WHAT A HEEL: Brad’s A Pip
LA is among the 40 states that give Hollywood studios huge tax credits and other subsidies to film in their states, and bring jobs and business to residents along with buzz and glamour. Some states seven reimburse producers for actors’ salaries, meals for the crew and soundstage rentals.
Still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina, the state is “financing a hefty share of Brad Pitt’s next movie - $27,117,737, to be exact,” reports the New York Times:
Louisiana, one of the most assertive players in the subsidy game, wound up covering that outsize piece of the nearly $167 million budget of Mr. Pitt’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” …
Until two years ago, Louisiana’s program offered a 15 percent credit for virtually the entire budget of a qualified film (and more for Louisiana resident wages), including money that may have been spent out of state. Things were fast and loose enough in Louisiana that Mark Smith, who oversaw the program, pleaded guilty last year to taking $67,500 in bribes to inflate budgets for a film production company that was not named by the authorities.
You’ll recall that Pitt made a pet project out of rebuilding the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans with eco-friendly homes, and that in a 2006 interview with the “Today” show’s Ann Curry, he claimed to be “baffled because the people here on the ground have not gotten the money yet. They have not received restitution.” Perhaps Brad will be less baffled if he investigates whether some of the money that was supposed to go to Katrina victims was instead diverted into the bank accounts of Hollywood types like him in the form of subsidy payments.
Comments