Remarks delivered before the May 4 meeting of the Downtown Rotary Club in Anchorage, Alaska.
According to USA Today, “The filming of “The Lord of the Rings” in New Zealand…has jump-started a new form of tourism.” Kiwi travel company Red Carpet Tours now offers Lord of the Rings Tours…a 12-day tour of New Zealand [whose] [h]ighlights include a stop in Hobbiton; visits to the rocky sites of Mordor and Mount Doom; a tour of Wellywood, the production studios where the films were based; and a visit with artist Daniel Reeve, whose calligraphy and maps were featured in [the film]…Along the way, you will be able to stay in the same hotel rooms as the film’s many stars and to dine where they did.”
Already I’m thinking Alaska Destination Specialists has to put together “the Kate Shugak tour of Anchorage,” including a Mom All Dark at the Lucky Wishbone, where Kate often dines when in town, and the second floor of Nordstrom, where Kate, much against her will, was decked out for dancing at AFN in Blood Will Tell.
You all have to know the story by now, I’ve told it enough times in all conscience, in front of I don’t know how many audiences and cameras. Although no one ever seemed to believe me when I said it, I met every prior offer to buy the screen rights to the Kate Shugak series with a question: “Will you film in Alaska?” The answer was always no, and frequently a horrified “Hell, no!” and so my answer was always no.
There were and are reasons for this besides my own obstinacy. First of all, Alaska is a character in the Kate Shugak series, and I wanted it up on the screen right next to Kate and Mutt.
I’m an Alaskan, born and bred, and I am sick to death of seeing anything but Alaska up on screen in television series and films allegedly set in Alaska. I wanted Alaska on the screen next to Kate and Mutt, not British Columbia or central Washington state.
And on a television series by and about Alaskans, I wanted to put Alaskans to work. In their economic impact report of 2009, the Motion Picture Association of America says, “The Albuquerque Studios opened on June 1, 2007. At a cost of $91.5 million…the overall project consists of over 400,000 square feet on 28.1 acres. Over the initial 20 months of operation the studio has played host to two television series; In Plain Sight and Breaking Bad, as well as four feature films; The Spirit, Game, Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins and The Book of Eli. These productions have created over 2,600 high paying production jobs and over $221.5 million in direct spending in the state.”
Twenty-six hundred jobs. That’s 2,600 people needing beds, meals, transportation and entertainment.
If a Kate Shugak series was going to be made anywhere, I was determined that it was going to be made here, where members of the cast and crew would rent a room at the Anchorage Hotel, eat caribou stew at the Downtown Deli, drink a Klondike Golden Ale at the Moose’s Tooth, buy a Moose Pooper at Cabin Fever for their kids back home, and on a weekend to head down the road to Seward and visit the Sealife Center and go spot some orcas on a Kenai Fjords cruise.
In time, if we do this right, the University of Alaska will start a film school, and we’ll train Alaskan students as producers and directors and cinematographers and construction coordinators and boom operators and camera loaders and casting directors and continuity girls and best boys. I don’t know what hardly any of those people do, but if they’re Alaskans and their jobs pay a living wage, most of which they spend here, I’m for ‘em.
The MPA report says that “2.5 million Americans jobs are supported by the motion picture and television industry…[this industry] underwrites over 115,000 businesses in all 50 states – 81 percent of which employ fewer than 10 people.” Mike Devlin’s plan to kick-start an Alaskan film industry with a long-running dramatic television series is tailor-made to move some of those 2.5 million jobs our way.
And then there is the tourism that results from a film or a television series produced in the area. Celia Stevenson of Scottish Screen told the BBC in 2002, “In the first six months after Braveheart opened there was a 130% increase in visitors to the Wallace monument…You also have the trickle-down effect on the economy. Everything benefits, from petrol stations selling more petrol to pubs selling more beers, when you have a film unit in the area.”
“Twenty years after the release of Field of Dreams,” the MPA report says, “the town of Dyersville, Iowa still gets 65,000 tourists a year to visit the cornfield in the film. [There was incredulous laughter and I ad libbed, "If you build it, they will come."] The town of Preston, Idaho, featured in Napoleon Dynamite, hosts an annual Napoleon Dynamite Festival for tourists visiting because of the film. A survey completed by the New Mexico Tourism Department indicates that film-related tourism accounted for an estimated 5.5 percent of total New Mexico tourism expenditures in 2008, due to visitors’ interest in seeing where movies like No Country for Old Men and 3:10 to Yuma were filmed…Certain locations in Alaska saw a 100-percent increase in tourism as a result of the film Into the Wild.”
I’m guessing “certain locations” means the bus, but they have to fly here, don’t they? And rent a car, and sleep and eat along the way.
Last night just for the heck of it I googled “film-related tourism.” I got 2,600,000 hits. I scrolled through a few pages. A lot of them were for film festivals, but a lot of them were title specific, from movie tours of north England to Bollywood tour packages of Mumbai.
There is also this. A film industry is a relatively green industry, an industry that does not require a gazillion-dollar environmental impact statement be written and approved by seventeen different government agencies before they begin work. With a film industry, we’re not looking at a return five to twenty-five years out, with an environmental footprint that gets everyone’s back up before we stick so much as a shovel into the ground.
With that, I’d like to introduce the deus ex machina of this process, the man who is going to bring Kate Shugak and the state of Alaska into everyone’s living room in living color, the president and CEO of Evergreen Films, Mike Devlin. I’m going to cede the podium to him while I circulate through the audience to take your questions. Of which I’m sure you have many.
[And then for the next twenty minutes Mike answered questions about state film incentives and skated over when we start filming. In response to "How do we sign up to be extras?" he replied, "We'll need a dead body for every episode."]
I can be a dead body! ReallY I can! Particularly if it gets me back to Alaska.
I’ll also volunteer to be a dead body on the show! Or an extra who stands around in the background. I’m old and fat and invisible in a crowd scene. Pick me! Pick me!
I have played as many dead bodies in CERT training exercises. I know how to do it and be realistic. Also I have a brother who lives in Anchorage so would have lodging available. Where do I sign up?
So hope it works!
I think sometimes you can get away with it, but in lots of others the sense of place is a character too.
In Braveheart, I can point out Ireland most of the time. Scotland looks different. Do not get me started on the location errors in the film, it goes on.
In the UK we had a reawakened film industry but the Government are trying to kill it once more. They even getting a letter from Clint Eastwood, telling them to stop.
Funny thing, went to Alnwick castle, mainly to see this place that had been in Harry Potter, the broom scene in one, and I can honestly say it was a brick wall. An old brick wall but still, a brick wall, the rest was CGI.
You only have to look at what is happening to the BBC at the moment. Bizarrly, they wanted to start doing Dr Who again but nowhere to do it. Then they find a studio in Wales, were they make some stuff but not a lot, and so is born the new TV industry from the UK. Nearly major successful TV series coming from the BBC at the moment, comes from Wales.
Why NOT film in Alaska?????? McCall’s First Ladie’s Detective Agency was filmed in Africa [I think]. I’m with you on the the employment benefits for the Alaskan population. If Sarah Palin can do a squat 8 week series of Alaska, why not do a series of movies–more than 8 weeks shown–in Alaska? Keep those jobs at home in the US, instead of elsewhere!!
Right there with you, Beverly.
The big problem is how much money it costs. The BBC spent a lot of money to go to Africa, and there was all sorts of deals done as well, I think.
The big thing I think Kate has going for her is being different. They have to be looking for another ‘Justified’, and Kate’s sort of frontier justice, might be just the ticket.
I can only hope.
The late, great Northern Exposure, one of the best tv series ever, was not filmed in Alaska with no lose of quality. I can understand the desire to film on location, but couldn’t some compromise be reached. It’s done all the time…some scenes shot in a more convenient location, others in the more challenging one. This way, everyone wins: the handful of Alaskans who would get jobs, and the millions of fans who would get to watch the series. Please, Dana, consider the millions of us who would love to see Kate come alive. And as for casting Mutt, I have an elderly cocker spaniel with delusions of grandeur. If CGI can make transform a wall into a castle, it can turn a fat little cocker named Mutton into a Wolf named Mutt…
[laughing] Sorry, Dani, not happening.
My husband, Paul, and I are fans of the scifi tv program “Eureka”. The other night after viewing it we were discussing the possibility of a program based on your novels. We think that the actress Erica Cerra, who plays Deputy Jo Lupo would be a choice to play Kate……she even has that rather “raspy” voice. What do you think???
Hmmm…haven’t seen Eureka but I’ve been reading Wil Wheaton’s tweets and thinking I should give it a try. I’ll watch out for that actress when I do, and thanks!
I think you will like the program. I hope it isn’t true, but I heard that sci-fi is cancelling “Eureka”….but hey, if they are, then Erica Cerra may be free to portray Kate!!! I would be interested to get your opinion about both the actress and “Eureka”.
It’s in my Netflix queue, but no promises when I’ll get to it. Way too much going on…
I am amazed that you continue to find time to write my favorite series!! You are one busy lady. Understand about your queue also….I have 114 DVD’s in mine! So, whenever you get around to watching, I would be interested in your thoughts of “Eureka” and Erica Cerras.
Thanks.
Any idea when they will start filming?
They say next year. I’m thinking it might be two. But what do I know?
I have recently discovered the Kate Shugat series and I love them. I am up to the “Killing Grounds” on e-books in the Kate Shugat serives and tried to locate the next e-book, “Hunter’s Moon”. My Kindle said no such e-book. Am I mistaken that “Hunter’s Moon” has not been put on e-books? If it has been released to e-books would you please let me know? Thanks, Gay
Thanks so much for the compliments, Kay, I’m so glad to hear you’re enjoying the series. We have been publishing the out-of-print Kate Shugak novels in e-format one per month over the last eight months. Hunter’s Moon will be out in October.
I get what you are saying about Northern Exposure but that was before programs like Ice Road Truckers. The big problem now is we know what certain places look like now, and there is a wave of shows were one of the characters is the place.
Also to be honest what Dana is trying to do makes sense, and it is not a sci-fi cost lots of money sort of show.
The big thing is finding a place to film inside, we have two soaps that when ever someone steps inside it is somewhere else. You can actually go visit the old set of one, it was destroyed on the show but is still there.
Looking forward to seeing Kate on TV. Only hoping it will be on a network that I get!! (only have a dish way out here in the boonies of Fairbanks, and am told I am missing out on alot of channels that require a SECOND dish! oh the horror!)
Anyway, the Alaska film industry dilemma: Dermot Cole has been writing about it in the paper. He is questioning whether all the tax breaks and money supposedly being paid ‘to Alaska (ns)’ are actually staying in the State or not. Very interesting. And very confusing. I feel like a mushroom. Being kept in the dark and being fed sh*t about this whole thing. Seems like the industry (or just the people making the money anyways) isn’t being totally honest about where this money is going. Two recent films made in AK are creating all the hoopla. The whale one (can’t for the life of me remember what it’s called) and the one filming right now in Anchorage.
Curious to hear your take on the money trail…..
Oh yeah, and that prior post is correct about that actress from Eureka. Seriously.
About Erica Cerra–she’s gorgeous, but I just looked on IMDb and she’s in her thirties. The actor for a potential franchise character always starts young so s/he doesn’t grow up too fast on screen. (see later ST:TOS films)
About Alaska film industry subsidies–Dermot Cole is a good reporter, I’m sure he has backed up the facts he is reporting. Two things, however.
One, how much are we subsidizing other industries in Alaska for? For example, the natural resources industry. Governor Parnell has or had a team of DOT and Dowell engineers traveling northwestern Alaskan touting the road they want to build ostensibly to Nome but really so we can exploit a bunch of mineral deposits along the way. (Don’t believe me, look it up.) Before I passed judgement on the Alaskan film industry, I’d like to see some side by side comparisons with other industries.
Two is, does Dermot assign any monetary value to the tourism that filmmaking brings to a location? Tourism in New Zealand went through the roof after The Lord of the Rings was filmed there (google Lord of the Rings+New Zealand tourism). People are still visiting the baseball/corn field in Iowa where Field of Dreams was made.
And I’ll throw in a third: It probably isn’t possible to assign a monetary value to the satisfaction Alaskans get by having Alaska up there on screen in a film purportedly about Alaska, instead of central Washington state or Vancouver or Louisiana. But I can sure feel it.
I’m totally hooked. Was devastated at the demise of Jack and thought the books would loose there way. Almost gave up on them but so glad I didn’t the emerging relationship with Jim is hilarious, charming and sultry. Just starting A deeper sleep trying to slow down befor I run out of books. A Series would be interesting but makes me wonder if it would spoil the images Iv already formed. The books have given me an interest in all things Alaskan a fascinating history. I love the maps too, gives a much better visualisation to each story. Looking forward to more great reads. Thanks Dana
Talk about a series of compliments, Shan. Thank you!
You really need to write faster. ;o)
I’m peddling as fast as I can…