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Hollywood South: The Fall

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How did Louisiana’s movie industry grow so big, and then fall off the map? 

“The problem with the Louisiana program has always been a case of Hollywood accounting meets Louisiana largesse,” says Robert Travis Scott.

Now the president of the Public Affairs Research Council, Scott used to be a reporter with the Times-Picayune. He covered the story that led lawmakers to fall out of love with the movie industry.

“Early on, there were a lot of fuzzy definitions about what exactly was allowed to qualify for the tax credit. And a lot of the power for deciding what those things would be was vested really in a relatively small number of people,” Scott says.

“You had Mark Smith (former head of the Governor’s Office of Film) in state government, and he was one of the ones responsible for helping decide what type of tax expenditures would qualify.”

And everybody in the movie industry knew that if you wanted to get a movie made in Louisiana, you had to go through LIFT.

“There was no question that LIFT and the people around it had a very large portion of the tax credit market,” Scott says. “And there was some stress in the movie industry, broadly speaking, about that.”

LIFT, run by Malcolm Petal, was an acronym for the Louisiana Institute of Film and Technology. But it was never a school. LIFT was the “fixer” that helped get your tax credits approved. Petal and Mark Smith were tight.

“There was a bribery case, and I know Malcolm Petal went to court and said he did this wrong,” Scott says. Both Petal and Smith were found guilty of federal charges and served time in prison.

Scott says when the corruption was combined with the ever-tightening state budget, “It did lead to a lot more scrutiny of the program.”

And ultimately it led to a credit cap that has stopped the cameras rolling – for now.

Tomorrow we’ll find what can be done to help get the “Lights, Camera, Action” started again.