Do Public Funds for Movies Mean the Government Gets to Censor Art?

Take a look at the still to the right. It could belong to any number of low-rent, backwoods horror movies, a long series of B-movies that today make a beeline to video-store shelves. In this case it’s snipped from Offspring, an especially low-rent, backwoods horror movie about a feral family with cannibal children who terrorize locals. It had a DVD debut last year through Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures and promptly floated off to its rightful home in $1 bins.

Now there is a proposed sequel: The Woman. The same director, Andrew van den Houten, wants to shoot the new movie in Michigan, where he made Offspring and where the tax credits are so generous for movies that countless filmmakers big and small (Michael Bay has filmed there) have been patrons in recent years. Yet, as van den Houten complained in an infuriating article in last week’s New York Times, the state shot him down for public money this time around. What gives?

The Times reported that Janet Lockwood, an official in the Michigan Film Office, informed van den Houten that his movie “is unlikely to promote tourism in Michigan or to present or reflect Michigan in a positive light.”

Unlikely indeed, and there is a provision in Michigan state law that calls for public money for film to be used on movies that could promote the state. The problem, of course, is that in practice, this stipulation is meaningless. Scream 4 begins shooting in Michigan this month as a stand-in the northern California town where the original takes place. Granted, slaughtered teenagers are not cannibal children, but really? A California-set slasher flick promotes tourism?

The difference, as the Times article suggests, is that one is a major studio production, the other is a comparably tiny craft production with a budget under $1 million. But the real issue is the power state officials have given themselves, especially since tax credits designed to lure major movies to unlikely locales have become a seemingly permanent crutch for filmmakers looking to minimize risk. The Times article offers the example of Georgia, which offers generous film tax benefits but is on the way to banning public money for movies that receive an NC-17 rating. Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah have similar rules. The standard has taken on colloquial life in the axiom that no state should approve a movie you couldn’t take the governor to see.

The stink of censorship stews strongly here. States do not invest in movies made at home because they have an interest in film art, they do it to make money. At least in theory, a major production like Scream 4 will open up jobs in Michigan, which now has the second-highest unemployment rate in the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (There’s debate if the productions even create jobs or long-term investment, but that’s for another time.) This shouldn’t be—and really isn’t—about a movie’s content. Who among us really trusts any state government to make those kind of decisions? What crosses the line, and who should get to decide?

Just ask David Cronenberg, the legendary Canadian shock auteur. His nasty little first feature, Shivers, from 1975, received public money in Canada, and before long its more squeamish features became a talking point for contemporary pundits. This is the filmmaker who went on to make Dead Ringers and A History of Violence. What if a bureaucrat had told him to tone it down back then?

The Times points to the recent case of a Florida film provision that would have essentially barred productions that receive state money from portraying gay characters before it was dropped. Although tax benefits and how they are administered varies widely state by state, the capricious whims of local officials with dubious motives and vague senses of power can hardly be underestimated.

Since state officials nationwide have sold the film tax credits to voters almost exclusively as job-building, economy-regenerating bows to the future, it seems reasonable that state film offices would offer or deny public money to projects on the basis of their likelihood to bring jobs or production revenue to the state. This is clearly not always the case now. Georgia’s proposal to bar NC-17 movies from public funds is an especially raw jab at film lovers who for years have fought their own battle against the MPAA’s ratings board and its own vague, often-random process for rating movies with adult content.

Obviously, local political figures who have voted to authorize the use of tax dollars to finance movies have a prerogative to make sure movies like The Woman do not end up in front of constituents as an example of tax dollars at work. But if they want to use film to bolster to state’s employment rolls, is it really wise to provide them the right to reject movies because they don’t like what they’re about? Meanwhile, tax incentives have the singular attention of independent filmmakers and the Hollywood establishment alike. Before long, they will have to ask themselves if the sacrifies the credits could involve are really worth it.