***image20*** Can New Mexico's film boom keep from going bust?
It began in a dusty schoolyard.
The year was 1898. The place was Isleta Pueblo. A man fresh off the Santa Fe Railway emerged from the desert holding a tripod contraption and, a few minutes later,
Indian Day School
became the first motion picture ever filmed in New Mexico.
If a digitally re-mastered edition of the short documentary were released today it might be called
Gone in 50 Seconds
. The grainy, black-and-white silent film boasts a running time of less than a minute and consists primarily of children filing out of the Isleta Indian School and passing in front of the primitive
camera lens.
The movie was directed by
cameraman Fred Blechynden and produced by the Edison Company. You may
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recognize the movie studio from such seminal films as
How the Telephone Came to Town
(1911),
The Codfish Industry in Newfoundland
(1912) and
Bobbie's Long Trousers
(1913).
Or not.
Indian Day School
nonetheless lit the fuse
to an industry that has exploded in New Mexico more than a century later. The Edison Company has given way to Paramount, Dreamworks and Warner Brothers. Blechynden has ceded his camera to Ron Howard, Jay Roach and the Coen brothers. The kids from Isleta have been replaced by glitterati like Pierce Brosnan, Jennifer Lopez and Charlize Theron.
Five years ago, seven highly forgettable movies were made in New Mexico for chump change. Thanks in large part to the
state's innovative film incentive programs, at least a dozen projects-including premium popcorn bait like
Used Guys
,
Wild Hogs
and
Employee of the Month
-
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are currently in production.
"I've been in Santa Fe for almost 25
years and I've seen the mini-boom periods of film work," Nicholas Ballas, co-owner of the Cowgirl, says. Ballas has landed parts in recent TV shows and movies such as
Wildfire
and
Into the West
. "But there is way more going on here now than ever before. There's a buzz in the air right now that is different than years past. You've got Hollywood and Bollywood. Well, now there's Tamalewood."
The film industry's growth spurt in New Mexico has done more than land Gov. Bill Richardson in the pages of
US Weekly
for
sharing chicken roulade with Jessica Simpson. According to the Film Office, it already has raked in more than $650 million in economic impact since Wild Bill took office.
The surge has been widely met with two enthusiastic thumbs up both in the Roundhouse and the court of public opinion. But the growth is not without controversy. Some are concerned that the state's
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substantial incentive programs give away the farm. Others question how strictly movie companies are adhering to provisions that require productions to spend money on New Mexican crew, goods and
services.
Furthermore, as the crest of silver screen serendipity continues to rise, the governor has unveiled a flurry of expensive and extensive film education and training programs to supply the increasing demand. Whether those programs can meet and sustain those needs will determine if and when the boom becomes a bust.
Eric Witt, the governor's director of Legislative Affairs and Media Arts and Entertainment Development,
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acknowledges that the state's labor and support services already are struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of expansion. And it's only getting faster. Witt insisted on answering questions via e-mail for this story.
"Right now we can field about four or five full crew at any one time depending on how large the productions are," Witt says. "But we have more productions than that waiting to get in. They're like airplanes stacked up on a runway waiting for clearance."
The control tower says
Office Space
all over it.
It's just another sleek, three-story bunker among the many totems of state bureaucracy in Santa Fe. But at least one department inside the Joseph M Montoya building hums a different tune than the usual numbing drone found in the honeycomb cubicles of government agencies.
The staff members of the New Mexico Film Office have a sparkle in their smiles and spring in their steps. Schematics for the 2006 New Mexico Film Directory-an exhaustive annual guide to the industry-are sprawled across the conference table. A small pile of movies sits atop a silver DVD player waiting for an audience with the large flat-screen television on the wall. Current selections include
Cada Cabeza es un Mundo
,
Fuga de Cerebros
and
Dirty Dancing: The Ultimate Edition
.
Nobody puts Lisa Strout in a corner.
Strout, director of the New Mexico Film
Office, navigates the office through the rocky shoals of Hollywood with an internal compass honed by 20 years in the business,
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which is perhaps why the office feels more like Sunset Strip than it does St. Francis Drive.
"We look more like a production company now than we do a government office,"
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Strout says. "It's been
really cool to see how
that has shifted but it also means our hours can be really weird. I literally have my phone on 24/7. People call me at midnight or seven in the morning on Sundays because that's what they need in this business."
Five years ago, the business was dead in the water. Strout is now prepping for New Mexico's biggest presence ever at the Association of Film Commissioners International Locations Tradeshow-a gathering of some 3,000 industry movers and shakers-on April 7 in Santa Monica, Calif.
"It's actually unbelievably exciting," Strout says. "We go to these trade shows and we hear-without even prompting-that
New Mexico is number one in the country. Business is coming to us almost faster than we can handle."
It wasn't always that way. Films didn't exactly stop once Blechynden turned off his camera at Isleta Pueblo-at least one movie has been filmed in New Mexico every year since 1962-but what changed dramatically is the sheer volume, variety and visibility of movies filming in the state.
New Mexico previously subsisted on a steady, if
stale, diet of swinging saloon doors and high noon gun battles. A ripple of film activity in the late '80s brought
Young Guns
,
Lonesome Dove
and
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
before
Wyatt Earp
,
Natural Born Killers
and the television series
Earth 2
sprouted a few years later. Then (poof) Hollywood was gone.
"The entire industry has shifted in the past 10 years to be all about financial incentives," Strout says. "We saw a lot of film productions going to places like Canada, Australia and Eastern Europe. But now it's shifting back to the states and New Mexico is at the heart of that movement."
The seismic shift that bumped industry politics in New Mexico off their axis was orchestrated by a small handful of influential people. Jon Hendry is among them.
Hendry officially announced his resignation as marketing
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director of the New Mexico Tourism Department on March 24 after more than three years in the position. The announcement
came after recent allegations surfaced that Hendry's state job and position as business agent for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees film workers union Local 480 constituted a conflict of interest. Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, R-Albuquerque, has requested the secretary of state look into the matter after allegations were made that Hendry threatened to withhold union labor from specific film companies.
Hendry flatly dismisses the allegations and suggests the rapid ascension of the movie industry in New Mexico has made bigger targets of its biggest proponents.
"The wind blows stronger on top of the mountain," Hendry says. "Any time that you're in the position where we are-where we have clearly taken a business from nothing into something-you're going to get some people that don't particularly like it."
Hendry's supporters point out that the film industry and the tourism department have experienced unprecedented growth, thanks largely to his guidance. But he was hardly alone in the drive to make movies a state priority.
State Sen. Shannon Robinson, D-Albuquerque, and State Rep. Ben Lujan, D-Santa Fe, were instrumental in pushing through legislation to provide tax rebates as an incentive for production companies to film in New Mexico with provisions requiring companies to
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utilize New Mexico workers, goods and services. It was a great idea in theory, but the law collected dust until Bill Richardson arrived at the Roundhouse in January 2003.
"The incentive program has been the magnet that's brought people here," Jonathan Wacks, professor and chairman of College of Santa Fe's Moving Image Arts Program, says. "It's too good for companies to turn down. When I first got here, people came to shoot Westerns and that was it. Now they look at the incentives and say, 'We could be doing
An American in Paris
here for chrissakes, let's just build the Eiffel Tower.' I think we have reached that point now because the incentives are so attractive." Beauty, in this case, is in the eye of the beholder.
The two primary components of the incentive program-tax rebates and investment loans-have expanded considerably since they first were initiated about four years ago. The rebate program now offers a tax refund of up to 25 percent on all direct production expenditures.
"I think it is a win-win situation because this business would not be here otherwise," Wacks says. "If there weren't incentives, the revenue wouldn't be coming into the state anyway. As a matter of fact, I think the state should go further and actually invest in films and not just give incentives."
Done and done. Enter the more controversial Film Investment Loan Program, which offers companies (with budgets of at least $1 million) a loan of up to $15 million at zero percent interest. In return, the state gets a percentage of a film's profits.
Strout says the exact percentage is negotiated on a movie-by-movie basis. It hinges in part on the length of time allocated for repaying the loan (up to five years) and the budget of an individual film (bigger films = more money). Problem is, the state has yet to see substantial profit from any of the films it has invested in.
"Not yet, but the loan program has only been around for about four years," Strout says. "A lot of these films are on three- or four-year loans so the time is coming up to see how it turns out."
At worst, the state will break even on its loans, given that the principals are guaranteed. Companies approved for the program are also responsible for all of the state's associated legal fees. Moreover, Strout says the investment loans are more about luring movie companies and less about gambling on box office success.
Witt also is quick to deflect criticisms that too many government resources are being devoted to the film industry at the detriment of other social and economic programs in one of the poorest states in the country.
"Over the past three years we have returned over $600 million in economic activity to our communities while spending a small fraction of that on our incentive programs," Witt says. "So not only does it make money for the state, it makes more money available for other social and economic programs as well."
The argument makes sense if the film industry has, in fact, sunk more than $600 million into the state economy. But economic impact isn't an exact science.
The film office comes up with its quarterly figures by tracking worker days and spending estimates using information provided by movie companies and film worker unions. The typical formula relies on a multiplier-how many times a dollar is estimated to circulate in a community-which differs from state to state. Strout says many state film offices use a 5.5 ($1 million in actual spending = $5.5 million in economic impact) while New Mexico uses a multiplier of three.
"There is no real standard that everybody uses,"
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Strout says. "We try to be conservative with it because it's really hard to track everything, but I think we're probably more accurate than we've ever been. We have a lot of sources to rely on, so I think that our margin of error is probably very small."
But it's only a matter of time before the incentive programs become a moot point. Several states have begun to emulate New Mexico's formula, which is why Hendry says the state has to invest in other means to support the film industry once the incentive playing field is inevitably leveled.
"Tax policy is not a permanent solution," Hendry says. "The minute this becomes corporate welfare we need to stop. You really can't build an economy based on tax dollars, so you've got to use those dollars to jumpstart something that will sustain it."
The folks at Merrill Lynch probably will tell you that real estate is
among the best long-term investments someone can make. Unless, of course, that patch of real estate happens to be the site of one of the bloodiest prison riots in American history.
"Charming, isn't it?" Van Ramsey quips as he pilots his rented SUV through the dusty maze of squat, dilapidated buildings formerly known as the New Mexico State Penitentiary. Aesthetics aside, Ramsey couldn't be happier.
The costume designer for
Comanche Moon
-a prequel to the
Lonesome Dove
miniseries currently filming in New Mexico-is looking for some authentic Native American leggings. And he's come to the right place.
More than 26 years after the infamous uprising that left 33 people dead and more than 100 injured, the former penitentiary is alive if not well. A long line of cars with California and New Mexico plates are parked out front. Carpenters are building sets for
Wild Hogs
and
The Horror Chronicles
in the prison's old wood shop. Ramsey has come for another reason.
He parks in front of the former "hobby shop" near the water tower that has "Allenville"-the name of the prison in the remake of
The Longest Yard
-still written on its side. He strides through the open door-still charred from the riot-where he is greeted by
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Laurie Hudson.
Hudson-a veteran costume designer and the IATSE Local 480 secretary treasurer-leads Ramsey down a long line of clothing racks filled with 19th century shirts, jackets and pants. She walks him past boxes filled with fur hats, straw hats, town hats and bowlers before arriving in the Native American section where the coveted leggings await.
Local 480-with the encouragement of state government and the help of local film students-has turned the former state prison into a nerve center of activity in the New Mexico film industry. Not that the location doesn't have its drawbacks.
"It's the creepiest place on earth," Hudson laughs. "It's a godsend, but we joke that a lot of people in the film industry have spent more time in this prison than hardened criminals."
Insert your own Hollywood joke here.
A couple years ago, set decorator Wendy Ozols-Barnes-a Taos native who recently returned to New Mexico-realized that film companies flocking to the state were being forced to ship in costumes and props from California and beyond. That's when she helped devise an idea to both fulfill that need and launch a revolutionary concept.
"There are thousands of prop houses in New York and Los Angeles that are for profit," Ozols-Barnes says. "We don't even have one prop house in the state of New Mexico, but what I wanted to see was a non-profit prop house. Now we have what I think is the first-ever
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prop house of its kind in the world."
Welcome to the Big House.
Well, "Big House Props and Costumes" at any rate. Volunteers culled from Local 480 and local film programs have filled two buildings on the old state prison campus with a communal collection of movie effects ranging from period costumes and set furniture to decorative kitsch and background filler.
While the Big House has serviced dozens of productions on a "free box" model-think of the take-a-penny/leave-a-penny tray at Allsup's-Ozols-Barnes says the prop co-op is in the process of incorporating as a non-profit entity, which will allow its handlers to charge nominal fees to mitigate the costs of managing the
inventory.
Many of the volunteers at the Big House are former and current students of training programs launched by the Richardson administration within the past three years. The Film Technician Training Program (FTTP), administered through institutions like Santa Fe Community College and Albuquerque's Technical Vocational Institute, is aimed at building an army of "below-the-line" talent-i.e. grips, gaffers, cameramen, makeup artists and other technical personnel-capable of satiating the current Hollywood onslaught.
Conversely, the New Mexico Filmmakers program
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is part of a long-term vision to recruit and develop the next generation of "above-the-line" talent (writers, producers, directors, etc.) that Wacks says will be the key to building a sustainable industry in New Mexico.
"You can have as many grips as you like, but they are working on a product that someone else is creating," Wacks says. "We have all this momentum now, but what happens when we're just another state with incentives? We better use this opportunity to build a local industry and to do that you need to develop 'above-the-line' talent."
The mobilization of new trainees is critical given a provision in the incentive programs that requires companies to hire a percentage
of their crew from the New Mexico workforce in order to qualify for incentives.
Chris Windisch, a veteran New Mexico construction coordinator on the sets of films like
The Missing
,
The Longest Yard
and
The Astronaut Farmer
, says the state's current stable of professionals is already among the best in the business.
"I've always thought that the crews here were as good as the crews anywhere," Windisch says. "I'd put them against anyone in the country. I think the incentives are great, but they couldn't come here if we didn't have the crew to do it."
The available crew may be more than capable, but the massive influx of movies has left the state's most capable crews less than available.
"The good news is that we've got all these pictures coming in but can we service all of these pictures in terms of crew?" Wacks says. "Are we training the crew fast enough and competently enough?
I don't know. But I think that could be the Achilles heel of this whole thing."
Achilles heel or not, it's going to take a Herculean effort by those already on the ground in order to meet the
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demands of the films currently in production, let alone those to come. As the state's training programs churn out the first batches of new recruits, Windisch is anxious for an infusion of fresh blood.
"This is the most [movies] I've ever seen here at one time," Windisch says. "I'm nervous about what it will do with the manpower. It hasn't affected me negatively yet, but the next six months will tell. It's a question in everyone's mind but I wouldn't discourage any of the work coming in, that's for sure."
The depleted workforce has raised questions about how movie companies adhere to the hiring provision when they can't
find locals to hire. Furthermore, there has been grumbling that the growth of the industry has lured carpet-bagging workers to take up "residence" in the state. Then again, even the local workers could use some extra hands.
"The industry has been such a blessing and such a challenge at the same time," Hudson says. "We're trying to stretch, but some departments are spread really thin. It's not uncommon to have 150 people working on one movie and if we have 600 members and there are 10 movies shooting, the math doesn't add up."
Something isn't adding up in Riverside, Iowa.
It could be the guys in lime-green Star Trek uniforms. It might be the life-size bronze statue depicting Capt. James T Kirk in the throes of hand-to-hand combat with his nemesis Khan. But it's probably just the fact that this isn't actually Riverside, Iowa.
This is Las Vegas, New Mexico, a city whose old town plaza has been temporarily transformed into Riverside, the fictional future birthplace of Capt. Kirk. We're on location with the cast and crew of
Fanboys
, a comedy about four friends who go on a roadie from
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Ohio to George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in California to fulfill the wish of a dying friend to watch
Star Wars: Episode I
before the movie's official release.
Riiiiiiight.
The production call sheet refers to this particular scene as "Seasholtz and Hutch get into a pushing match." In layman's terms, that means some Trekkies and
Star Wars
nerds are about to brawl, ya'll. But right now the actors are simply milling about while dozens of crew members flutter around the set adjusting large white screens, measuring camera angles and reattaching one of Spock's plastic ears.
Line producer Scott Lumpkin calmly surveys the scene from behind a pair of black Ray-Bans. He is
no stranger to filming in New Mexico. It was, after all, his vote of confidence-after he shot
Doubting Thomas
in the state this past winter-that brought
Fanboys
to New Mexico from a galaxy far, far away.
"The incentives are important but New Mexico also has a certain flair that hasn't really been tapped into," Lumpkin says. "You can only film Los Angeles so many ways before it gets dull."
Apparently that's not the case in
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New Mexico.
Fanboys
will be shot almost in its entirety in the state. No small task when your movie is about a road trip across America. Lumpkin says the movie has bounced from a small town in Ohio (Albuquerque) to Riverside, Iowa (Las Vegas) and the other Las Vegas (Santa Ana Star Casino) to the Rockies (Cibola National Forest). He expects moviegoers won't be any the wiser.
"That's one thing that works well in New Mexico," Lumpkin says. "You have the cities, the mountains, the open plains and the desert plateaus. It's all of America in one state. Sometimes you have to be a little creative, but it works for 99 percent of what we're doing."
Lumpkin has nothing but praise for
Richardson, the New Mexico Film Office and the local crew, which he says represents the majority working
Fanboys
. But he saves his greatest praise for the crowd of curious locals that have gathered to watch as the cameras roll and actors begin trading insults like "Hans Solo is a bitch," "Capt. Kirk is gay" and "Darth Vader has asthma."
"This isn't a community that's jaded like Los Angeles," Lumpkin says. "The people here are so excited and so enthusiastic and I think that kind of atmosphere is really invigorating for the cast and the crew."
Celebrity culture isn't exactly a new
development in places like Santa Fe. Most residents shrug when they pass Val Kilmer on Palace Avenue, scarf breakfast next to Gene Hackman at Cloud Cliff Bakery or bump into Ali McGraw at the Lensic. But the atmosphere has changed significantly with the arrival of tabloid darlings like Jennifer Lopez and Jessica Simpson and the paparazzi lamprey that are sure to follow.
"One of the reasons big stars like coming here or living
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here is that New Mexicans are really kind but they also respect privacy," Strout says. "I think the Jessica Simpson thing just comes with Jessica Simpson. I don't think it will become a trend."
Christopher Coppola knows better than most how quickly the Trojan horse of celebrity can turn against you. The independent filmmaker is the nephew of Francis, the cousin of Sofia and the brother of Nicholas Cage.
"People love celebrity, it makes them feel special," Coppola says. "I think it's a great buzz for a couple of days, but when they leave what do you have?"
Bubkus. Which is why people like Coppola-who has served as a mentor for Albuquerque's Flicks on 66 Film Festival-wants to lay a foundation for the future of film in New Mexico. Coppola and his EARSXXI studio recently launched an independent training and film production program dubbed "Project Alternative Hollywood" (or "PAH-Flicks") to prepare the next generation of New Mexico film workers while utilizing the latest innovations in digital technology.
"Bugsy Siegel could see Nevada as a big casino capital," Coppola says. "I can see New Mexico becoming a major capital for digital content. This is the land of the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb.
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Now that we're moving into the future, it's time to build a creative bomb."
Coppola will begin the first round of his PAH-Flicks program while shooting
Big Bad Voodoo Mama
in Grants at the end of May. He expects to break ground on a small digital studio in Grants by this fall before eventually expanding the project to at least four other studios across the state.
"People in the New Mexico Film Office say what I'm talking about is the future," Coppola says. "It's not the future, it's happening now. If New Mexico can take the lead, that's a much bigger concept than just having spill-off from Hollywood."
For now, the spill-off suits
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New Mexico just fine. The future of film in the state, Hendry says, is being created through the government's incentive and training programs. Coupled with a communal approach to a superficial business, he anticipates Tamalewood can become the staging ground for a coup d'etat of the movie industry status quo.
"I call this the
New
Mexican Revolution," Hendry says. "We have a unique business model and I hope it works. It's working so far but you probably need to ask me in October if we got through the summer."
Either way, the revolution will be televised after all.
Santa Fe Reporter