The news Texas film folk had been awaiting came quietly last week, but a roar may be required to get it to fruition. Gov. Rick Perry didn’t mention it during his State of the State address, but his printed budget lists as a priority item $20 million in incentives to attract more projects. Another $10 million would go toward promoting the state’s film biz. Approval will require action by a Legislature that has been reluctant on the issue in the past. “Texas has had a significant drop in the number of films coming here because of the incentives being offered in neighboring states,” says the guv’s spokesperson, Kathy Walt. Some 11 projects with budgets totaling $117.5 million scouted Texas last year but chose to go to places like New Mexico and Louisiana, where incentives greased the skids. Worse, an estimated 1,320 jobs were lost. “The first thing a producer asks is ‘what kind of incentives are there?'” says Suzanne Quinn of Austin Studios, who has spent the past two years watching our neighboring states start film industries practically from scratch. “It took 10 to 20 years for Texas to develop this. It’s not something you can develop overnight.” Gary Bond of the Austin Film Office cites the untitled comedy Mike Judge shot in Austin last year as the sort of project Texas might continue to lose if it doesn’t join the incentives trend. “I know for certain it wouldn’t have shot here if Mike Judge hadn’t pushed so hard for it to,” Bond says. Now, the big question remains whether the film industry can speak loud enough to get the attention of legislators whose eyes likely will be focused on school finance. In other words, industry pros, the time has come to get loud.
• Punk Reality: Where do you turn when you want to spoof the courtroom reality-show trend? Former Austin punk rockers, of course. Jesse Sublett, formerly of the Skunks, and Tom Huckabee of the Huns, rivals in the days when their bands had fans pogoing at Raul’s nightclub, are creative consultants for the syndicated Eye for Any Eye, which is going from weekly to daily and will shoot about 80 episodes in Dallas beginning any day now. Sublett terms the show, in which the loser faces punishments like a thorough syruping and feathering, “trashy fun.” It’ll soon air across the nation and in every major Texas city, except Austin, with Kato Kaelin as host. Meanwhile, Houston is gearing up for its own television courtroom drama launch in March from 20th Century Fox, which is keeping details ultra quiet.
• Hindi-Vision: Low-budget thriller Zero Hour has delayed shooting until at least April, freeing up space at Austin Studios that will instead go to director Dinesh Potluri and gang, who intend to shoot four to five films in the coming year for the India market, all in the national language of Hindi.
• Award This: Marcus van Bavel and the folks at Austin-based DVFilm are walking on air at word that Bill Plympton‘s animated short “Guard Dog” is up for an Oscar. DVFilm took Plympton’s signature pencil-on-paper drawings and recorded them to film and also had a hand in soundtrack preparation… “Life Against Memory,” a short film by Evan Torchin and James Webb of Austin has been nominated by Kevin Spacey‘s TriggerStreet.com for the 2005 Budweiser Discovery Award.
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This article appears in February 4 • 2005.