Hollywood’s third home by David D'Arcy Wednesday 19 August 2009 With eight new sound stages and more planned, picturesque landscapes and a healthy rebate for filmmakers, New Mexico has become a major player in the movie industry. Its governor is working to keep it that way, David D’Arcy writes Bill Richardson was among the hopefuls to make films because of cost, congestion running for the Democratic Party’s and unreliable weather. He boarded a nomination for president in 2008. But he train to California for his first trip West. More quit the race early and settled for another than two-thirds of the way there, DeMille job – executive producer of his state’s got off the train in sunny Santa Fe. Gazing emergence as a centre for movie at the Spanish colonial city and production, the third most important US breathtaking mountains, he said film address after Los Angeles and New contentedly: “So we’re finally here.” York. “No, Mr DeMille, not quite yet,” he was As governor of New Mexico, a post he has told. held since 2003, Richardson has seen the Had it been up to DeMille, Santa Fe, New construction of one film studio, with Mexico’s capital, might have been another on the way, in a state with fewer Hollywood. It isn’t, but it really isn’t far than two million people. away – it is only two hours from LA by Thanks to a rebate system that returns plane, a key reason for the state’s surge in money to producers, 126 features have film production. been shot in the state since Richardson It also has breathtaking natural locations took office. He recently coaxed two and brand new sound stages and the branches of Robert Redford’s Sundance financial backers who make big-budget Institute to leave Utah and set up in an movies possible view its 25 per cent rebate idyllic ranch that the state purchased. as generous and well managed. The film industry hasn’t put Richardson on Hollywood’s A-list of celebrities, at least not yet, but it has put the state’s landscape on the big screen and it does employ thousands of New Mexicans. In a relatively poor state, that’s stardom. The industry has also helped shield New Mexico’s economy from the downturn that has staggered many states, including A scene from No Country for Old Men, California, the nation’s film capital. a movie set in Texas but shot in New New Mexicans in the movie business tell a Mexico. Richard Foreman / Miramax story about Cecil B DeMille, the mogul Films who created Hollywood in the early 1920s. The economic impact from films in the DeMille despaired of New York as a place past few years has been US$2.7 billion
Santa Fe Film and Media Studios, Inc. 1 Santa Fe Studios Road, Santa Fe, NM 87508 =USA= santafestudios.com
(Dh9.9bn), says the governor’s office. No loss leaders,” says Witt. “For us it’s a Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers’ business. We need to make money off this neo-western set in Texas but shot in New thing, as well as employ our people.” Mexico, won the Best Picture Oscar in Film has created some 10,000 jobs in New 2008. Terminator Salvation, a $200 million Mexico, estimates Jon Hendry, a Scot who Hollywood extravaganza, was shot in New runs the International Alliance of Theatrical Mexico last year. Insiders say that Kevin Stage Employees, Moving Picture Branagh’s Marvel Comics epic Thor, with Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth, (IATSE), the motion picture craft union in could be the state’s next mega-feature. the state. “We’re a production centre, Richardson, 61, inherited a film we’re not a fad.” programme from his Republican The rebate programme began as an predecessor, Gary Johnson, who instituted incentive to film the postcard landscape. a 15 per cent rebate in 2002. Officials were banking that the on-screen “Frankly, it was nowhere,” he says. “The beauty would draw tourists to what the year before I took office we did less than state’s licence plates call “The Land of $10 million in production, which was Enchantment”. terrible because New Mexico has a Soon film producers were looking beyond filmmaking history going back to the 1800s. westerns and western-themed stories and Films were leaving LA but they were going substituting New Mexico for Cleveland, out of the country – to Canada, Ireland, Minnesota, Arizona, the Arabian desert, Eastern Europe, New Zealand.” and even ancient Rome, as in this Richardson, “the Guv” to his staff, raised summer’s Year One with Jack Black. the rebate to 25 per cent. There are new sound stages in The Guv is a former ambassador to the Albuquerque, the state’s largest city, and United Nations and is best known outside “Once you walk inside, thanks to movie the US as a diplomat and negotiator. (He magic, it can be anywhere you want”, prepped Bill Clinton’s recent North Korea says Nick Smerigan. trip.) Raised in Mexico, he speaks fluent At his ABQ Studios, eight stages sit in boxy Spanish, as do 30 per cent of his hulks on a barren mesa south of the constituents. Film and diplomacy, he finds, airport. Mountains are to the East, a are similar. freeway to the West. “They expose us to each other and reveal Smerigan invested $91 million (Dh334m) in our shared humanity on many different, these sound stages, which opened in June often subtle, levels. They both strive to find 2007. Smerigan’s clients have spent some common ground,” he says. $340m (Dh1.25bn) at the studio since then. The film production business is fiercely And that money ripples through the New competitive, said Eric Witt, Richardson’s Mexico economy. deputy chief of staff, a former Hollywood “There’s a lot of films looking to leave LA, executive whom movie people call the and there’s only one main driver. That is governor’s film czar. cost,” said Jeremy Hariton, a senior vice “Ours is a direct cash rebate,” Witt says of president at ABQ. “The desire to go one of the advantages of making a movie somewhere where they can put the same in New Mexico. Some states combine thing on the screen for less money rebates with tax credits allowing places increases every week.” such as Michigan and Oklahoma to offset ABQ’s trophy project so far is Terminator almost half of a film’s budget. Salvation. It required a freeway overpass “They’re setting up their programmes as and an 18-foot deep simulated section of
Santa Fe Film and Media Studios, Inc. 1 Santa Fe Studios Road, Santa Fe, NM 87508 =USA= santafestudios.com
the Rio Grande river, which were built on Institute’s Utah location, he says, were “the ABQ’s exterior lot. The crew also cooks”. detonated a real petrol station near the “Bob and I have known each other for 20 city’s airport, a potential nightmare for years and have been political allies. He’s Homeland Security. had a long relationship with New Mexico Outdoor explosions are near impossible in going back to his shooting The Milagro Los Angeles, says Smerigan. Beanfield War,” says Richardson. “Here they were able to blow things up Creating Sundance in New Mexico makes almost every day to see if they worked. economic sense, says Gregory Nava, the They would just get on carts, go out to the director of Bordertown, which he shot in mesa, blow something up and come back New Mexico in 2007. home. We call that ease of use.” “New Mexico lacks a range of options The last film to wrap at ABQ was The economically. Nobody’s going to build Resident, a thriller starring Hilary Swank as manufacturing plants. Juarez [Mexico] is a doctor who learns that her Brooklyn just a few hours away,” he says, predicting neighbours are stalking her through secret that film will train a generation of Latinos passageways. In Albuquerque, they for high-paying “green” jobs, and lure created a grey Brooklyn apartment inside productions in Spanish. an ABQ box, complete with huge photo- There are sceptics, including Victor Nunez, panoramas of the lower Manhattan the director of the recently completed skyline by day and by night. Spoken Word about a young poet’s return Jason Hool is another investor in New to his dying father that was set in and Mexico’s film future. His family’s firm is around Santa Fe. building Santa Fe Studios on 65 acres Nunez notes that both Dallas and south-west of the state capital. “New Wilmington, North Carolina, invested in Mexico is capacity constrained,” he says, sound stages in the 1980s with high hopes, noting that Hollywood features have gone and never flourished. elsewhere when they couldn’t be accommodated in the state. “Suddenly people will decide that it’s not such a good deal, and go somewhere The Hools hired the entertainment else,” he says. “It’s going to happen, but architect Gary Bastien to design the until that time, make hay.” studios. Construction begins this year, with opening projected for 2010. IATSE’s Hendry doubts officials will abandon Richardson’s aggressive At Los Luceros Ranch, in a lush valley an promotions. hour north of the capital, Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute has found a new “We could lose the whole business here if home, or at least a second home. we lose the political will from the top, but I don’t think any politician wants to lose The state bought the ranch last year for 10,000 jobs.” $2.6m (Dh9.55m) and Richardson the diplomat then went to work, luring Had Richardson somehow won the Sundance’s programmes for Native Democratic nomination and been American and Latin American filmmakers elected president, Hendry says, film away from neighbouring Utah. Redford is production in New Mexico would have building a house nearby. The Guv made suffered. “I’m absolutely convinced of welcoming the programme to New that.” Mexico, with its native and Latin cultural Richardson disagrees. roots, sound like liberating hostages. “I think production levels would have The only Hispanics at the Sundance continued,” he says. “We’ve worked very Santa Fe Film and Media Studios, Inc. 1 Santa Fe Studios Road, Santa Fe, NM 87508 =USA= santafestudios.com
hard over the past six years to get the will remain attractive for film production – industry to the point where it could take unless it evolves into a congested and care of itself no matter which costly mini-Los Angeles. administration was in place. Besides, Richardson’s challenge is to make sure it maybe I would have moved the White does not. House to Santa Fe.” www.thenational.ae The White House, perhaps, but not Hollywood. Insiders warn that New Mexico
Santa Fe Film and Media Studios, Inc. 1 Santa Fe Studios Road, Santa Fe, NM 87508 =USA= santafestudios.com