Hashtag Of The Entitlement Class

Sorta sums it up very well for the Canada Film Board,only not on the scale the CFB practises it.

That first article provided me with some creative inspiration of my own - to take a running swing at Ken Loach's head with a cricket bat. And well done, Mr. Wall!

Growing up in a socialist country run by communists one can report on the culture that you have to see no matter what.

Have seen many a film made in the glorious Soviet Union. All, without fail were propaganda, sometimes weak, sometimes bombastic, though propaganda about the wonderful life in socialism run by communists.

In case the film was not doing good in the box office, which was approximately 97.7% of the time, there were readymade masses of filmgoers from the classrooms of the schools. They would tell you to get coins from your mama because tomorrow you will be going to see how glorious your life is.

The interesting and bizarre fact was that the reality contradicted every point made by the propaganda. Much in the vein of the familiar saying "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us". They pretended that socialism and its leaders were possibly selected by gods and we pretended that we believed them.

Everybody was happy under the circumstances, what the hell.

"...Goetz said he is willing to discuss new ways of working with the province, but people in Saskatchewan's film and TV industry would still rather have the existing tax credit..."

I bet.

I've been wondering when this issue will make it to smalldeadanimals.

At first I believed this tax credit was related to money spent on taxes paid to the province. I thought it was a pro-business type of deal.

Upon learning the difference between refundable and non-refundable tax credits made me realize what this "tax credit" really is....

a government handout.

The debates are always about how much money is triggered by the handouts in order to bring in outside investment, but the outside investment doesn't make up for the tax payer cost.

So over ten years $100 million tax payer dollars were spent and $600 million private dollars from outside the province arrived.

A six to one ratio.

The problem is that we don't accurately seem to know where all the money went. How much money went to pay Ryan Reynolds to show up and do his schtick? How much of the budget for Dolan's Cadillac went to Christian Slater? Thy just get paid and go home. Does this count?
You hear some shady stories around the industry....believe me.

I was a film student at the U of R and the old joke was that you'd spend four years in school and then get hired to hold a stop sign seven blocks from where all the Americans were filming some garbage movie-of-week.

Of my graduating class not many are left in Saskatchewan anymore I think. The handful that stayed are not thriving in a way that they could in a more practical industry.

The fact is, movies and television are sexy industries, but there isn't a lot of money in them. Many people who work in the industry live feast or famine lifestyles. The tax credit incentive is just provincial governments trying to raise the profile of a province and be "hip" by having a show produced that actually garners some attention.

As the industry begins to collapse the same way that the record industry collapsed, this mentality will probably subside. The new outlays that the Saskatchewan government has put out is actually far better and more business natured for the 21st century.

Having local, small businesses doing innovative stuff, (possibly/likely) online stuff has far more potential than trying to endlessly recreate Eli's Lesson and hope that more and more films are made here.

End of the day, a colon screening unit established in a hospital is far more valuable to the people of Saskatchewan than a straight-to-video movie like Vampire Dog.

We just had a fourth-rate little theatre actor here in Swift Current, who, in a letter to the editor of the hugely influential Swift Current Booster (which is, BTW his employer) state that he can no longer support Brad Wall's party in the next election.

OMG!!! The alarm bell went off big time in ol' Speedy Creek.

There is gnashing of teeth and other stuff I can't mention here.

Oh - the humanity of it all!!

j @ 2:26 PM speaks well about this issue, and it is at it's core a common topic on Kates blog, the largesse of the fairy governmentmother bestowing other peoples money upon the chosen. Arizona and Saskatchewan share two sanities; neither change their clocks twice a year, and neither support an industry that shows itself as being consistently unprofitable with a dubious return on the 'investment' of taxpayers dollars.