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Sunday, November 24, 2002

By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor

Movies are both art and commerce, and these days, everybody wants a piece of the action.

Nearly 200 film commissions representing states, regions, counties and municipalities across America try to attract the glamour and the greenbacks of Hollywood.

Competitive by nature, these commissions also have joined forces at times, especially in the current effort to keep movie production from fleeing to less expensive foreign locations.

But such cooperative ventures can raise questions of conflicting interests and even possible wrongdoing, as have the connections between the Pittsburgh Film Office, headed by Dawn Keezer, and the Los Angeles-based Entertainment Industry Development Corp., run by Cody Cluff.

While neither Cluff nor Keezer has been charged with any crime, an investigation is under way based on allegations the two conspired in the misappropriation of funds. EIDC has contributed at least $10,000 to the Pittsburgh Film Office over the past two years.

The investigation also has cast a spotlight on the purpose of film commissions and their role as economic stimulators. As with the Monday morning box office reports carried by most newspapers, it's all about the bottom line.

A report commissioned by the Pittsburgh Film Office says the production of movies, television programs, commercials and videos has generated $155.6 million in economic activity in the region since 1995.

Producers of the Richard Gere thriller "The Mothman Prophecies," filmed over a three-month period of 2001 in Pittsburgh, and Kittanning, Armstrong County, spent $16 million on crew, hotels, catering, transportation, office supplies, lumber and dry cleaning.

When Palm Beach County, Fla., opened its film commission in 1990, the region generated $15 million annually from movie production. This year, film commissioner Chuck Elderd said, the figure is $134 million.

Greater Philadelphia Film Office Director Sharon Pinkenson said movie production had contributed $750 million to that region's economy since 1992.

"It's economic development. What we do is all about jobs, jobs, jobs," she said.

It is no coincidence that many state film offices, including the Pennsylvania Film Office in Harrisburg, function as an arm of the government's economic development or tourism agency.

Other countries, notably Canada, Australia and New Zealand, have gone a step further, enacting federal tax breaks and other financial incentives to go along with favorable currency-exchange rates.

These nations have lured enough business out of the United States, in fact, to get normally competitive American film offices to band together. They have formed a lobbying group, Film US, that wants to level the playing field by persuading federal legislators to enact similar tax breaks and incentives.

Palm Beach County used its own kind of incentives to bolster its local film industry, Elderd said. The Department of Economic Development offered $500,000 in reimbursable construction costs to companies that built five studio facilities in the region.

Those studios are "generating $90 million a year that wasn't generated 10 years ago," Elderd said.

Florida also offers such incentives as no personal income tax and a tax exemption on studio rentals. The sunny climate and the beaches don't hurt, either, Elderd acknowledged.

"If you actually build the industry in your community, you'll have permanence and consistency," he said, instead of having to keep persuading producers to shoot there. "Go choose your turf, fertilize it and grow something."

His office runs on a $500,000 annual budget generated by a 4 percent cut of the county's bed tax, analogous to Allegheny County's hotel-motel tax. The Pittsburgh Film Office received funds from that source until the money was diverted to build PNC Park, Heinz Field and the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

Elderd's cut is guaranteed -- it was written into legislation and enacted into law. The Pittsburgh Film Office had to rely on its funding being renewed every year; even at its peak, the budget never exceeded $350,000.

"It's a struggle every year," said Pinkenson, whose office runs on $700,000 a year provided by the city of Philadelphia, the Delaware River Port Authority, four suburban counties and grants from foundations and the state.

"It's been a wild ride for us," said Greg Torre, director of the Georgia Film, Video and Music Office. "Three years ago, our budget was $400,000. Then a new management team came in that felt we were underfunded. We were fortunate."

Now, Torre's budget is $825,000. About half of Torre's budget pays for the office's seven-person staff. The rest goes toward marketing Georgia as a film location.

Film commissioners agree that the personal touch -- getting to know the players -- is essential. And that means lots of travel, especially to Los Angeles and New York.

"People do business with people they know and like. It's all about building relationships," said Ron Ver Kuilen, managing director of the Illinois Film Office. About 20 percent of his budget goes to travel-related expenses, and he said that was typical of most film commissions.

By comparison, the Pittsburgh Film Office earmarked $50,000 for travel last year, or about 17 percent of its budget.

"If I had my druthers, I'd go to as many events and film festivals as I can," Ver Kuilen said. "If one contact brings business back, it's worth the cost."

He remembers being criticized for treating some Hollywood producers to a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game. Five years later, one of those producers brought the TV series "Early Edition" to Chicago. It stayed there four years and generated $80 million in business.

But there are other ways to lure productions involving the service aspect of the job: helping the companies obtain permits, finding needed facilities and hiring local actors and crew -- and, occasionally, shutting a major bridge down for several weeks.

Keezer lured the movie "Inspector Gadget" to Pittsburgh by getting the city to close what was then known as the Sixth Street Bridge for three weeks to accommodate the movie's climactic action sequence. Later, Kittanning shut down the bridge over the Allegheny River that goes directly into downtown for the filming of "The Mothman Prophecies."

The Palm Beach County Film and Television Commission arranged the permits and insurance for a commercial using an alligator roaming loose in a ritzy neighborhood, and then helped keep things calm when the creature got loose and a trainer had to coax it out of a backyard swimming pool.

Persistence pays. The TV series "The West Wing" came to the Pittsburgh area in August to shoot scenes supposedly taking place at an Indiana soybean farm. But Ver Kuilen thought his Illinois Film Office was going to land the gig.

"More soybeans come out of Illinois than any other state. I've known [the show's producers] since 1983. The show's production designer is from here," he said.

But Keezer kept sending production photos to the producers, and a box filled with two pounds of soybeans.

"She snatched it away from us. Dawn kept calling them and nudging them and sending them more pictures. At least it didn't go to Toronto.

"It's not about stealing business from somebody else. It's about putting your best foot forward," Ver Kuilen said.

But film commissioners find it advantageous to cooperate at times, as in the Film US effort.

The Association of Film Commissioners International is a professional trade organization that has members from all over the world. It was formed in 1987, long before Canada created its incentives to filmmakers and when the exchange rate was less favorable than it is now, Ver Kuilen said.

"We were mentoring the Canadians. It's part of the services of AFCI. We still do it with the Scots and the Czechs."

So if we're helping other countries develop their film industry to the point where they can lure business out of the country, where's the advantage of cooperating?

"We help ourselves by working with these people as well," Torre said. "We have the same problems, the same issues. You get more by sharing information than by being adversarial."

Cooperation is important on the domestic level as well, Pinkenson said.

"All of us in the U.S. are competitors, but we're happy when a film stays in the U.S. That's the basis of Film US. That's why we're trying to counter runaway production. As a group and as film commissioners individually, we're trying to keep American products in America."

And, ideally, in their own state and city, building that bottom line.