Nouvelle Vague director and Austin, TX native Richard Linklater is calling B.S. on President Donald Trump‘s suggestion for film tariffs.
“That’s not gonna happen. That guy changes his mind 50 times. Film is our number one U.S. export,” said the filmmaker who shot Nouvelle Vague in France and his previous movie Blue Moon in Ireland — pics which could be potentially ‘tariff’-able under the suggested Trump plan. The Trump plan has proposed a 120% tariff on movies receiving foreign film credits. The debate is that given the fact that film is digital, it’s not necessarily taxable under the World Free Trade Agreement. Motion pictures aren’t car parts.
As far as whether it’s more expensive to shoot in the U.S., Linklater disagrees: “I think the true indie film with no budget cost the same for last several years. It’s about how much you have. That hasn’t changed much,” said the Boyhood filmmaker.
Zoey Deutch who plays Iowa born Jean Seberg in Linklater’s movie about the making of Jean Luc Godard’s Breathless, championed, “It would be nice to make more movies in Hollywood, the culture and the crews. I just finished doing a movie there and it was magical; it’s the history and love of movies made in LA.”
Linklater thinks the United States, when it comes to the managing of the film industry, should look at France as an example.
“The French film industry takes care of their industry. They make sure it’s healthy, they help it, the government, they’re all in, from production to distribution,” Linklater said.
Blue Moon, Linklater’s Sony Pictures Classics title which stars Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart on the opening night of Oklahoma, was shot in Ireland which has a rich tax credit of 30%. The country is looking to up that to 40%. The upside to shooting in Ireland versus other places including Georgia, is that a feature production doesn’t have to fight to obtain the credit after picture is locked. Ireland delivers 90% of the tax credit to an incoming shoot upfront. It’s hard for the U.S. to compete with that.
Even if great tax credits are achieved in the U.S. another gripe from the motion picture industry is how expensive it is to make a movie here, particularly post strikes with the labor unions. Reportedly, one grip on a U.S. union shoot can cost multiple times more than than a grip on an Australian-made production.
“They care and our country could use a little bit of that.”
