A Snow-Ball In Florida: How to Improve Florida's Film Industry One Filmmaker at a Time

I heard someone say this once. I don't remember when, but it effected me greatly. -

“If filmmaking is about quality than we have an uphill battle here in Florida.”

Regardless of whether this is a fair assessment of the Film Industry in Florida, we DO have an uphill battle ahead of us with the recent striking down of the attempt to re-institute incentives in Florida. But, maybe there is a "Way Around" traditional incentives in Florida. If there was, would you be interested in doing something to make it happen? If the answer is "yes", than please, hear me out. 

We Must Be Indispensable:

To build the Film Industry in Florida we need to make Florida an indispensable part of the Industry itself. We need to showcase the state, but, also, the people here and the resources available here to shoot. This is not easy without incentives, but there are some things we can do. 

Here’s some priorities we can focus on until we get incentives (noting that state incentives are STILL on the list to get at some point & that this is unavoidable if we wish to compete effectively). 

In order to do this we need to let the industry know that…

1. There are good crews & good locations here (we are working on this)

2. There are good projects being originated here 

3. There are ways for us to get the attention of producers 

4. There are competitive incentives, or other funding available

5. There are good film festivals (we are working on this)

Crews, Locations and their Origination:

Films start with scripts. Scripts that get imagined in specific locations, with specific characters, doing specific things. The only one of these things that can help Hollywood know that we have good crews and locations… is if we are getting great projects to be IMAGINED in our LOCATION, Florida, then filmed here. 

Don't bet that another Burn Notice, a show originally
'imagined' in New Jersey will show up here again,
without some sort of competitive edge in place.

But, this isn't as easy as it looks. There are a few films that have a specific “Florida Look” to them, films which can be striking, but there are not many. Films that are memorable in how they portray Florida are… 

“The Creature from the Black Lagoon” - “Cocoon” - “The Yearling” - “Key Largo” - “Miami Vice” - “Palmetto” - “Spring Breakers” - “Pain & Gain” - “Burn Notice”

The idea is that we need filmmakers and screenwriter to 'imagine' stories taking place in Florida. The easiest way to do this is to actually engage Florida filmmakers and writers in making films with Florida as the indispensable backdrop for a good set of characters doing interesting things within a compelling story. 

Back to the list… this means #2 has to happen on the list- in order for #1 to happen.

Attracting Producers:

Getting the attention of producers will happen as more projects are filmed here, but for producers nothing talks louder than money. If there were competitive incentives or other funding available that setup Florida as a competitive player in the incentives battle, we might have something to talk about here. As it is… silence is what we hear. So we need #4 to happen before #3 can happen in any substantial way. 

Although, one caveat is that these good Florida films that we get made end up making bountiful profits- but this is not something filmmakers can plan for. All one can do is make the best film you can and hope that it strikes a nerve in the audience effectively enough that it becomes financially successful. And one film here and there is not enough. We've seen that play out here and it doesn't seem to lead to more films getting made here.

Film Festivals:

Good festivals take care of themselves, until they don’t. These sorts of non-profits or community organizations center on the success of their event(s), which is really due to certain individuals in the organization possessing particular talents which has, really, nothing to do with film or filmmaking. Then, regardless of the event’s success, it ultimately doesn’t prove that we have what it takes, as a state, to be a filmmaking state. It’s just a stop on the tour, but no one seems to actually ever consider staying there to film.

Until we prove our local industry to be worthy of investment, we ought not prop up any festivals with state subsidies. But, if we can, that support may prove productive, as those who DO become attracted will find much more than promotional buzz. There will be something special here that people will be able to sense. Something of true substance. Something worth investing in.

The Snow-Ball Effect:

Once producers get wind of this “something special” they will attract more stars. Stars will attract even better projects and funds. A snowball effect can then happen. But, in my view, until a few high quality films or show gets made here WITH Florida as its indispensable backdrop, infrastructure and crews won’t grow more, locations won’t get utilized more, competitive incentives won’t help to attract more producers and thereby, more stars. And festivals will attract many to stop by, but never to stay, until we have something of substance to offer them as an example of the kinds of projects they can shoot here too.

This all means we need to encourage, invite and attract directors and screenwriters to write with Florida in mind in such an indispensable way that these directors will shoot great micro-budget films here because they are inspired by other great work to take part. An even more effective ‘snow-ball effect’ may take place with directors and screenwriters and the ‘originators’ of projects in my opinion. 

A Different Kind of Incentives… Incentivizing Originators:

How do we accomplish this? If a program, contest or special fund can get approved to do just that- we might be off to a start, incentivizing project origination in a different way than traditional film incentives can. 

A contest to invite screenwriters to write features, shorts and series’ with Florida as a primary “character” in the script could be a start. Give an award for the best one- a ‘Grand Prize’ to source a director to direct it, and possibly a star to champion the project, etc. Do one every year and we will have a good start. 

We can also award funds for Florida directors to write and shoot films from the very beginning of development with Florida as a primary “character” in their films. But I prefer the contest idea, unless the director has a proven track record of doing high quality work before, these funds may never accomplish their task. 

This would definitely be true for features, in my opinion- but I do think that if we provide funding for Florida directors to make shorts, it may prove productive for them, with very little risk of public funds. Capping that amount to a reasonable amount, say a few hundred thousand (available funds per year), would be a substantial benefit to these filmmakers.

Do What Works:

Hedge your bets. Focus on what will truly work. Real Work attracts people in the Film Industry. Actors, Producers, Executives, Directors. That means films or TV shows that are of exceptional quality, that compete with Hollywood on their level and that show Florida as an indispensable backdrop or “character” in the story, will help to make Florida an essential player in the Industry. 

If we can accomplish that, I believe that real money will come into play for more productions here, and we can attract even more of the industry here to make a lasting legacy for Florida.

...A snow-ball in Florida. I think I’d like to see that!

Do you think this would work? Why or why not? Present this concept to Producers and Directors and ask them what they think. Is this a viable option for the Florida Film Industry to find “Another Way Around” traditional incentives in the state.

Blood Covenant is Completed!!... The First Draft, that is.

It took me about 9 and a half months. The same time (give or take a few weeks) to fully gestate an infant human being. I am now resting peacefully. Eating well and am recovering from traumatic wounds caused from birthing a new baby script. A gift to the world. You're welcome.

Now we spend the rest of the scripts life constantly telling it what to do, correcting it, treating it unfairly... or do we nurture it, mold it, protect it and help it to grow into a beautiful fully formed script? I will decide that now- as a first time parent of a script.

I absolutely love the story- the characters (though some still seem unfinished or incomplete)- the plot twists, the locations, the action, the beats, the tone. I can't wait to see it as a movie, but I have very large concerns that if I sell the script, people would absolutely relish changing the ending.

I would hope that, whoever reads the script or thinks about working on it, that they will fully experience the meaning of the film, as it was meant to be experienced. If that experience is given a fair chance, I am confident that the primary elements of the script will remain as it was written.

Sometimes, you just have to not care what kind of criticism you get and keep trudging on... FOR the script. Keep doing the script justice by, yes, doing multiple passes of it and editing it, but also, in believing that there was a reason that you set out on this journey, and it wasn't just to make a script. It was to make a damn good script!

If Wendy says it... I know I can be happy with it!

The 2014 Summer Movie Wager

I have decided to participate in what some film blogs call “The Summer Movie Wager” started by Time Travel Review’s Summer Movie Pool. The rules come from their site: TimeTravelReview’s Summer Movie Pool.

A summation, quoting them…

The object is to pick the films that you think will be the top-ten grossing films of the summer, in order of box-office performance. As I’ve said, that means only films released from May 1st 2012 to the Labor Day weekend, counting only the money those films make domestically (US and Canada) in that period. In other words films from March or April might still be making money after May 1st, but they don’t count; films released from May on could start racking up foreign B.O., but that doesn’t count; films released from May on could still be making money into September, but that doesn’t count either. Box Office numbers are generally available late Monday or Tuesday after the weekend closes. For the last seven or so years, I have been using box office numbers from Yahoo Box Office which gets their numbers in turn from Box Office Mojo. So what you will be doing is figuring out what 10 films will make the most money, and putting them in order of what you think they will gross at the box office. BUT, in addition to your top 10, you get to pick 3 “Dark Horses”- films you think *might* make it, but that you are not confident enough about to put into the top 10 proper.

2014 Summer Movie Wager Scoring:

• Getting number 1 or number 10 dead-on gets you 13 points (each).

The rest of the scoring goes like this:

• 10 points for numbers 2-9 dead-on
• 7 points if your pick was only one spot away from where it ended up
• 5 points if it was two spots away
• 3 points if your pick is anywhere in the Top 10
• 1 point for each dark horse that makes it into the Top 10

The scoring is tabulated so that you get the SINGLE HIGHEST point value for each pick- that is, if you get number ten right, you don’t get 13+3, you only get 13.

So, here it is...

Jon’s 2014 Summer Movie Wager List

1. Amazing Spider Man 2

2. Transformers 4

3. How to Train Your Dragon 2

4. Maleficent

5. X-Men: Days of Future Past

6. Godzilla

7. Guardians of the Galaxy

8. 22 Jump Street

9. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

10. TMNT

Dark Horses:

Jupiter Ascending

Hercules

Neighbors

We shall see how accurate my predictions are. I don’t predict I’ll be as good as some of these other guys participating… but it’s gonna be fun to find out how close I will be.

Vertigo: The Modern Woman vs. the Classical Woman

Introduction:

In 2012, the British Film Institute named Vertigo the greatest film ever made, finally topping Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" which had held its title for nearly 50 years. This prompted me to revisit the film and the discoveries I made about what makes this film stand apart were amazing to me.

Kim Novak played duel roles, "Madeleine" & "Judy"

The Vertigo We All Know:

See if this sounds like the classic Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece "Vertigo" that you know...

Scottie is a man who has failed to reach the heights that his work demands. He wanders through life now, a ghost of a man. As does Madeleine, since she longs for a time past, obsessed with the trappings of a different life and yet sickened by the results of such a life, dominated by the men who abuse them. They are both, born out of time. A tragic existence, doomed to failure, misery and death.

That's the "Vertigo" that I saw recently, but not the one I saw fifteen years ago as a young man...

What is Vertigo REALLY About?

Vertigo is a film obsessed with death, past lives, and a promise of idyllic romance that can never be. It is Hitchcock's Romeo & Juliet. His tragedy of tragedies. But instead of the "Capulets and Montagues", the plot seems to make this about "the Modern Woman vs. the Modern Man". Two lives, so disenfranchised by their current state that they roam aimlessly around San Francisco, not even knowing why. But, let's go a step further... 

To me, the subtext makes the true story "the Modern Woman vs the Classical Woman". After all, the real mystery to solve is Madeleine and Judy. Who is who? And why is their presence in the movie so disorienting and yet powerfully symbolic? Let me explain. To do this we must explore the effects of the emotional undercurrent of the film "Vertigo" and the iconic symbols that underpin it. But first- some history.

Some History:

The late fifties. This was the time of the beginning of modern man and of modern woman. The beginning of the feminist movement and the youth movement. We were on the precipice culturally of all things past and all things modern. WWII and Korea had changed us all in America. Not to mention the "Red Scare"- making us question everything, and what it was all for? The Beatniks and their counter-culture movement made us question everything about American life. 

The American home and culture were in full swing now, at it's prime. What were our true roles in the American home as men and women? Were we equal? Could a woman be free of man's dominion? Wasn't the failure of modern man something to face and possibly to try and repair? And what of the modern woman?

Creating the Modern Woman:

The story of Carlotta Veracruz explains to us this tale of a long lost woman in the film. So, Vertigo tells us, Carlotta was a girl in the mid-eighteen hundreds who was taken in by a rich man, who gave her a child, took the child and soon after, discarded her. "Men could do that in those days..." the storyteller in the film tells us. She roamed, seemingly... half mad, around the small town south of San Francisco, vacantly asking where her child was, similarly to how Madeleine roamed around, seemingly possessed with the past-life of her matriarchal ancestor. She even throws herself into the San Francisco Bay emulating her great great grand mother's untimely end (the story doesn't tell us how far removed).

Madeleine sees herself in Carlotta.

"But, What About The Switcheroo Near The End?"

But, the question is, is this the result of pain from Madeleine or from the existential role of women at this time? Some people may simply chock it up to a simple switcheroo. That the plot and the actions of the characters are quite conveniently "disregarded" due to the murder plot, revealed after Scottie meets Judy. 

But, I am not convinced by this simple "right off" of the major part of the dramatic action of the first half of the story. I am compelled to believe there is more to this first half of the story than a fraud perpetrated on Scottie alone, but that it is perpetrated on the Modern Man, as well as the unsuspecting "Woman of old", who have fallen into the trap and end up left behind, betrayed and murdered. This story and its universality are in question and it resonates with me on this level.

Seeing the fractured personalities.

The Symbology:

So, let me define the symbols: 

1) Madeleine is a rich lady who represents the "Classical Woman"- the woman that Hitchcock is constantly idealizing in his movies. Graceful, mysterious, powerful. 

2) Scottie is the modern man who has realized his failure and is broken. He cannot reach the heights that his work and that normal life demand of him. 

3) Heights are a symbol as well. It symbolizes the great expectation and demands on the modern man to be great. This perfection can only eventually lead to failure and the disenfranchisement that so many felt at this time in history. 

The dizzying heights that Scottie faced on the job, breaking him.

4) Judy represents the New Woman. The femme fatale who is a fraud, a trickster. And yet naive and foolish. She is "the Modern Woman", who is working together with... 

5) The "Old Man." Judy conspires with him to end his wife, the Old Woman or the "Classical Woman", who cannot live with herself, knowing what has occurred in the past. Why does he do this? Freedom? Is he tired of her obsessions with the injustice of the past? We are never told this, except we do know he is a man who seems very comfortable with the heights Scottie realizes he cannot reach. He may be the one who creates or perpetuates these expectations that "heights" represent in the film.

And...

6) Midge is a second incarnation of the "New Woman" which now has a duel personality. The New Woman cannot contain both parts of the Old Woman, so she has fractured into two. The sexually liberated Judy & the rational Midge, who represents the part of the New Woman who never grows up. She has the trappings of womanhood and the desires, but she has forfeited her sexual knowledge for a rational one, as she completely fails to attract her man of choice, Scottie, and perpetuates the fraud of true womanhood as personified in the pairing of "Midge as the Old Woman".

The second example of the fraud revealed.

The Plot Thickens:

So the "New" must get rid of the "Old". This "out with the old- in with the new" from a social and cultural perspective, may seem simply as nature taking it's course. But, it is not that simple in THIS story. Instead, it is taking place as a fraudulent act. 

This is represented by the New Woman, Judy. For what some might mistake as girlish charm in Judy becomes a foolish and absent-minded naivete. She believes her duty is to please and placate the new man in the interest of maintaining the facade. Instead of claiming her equality, she becomes beguiled by Scottie's seemingly innocent desire for her, and in doing so falls into the same sort of trap she laid for Scottie. 

The Old Man, the Man of the World.

My Interpretation:

This is the revealing of the lie of the woman's sexual power over man. As she believes she is using him, she is really being used. I have, as a man, always known that the woman's sexual power over man was always a lie, just as man's sexual power over women is not a real thing. It is like a class struggle, in this case, a war of the sexes perpetuated by those who would use this struggle, this war, to an advantage for those political powers that propagate it.

Vertigo is a Criticism of the Sexual Revolution? 

And therein lies the crux. Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" is an analysis and criticism of the modern ideas of Women's Liberation. The idea that the New Woman can eliminate the Old through fraud, that the New Man can transcend the Old when he realizes that he cannot fulfill the great expectations and chains placed on him. 

Is she the New Woman, or The Old?

But, are we truly given alternatives to these sexual archetypes in the film? Not exactly. But we are given something equivalent. Scottie, after all, "can" reach the heights of the bell tower. But only when he knows the truth about the New Woman. The Classical Woman doesn't actually show herself in this film, for what is shown is only a representation of it. Does this mean, Hitchcock believed the Old Woman was extinct? Possibly. But it does reveal that the New Woman is a fraud. 

That is, regrettably, something Hitchcock does not reveal to us... maybe this is to his credit. But, he does not reveal how a woman might become the Classical Woman he reveres... because he CANNOT know how the Classical Woman becomes the idyllic creature she is. But, we do know he might believe that she, possibly, cannot exist ever again. Like the unicorns of old and like the romantic tragedies like, Romeo and Juliet. They are two souls trapped by fate. Doomed to live an impossible life in their minds, but never in body.

Realizing the fraud and murder that she perpetuated, Judy crumbles. 

The Conclusion (A Challenge):

I don't know about you, but this is not the Vertigo I was taught about. This is not the Vertigo that I saw when I first saw the film about fifteen years ago. But, it is what results after repeat viewings of great films years later with the benefit of life experience to aid in interpretation. 

And, it is a challenge to you viewers out there who watch movies as strictly entertainment- somewhat absently. Believing what others tell you about films and not thinking about them yourself may allow you to watch the commercially popular films- and to enjoy them as entertainment. But, you will see a whole new world of film open to you if you are open to it. If done with knowledge and experience as your guide it will open you to an even richer understanding of what makes films like these great.