Posted 22 March, 2008 in RI News
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, March 23, 2008
By Michael Janusonis
Journal Arts Writer
Bill and Angela Ryding, of Warwick, have found a post-retirement movie career working as extras on movies such as Underdog and 27 Dresses.
The Journal / Bob Thayer
Rhode Island had the New England playing field to itself when its new state tax-credit program attracted such Hollywood projects as the Brotherhood TV series and the Wesley Snipes movie Hard Luck to Providence in 2005.
Since then, Massachusetts and Connecticut have taken note and created tax-incentive programs of their own.
“Massachusetts saw our success and created their film-incentive law in 2006, which failed to have an impact in their state,” says Steven Feinberg, executive director of the Rhode Island Film & Television Office. “So they went back to the drawing board and copied our law and raised the ante slightly in 2007. Connecticut also copied our law in 2007, but instead of our 25-percent credit, they raised their credit to 30 percent.”
Karen Senich, the acting executive director of the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, in Hartford, which oversees the state’s film division, says that besides Connecticut’s more generous benefits to filmmakers, productions need to spend only $50,000 in the Nutmeg State to qualify, rather than the $300,000 required by Rhode Island’s law. This has meant a resuscitation of Connecticut’s film division, which she says is in the midst of going from a staff of one to a staff of four.
(Rhode Island has an executive director, a full-time paid assistant, a part-time Web designer and two unpaid college interns. The budget for the film office is $273,464; $213,255 is for personnel expenses and $60,209 is for operating expenses. Feinberg is paid $82,700 a year.)
“It’s about the economy, about creating jobs,” says Senich, who points to such big-ticket productions filmed in Connecticut after the tax credit went into force as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with Harrison Ford, Revolutionary Road with Leonardo DiCaprio, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 with Amber Tamblyn and America Ferrera.
Already the state has pledged $26 million in tax credits to 64 productions. However, Connecticut recently revised its law so outside venders wouldn’t be the principal beneficiaries, and the Rhode Island Division of Taxation has proposed doing the same here, taking the position that an expense only counts toward the credit if it is performed, purchased, provided or rented by a Rhode Island resident or vender. In Connecticut, as of Jan. 1, 2009, only 50 percent of expenses “incurred outside the state” will count toward the calculation of that state’s 30-percent tax credit. After Jan. 1, 2012, “no expenses or costs incurred outside the state and used within the state shall be eligible for a credit.”
Nick Paleologos, head of the Massachusetts Film Office, in Boston, reports much the same kind of success in attracting filmmakers to the Bay State since its new and improved tax-incentive program went into effect. Ten films were made in Massachusetts last year. That was up from two in 2006 and includes Pink Panther 2, The Box, Bachelor Number Two with Dane Cook, 21, The Women with Annette Bening, Meg Ryan, Bette Midler and Candice Bergen, The Lonely Maiden with Morgan Freeman, William H. Macy and Christopher Walken, and The Great Debaters, directed by Denzel Washington.
There were so many films that Paleologos says one of his biggest headaches was “just trying to make sure that one film crew wasn’t bumping into another.”
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