The House and Senate voted to sustain Film Enhancement Rebate Program, aka House Bill 2580 (aka The Compete with Canada Film Act), would keep the rebate initiative alive through 2024. It now heads to the governor for perusal.
Not everybody’s happy about it. “The taxpayers of this state shouldn’t be forced to finance a film about a dysfunctional family,” said State Rep. David Dank, R-Oklahoma City, according to The Journal Record.
By dysfunctional, he means August:
Osage County, the critically acclaimed, star-studded black comedy-drama filmed in Bartlesville and
Pawhuska. It was released in January and is written by Oklahoma native
Tracy Letts. You know the one; his play of the same name won a Pulitzer
prize.
But see, taxpayers aren’t really funding these “dysfunctional” movies like The Cherokee Word for Water, Rudderless, To the Wonder, The Veil, You Can’t Win, Running Deer, Yellow… Production
companies may get up to 37 percent back to help pay for things like
building sets (jobs), catering (jobs), production (jobs), film crews
(jobs) and renting job locations (jobs). The money has to be spent by
the film industry first — in Oklahoma. The payback for the state comes
in money, industry strength and job growth.
“It’s
not a tax credit, but a rebate, and that’s an important difference,”
Sean Patrick Eaton of the Professional Filmmakers of Oklahoma replied.
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2014.