With three Oscar wins from eight nominations, the success of the gritty coming-of-age drama Moonlight at last month’s Academy awards should have been a celebration of a thriving Florida film industry, once the nation’s largest outside Hollywood and New York.
Instead, the state’s association of moviemakers is warning that Moonlight, which was set and filmed entirely in Miami, could be among the last of Florida’s long production line of blockbusters.
The group says that a bill currently working its way through the legislature in Tallahassee threatens the future of movie and television production in the state by eliminating financial incentives to film there and driving billions of dollars of potential revenue to rivals.
If signed into law, the bill would also eliminate the 40-year-old office of film and entertainment, leaving Florida alongside Vermont as the only two states with no dedicated taxpayer-funded support for production companies.
“We’re effectively telling the world that we don’t take the film industry seriously here, we don’t want your business,” said Kelly Paige, president of Film Florida, a non-profit association of movie, TV and digital media producers.
“Florida’s film history is long and rich and we have people coming here from all over the world, but we need a film office, no ifs, ands or buts. What are they going to do when they want to shoot in a state park, or need a road closed, or a permit for something? If there’s no place for them to call, they’re not going to come.”
Film Florida calculates that $875m in revenue has already been lost since the legislature allowed sales tax exemptions in place for the entertainment industry since 2004 to expire last summer. The association says a $26m hit came when HBO switched filming of its hit series Ballers, starring Dwayne Johnson, from Miami to California to take advantage of that state’s tax-incentive programme, similar to the one Florida looks set to permanently eliminate.
Paige is worried that the new proposals, contained in a Republican-sponsored bill that seeks to shut down several other economic development projects, will crush the enthusiasm of film-makers such as the Florida State University graduates behind Moonlight.
“We want those creative minds to stay here and make their second and third and fourth movies here,” she said. “But how do we keep those creative people here, buying their homes here, raising their children here? That’s a conversation we’re hoping to have with legislators.”
Tarell Alvin McCraney, the Miami-born playwright who won the best adapted screenplay Oscar for Moonlight, alongside the movie’s co-author and director Barry Jenkins, told the Guardian he shared Film Florida’s concerns.
“There were people who worked on Moonlight who were only in Florida at the time of filming because it was their last job before moving to Atlanta or Los Angeles for work,” he said. “Barry and [producer] Adele Romanski and Andrew Hevia, co-founder of the Borscht Corporation, all from Florida, all graduating from FSU, worked hard to keep the film set, shot and celebrating south Florida.
“There are so many stories to be celebrated and created here. There are also many artists, technicians and business owners in the film industry in Florida who want to be here. But when we don’t provide an opportunity for those stories to be shared, we all lose, large production and the revenue it can bring and intimate production alike.
“Look at all the TV shows set here that no longer film here. I hope the story of how Moonlight came to be can shine a light on this economic possibility for our state and the business-minded government of Florida will seek to help create a pathway to more like it,” McCraney added.
Film Florida’s leaders, who will discuss their fears with lawmakers in Tallahassee next Tuesday, appear to have an unlikely ally in Rick Scott, Florida’s Republican governor. Scott is at odds with the Florida house speaker, Richard Corcoran, who is promoting the incentive cutbacks as a war on “corporate welfare” and the governor has suggested he might veto the bill.
“A vote for these bills was a vote to kill tourism and jobs in Florida,” Scott said after the state’s house of representatives voted to approve two parallel incentive reduction bills, including the closure of the state’s economic development agency, last week. Corcoran, meanwhile, insisted his colleagues were “right on the policy, right on the principle”.
For Paige, however, it’s more about Florida’s legacy as a major film-making state renowned for popular movies including Scarface, Edward Scissorhands, Body Heat, There’s Something About Mary and Caddyshack and a succession of TV hits from Flipper and Miami Vice to more recent series such as CSI: Miami and Ballers.
“We had Flipper going in the 1960s, which started people thinking how beautiful it would be to visit Florida in the warm weather,” she said. “Miami Vice actually created South Beach, and if you’re young and hip and want to to have a great time, South Beach is one of our busiest tourist areas outside of Disney and Universal, which are themselves all about films.”
