Hollywood needs better tax incentives, more solidarity from the stars and greater openness to new faces, if it is to survive and may yet be scuppered by algorithms and Silicon Valley.
This was the conclusion of a group of veteran L.A.-based producers exploring Hollywood’s future at the producer-focused AVP Summit in northern Italy this week.
“We all came here in our 20s. We all made our mark in entertainment, and we’ve seen Hollywood go from what was clearly the entertainment capital of the world to a city as the crossroads,” commented Primal Fear, Million Dollar Baby and Underworld producer Gary Lucchesi as he opened the debate.
The former Paramount Pictures President of Production and Lakeshore President was joined on stage by ex-HBO Films President Len Amato, who now produces under the banner of Crash&Salvage; The Fisher King and Erin Brockovich producer Stacey Sher; Lori McCreary, CEO of Morgan Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment, and Mike Farah, former CEO of online comedy site Funny or Die who has recently branched out as an independent producer.
“One thing is clear for all five of us, and I think I speak for all producers in Hollywood, is that we love that city; we love going to the studios, there’s something sacred about walking through the gates of Paramount, or Warner Brothers, Sony, Fox or Disney. You feel like you’re in this special environment,” said Lucchesi.
Sher acknowledged that it was not the first time Hollywood had faced challenges but suggested that the headwinds were different this time around.
“One of the things we have to look at is… Gary spoke about the sacred ground of the lots…and it’s something we’re looking at in all industries, we lost a sense of community,” she said.
“Everybody used to be on the lot together. We had a kind of water cooler environment where filmmakers, writers, directors, actors and executives were all overlapping.”
The pandemic had accelerated the move away from face-to-face collaboration at the same time as ownership of the film and TV businesses was also changing hands, she continued.
“It’s not an industry that’s run by people whose main business is entertainment, film and television anymore, and I think that’s a big change,” she said.
Amato suggested Hollywood’s current malaise was similar to that of the 1950s and 60s, with the event of TV, which had been resolved by the entry of the so-called “movie brats” led by the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
“There were a bunch of old guys running studios, the projects were bloated spectacles and it took a group, it’s now the old guard, but it took a group to come in and change Hollywood and invigorate everything, but the only reason they were able to do it was because the studios were desperate and afraid, because they were losing their audiences,” he said.
“It was based on the fear of the studio heads. It forced them to take creative chances, chances on new faces and new stories… the dramas, the comedies that were made were about taboo subjects; they were brilliant and funny, and there was emotional connection.
“I feel like we’re in a place that’s a little similar and a big problem that I would just put out there is that a lot is fear-based. Yes, there’s the corporatization and the mergers… the bottom line… but it’s really more about fear and as Stacey said, you don’t have content people, movie people, TV people, wherever you want to call them, running the show, pulling the levers of power, and then you have companies that it’s not even in their main business.”
Sher added that another challenge was the fragmentation of the audience.
“We lived in a monoculture when the ‘film brats’ took over the industry. Everybody gathered around the TV to watch the same thing,” said the veteran producer.
She added that while A24 had managed to federate a certain twenty-something crowd and Sinners had been a film that people felt they had to see to be part of the conversation, these “water cooler” moments were on the wane.
“It used to happen every weekend. Jaws turned 50 this year and that was obviously a huge change as the first blockbuster… but every weekend three movies would open that you had to see, or you weren’t part of the discussion on Monday. And now people are saying, ‘Did you see MrBeast?” she said.
Farah – who spearheaded a number of TV shows and features with roots in the digital space while at Funny or Die, including Brockmire and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story – countered that not all online influencer-talents were suited to the more in-depth story telling required for film and TV.
“Is there a point where someone’s pursuit to have an individual brand is actually more important to them than telling an original story, given that to them, they are the original story… we should never forget how hard it is to do this, to develop and produce a story that is great,” he said, also suggesting that online influencer content could end up changing storytelling in the longer term.
Sher also noted that promising new faces continue to emerge in the filmmaking world, pointing to the success of French director Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance last year.
“We had a film nominated for best picture which was dropped by Focus and picked up by a company, Mubi, that wasn’t on anyone’s radar, that grossed over $100 million globally, and not just because it’s a horror movie,” she said.
“As Gary said, people have been writing the obituary. We went went through it in the 90s, I was one of the producers of Pulp Fiction and that ushered another wave of cinema, as did Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape… So new voices are the thing that renew us. The hope is that they continue to have an outlet, and I think international cinema has been supporting new voices, which is why so many of the filmmakers crossing over are coming from the rest of the world.”
Lucchesi replied that he, like most producers, would love to work with new faces but that this was easier said than done.
“Every one of us on the stage would love to support young filmmakers… which takes us back to Hollywood at a crossroads. We’ve got six studios. Half of them empty, none of them are making feature films. Minecraft was made in New Zealand. Superman was made in Cincinnati, Cleveland and Atlanta. They’re not making in Los Angeles so how do we create an environment where young filmmakers can be in Los Angeles at those great studios making movies. Is there going to be a corporate world that is going to support the next De Sica or Rossellini?” he asked.
Amato suggested it would take “somebody having the courage to not make that super-hero movie” and then use budget and marketing budget to make 10 movies,’ at a price point where that could turn a profit.
The discussion inevitably also touched on the role of tax incentives. The panelists welcomed California’s move to more than double the annual incentive funding to $750M, but said the state’s Film & TV Tax Credit program needed further bolstering.
“We all know that California just passed a $750M incentive, but we also all know that Texas passed a $2B incentive, and I wouldn’t contend that Texas is a state known for film and television as much as California,” said Lucchesi.
He asked McCreary, who was on the committee that helped broker the bolstered California support, for her thoughts on the situation.
“It’s hard when you have an industry to understand what it means to lose it, until you completely lose it. It’s not completely lost but it’s on the way so this a a big step up but, like you said, it should be twice as much,” she said, adding that more needed to be done “to market” the reason for the incentives.
“We really need to help Californians understand that this is not a means to give Tom Cruise another $10 million but is really about all the below the line people on a film line, the set-dressers, the carpenters, the teamsters,” she said.
“These are really good jobs that feed their families and keep kids going to school. A lot of those people, at least my friends, have moved out of the state in the last ten years. They’ve moved to Atlanta or New York, or Canada or Louisiana. I think next, we’re going to be seeing people moving out of the country.”
McCreary suggested other enhancements that would help California’s offering would be above the line and post-production incentives which do not exist for now.
She also recounted how Madam Secretary, which Revelations Entertainment produced with Barbara Hall Productions for CBS, was short entirely in New York because of the 35% incentive, even if the writer and post-production was done in L.A.
The discussion also touched on the role of political infrastructure and support, with Lucchesi making the observation that the size of the California as a state as well as differences between northern and southern California made it harder to build consensus around the film and TV industry in L.A.
Beyond the issue of incentives, the panelists suggested that the L.A. film community would also have to make choices on choosing the city and its studios as a shooting location that went beyond the bottom line.
“The adoption of the new measures are going to require people choosing to shoot in L.A., even if it’s against their short-term economic interests,” said Farah.
“And asking our stars to say, ‘Please shoot here’,” chimed in McCreary. “I have two friends who are shooting in L.A. now because the star said, ‘It’s more expensive, but I want to be here’. We’re getting closer.”
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