Brad Pitt Given Money From Struggling Louisiana

As A Filming Incentive

October 29. 2008

Brad Pitt

Louisiana has been through a lot, but the cash strapped state, battered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, paid actor Brad Pitt cash and furnished him with tax credits, for filming in the region.

Under the circumstances, with Louisiana still trying to rebuild, I think it was inappropriate for Pitt to accept the cash gift.

Incentives for Filming Cause Jitters

One of the most shocking bills has come due in Louisiana, where residents are financing a hefty share of Brad Pitt’s next movie — $27,117,737, to be exact, which the producers will receive by cashing or selling off valuable tax credits….

Louisiana, one of the most assertive players in the subsidy game, wound up covering that outsize piece of the nearly $167 million budget of Mr. Pitt’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” — the state’s biggest movie payout to date — when producers for Paramount Pictures and Warner Brothers qualified the coming movie, a special-effects drama, under an incentive that has since been tightened. Separately, Louisiana’s former film commissioner is set to be sentenced in January to as much as 15 years in federal prison for taking bribes to inflate film budgets (though not that of “Button”) and, hence, pay higher subsidies….

Rebellious legislators from both parties are now looking to put a cap on the state’s annual film spending, which some have estimated could quickly hit $200 million a year.

In Rhode Island, meanwhile, the rules have toughened considerably. That happened after The Providence Journal reported in March that producers of a straight-to-DVD picture called “Hard Luck,” which starred Wesley Snipes and Cybill Shepherd, had picked up $2.65 million in state tax credits on a budget of $11 million, even though it had reported paying only $1.9 million of the total to Rhode Islanders.

http://www.nytimes.com