The Opening Salvo

This is my first email letter to the Economic Development Appropriations Sub Committee of the Iowa House and Senate. I encourage everyone to write your legislators to fully fund the new Iowa Film Office, especially the members of these committees. Be sure to share your strategies with us. What follows addresses the perception of some legislators that all film producers are dishonest, which needs to be discredited right away.


Subject: The New Iowa Film Office is Not the Old Iowa Film Office

From what I've been hearing, there is an attitude going around the statehouse that most film producers are dishonest and therefore don't deserve anything, or at least very much. I would like to address that issue first.

This whole perception came out of the problems that arose out of the scandal involving the film tax credits and the subsequent coverage of the issue from the press, particularly the Des Moines Register .

Before you consider going along with this perception, think about this:

Anytime you have a situation where money is being given away, you are going to attract greedy, dishonest individuals. Thieves are attracted to anything where they think they may be able to get something for nothing. Because of the loose way the law and the subsequent contracts were written, a higher percentage of this population was attracted by the lures of our film tax credit than would have normally considered coming here.

When the old Iowa Film Office and the film tax credit were shut down it certainly brought this fraud to a halt but it also did a lot of harm to legitimate producers too. Many productions were forced to shut down or to move from the state.

The movie "Cedar Rapids" (which ended up getting a lot of positive buzz from the press) did in fact not end up being shot in its namesake city. No, other than for a few quick establishing shots, it ended up being filmed in Ann Arbor, Michigan - a bonus for Michigan's economy and a deficit for ours.

Contracts were broken and productions scuttled for legitimate producers. Meanwhile, the efforts to prosecute the dishonest ones were hampered by the gaping loopholes left in the law and not written into the contracts.

We need at least a new Iowa Film Office to make it up to the legitimate producers and repair our state's reputation - an adequately funded one.

An adequately funded Iowa Film Office is not something we've quite managed to do in the past. The results have reflected this.

The original Iowa Film Office under Wendol Jarvis (the same man being considered to run the new Iowa Film Office) was a little short of what it needed to operate effectively but nonetheless did manage to bring a few higher profile to Iowa which helped to boost its reputation, the most famous of which were "The Bridges of Madison County" and "Field of Dreams". The state even managed to wrangle an slogan ("Fields of Opportunity") for economic development out of the latter film.

But Wendol Jarvis did not stay. Why? Because the budget of the office was cut to levels where he no longer wanted to try to do the job. Not enough money, no more miracles.

The transitional Iowa Film Office under Steve Schott inherited this skimpy budget. Because of the budget, Mr. Schott could only work on a part-time basis - hardly enough time to promote Iowa to filmmakers, build up a database of Iowa locations, maintain an Iowa Production Guide and find ways to compete with the new competitive threat from other states - tax incentives.

For whatever reasons, Steve Schott's contract was not renewed and Tom Wheeler was appointed to the job of manager. In his capacity in the old Iowa Film Office, Tom Wheeler was not very effective. There was little money to do anything to attract film activity to Iowa and the salary offered by the state for the position of Film Office Manager only could pay for someone of Mr. Wheeler's qualifications which it turned out weren't too high.

The Iowa Film Tax Credits were passed with Wheeler's encouragement and it did manage to produce a gold rush of a sort for film production in Iowa. But it was based on a foundation of sand. It was not sustainable, it drained the treasury, and it attracted greedy fly-by-night operators who had little intention of actually getting films on the screen. They only wanted to collect money and make their fortunes.

When the film tax credit came into being, funding for the old Iowa Film Office was cut even further. There was no additional money provided to hire an expert in film tax credits who could have recognized the potential problems and cut them off. We, of course, know how that turned out.

A key component to the ineffectiveness of the previous incarnations of the Iowa Film Office was money - as in not enough of it. In order to save a few pennies, Iowa opened itself up to losing millions of dollars.

Which brings us to the subject line of my message.

What is being proposed is a new Iowa Film Office, not the old one. This new Iowa Film Office shouldn't need the trick of film tax credits to do its job, not if it has the resources to do its job. Film tax credits shouldn't even be part of the question by the end of this session since, as I understand it, the now dormant film tax credits are due to be axed.

The new Iowa Film Office, in order not to have the problems of the previous Iowa Film Offices needs to be adequately funded. The proposed $400,000 is the actual estimated cost to do all that needs to be done. It is not some inflated figure invented in order to trick you into negotiating down to the actual level.

The new Iowa Film Office essentially has to start out from scratch since there is little to no physical elements left over from the previous Iowa Film Offices to build upon. All that is gone. The locations database was lost when the computers were reclaimed and wiped clean. The same with the Iowa Production Guide. Until this is rebuilt, it will be difficult for any potential film to be shot in Iowa to find qualified crew members who live here.

Not only must the new Iowa Film Office start from zero but, because of the old baggage left over from the mishandling of the film tax credit situation, it will have to start out behind.

There are a lot of relationships to repair, a lot of bruised feelings, and a whole lot of coaxing to be done to encourage legitimate producers to consider coming back to the state. To do all this traveling, not to mention build up the infrastructure, is going to take money - the estimated amount, not the cut-rate amount of the counter-proposal.

None of these very sensitive negotiations can be phoned in. It has to be face-to-face. If producers learn that the state has cut the opening operating budget from its original $400,000 to $125,000 or some point in between, it will reinforce our reputation of a place that takes away - a place unfriendly to film production. Again, these are the legitimate, honest film producers we are talking about - the ones that got burned by the handling of the old Iowa Film Office's film tax credit fiasco - the ones the Iowa Film Office was created to attract in the first place.

Don't think that a desk and a phone is going to be enough to overcome this damage and don't think that "economizing" is going to be enough to give the new Iowa Film Office the resources it needs to overcome this situation and to rebuild its infrastructure. $400,000 is what it needs and that is a very modest amount compared to what it could be.

And don't tell me that the state can't afford it. The article in the Des Moines Register about the state giving $800 million in tax credits to established, profitable big corporations would certainly indicate that $400,000 is a drop in the bucket in proportion to the whole state budget.

Don't cheap out. Fully fund the new Iowa Film Office.

-Dave