When the credits roll later this month for “Confidence Game” and other works at the Connecticut Film Festival, Tom Carruthers is confident of this ”“ the sooner the state ends the shifting, shell game with its movie tax credit, the easier his job will become in rolling out the red carpet to filmmakers near and far.
Six years after installing a 30 percent tax credit on film and digital media productions ”“ then editing down the incentives ”“ Connecticut has cut down what was fast becoming an A-list movie shooting location to the industry equivalent of an extra.
The state is now eliminating funding to train film industry workers in Connecticut.
“You hate to see it eliminated, but I think in the overall scheme of things there are other needs that were more important than the film industry,” said Glenn Marshall, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Labor, in testimony to a Connecticut General Assembly committee. “Unfortunately, we had to cut someplace.”
As a result, major moviemakers appear to be cutting Connecticut from the list of shooting locations. In 2007, it was Steven Spielberg filming “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” in the streets of New Haven; fast forward to April 2012, it is “Dead Souls” under production by NBC Universal”™s Chiller TV ”“ and not much else destined for theaters, though the television industry continues to gain steam.
Carruthers has done as much as anyone in working to raise the state”™s profile with filmmakers, through his organization of the Connecticut Film Festival, a year-long series of screenings and seminars culminating in its main event in Danbury at the end of this month. Anchoring this year”™s festival is “Confidence Game,” a documentary on the collapse of Bear Stearns and its ramifications, produced by Ridgefield resident Nick Verbitsky and his Blue Chip Films in Norwalk.
Verbitsky said he actually secured a tax credit for “Confidence Game,” but hasn”™t been able to take advantage of it because Blue Chip Film”™s out-of-pocket costs don”™t come close to qualifying. He did cash in on a TV series called “Intersections” produced for the Speed Channel.
One problem with Connecticut”™s tax credit for producers like Verbitsky is that they cannot be applied to money spent out of state if not for items used in state. While that works fine for television producers such as NBC Sports, which is moving its main studio operations to Stamford, for filmmakers who live in the saddle it is another.
Verbitsky would have liked to use the credit for shows on polygamy in the southwestern United States he produced for WE tv”™s “Secret Lives of Women,” but the project required going there.
“If I hire a Connecticut crew to go shoot in Arizona ”“ not acceptable,” Verbitsky said. “I mean, they are going to come back and spend the money here. Those are the things that just mystify me ”¦ It doesn”™t make any sense.”
There”™s no mystery to Carruthers”™ ultimate goal ”“ to build the Connecticut Film Festival into an event comparable to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, which also encompasses music and digital media, or New York City”™s Tribeca Film Festival or the Toronto International Film Festival. In Toronto, moviegoers have picked two films for a “people”™s choice award” the past five years that went on to win best-picture Oscars: “The King”™s Speech” and “Slumdog Millionaire.”
If not the slums of the moviemaking world, Connecticut is no Camelot either ”“ and Carruthers suggested the state was well on its way there in 2006.
“There”™s a whole cottage industry that could have started here a couple years ago. Can you imagine hundreds of (small producers) all around the state?”
The Connecticut Film Festival will receive some 1,000 submissions this year from filmmakers, culling the list to perhaps 175 and screening them at 85 events around the state, including the four-day festival in Danbury starting April 26.
“In 2006 ”¦ it was flat-out the most competitive tax credit in the country,” Carruthers said. “There was a whole bunch of plans, and I think some of them didn”™t come to fruition because the economy tanked. That was the biggest problem right there. But if the state was to go back to the tax credit from 2006, all these guys ”¦ would be producing films here.”
