Film tax credit is a local production
Adam Roffman is worried. He has a right to be. Governor Charlie Baker just announced he wants to put a coffin nail in the Somerville native’s career.
Roffman, 43, is a set dresser on films shot in Greater Boston. He has been at it for years and has worked on “Gone Baby Gone,’’ “The Town,’’ “Ted,’’ “The Equalizer,’’ and many others. Currently, he’s getting up early every morning to report to the set of a movie directed by David O. Russell (whose credits include “American Hustle’’) about which Roffman’s allowed to tell me nothing. (A quick search of the Internet Movie Database reveals that it’s a comedy about the inventor of Miracle Mop, provisionally titled “Joy’’ and starring Jennifer Lawrence. The film has been shooting in places such as Wilmington and North Reading.)
Roffman describes his job thusly: “As the on-set dresser, I’m the eyes and ears for the art department. I arrive with the shooting crew and work with the director and cinematographer to make sure everything looks the way the director wants it while also trying to maintain the production designer’s vision.’’
It’s specialized labor, necessary to the making of a feature film, and it’s a union gig, the union being the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 481. And yet Roffman’s job — and thousands of others — hangs on a stroke of the governor’s pen.
Baker’s new budget, released on Wednesday, made early headlines for what it giveth and what it taketh away. The “giveth’’ is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which benefits low-income families and which Baker proposes to double. The “taketh’’ is the Massachusetts Film Tax Incentive program, the engine behind a remarkable resurgence in Bay State filmmaking since 2006 but a political punching bag ever since the Department of Revenue reported that two-thirds of the spending generated by the tax credit has left the state (in 2012, anyway).
As political baseball goes, this is a floater over the plate. Is there anything easier to scorn than fat-cat Hollywood producers and stars taking our tax money and skedaddling back to Lotusland? Especially when the resulting movies can possess the staggering badness of “R.I.P.D.,’’ a Ryan Reynolds turkey that was the biggest recipient of tax credits in 2012?
Yet the face of Massachusetts filmmaking isn’t Reynolds or even Ben Affleck, who at least has made some good Boston movies over the years. It’s Roffman and other below-the-title locals who dress sets, provide props and costumes, handle boom mikes and cameras, work as drivers, fix hair and make-up, and on and on. It’s the restaurants and hotels and car services and dozens of other businesses that benefit from a busy production community. “I think it’s hard to conclude from the reports that I’ve read that [the film tax credit] is the most fundamental piece of why someone chooses to make a film here,’’ Baker told the Globe on Monday. Roffman’s experience strongly suggests otherwise.
Before the tax incentive program went into effect, he says, “I spent at least half of my year, if not more, working on films in New York because there just wasn’t enough work here. I’d be paying two rents, I’d be away from home and my wife, I’d be working on films elsewhere and paying taxes elsewhere.’’
That changed, dramatically, in 2006. “Once they passed the tax incentive,’’ Roffman says, “there was such an abundance of work here all of a sudden that I haven’t had to leave the state.’’ At any given time, he says, there are three to four films concurrently under production, enough to sustain a vibrant community of film workers. “The crew base here has grown significantly, and everyone’s experience has grown, because everyone is working on so many films with so many different people.’’
The ripples fan out in many different directions, including the larger business and cultural communities of Massachusetts. Because Roffman was able to find so much work in-state, he was able to devote more time to the Independent Film Festival of Boston, which he started with others in 2003 and ran for 11 years — unpaid — before handing the reins to new directors. The IFFB now stands as the city’s premier film festival and a much-attended rite of spring, attracting movies hot off Sundance and elsewhere. (The 13th edition will run from April 22 to 29.) Says Roffman, “If it weren’t for the tax incentive, honestly, I don’t think the film festival would be in existence today.’’
He mentions friends of his, a propmaster named Noah Dubreuil and his partner, costumer supervisor Virginia Johnson, who’ve benefited from the surge in local production by starting a fabric store and self-described “stitch lounge’’ called Gather Here in Cambridge; the business has been so successful that Johnson, reached by e-mail, says they’re planning to move into larger quarters — unless Baker has his way and film producers head elsewhere.
“Loss of the film tax incentive would mean we would halt our expansion plans,’’ says Johnson. “It would stall our community outreach programming and definitely cap our hiring. We would have to make tough choices between using local small businesses for our shop — screenprinting at Hemlock Ink, pattern printing from Cambridge Repro-graphics, baked goods for events from Sweet Lydia’s and Union Square Donuts, cards from Pressbound, locally dyed yarns from Dirty Water Dyeworks — and instead use international chains and larger commercial vendors.’’
That’s a hint of the ways a robust local film production industry can fill the coffers of more than the studios out West. Roffman recalls shooting exterior scenes for a movie called “The Finest Hours’’ in Chatham in December and being engulfed by a nor’easter; the underdressed crew — 80 strong — trooped over to Cape Fisherman’s Supply on Depot Road and over three days bought “headgear, coats, pants, boots, socks, gloves, everything you can think of. They said it was the busiest three-day span they ever saw in their store, and that was in December, which is the dead season.’’
Johnson cites another example: “As the costume supervisor on large films like ‘Black Mass’ and ‘Spotlight,’ I can tell you that we have spent thousands of dollars locally just on dry cleaning. Over the summer we spent $39,000 at Clevergreen Cleaners alone.’’
Everyone in the business seems to understand the political play being made here: Doubling the Earned Income Tax Credit helps working families. But killing off the Massachusetts film industry — which doing away with tax incentives would almost certainly do — does just the opposite. “There are many, many working families that make their living because of the film tax credit,’’ Roffman says, “and there are all of the businesses that the films that come to town help as well: the restaurants, the hotels, the Home Depots, the print shops, the antique shops where we buy and rent tons and tons of furniture and artwork to decorate the sets. There are so many businesses in Massachusetts that make so much money from the film industry being here that to get rid of the film tax credit actually hurts working families.’’
Just a thought: Maybe it’s them Charlie Baker should be thinking about before he calls “Cut.’’
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