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A bill proposed earlier this month by Councilmember Vincent Orange (D-At Large) is the latest attempt to lure more television and film production to the District. The Art in Public Spaces Motion Picture and Television Production Funds Act would collect money from District government contractors for the purposes of mounting works of art in public buildings and offering incentives for movie and television crews that visit D.C.
The latter fund has been something of a MacGuffin for D.C. officials interested in promoting the city to production companies—there’s no shortage of movies and series set in Washington, but few of them are actually made here, even when the script calls for outdoor scenes. Instead, many D.C.-set titles grab a few location shots but have the bulk of their production in states willing to grease the camera dolly. Maryland and Virginia, for example, both offer considerable tax rebates.
Under Orange’s bill, construction contractors and developers doing business with the District government would be required to give one percent of the value of their contracts to the new funds. Half would go to the public art allowance, while the other would fund a film incentive program. The District created a $1.6 million film incentive program in fiscal 2007—it gave $1.4 million to the 2010 James L. Brooks dud How Do You Know—but by mid-2010, the fund had dwindled to a meaningless $16,000 without being refueled.
With so many Washington-set movies and series shot elsewhere—HBO’s series Veep was filmed almost entirely in and around Baltimore, for instance—D.C. often sees itself on-screen and watches with envy. “We cannot compete effectively with other cities and states,” Crystal Palmer, the head of D.C.’s film office, said at a Council hearing last year.
And as much as the film office tries to advertise the non-federal parts of the city—Palmer recently showed off Adams Morgan to location scouts for Marvel Studio’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier—getting production companies to commit beyond getting a few establishing shots (i.e., the U.S. Capitol and the monuments around the National Mall) is where the money matters. Maryland and Virginia continue to fund their film incentive programs, with Virginia putting up $5 million for the two-year budget ending in mid-2014.
But will making collections from construction contractors be a viable solution? The bill was originally set to be debated by the Small and Local Business Development Committee on October 31, but the hearing was postponed pending a report from the office of D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi. A member of the committee’s staff declined to say what the estimated revenue from the bill would be, but the CFO’s office said that in its current form, the cost of the legislation would likely be passed back on to the District.
That seems like a tough sell, but not necessarily tougher than some of the previous attempts to replenish the District’s ability to reel in movie crews. Last year, Mayor Vince Gray, who has also pressed the flesh with Hollywood, proposed a surtax on concessions sold at the city’s movie theaters. The so-called “popcorn tax” was a box-office bomb when it went to a Council hearing.
