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We have seen
a great deal of change and growth in the past year. I thank all of
you who participated in our effort to bring jobs home.
Next year we
will have many things happening to further our goals. We want to
start a list on the web site, which will let everyone know those films
and TV shows that have been shot out of the country. I think all
should be encouraged to send this information far and wide to give the
people a choice.
Outsourcing
is turning into one of the largest economic problems this country faces
today with over 3 million sent out of the country in the past 3 years. Some of those jobs that are gone are ours and it is up to us to get them
back.
We need your
help! Many of the jobs we need help with are ones that can be done
from home and only take a few hours a week.
If you want
to become part of the solution call me. (818) 509-0614
Happy New Year,
Brent Swift
Chairman FTAC
WHAT AMERICA NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT COLD
MOUNTAIN
Cold
Mountain, the highly-promoted movie based on the best-selling novel,
opens Christmas Day. Americans need to know that this film, set in Virginia
and North Carolina against the background of the Civil War, the most wrenching
period in our history and a time whose impact is still felt today, was
shot almost entirely in Romania.
In a recent
interview on the ABC newsmagazine show 20/20,
Anthony Minghella, director of Cold Mountain and partner (with Sydney Pollack) in Mirage Enterprises, one of the film's
producers, told Barbara Walters he shot the film in Romania because he
had looked at locations all over the American South and could not find
any large expanses which "had not been touched by the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries."
Anyone familiar
with Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee
and Georgia knows that that is completely untrue. What is true is
that wages for workers in Romania are considerably less than wages anywhere
in America. Interestingly enough, the producers of The
Patriot, the Mel Gibson movie set during the Revolutionary War,
were able to find plenty of places in South Carolina which were apparently
untouched by the nineteenth century as well as modern times.
There is currently
a great deal of discussion about outsourcing and its impact on our economy. We are outraged that many companies have exported their customer service
and technical support jobs to English-speaking foreign countries or that
American furniture manufacturers now send American hardwoods to China to
be made into furniture for the American market instead of making it domestically.
Cold
Mountain is no different. This movie represents many hundreds
of jobs, not just in Hollywood, but in the well-established communities
of film workers throughout the Southeast and in the cities and towns in
the region whose stores, restaurants, hotels and countless other small
businesses would have benefited had it been shot in the part of our country
where it is supposed to take place.
When such an
American story is taken away from its roots it loses its soul. Those
who have already seen the film and know the South say that Romania does
not really look like the Blue Ridge Mountains, and have observed other
discrepancies as well.
Daily Variety's
December 8, 2003 review of Cold Mountain says
it best: "...there is an intangible something missing.... It's impossible to say whether this stems from the fact that the film was
mostly shot in Romania, from its being made mostly by foreigners, or from
the variability of the accents by a significantly Anglo-Aussie cast, but
there's something of a void at the bottom of things where bedrock ought
to be."
You can send
a message that these economic losses and artistic choices compromised in
the name of saving money are not acceptable to Americans. Do not
contribute to Cold Mountain profiting literally
at your expense by buying a ticket (or buying the DVD or renting the cassette
when they become available.) Because of its ripple effect throughout
the economy, even if you are not directly employed in the film industry
your job could still be ultimately impacted.
You can also
send a message directly to the people responsible for the decision to take
the production of this most American story and the many jobs it generated
to a completely foreign country by writing the producers of Cold
Mountain:
Bob Weintstein
Harvey Weinstein
Miramax
375 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10013-2338
Fax: 212-941-3949
Phone: 212-941-3800
Anthony Minghella (director)
Sydney Pollack
Mirage Enterprises
233 South Beverly Drive, Suite
200
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
Fax: 310-888-2825
Phone: 310-888-2830
Albert Berger
Ron Yerxa
Bona Fide
8899 Beverly Boulevard, Suite
804
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Fax: 310-273-7821
Phone: 310-273-6782
PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THIS MESSAGE
AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE. THANK YOU.
Cold Mountain,
the Civil War movie which KCRW has been heavily promoting of late, is the
latest in a too-long line of "runaway productions" (movies, TV series and
commercials shot outside their country of origin -- specifically, the U.S.). The financiers and other above-the-line interests who are responsible for Cold
Mountain chose to make this could-not-be- more-American-themed movie
in ROMANIA, merely because they were too selfish and short-sighted to reconsider
the hypocritical greed they were expressing, undermining their artistic
expression. By shooting in a very low-wage country, exploiting the
local workforce, they displaced the myriad U.S. film craftspersons who
could have and should have worked on this project. As a film industry
worker, I will be amongst those boycotting this movie.
Far too many
U.S.-located and -generated productions have left the U.S., bribed away
by various governments' "incentives" (tax breaks, low wages, lax worker
and environmental laws, etc.). Hollywood is far too rich to justify
such taxpayer-supported subsidies, from any nation. Canada has been
the main culprit in this scam (Elf, Honey, Chicago, Paycheck, the Scooby
Doo sequel, both X-Men movies, Titanic, The Score, Undercover
Brother, Along Came a Spider, Shanghai Noon, Texas Rangers, Mission to
Mars, Josie & the Pussycats, Snake Eyes, Reindeer Games, Get Carter,
Driven, Affliction, Antitrust, Waking the Dead, Mother Night, Dick, Detroit
Rock City, Lake Placid, Snow Falling on Cedars, Final Destination,
most TV movies and many TV series were partly or completely shot there). Meanwhile, Australia, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Romania and others
are catching up.
If you wish
to have my support, and that of my friends, family, and colleagues in the
film/TV industry, you will stop promoting Cold Mountain and instead
expose it for the sham it really is.
Get Warren
Olney on it!
Sincerely,
John Hays
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Dear FTAC Members, 
