Posted 26 April, 2008 in MA News
Producer Dana Brunetti has acknowledged that he and fellow producer
Kevin Spacey had originally planned to film most of his gambling movie
21 in Toronto or Chicago until he was lured to Massachusetts by a
$5-million tax credit. Brunetti told Bloomberg News that the other
incentives were significantly less attractive and that Boston offered
a better setting since the true story concerned a group of MIT card
sharks. Nevertheless, the tax credits that the filmmakers received
have sparked political debate over the role of government in
supporting private businesses. “There’s something obscene about giving
Hollywood producers, with all their money, a tax break,” Republican
state Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei told the news service. And
Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation in
Boston, said, “We’re not getting sufficient payback of this as an
investment.” Bloomberg reported that in the past two years the state
has contributed $138 million to 88 film ventures and generated $544
million in wages and other production spending. Nicholas Paleologos,
head of the Massachusetts Film Office observed that that amount
doesn’t include such things as additional wages for workers at hotels
serving film crews.
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