In late April, as the race for California governor was heating up, Steve Hilton and his advisers at their Huntington Beach headquarters were in a quandary. They wanted to show they were serious about saving Hollywood. But what could be done that wasn’t already tried?
Hilton hit on it: What if the entertainment tax credit went into the stratosphere, going so far that shooting in the state could, when combined with a hoped-for federal tax credit, (almost) be free? He decided to float the idea of a 60 percent credit, a signal to Hollywood that he stood beside it. (The ceiling in California now usually sits at 45 percent, with many productions getting 35 percent. So the move would substantially increase what is already, by many metrics, the most generous film tax-break program in the country.)
About 45 miles northwest, at the campaign headquarters of Xavier Becerra in Glendale, Hilton’s Democratic rival was equally in a bind. He had almost no Hollywood plan at all, owing to the fact that until recently he had almost no campaign at all.
But then Eric Swalwell was felled by a sex scandal, Katie Porter was beset by volatility claims, and suddenly Becerra was surging and on the clock. His small staff went into a frenzy. He, too, came up with a Hollywood plan (eventually), albeit focusing not on tax credits. Among the most eye-catching of Becerra’s proposals is a “California Content Performance Disclosure requirement” — essentially, a law or rule that studios/streamers must provide “meaningful performance data” to everyone from directors to the crew. Such sharing would need to come in a “standardized form that gives workers what they need to bargain fairly.”
The likely advancement of both men to the general election, combined with two mayoral candidates who talk effusively about rescuing Hollywood, shows just how good the entertainment industry has become at the message game. (One only wishes for such effectiveness about subjects other than its demise.) What could have been brushed-aside concerns about Hollywood elites have become, thanks to a combination of behind-the-scenes guild lobbying and celebrity public pronouncements, a labor cause celebre.
Now it’s commonplace to hear pro-worker statements, even from Republicans. “[This] is not a temporary slowdown. It is one of California’s signature industries being pushed out of its own home land, taking its toll on good, middle-class jobs,” Hilton’s Hollywood plan stated.
And the problem is indeed dire, with 51,000 jobs lost in the past three years and AI threatening to take more. By some metrics, L.A. soundstages could fall much further than the 62 percent occupancy rate that permitting office FilmLA reported in its latest snapshot.
The problem for Hollywood is it now has to decide which of these supplicants can do the most for its interests. In The Hollywood Reporter’s conversations with both campaign strategists and Hollywood producers, it’s clear that could be a tougher task.
Becerra has seemed almost allergic to lavish tax benefits, while Hilton comes with a host of conservative policy proposals, from the dismantling of environmental protections to pushing low-density housing, that will be anathema to many liberals in Hollywood.
In that matchup, voters from the entertainment industry might thus be forced to choose between the candidate they can live with who won’t help them and the candidate who can help them and who they can’t live with.
At least the two L.A. mayoral candidates have been uniformly vocal on Hollywood. Mayor Karen Bass in her acceptance speech the night of the primary June 2 called L.A. “the creative capital of the world” and declared an “industry that was leaving, but we are bringing it back.” Councilmember Nithya Raman has equaled that talk. “Los Angeles is losing Hollywood. Not because productions want to leave, but because we’ve made it too hard for them to stay,” she has said.
Both have released rescue plans of some kind. Bass has issued a “new executive directive to support local film and TV jobs,” while Raman has a platform focusing on “five immediate priorities” to “bring Hollywood jobs home.”
Unlike the job of governor, though, the mayor has very little control over where productions shoot. Outside of permitting and other procedural measures — annoying when disregarded, but not the main reason producers decamp elsewhere — mayoral efforts mainly involve lobbying other people to do something. The one mayoral candidate with a truly concrete Hollywood proposal was the Democratic Socialist Rae Huang, who advocated for the city to buy up movie theaters and sell tickets for low to no cost. She notched just 3 percent of the votes.
Fundraising and support among the glitterati will be the game for the mayoral candidates, and it could get intense. Already Samuel L. Jackson and Jane Fonda have joined many establishment Dems (Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris) in endorsing Bass. IATSE has, too.
But some of those endorsements came before Raman turned into a powerhouse, and it’s at least possible a few of them could jump ship. Meanwhile, a slew of celebrities — many with hipster cachet, including Adam Scott, Mindy Kaling and Michael Schur — have joined Team Raman.
If Bass has the political establishment, Raman has the entertainment one via husband Vali Chandrasekaran, whose long career gives him relationships with seemingly every third bold-faced name. Already the campaign has landed the endorsement of Christopher Lloyd, creator of Modern Family, on which Chandrasekaran wrote and produced. The Hollywood battle could turn the town upside down. Now it just needs someone to come along and put it right-side up.
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