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I've wanted to make movies since since I was introduced to the Three Stooges working here in New Mexico has allowed me to be all the things I want to be yeah you know just have some fun and you there was a state capitol I knew that there are a couple colleges here I figured we'd be okay I came here on vacation a long time ago and I like to say it's been a long vacation I'm still here and it helps if you have a crystal ball but mine's always blurry I do find that I'm not much interested in what's coming out of Hollywood for the most part I like films that have a positive spin do there was a sense of an ability to influence the future of film in New Mexico it's funny now that our industry has grown to this place I'm seeing more sharks coming in and I would like them to swim on to other waters I think we sold a can of streaks and tips to the Avengers who can the RAM Bratton says draw something that makes me money come on we're making art why does art have to make money this is show business so it's all based on money and making money I usually don't take a job that is going to be something I don't like and I can usually find something good in every job that I take it just gets in your blood and you just don't want to do anything else it's like you want to do this again you turn the counter office like no no turns effect oh yeah I guess I'd have to say my heart brought me here to New Mexico and has kept me here good evening ladies and gentlemen fellow film enthusiasts and film workers you're listening to cinema scope and I'm your host to Goswick we've got a great lineup today and as always we're gonna talk about all things film here in New Mexico I'm Stu Goswick and I host KSFR 101.1 FM's CinemaScope here in Santa Fe New Mexico with films such as Thor No Country for Old Men True Grit and the Avengers all being shot here in the past you could argue that things have been looking up and some would say nature has given New Mexico its own movie set huge blue skies and deep sunsets deserts and mesas canyons and mountains rivers forests grasslands 300 days of sunshine a year and some of the best light in America one thing is clear the industry has taken a hit in recent years and you could argue that it's only just now recovered we've been speaking to some of the industry's leading executives its indigenous filmmakers and some of the very founders of New Mexico's film business to see what position we're in right now we wanted to find out if the Land of Enchantment really has a future in the filmmaking arena and more importantly how we will get there I came to New Mexico originally because New Mexico was climbing up in the field of film friendly States New Mexico at the time I came here was pretty much touted as a backdoor in the Hollywood if you want to live in a place that's really beautiful really clean really great people beautiful history beautiful culture great food and yet still be able to pursue a career in an industry on a on a high level you well you can do backings if you can do storyboards you can do whatever photography telling people what to do directing putting it all together producing if if you know you're into music obviously fantastic there are many fabulous entertainers artists composers here in New Mexican I'm not just speaking about rock music or rap music the entire gamut of composition and performance and while there's been a lot of attraction to places like Louisiana films going there New Mexico's gonna still have a certain kind of background for locations and for weather and all that I think is still going to continue to draw people the light here is unlike anything else in the world you really can't find it anywhere from morning to even even high noon into dusk it's just absolutely fabulous within 20 minutes you can go up into the mountains and be you know surrounded by trees and forests and a little ways further than that you could be in trees and forests that have moss hanging in the trees and so I think we're really blessed we have an extraordinary amount of talent and programs that are developing not only talent here in terms of above the line but below the line we have some of the best crews in the business and I would even go so far as to say I would put our crews up with anybody work rules here are infinitely more flexible so it's easier to take somebody from from here than it is from other places we've gotten so much more since we started where there's two and three and four film crews that can be working that are all equally qualified the benefits of getting into the film industry well as a gripper an electrician is you stay in really good shape another very important thing is is the the quality of the films being made in New Mexico is quite high I mean there are guys who've only worked here who have incredible resumes with amazing credits other people have come here from Hollywood you know and you'd look at their credits and you don't recognize a single film on their credits but some guy from New Mexico I mean you know he's got Academy award-winning films and Emmy award-winning TV series and you know so it's next it's it's amazing The Lone Ranger just finished shooting here The Avengers shot here Breaking Bad one of the most successful television shows in history so you can be involved with truly legitimate productions and still kind of get away from some of the hustle and bustle of like a really big city like Los Angeles it's not quite as intensive as in Hollywood I mean you know I don't know it's just to me it's so much better here because people are a little bit more I was a natural I mean there it's more about the talent then about you know who did lunch with who you I've paid my dues I've lived in LA it's not pleasant maybe when you're you know really young you but New Mexico the Land of Enchantment it really is it's enchanting and it's it's so easy to live here but at the same time you can work in the industry and follow your dreams it's a perfect combination to me my goal in life was to never be a starving artist what I found out I can make a living in the motion picture business that's where I went I tell this story that you know I've watched a lot of people start into business on their first films and now they've come along and they they're accomplished people and you can really see the change in them because you know they have families and they're wearing nicer clothes when I came here there was not the kind of film industry that there is now there were a group of film makers they were around and I just haven't really decided to attach myself to those people and you know sort of apprenticed to them in a way it's great to share your art and bring community together it's great to meet other filmmakers and be able to share your stories but ultimately we're making film so hopefully we can sell them and keep making more I can talk about all things you want to do but when it comes right down to it movies are like any other business it's the bottom line the industry is going through a rough period and it's gonna take you larly film industry television is good so what's good in the right now a lot of people are going into television because that's what's moving quickly how many industries are there out there in the world that are not going to China that are willing to pick up wherever they are doing something and move to where you are and do that thing where you are the film business is a business that's incredibly mobile and incredibly flexible and is able to do that to some extent were or hampered a little bit by the the current financial situation because it's hard for people to get credit to to make bigger phones the nature of the work is still feast or famine you either have I I tend to either have way too much work I can barely complete or had absolutely nothing going on I prefer the first one obviously the country is going through they well the world is going through an economic crisis this trickles down in music industry to less funds discretionary funds that people have to use major facilities like ours it's always a challenge I mean I I'm sort of sorry that I got into that part of the business you know it's a lot more fun to be in this part of the business because financing is especially what with the economies and around the world today it's just you know it's just really tough they say that banks are lending money but I want to know to who because they're not the money that comes in that is not local money that gets spent on the local economy is important money we like that the money that comes from local folks is money that kind of stays here and I think that the money spent in the state is new money it's not money that is here and turned over it's coming from outside I think we should we should embrace that because it's new money into our economy I don't think the state should lose money I live here I don't want it to lose money but I think if you track how much money comes in and where the dollars are spent it's a very very helpful to the New Mexico economy there are so many ancillary businesses that are attached to the film industry that people forget about you know dry cleaners hotels restaurants clothing lumber carpentry even places like you know the goodwill where people will costumers can buy clothes from there and then return them so they get resold again and it's a it's an extraordinary amount of business that is generated and clean industry generally around around the film industry so I feel like it's made a huge leap by having studios built here in Albuquerque this is the biggest driver when Albuquerque loses is they just have a superhero movie that was going to spend two hundred and fifty million dollars a quarter of a billion dollars at Albuquerque in the space of six months that's huge net effects every restaurant hotel but also effects home prices effects as in gross receipts tax revenues which pays for fire protection or cops and things that across the board that affects them and people need to continue to realize that the money that is spent on the production filters into so many industries here that it's difficult to track and I they have done studies that have said you know positive and negative things about the impact but when a hundred and fifty million dollar movie comes to town and rents hotel rooms and cars and go they all go to restaurants they buy supplies here that has a positive impact on the on the community and on the economy and I think that people need to recognize that and support it instead of trying to save money by pushing productions away that would otherwise otherwise spend money here I'm a native New Mexican and I had to go to Los Angeles in New York to work for years and years about eight or ten years ago I just decided that I didn't like living in Los Angeles I really liked living here so I came home and I said I don't care if I don't make money I can live on beans it's fine and then the incentive happened about five six years ago and I've worked the last five or six years more than ever and obviously we were in a grey spirit we were we were in a place where we had great support from the the government you there was no industry until there were tax incentives there was one film of year being made and now suddenly there are you know there's a whole docket of films television being made here and that's in addition to you know the commercials and documentaries and other smaller projects that have always gone on here with the new focus that's happened in the last I guess it's been maybe the last eight years or so the work has continued it just continued to come here we call it Hollywood but it's really an industry it's like making shoes or making cars or you know whatever it is you manufacture something you want to manufacture the best for the least price and so when when Hollywood here is that in South Africa they're giving you 40% back on your money you go there I think that the film incentives have been basically a huge part of why the New Mexico film industry has thrived and I think that if it's going to continue to thrive we need to offer the incentives we were doing really well attracting film companies and then with the change of the political scene it pretty much scared away a lot of though the Hollywood folks what the industry now feels that it gives so much money to wherever they go make the movies that they're not going to go to a place that doesn't do that you know you when you look at Warner Brothers Studios that has hardly been a film made there in the last four or five years yeah it's gone all over the country because of incentives senator Tim Keller I think has said it really well about the tax incentives they were necessary to get us off the ground we're still on the map to build all of the infrastructure everything we now have we needed those tax incentives I would argue we still need them every major production company now in the world has a division that all they are doing is seeing where they can get incentive money and so we can't not do that film that I'm working on now it's it's a story about Albuquerque the interiors all the interiors are being shot in Winnipeg Canada that gives a 60 percent rebate Colorado has just amplified and ratified and passed a brand new film and Senate program I don't have the details of it yet but I am told it's a pretty good one and ostensibly at least as good as the one offered in New Mexico what does that mean to New Mexico film industry like a lot of people have to already done go to Louisiana or you know I was with a friend the other day who's an actor and he was saying I'm gonna go back to Hollywood because there's not enough happening here I can't I can't stay live we still do well compared to a lot of markets between Los Angeles and New York but we aren't getting nearly what Louisiana is getting right now you in a funny way New Mexico is one of the places that started you know and so now everybody's followed it now we got to be we got to be in there and while crew and cast may be driving up to Colorado to shoot it's going to taper off if Colorado's program is successful and I think it would be a travesty for as much support as has gone into the New Mexico film industry to lose it by nickel and diming it upfront to a state that is starting its program and is going to hit it hard our biggest challenge is making sure we keep moving on and and try to get clarity and the incentives and I'm trying to have a program that works for everyone film producers want to know what they're going to get what this is what is the playing table you can't keep changing the rules on them they'll just go somewhere else the reason people came to New Mexico even if there were other states that had incentives that were higher than ours was because they knew exactly what they had to do to get any money back and when it would happen for example icon Mel Gibson's company came out here and produced a film called Seraphin Falls which I worked on so icon borrowed the whole 15 million dollars for the production of the film so that they didn't have to use their money from their company so they made the film with somebody else's money they went out sold the film distributed the film got their money back and then paid the state back so it was a way for them to do a whole production without putting any money down at all for themselves when Clint Eastwood was asked if he had anything that could be shot in in Michigan when Michigan was given 42% he's told his assistants as he didn't we have somebody write like hand write a screenplay about you know this old Keesey er one stuff yeah I brought it back to us as yeah for Tori no I mean that movie would have never got made cap put everybody into a dither because they did not really know how much of that cap would be left by the time they got power and other small operations rebates processed you think it's stifled production they have more than enough money in my opinion to afford to to have a much larger pool of money available for for production we have a ton of money we have 15 billion that's 15 with a be 15,000 million dollars in the bank sitting in a permanent fund that we can't spend we should be investing at a lot more of that money here in New Mexico a lot more of that money and our people we should be i
vesting it in the movies because movies in Greece movies have high paying jobs attached though so I think if we do that then we stay competitive we'll be fine but if we don't we want but fortunately I think it's it's reversing itself now and it's there are made their major pictures coming in this year and I think you'll see more and more coming back I don't know whether it will ever get back to the heyday of 5 years ago but hopefully it'll continue to get better I think it's very important that the governor and the legislature do not shoot themselves in the foot and ignore the financial windfall that film has brought to the state of New Mexico and it has been a major major windfall you know I've been around this business for long enough to know that everything we talk about they know there's to say that great quality of light the storytelling aspect of New Mexico the you know the one day trip to LA and things that's all great but if there's no film incentives people want you here as a native filmmaker our community here in New Mexico is very unique if somebody said tonight called me at midnight say hey I need help in the morning I'm down there and I'll go help the same I know I can call them and they would come and help at a moment's notice for me I think what I found is to be most beneficial being in New Mexico is that it is a collaborative community I don't think there's too many places where you can go we're above the line and below the line actually know each other and actually you know you bump into each other you see each other out you hang out together and there's a really collaborative environment to actually make films here I think about three years ago now a bunch of us were doing a 48 hour film and I had never done one before and one of the things that happened in the beginning of that process is you have to incorporate an one word into your narrative of what you're gonna do and you have a half an hour to come up with ideas for stories and the genre that they give you and I was blown away at all the cool stories that people thought of in like a half an hour and I thought to myself well this is kind of silly we have all this talent here why are we waiting for a competition why don't we just get together and do something meaningful we have an opportunity here to sort of reinvent a little studio approach to things and you know what we might kind of term kind of a micro studios I think any given group of people or producers can change their approach to how they do the work we've got everything we need here we just need producers and directors and writers to come up with great original content that can come out of New Mexico I think it's important there's so many stories here in New Mexico that I mean telling other people's stories we've done that you know and let's try to make our own stories for a while we have the crews we have everything we need to make stories happen to make stories become reality there have to be indigenous filmmakers some kind you know there have to be people who want to make this into a filmmaking center like San Francisco you know I you know San Francisco worked because of Francis Coppola and George Lucas were there and they made movies that made huge amounts of money and that's why they were able to be there you know every film that George Lucas made Hollywood thought was the worst film that they had ever seen in their lives and they took them away from George and they recut them and even in mangled States they were hugely successful if we just had one George Lucas here one person was some sort of vision who could do something like that that might help us begin to establish ourselves as our home production center I think municipal government state governments can be helpful if they would just see that we have so much talent right here in our state and you know I'd like them to back off of the whole big Hollywood concept and think more about how can we make it more of a homegrown make our own Hollywood I mean we have the infrastructure so we just need to recognize that we have the talented people here that can produce direct shoot right you know we sort of have that with the with Breaking Bad in a sense you know there's a show that's located in Albuquerque the location is Albuquerque the guy writes the series for Albuquerque we need that kind of thing I think that right now we have vertical infrastructure so we can definitely make films here the question now is can we finance films and I think that's really the the only factor that holds New Mexico back is really finding a vertically integrated model just like the one that used to exist in Hollywood which basically that makes a whole bunch of pictures and rely on one of them making money to cover the cost of everything else you're making a big mistake New York in Texas California Louisiana there's a lot of capital in those states that end up actually financing pitchers I think in New Mexico it's a little bit more challenging just be it's not necessarily a state that is known for its its opulence and wealth that being said though it's a very resourceful place I think deals are always going to be made in Los Angeles but ideas come from somewhere else and I hope New Mexico becomes that this is a place where everybody sort of works together and cheers each other on supports each other it's a it's like kind of a giant family it's nice it's tough because you walk this fine line between competition and cooperation with other filmmakers and so where you can come up with combinations of people that can work together and move that along it's gonna be their own initiative that's gonna help things not it's not gonna come from miraculously from outside you know somebody's got to come along with that original idea you know and and understand all these different factors and put it into put it into action it's a place where you can think outside the box and hopefully we'll find the box that we need to think outside of I don't think you want to create an Hollywood in the high desert even a new Hollywood because even Hollywood if they went back and did it again we did a completely different way I mean I think what you need is a new business model and you have that opportunity here to create a new business model you have the crew base you had the funding you have the facilities you have the equipment you have everything to create a different business model and I think naturally where you want to go but but to build it or run profit would be a huge mistake and we already have that business model of art here Art's a big business arts the biggest business in Santa Fe art is what brings the tourists here and everything else and absolutely you can't so while the typical model of you know let's we let's try to raise a few million dollars to make our movie really I don't see that happening so much on the independent side here I do see that there's a lot of collaboration and a lot of resources that get pulled together and people that really come together to make film basically what we need to do in New Mexico is we need to have a distribution point whether it's you know finding a way to utilize the new media or use old media to our advantage the other thing is is we need to have revenue points whether it's tapping into people who live here who have the money and want to tell stories like we do or finding a way to fundraise you know through various means you know online or however that may work out we have an infrastructure we have a crew base we have all these things that Hollywood would look to international films will look to the most important thing is that the community here it's a less competitive environment it's a more cooperative environment I think the New Mexico of film industry is going to continue to grow there's a lot of people who have been trained here that that's the been the beauty of the film crew training programs and people just getting experience not just working behind the camera but in front of it creating their own films as well as working on big television shows and feature films is that they've all greatly improved and I think that that's that's just going to cause the business in New Mexico to expand create more opportunity for everybody I think that's what we're trying to do when we reinvented the film business here I mean our film businesses laughed us in 1997 when I wrote the original incentive bill which was the loan program our film business had gone to Canada had gone away and we reinvented the film business here between 1997 and 2002 it's ten years there and their oldest time we reinvented again let's look at the other models and see where they're broke and not trying to import you know the the Hollywood model or the Eastern European model or anybody else's model we need to invent a new model here well we can do that we've done it once we can do it again we're a small state in population and we need to all be pulling for the same thing you know people can work together there's going to be competition on certain levels of course but that's same about everything a little car repair shop that's out there and my car repair guy the other day so busy kept my car for five days well my dream is would be to see the entertainment industry here cater more to the local people who want to make their own films I don't know that that's gonna happen I mean when you say where do you see it I'm not I don't have a crystal ball but I would say if things continue the way they are I'm sure that the economy will be good and for certain people certain crew members it will be good but and I'm not sure it's a government thing or a private industry thing but somewhere along the line it would be really nice to see some help for people that just want to make a film here and that are from here and they'd have a good idea no I want it all
