Have our films gone to New Mexico?

Study looks at how to keep projects

The crew of 'Spy Kids 3-D' moves camera equipment up Congress Avenue during filming in 2003. Robert Rodriguez will stay in Austin to shoot his next film, 'The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl.'
Marla Brose FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN

By Joe O'Connell


Posted: August 6, 2004

Is the heart of the Texas film industry still beating? Yes, but you may detect a faint murmur that has Austin and state officials stocking the medicine cabinet.

City leaders are expected to release their study of the local film industry on Aug. 16, and the state is mulling incentives to pull in more big studio projects.

First the hot news: Matt Damon is set to portray Lance Armstrong in a biopic expected to shoot in 2005. Meanwhile, the Platinum Dunes folks behind the Austin-shot remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" plan to make a prequel. New Line recently bought more rights for the 1974 original from Tobe Hooper, Kim Henkel and attorney Robert Kuhn and set "The Longest Yard" scripter Sheldon Turner to work on a story.

Tommy Lee Jones has opened preproduction offices at Austin Studios for "The Three Burials of Malquiades Estrada," a western that will shoot on Jones' Van Horn ranch, in Odessa and in the Big Bend this fall. The production office originally opened in San Antonio but moved to the Capital City to be nearer to the state's main crew base. Jones will direct, star in and produce the story by Guillermo Arriaga ("Amores Perros") about a ranch hand trying to fulfill a promise to bury an old friend in his Mexican hometown.

Plus, Robert Rodriguez is gearing up an Austin shoot this fall for "The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl," about which few details have been released except that it is a family film and potentially a return to 3-D.

Actor and former pro skateboarder Jason Lee is turning director and currently casting "Seymour Sycamore, Margaret Orange" for a Texas shoot this fall (no word on which city). Lee, of Kevin Smith's "Chasing Amy" and "Mallrats," apparently has Smith on board as an executive producer for the quirky tale of two 12-year-olds.

And there remains an outside shot that Richard Linklater will bring to Austin his next directing effort: "The Smoker," starring Natalie Portman as a young woman with designs on wedding her teacher, Owen Wilson. But, surprise, Canada is a better bet.

What do three of these four projects have in common? Texas homeboys. San Saba resident Jones recently threw his weight to move the comedy "Cheer Up" here, and Linklater and Rodriguez have long shown a preference for staying home with the armadillos.

But money talks, and Louisiana and New Mexico are waving a wad of cash toward Hollywood and getting takers. Disney's "Glory Road," the story of how in 1966 Don Haskins of Texas Western (now the University of Texas at El Paso) led the first all-black college basketball team to an NCAA championship, will be in El Paso briefly. But most filming will be in New Orleans, with plenty of Austin crew folk crossing the border as well. By the way, Ben Affleck is out and Josh Lucas is on board to portray Haskins.

Over in New Mexico, former Dallas Cowboy Michael Irvin and University of Oklahoma alumnus Brian Bosworth have joined Adam Sandler and Chris Rock in "The Longest Yard" cast. About 35 percent of the comedy remake about a prison football team is being shot at a former penitentiary near Santa Fe, N.M., with the rest in Los Angeles.

"Both of these states are really trying to buy their way into this business that we've spent some 30 years to grow," said Tom Copeland, head of the Texas Film Commission.

They're doing it through incentives. New Mexico offers loans and actually invests state funds in films, while Louisiana gives state income tax credits. Copeland says 12 states currently offer some form of incentive, and the Texas Legislature will likely consider joining that group during the next regular session. A similar effort failed last session in light of an ultra-tight budget forecast. Texas currently offers sales tax exemptions to filmmakers.

"We've got to get in there and start participating or we're going to lose this," Copeland said.

The Austin City Council commissioned a 100-day study of what it can do to promote the local film industry and is poised to release its findings.

"Now I'm confident with the results of the gap analysis study the council commissioned four months ago we'll have the facts we need to determine how local government can further develop its partnership with this dynamic local industry," Mayor Will Wynn said.

Why the local interest? Perhaps a realization that Austin is now the home of Texas film. The state estimates 2003 Texas film and television projects had a combined budget of about $229 million. Austin claimed just less than $200 million of that figure, almost half of that from "The Alamo." It's conservatively estimated that 50 percent of a film's budget goes directly into the local economy.

Copeland's biggest concerns are the mobility and fickleness of the film business, and the possibility that Texas crews will start migrating to our neighboring states to follow the work. Or when Texas crews are, in a sense, training newcomers to the field, our neighbors could soon boast their own film pros.

And don't forget Canada, which has used its weak dollar and financial incentives to lasso a big chunk of the U.S. film industry. Terry Gilliam's "Tideland" tells of the bizarre world of an 11-year-old girl who talks to her Barbie doll heads in rural Texas. It'll lens in Saskatchewan. Howe about a television film titled "Miss Texas"? It'll shoot in Vancouver.

So when Damon stars in the Armstrong biopic next year, will he bicycle the streets of Montreal or Albuquerque, N.M., instead of Austin? When the "Chainsaw" sequel gears up, will Bourbon Street fill in for Sixth Street?

Let's hope not.

Got a tip about the Texas film industry? Send it to Joeonlocation@hotmail.com