In May 2021, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed into law SB8, also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act. It’s the latest, and most contested, challenge to the 1973 Supreme Court decision made in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States. Since Abbott’s adoption of the law, which allows any private citizen to sue someone who performs or aids and abets an abortion once “cardiac activity” can be detected, the current Surpeme Court has denied a motion to block the act from going into effect; the White House is reportedly preparing to sue Texas; Abbott has signed a Senate bill that requires physicians providing abortion-inducing drugs up to seven weeks into a pregnancy to report such doings at the risk of possible jail time; and everyone from HBO’s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver to The Satanic Temple has argued against the law.
But Hollywood has been relatively quiet on the matter. While the Texas law inspired some outcry from names like The Wire’s David Simon, Boyhood’s Patricia Arquette, and her sister, Ratched’s Rosanna Arquette, as well as scattered refusals to film in the state, the response hasn’t been nearly as urgent as it was in 2019, when Georgia had its own “fetal heartbeat” bill.
Back then, Disney CEO Bob Iger told Reuters that if that bill became law, it would be “very difficult” to produce films and TV series there. “I rather doubt we will,” he added. When asked about it during that summer’s Television Critics Association press tour, Mark Pedowitz—president of the CW, a channel that’s a subsidiary of WarnerMedia and CBS Entertainment Group and that has a history of airing shows filmed in Georgia—was similarly responsive. “Anybody who interferes with people’s right to make medical choices, I am solely against,” he said. “If the law is passed, I am certain we’ll have discussions with both studios about what to do and what not to do in terms of where Georgia sits.”
Why, then, has the Texas bill not catalyzed the same level of fervor? Simple: “Texas is not a production hub on par with Georgia,” television producer and writer Amy Berg says via email.
Berg, who was interviewed by Vanity Fair in 2019 about her decision to call for a boycott then—and, judging from her Twitter feed, is no fan of the Texas law either—continues that “even Louisiana and New Mexico have traditionally been more film-friendly. Perhaps that’s why boycotting Texas isn’t something that comes to mind immediately as a vehicle for expressing outrage or inducing meaningful change.”
Miguel Alvarez, an independent filmmaker and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s department of radio-television-film agrees. “The Republican-backed legislature [in Texas], they don’t really care about film,” he says. “They think of it as though we’re giving money to the Hollywood elite. So any boycott would be welcomed by them.” He doesn’t believe a statement by a name player in the Texas filming community like Matthew McConaughey, Richard Linklater, or Robert Rodriguez would make a big difference either. “I don’t think that it’ll matter,” Alvarez tells me, because “they’re just going to say what everybody already knows and thinks.” (McConaughey, Linklater, and fellow Texas-bred filmmaker Wes Anderson declined through their representatives to comment on this story, as they are in production. Rodriguez’s production company did not return a call seeking comment.)
It’s true, as Alvarez notes, that Texas is home mostly to independent productions; the state doesn’t house giant studio spaces like Marvel’s Georgia-filmed properties. Still, Stephanie Whallon, the director of the Texas Film Commission, says via email that interest in filming in Texas “has continued to increase in the last 18 months as we’ve maintained our supportive business climate and shown that our open spaces and diverse locations allow for productions to be launched safely and efficiently.” She points to a list of current and past productions filmed in the Lone Star State, including housing-renovation programs like Discovery+’s Magnolia Table and Fixer Upper, as well as scripted series like AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead and the CW’s Walker.
HBO Max’s upcoming limited series Love and Death, from director Lesli Linka Glatter and writer David E. Kelley, is currently filming in Texas—appropriately, since it’s inspired by Texas Monthly’s reporting on a suburban Dallas murder. The next season of Bravo’s Top Chef will be filmed in Houston, a commitment that was made before the law was passed. The food competition’s judges, Padma Lakshmi, Gail Simmons, and Tom Colicchio, will be attending Houston’s Women’s March in October. The women, who have each used their Instagram platforms to oppose the law or say they stand with people who do, will be speaking at the event.
UT’s Alvarez, whose wife is a production designer and set designer, thinks the relative silence of performers, creatives, and crews can be attributed, in part, to the pandemic. “Everybody is so starved for work, and so grateful that things have picked up again, that the backlash just isn’t there,” he says.
“I think that people right now, at least [those who] worked in the industry, are just really happy that they have a paycheck again,” he says.
But Janis Burklund isn’t as optimistic. The director and film commissioner for the Dallas Film & Creative Industries Office, which works with production crews filming in that area, attempted to use her organization’s social platform to persuade writer-producer Simon when he tweeted he’d be pulling a production from Texas.
“While I can somewhat understand where [Simon and others] are coming from, my job is to try and help people keep working and stay here,” she says, noting that she has seen people in the industry leave the area for places with more opportunities to work. “We really can’t afford to keep losing people. Most of them would come back in a heartbeat if they felt the work could be consistent here. They prefer Dallas, but they have to go where there’s consistent work.”
from WordPress https://ift.tt/3zZTJcy
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment