NEW MILKEN INSTITUTE REPORT OUTLINES HOLLYWOOD’S BLEAK FUTURE (video):

In the current issue of Commentary, Rob Long implores, “Stop Giving Show Business Free Money:”

Let me tell you what happens when you give a movie studio some money: They use it to give themselves raises. In the same way that the union contracts of 2023 led to the Great Irish-Hungarian Exodus, the sugar that the state and global governments sprinkle on production budgets just helps us pay more to the above-the-line, high-salaried players. When I was shooting a show in New York State, for instance, the cash rebate allowed us to hire a lot of expensive writers (from Los Angeles) and a line producer (from Los Angeles) and a do-nothing non-writing producer (from Los Angeles) and an overpaid showrunner who ended up getting the show cancelled (me). When the show was done with, we moved out of the Grumman plant, and to my knowledge, it’s still empty. How, exactly, did the New York State taxpayer win?

And finally, there’s the impossible task of deciding what a “foreign” production really is. Rob Lowe’s show, The Floor, appears on American television with American contestants. It’s shot in Ireland, was developed by a Dutch company, and appears in versions all over the world. Is it Dutch? Is it American? Is it Irish? Do we slap Rob Lowe with a 100 percent tax? Or do we subtract the part of the budget that’s coming back to the United States and tax only the Irish portion?

Or do we just let show business figure out how to make stuff at home? Look, nobody wants to leave sunny, relaxed Los Angeles for rainy Ireland or spooky old Budapest. People in show business want to drive their cars from Brentwood to one of the studios and then head back to their giant kitchens with farmhouse sinks. What show business needs to do is what every other business needs to do, at some point, and that’s to come to grips with economic reality or go broke. What it doesn’t need—from the taxpayer, or the president—is help.

To revise and extend the remarks by the late P.J. O’Rourke, you can’t get good Chinese takeout in China, Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba, and the TV and movie industry is failing in California. That’s all you need to know about communism.