Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Lisa posted this on a Facebook group, but I'm stealing it for the blog:

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD. TREME. Louisiana created their film/TV tax credits solely for business reasons, but the results show the state's rich literary and cultural heritage in ways we'd never seen before. I even hear that CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, Louisiana's most beloved novel, is going to be a Hollywood studio movie. 

That's why tax credits matter culturally. When I was a kid, you never saw Southerners on TV unless they were illiterate yokels who existed only for non-Southerners to laugh at. (Coming from a Southern family, I internalized the idea that my culture was inferior and that the only way to be a Serious Person was to lose my accent and leave.) 

Louisiana is proof that tax credits enable you to tell your own stories, instead of being defined as a stereotype. And that's part of what's at stake in B.C. Yes, tax credits provide a lot of employment. But they also make it possible to be proud of your culture.

I guess one question is: how do you make the tax credits so the gatekeepers don't kill BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD in the cradle, while still providing a benefit to the taxpayer?

8:52 AM

1 Comments:

I think it's sort of like indie films. If you have a cheap location, your mind turns to the kind of stories you could tell there.

By  Unknown, at 9:06 PM  

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