How the film industry fell for the Land of Enchantment
BY KEVIN MAX
About 25 miles south of Santa Fe, residents of the dusty old mining town of Madrid (they say MAD-rid) woke up one day on the set of the Hollywood feature film Wild Hogs. John Travolta, William H. Macy, Martin Lawrence, Tim Allen, Ray Liotta, and the film’s crew became Madrid’s honorary, if temporary, citizens. If you added them all together—the well-heeled of Hollywood and the boot-heeled of the burgeoning artist enclave—the population swelled to more than 400, in an increasingly common scene in this southwestern state.
The film’s crew painted buildings, put in grass and white picket fences, and compensated just about any of the town’s 350 residents for the inconvenience and loss of business. Some Madrid residents also requested that their town’s name be used instead of the fictional one written into the script, and the director, Walt Becker, obliged. All in all, Madrid came out ahead.
“How many towns have $200 million worth of advertising spent on them?” says Honore Hackett. The Madrid resident and her husband own two Southwestern and American Indian jewelry stores in town. But they were more than smitten locals for Wild Hogs. They became vested partners, surrendering their empty lot so crews could build from the ground up Maggie’s Diner, the remote desert battleground where Woody (Travolta), Bobby (Lawrence), Doug (Allen), and Dudley (Macy), as middle-aged suburbanites turned “hardened” biker gang, defended their turf and Madrid against the Del Fuegos, a real bike gang led by Jack (Liotta).
Since Wild Hogs wrapped last year, the Hacketts have used Maggie’s Diner for storage, but the vestiges of Hollywood remain. Tourists have started streaming into town to take photos in front of the building. Director Adam Marcus is also in the area filming the Val Kilmer movie Conspiracy. And all this shooting centers on a single tiny town in New Mexico.
Meet the new face of Hollywood, what Hackett calls “Hollywood Southwest.” The state has stolen more than 80 feature films and television projects from mighty Tinseltown, adding more than $1.2 billion dollars over four years to the economy. That’s up from a meager $8 million just five years ago. The industry created 3,000 new in-state jobs. The crew base in the state shot up from 60 technicians in 2003 to more than 1,400 today. At the time of this article, there were about a half dozen feature films being shot in New Mexico and a couple had just wrapped. The alkali salt flats outside Lordsburg served as the setting for the nowhere-to-hide final confrontation between Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson in Seraphim Falls. The Gilman Tunnels, blasted through the Jemez Mountains in the 1920s for logging trains, “collapse” behind a fleeing Russell Crowe and Christian Bale in 3:10 to Yuma. The 1957 version of 3:10 was shot on the Warner Bros. Ranch in Burbank and in Tucson, Arizona; it’s a one-movie indicator of Hollywood’s decline and New Mexico’s rise. And then to Galisteo—a small town in the cradle of the Cerillos Hills and the Jemez Mountains and Sangre de Cristo Mountains—where Gulf War veteran Kilmer looks for the marine who saved his life in Conspiracy. “As directors realize the diversity in New Mexico,” says Lisa Strout, director of the New Mexico Film Office, “they see it as a canvas to make their films come alive.”
Hollywood has always loved the beauty and culture of New Mexico in a nice-place-to-visit sort of way. Just a short flight from Los Angeles, actors like Kilmer, Julia Roberts, Gene Hackman, Jane Fonda, Alan Arkin, and Dennis Hopper have flocked to the state. Dozens more actors appreciate arts culture, the sabor of Spanish and American Indian cuisine, the warmth of the Southwestern sun, and the comforts of luxury spas in Santa Fe. “It is kind of an idyllic, quaint, and sophisticated place with great food and a big art community and spas and horseback riding,” says Strout. “This is the type of place that people fall in love with.”
But the latest Hollywood influx is not about pleasure. It’s about business. And much of it happened because of one man: Governor Bill Richardson.
Richardson came into office in 2003, telling New Mexicans that the state needed to attract new businesses and making the film industry a priority growth target for the state. Then he convinced the state government to roll out an incentive package for filmmakers. Today, as many as 32 states offer similar perks, but few are as established or as generous as New Mexico’s. They include a 50 percent reimbursement of wages for on-the-job training of state residents, a tax rebate of 25 percent on all direct costs and labor (or no sales tax on most production costs), and a film investment loan program that offers no-interest loans for up to $15 million.
“It was natural for us,” Governor Richardson says. “We’re close to Hollywood, so logistically and cost-wise it’s easy for productions to be here. We have a tremendous climate and natural beauty, rich cultural traditions, and the most progressive production incentive program in the country. What’s not to love?”
The state started small, chasing low-budget indie films before moving into bigger productions that had been shooting abroad and finally courting repeat films and longer series TV productions. At all times, one constant guided the state: “We approached it like a business,” says Eric Witt, director of media arts and industries for the governor. “It had to make money for New Mexico.
Four years after Richardson launched his program to bring the film industry to the state, his epiphany came through the smoke rings of a cigar. “During the production of Wild Hogs, I had some of the cast and crew up to the governor’s mansion for dinner,” he says. “After the meal we’re sitting out on the back lawn overlooking a magnificent New Mexico vista, having a cigar, and I look around and see John Travolta, William Macy, Tim Allen, and Walt Becker laughing and having a good time. And I think to myself, I can’t even get a table at McDonald’s in L.A., and I’ve got all these people right here at my house. This is all right!”
Los Angeles might disagree, and it’s easy to see why. For decades, film production has become more competitive and cost-conscious. Film producers, hoping to make a profitable film in this tougher environment, started looking for tax incentives, rebates on labor, and kickbacks on production costs. Canada was one of the first to come through, starting in the late ’80s. British Columbia stepped up with a raft of incentives that drew millions of dollars of film production to the Great White North, with total production investment spiking in 2003 to $1.24 billion Canadian. Canada’s gain was Hollywood’s loss. But by last year, B.C.’s numbers had trailed off to $950 million in foreign film production. Experts peg that decline to powerful incentives coming from states like New Mexico.
Even so, a film takes a short time to make and leaves little more than memories and photo ops like Maggie’s Diner. Until the industry matures, the local jobs lifted from Hollywood won’t last long. Recognizing this stark economic reality, all of the states and countries courting the industry hope to build a self-sustaining film culture, from homegrown filmmakers in high schools to professional digital animators. But New Mexico figured that out first.
The state’s original incentive package offered $200,000 in “film boot camp grants” for college and high school campuses. New Mexico also partnered with Comcast and National Geographic in a Governor’s Cup competition for local film projects, including screenplays and documentaries. Meanwhile, both Disney and Sony Pictures Imageworks rolled out academic programs for high school students and undergraduates alike. Sony brought its Imageworks Professional Academic Excellence (IPAX) program to the University of New Mexico. The IPAX curriculum aims to nurture the next generation of digital artists. Thanks to the program, the University of New Mexico joins 10 other schools—including Carnegie Mellon, Stanford University, and the University of Southern California—that graduate IPAX-certified digerati.
Farsighted programs like these, says Bill Lindstrom of the Association of Film Commissioners International, show New Mexico’s ability to “think outside the box.”
Whether conducted outside the box or otherwise, the future of filmmaking in New Mexico looks bright. The state already recognizes the benefits of the exposure a film gives to local economies. A scene or two shot in small New Mexico towns like Madrid, Galisteo, and Lordsburg act as an inexpensive national marketing campaign, adding dollars to the tills of local merchants. So the aggressive raft of incentives state legislators passed four years ago will probably stick around for some time. And over the next couple of years, the part of the plan designed to create bricks-and-mortar facilities will finally bear fruit.
That started last year with Pacifica Ventures, managing partner in the famed Culver Studios in Culver City, California (think Citizen Kane and Gone with the Wind). Citing New Mexico’s incentives as a key element in their decision, Pacifica announced its plans to build Albuquerque Studios, a 500,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art film studio. The studios opened in January this year, and value-minded filmmakers began laying plans to use the new resource in their adopted state. Sony Pictures Imageworks—the digital talent behind films like Surf’s Up, Ghost Rider, and Spider-Man 3—announced in May that it would build a 100,000-square-foot digital studio in connection with Albuquerque Studios. The new digital lab will create another 300 jobs for the state.
Hollywood recognizes that these facilities will compete against its own. But like a Mom-and-Pop storeowner who shops at Wal-Mart, the industry can’t resist the value pricing. “One of the main drivers of this industry is cost, and the incentives afforded from New Mexico are great,” says Imageworks president Tim Sarnoff. “The fact is that we, in L.A., were losing work to the rest of the world. New Mexico and other states have stepped up to the plate.”
Of course, New Mexico and the other places courting value-minded moviemakers (see “The Next Hollywood?” on page 132) will never displace Tinseltown. Its concentration of money, production assets, and creative talent will allow L.A. to remain the entertainment capital of the world. But with a raft of incentives, a growing band of industry pros, state-of-the-art facilities, and a topography that runs from frozen tundra to scorching bleakness, the Land of Enchantment could become “Hollywood Southwest.” Expect fewer film crews to wrap with martinis in L.A. and more to celebrate with margaritas in New Mexico.
