ee14008a-77f9-4df3-8c40-84cf96adf069202606150131203121Depositor Namedepositor_email@address.comRUA Metadata ExporterVickiMayerTulane Universityhttps://ror.org/04vmvtb21The Lure of the Local Film EconomyEarly in the twenty-first century, Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the United States, redirected millions in tax dollars from the public coffers in an effort to become the top location site globally for the production of Hollywood films and television series. Why would lawmakers support such a policy? Why would citizens accept the policy’s uncomfortable effects on their economy and culture? Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans addresses these questions through a study of the local and everyday experiences of the film economy in New Orleans, Louisiana—a city that has twice taken the mantle of becoming a movie production capital. From the silent era to today’s Hollywood South, Vicki Mayer explains that the aura of a film economy is inseparable from a prevailing sense of home, even as it changes that place irrevocably.“A scathing critique of the economic realities and broken promises of Hollywood South, told in rich ethnographic detail and passionately argued through Vicki Mayer’s deep connection to New Orleans. This is a vital book.” NITIN GOVIL, author of Orienting Hollywood: A Century of Film Culture between Los Angeles and Bombay“Mayer guides readers through the numbers and arguments behind Louisiana’s costly love affair with the film industry and raises important questions over whether the state’s citizens are getting their money’s worth.” STEPHANIE GRACE, columnist, The New Orleans Advocate“A visionary in the study of cultural labor, economy, and geography, Mayer is that rare writer who combines exquisite storytelling with rigorous scholarship. This is an essential contribution to film and media studies, and an urgent history lesson for policy makers.” MELISSA GREGG, author of Work’s IntimacyVICKI MAYER is Professor of Communication at Tulane University. She is coeditor of the journal Television & New Media and author or editor of several books and journal articles about media production, creative industries, and cultural work.Early in the twenty-first century, Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the United States, redirected millions in tax dollars from the public coffers in an effort to become the top location site globally for the production of Hollywood films and television series. Why would lawmakers support such a policy? Why would citizens accept the policy’s uncomfortable effects on their economy and culture? Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans addresses these questions through a study of the local and everyday experiences of the film economy in New Orleans, Louisiana—a city that has twice taken the mantle of becoming a movie production capital. From the silent era to today’s Hollywood South, Vicki Mayer explains that the aura of a film economy is inseparable from a prevailing sense of home, even as it changes that place irrevocably.“A scathing critique of the economic realities and broken promises of Hollywood South, told in rich ethnographic detail and passionately argued through Vicki Mayer’s deep connection to New Orleans. This is a vital book.” NITIN GOVIL, author of Orienting Hollywood: A Century of Film Culture between Los Angeles and Bombay“Mayer guides readers through the numbers and arguments behind Louisiana’s costly love affair with the film industry and raises important questions over whether the state’s citizens are getting their money’s worth.” STEPHANIE GRACE, columnist, The New Orleans Advocate“A visionary in the study of cultural labor, economy, and geography, Mayer is that rare writer who combines exquisite storytelling with rigorous scholarship. This is an essential contribution to film and media studies, and an urgent history lesson for policy makers.” MELISSA GREGG, author of Work’s IntimacyVICKI MAYER is Professor of Communication at Tulane University. She is coeditor of the journal Television & New Media and author or editor of several books and journal articles about media production, creative industries, and cultural work.02242017978-0-520-29381-6978-0-520-96717-5978-0-520-96717-5978-0-520-96717-5University of California PressCaliforniahttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/10.1525/luminos.25https://www.luminosoa.org/books/m/10.1525/luminos.25https://www.luminosoa.org/books/28/files/56e8a4e9-23c7-4035-8ea3-470aa0f4f77f.pdfhttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/28/files/56e8a4e9-23c7-4035-8ea3-470aa0f4f77f.pdfThis is an explanation of a film tax credit in the format of a Schoolhouse Rock lesson.0224201710.1525/luminos.25.ahttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.25.ahttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/28/files/b36045ae-a873-41ff-9876-890f331602d6.pdfIn order to understand the longstanding love affairs between regional governments and Hollywood film industries, as well as citizens’ ambivalence toward film incentives, we must delve deeper into the relationships between locations and their cultural production. New Orleans’s rise to become “Hollywood South” thus must be situated both in the regional history of cultural production and in the political economy of film economies globally.0224201710.1525/luminos.25.bhttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.25.bhttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/28/files/4740fe9a-2fcf-46e3-9c8b-5f861cf61f22.pdfThe aura of a local film economy in New Orleans can be traced to the first two decades of the twentieth century, when local boosters and traveling movie crews spun tales of heroic film entrepreneurs and fed fantasies of creative economic development. This aura obscured both the fledgling industry’s search for cheap land and labor, as well as speculators’ greed and graft. In the end, the local politics of race, labor, and class interfered with the efforts of the early film colonizers, who headed to Southern California.0224201710.1525/luminos.25.chttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.25.chttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/28/files/a4047233-6baa-4063-8118-bc2f912c0d33.pdfThe cultural geography for Hollywood South reveals how location-based film production has reorganized the landscape of New Orleans through constant and yet ephemeral uses of public space. These interventions reorient local spaces to more flexibly suit the needs of the professional managerial class. What citizens cannot witness, however, they can sense in their movements around the city and in their everyday routines.0224201710.1525/luminos.25.dhttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.25.dhttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/28/files/805d4c2f-7af2-40a1-ab42-e83c9ba71fa2.pdfSet in the post-Katrina New Orleans and shot concurrently with the rise of the film economy, the HBO series Treme highlighted local cultural production and its creative producers, including audience members who worked on the show’s behalf. The diverse reactions that residents of New Orleans had to Treme reveal the social construction of the city as a place as well as the ways citizens embrace, negotiate, and struggle with the aura of Hollywood South in their own ways.0224201710.1525/luminos.25.ehttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.25.ehttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/28/files/d31938da-4ccd-4e63-a31a-77972398490a.pdfThe budget negotiations in the spring and summer of 2015 provide insight into the nature of the public discussion about the incentives given to film production and about the state of the New Orleans film economy after legislators modified the policy. The use of emotional appeals and the continuing aura of Hollywood in an age of precarious employment illustrate the continuing barriers to a meaningful debate over media policy in the United States.0224201710.1525/luminos.25.fhttps://www.luminosoa.org/chapters/m/10.1525/luminos.25.fhttps://www.luminosoa.org/books/28/files/1d834d3a-692f-4a8a-85a0-0923119aa6e6.pdf