Hollywood work was already drying up. Then the fires hit

Just a week before the fires the couple had been looking over their mortgage documents. They wanted to reassure themselves that even though work had grown sparse, the equity in their three-bedroom home was on the rise. Then the Eaton fire rampaged through the eclectic art hamlet of Altadena, burning their pet chickens, destroying their home and leaving them with “a worthless strip of charred land,” as Rutland described it.

“Who knows when it’ll be safe to come build again?” asked Rutland, 44. “And if we want to build again?”

As Los Angeles begins to think about how to rebuild homes and whole neighbourhoods that were reduced to rubble, officials are renewing their efforts to revive local film and television production. Even after recent setbacks, the region remains the business’ epicentre. The entertainment industry contributes more than US$115 billion ($203b) annually to the regional economy, local officials estimate, and helps sustain 681,000 jobs in a wide variety of fields.

But things have not been going well for some time. Still reeling from the long shutdowns and extended periods of unemployment during Covid-19, the business ground to a halt for another six months in 2023 when the writers and actors went on strike.

After production resumed, studios retrenched, effectively ending the peak television era. The number of television series produced in the United States last year fell for the second year in a row, and is down 23% since 2022, according to a study by Luminate.

The slowdown has had a big impact in Los Angeles. Location shoots in the region fell last year to its second-lowest total on record, behind only 2020, the year the pandemic stopped work, according to FilmLA, the film permitting office. The number of location shooting days in the region has dropped 40% since reaching a high in 2016, according to data from the office. Reality TV has seen an especially steep decline, it reported.

The fires underscored how few major movies are being filmed in Hollywood these days. When the blazes erupted, only two movies from major studios were affected – because only two movies were shooting in Los Angeles at the time.

Local officials said Los Angeles was losing productions to other nations and other states, including Georgia and New Mexico, which have wooed them with generous tax incentives. A survey by The New York Times last year found that 38 states offer such incentives, and have spent more than US$25b ($44b) attracting productions over the past two decades. Most economists consider such subsidies a poor investment for states, but the programmes continue to be popular with legislatures and studios, and have lured many productions from Los Angeles.

“More and more jurisdictions have come online to compete and take business away from LA and the US, and they’re broadening what’s eligible for those credits or refunds,” said Paul Audley, the president of FilmLA.

While Los Angeles County had 35% of the nation’s film and television jobs before the 2023 strikes, its share dropped to 27% after, according to a recent report from Otis College of Art and Design.

California has its own tax credit programme, which offers US$330 million ($529m) a year in incentives, but state and local officials say that is not enough to remain competitive. In October, Governor Gavin Newsom proposed more than doubling the funding to $750m annually.

Colleen Bell, the state’s film commissioner, said that expanding the credit was essential, and that she often had to turn away projects because the programme was oversubscribed.

“The truth is, people want to shoot in California,” she said. “I hear this over and over and over again, the depth and talent of our crews, our equipment, innovation, our infrastructure.”

Earlier in the month thousands of people in the entertainment industry signed the #StayinLA petition, calling for uncapping the state’s tax incentive programme for the next three years for projects that shoot in Los Angeles County, and calling on studios and streamers to pledge to increase local production by at least 10% during that period.

This month the Los Angeles City Council approved a US$1b ($1.8b) project to build and enhance sound stages and production facilities at the Television City complex at Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, who supports increasing the state tax credit, is planning to meet this week with a council of entertainment industry leaders to discuss keeping more productions local.

But many workers in the industry who have seen jobs dry up say they now face a choice: keep hanging on in the hopes that things turn around, or try something new. And those who lost their homes in the fires could be forced to decide soon.

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents a wide range of professionals including makeup artists, set decorators and animal wranglers, said that at the peak of the crisis, 8100 of its members were in evacuation zones. At least 300 lost their homes. “Pretty devastating,” said Michael Miller, a union vice-president.

Marco Cordero, 42, a director of photography, was among the workers stressed by the shrinking job market even before his home in Altadena was destroyed.

“We all know so many people that haven’t worked a very long time, that are either leaving the industry, considering doing so or moving somewhere else, where the cost of living is lower,” he said, “because the amount of work that was here to support them isn’t here any more”.

Adrienne McDonnell, 46, a makeup and special effects artist, and her husband, BJ McDonnell, 49, a director and camera operator, lost their house in the Sunset Mesa neighbourhood of Malibu.

“Everybody was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said. “Negotiations are done, the strikes are done. Newsom is going to finance some incentives for us to get filming back here. We were all hopeful – and then this happens.”

The loss of so many homes and the skyrocketing cost of housing in the region could be the last straw that pushes some workers out of the state, or even the industry.

But nearly a dozen members of the film and television industry who lost their homes said in interviews that they plan, at least for now, to stay and rebuild.

Many said they have been overwhelmed by the support they received. When Olivia Newman, the director of the upcoming film “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” lost her home in the Eaton fire, Netflix set her family up in a home in Vancouver, British Columbia, where the movie is being made.

Unions set up pop-up donation centres with everything from basic supplies to opportunities to meet with emergency resource officials. Fire victims said it had become clear their support system was in Los Angeles.

Others worry that they may not be able to afford to leave, if their insurance is not enough to pay off their mortgages, or if doing so would leave them with no savings. Some said their losses had granted them a moment to contemplate what they wanted their futures to look like.

“Is this our get-out-of-jail-free card?” cinematographer Gabriel Patay, 40, said he wondered after he and his wife, a documentary producer, lost the home they spent nine years restoring.

“We are tied to this property, we are stuck in LA,” he has thought. “Should we leave?”

Patay is clear-eyed that his insurance will not cover the cost of rebuilding. He and his wife are looking into mortgage deferment and recently applied for hardship status with their bank.

Job opportunities have not been robust either. Patay recently finished work on a documentary for Hulu, but described current job prospects as “bleak”. Now the couple is considering rebuilding their home, slowly over time, if they can somehow make the economics work.

Some have rethought their futures in other ways.

Madeline Power, a 32-year-old producer, had been just about ready to leave Los Angeles before the disaster.

With no work, the past 12 months had been “the worst financial year of my life,” she said, noting that she took odd jobs babysitting and cleaning. She felt, at times, like the city itself was rejecting her.

Then her house burned down. She found purpose using her skills as a producer to help raise money for her neighbours, and when people heard of her situation, some came to her with job leads. Now she, too, has US$30,000 ($53,000) in donations – more money than she says she has ever had.

There is no question in Power’s mind. She is staying.

“LA caught me,” she said. “LA came and just showed up.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Nicole Sperling and Matt Stevens

Photographs by: Loren Elliott, John Rutland, Alex Welsh, Philip Cheung and Stella Kalinina

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