Grindhouse met statehouse when lawmakers and filmmakers gathered at Robert Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios in East Austin on April 23 to watch Gov. Rick Perry sign House Bill 873, the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program reform bill, into law. Rodriguez was there; along with bill author Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin; bill sponsor Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville; and Texas Motion Picture Alliance President Don Stokes, he received a commemorative signing pen for his bill-boosting efforts. Gaming guru Richard Garriott showed up, as did Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, who was rustling up support for Senate Bill 1929, his tax-break bill for production facilities.
HB 873 puts $62 million into the program (up from $22 million last session) and also unties the hands of the Texas Film Commission, allowing it more latitude to fine-tune incentive packages for individual film, TV, commercial, and video-game productions. Before Perry signed, Dukes confirmed that one incentive recipient, Friday Night Lights, will stay in Austin for another two years, but that wasn’t the only good local news. When the bill was originally introduced, it excluded Dallas and Austin from extra incentives for shooting in economically distressed areas: Those restrictions were stripped out, meaning productions at both Austin Studios and Troublemaker can compete with facilities in other poorer areas of the state. Dukes noted the work isn’t finished until the state budget goes through the joint House-Senate conference committee, but with House Appropriations Committee Chair Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, joining Dukes as a bill author, the outlook is good.
This article appears in May 1 • 2009.
