It's not Hollywood, not even Bollywood, but Philadelphia has done a pretty remarkable job in the past few years of positioning itself as the money-saving alternative to Hollywood and New York for movie makers.
Now the outfit that gets most of the credit for building that reputation -- the city's Film Office -- is facing a money crisis. It takes about $800,000 a year to operate and a good bit of that money comes from state funding. The senate just signed off on a budget that cuts all arts funding. If that ends up happening, combined with cuts the city is proposing, the film office could lose more than half of it's funding by the summer, according to the Metro.
“There won’t be any business. It’ll be like the 1990s,” Sharon Pinkenson, the face of Philly's film industry, said. “We’ll have a couple tourism commercials, maybe some lottery advertisements. And the thousands in southeastern Pennsylvania who work in the local film industry will lose any work they had.”
If you think $800,000 a year is a lot to spend for a film office, consider this: In the past two years, movie makers have pumped $200 million into the local economy in production costs, according to the report.
We're making this one easy for you. You can just plug in your zip code on the state's Web site to figure out who your local lawmakers and fire off an email.
