all-in on Albuquerque. But the fragility of the industry had followed them. Production dwindled in every city. And Albuquerque was more saturated with competition than they expected.
A camera crew friend that Mr. Riveros had met earlier in Albuquerque greeted him this time with sobering news. Opportunities had dwindled even more since Mr. Riveros had worked in town. There were now about 200 union camera workers and not enough shows to employ them. The local union for below-the-line workers, which does not include camera crews, has about 2,000 members, with hundreds more on an overflow list.
“A lot of my L.A. friends have been bugging me about what it’s like — ‘Hey, should I come out?’” Mr. Riveros said. “And I tell them, You shouldn’t come out here unless you have an in on a gig, because there’s a lot of people out of work. No matter where you go, it seems like you’re losing.”
The night before he began shooting for “The Cleaning Lady,” Mr. Riveros had a restless sleep. He dreamed all his monitors were missing. “I had, like, first-day-of-school jitters,” he said.
When he showed up to set at a nearby soundstage, the cast and crew were good-natured and affable. Timothy Busfield, the actor, was directing the episode and cracked jokes all day. Mr. Riveros felt a thrill from finally earning a paycheck again, and settled in.
There was, however, a local crew member who bristled at his presence, wary of an outsider swooping into a crowded market.
Mr. Riveros had a Los Angeles pedigree and appeared to be a big fish in town. But even years of experience and an extensive network had not shielded him from a universal feeling.
“If there’s ever a time to not get fired,” he said, “it would be right now.”
Dipping Into His Pension
The charm of Albuquerque has helped soothe the couple’s worries. Their new surroundings are peaceful, accented by the striking Sandia Mountains in the distance. The annual hot air balloon festival was breathtaking, turning the sky into an enchanting canvas. Their daughters were delighted at the area’s first snowfall and quickly made friends at school.
And Mr. Riveros recently hosted a poker tournament at his home, inviting over some of his new colleagues. In some ways, it has been easier to build community in a smaller market like Albuquerque. His family spent Thanksgiving at the home of the show’s director of photography, where Mr. Busfield and Lou Diamond Phillips also showed up. And the holiday party hosted by the local union for its members was much more intimate than those he had been to in the past.
He still missed the energy and diversity of Los Angeles and the feeling of being in the heart of Hollywood. But he had left, he believed, just in time.
“It may get a little bit better, but it’s never going to be what it used to be,” he said.
The lingering question was whether Albuquerque could become what Los Angeles used to be. “My No. 1 fear is chasing the work to a place where the tax incentives dry up,” he said.
By mid-December, the house in California still had not sold. Mr. Riveros was hoping to be granted an extension on their current rental. Or see if his family could rent out their old home and purchase the new one. His résumé might help him qualify for another loan. In the meantime, he had dipped into his union pension to tide the family over.
He hopes he can line up another job. Production on his current show ends in March.
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