Hollywood – An Australian View

Ben GoldsmithUniversity of Queensland/Australian

Film, Television and Radio Schoolb.goldsmith@uq.edu.au

Global Hollywood

• Harry Potter• Australia

Global Hollywood

• New International Division of Cultural Labour (NICL)

• Studios

Local Hollywood

• New International Division of Cultural Resources (NICRs)

• International Distribution of Talent (IDiOT)

Boundaries and Relations

• Topographical– Space as surfaces, maps, lines– Euclidian space – contained space

• Topological– Relations and interactions between relations– Films as space-times

Doreen Massey: Places, like people, have multiple identities

Design and Location Interests

Design Interest

Location Interest

Relation to production Conception and coordination, project based

Facilitation, place based

Policy

•Subsidy to development, production•Support for training institutions•Focus on ‘core creatives’

•Infrastructure provision,•Tax incentives/credits,•Focus on employment outcomes, industrial development and indirect benefits

• Global Hollywood– Finance– People– Settings and Locations– Services and facilities

• Local Hollywood– Film commissions– Incentives– Place-based service companies– Locations

Runaway Production?

• 1920s, 1950s, 1960s• Hollywood ‘natural home’– Tunstall

• Junior Partners - Village Roadshow, Wild Bunch • Finance – Lord of the Rings, The Way Home• Personnel – Eric Bana, Flight of the Conchords• Settings – Paris/London/Prague• Locations – New Zealand• International Markets

Comparaisons internationales: Nombres

Source: Screen Digest, June 2005, June 2006, July 2007, July 2008 and July 2009; Screen Australia Get the Picture: International Comparisons

Comparaisons Internationales: Dépenses

Source: Screen Digest, July 2009; Screen Australia Get the Picture: International Comparisons

Cinema Admissions par an

Source: Screen Digest Sept 2005, Oct 2006, and unpublished data from the Cinema Intelligence Service, reproduced at http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/gtp/acompadmitper.html

Tous les films en Australie, guichet de tous de temps

Films d’Australie, guichet de tous les temps

“Superior reality”

“’If you build it, they will come.’ The regional government of Valencia, Spain, is putting this advice from 1980s Hollywood smash Field of Dreams to the test with La Ciudad de la Luz, or the City of Light, a 250 million euro film studio project.” (Video Age International 1 Jan 2003)

“If you build it, they will come. The line was first spoken in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams and it’s become a cliche in connection with faith in any new enterprise. But now Anant Singh has brought it back to the movies.” (Judy Gerstel, Toronto Star, 4 Oct 2003)

“With the right weather conditions, Poland can look like Paris in the spring-time. What international projects really need are big studio spaces and make no mistake, if you build it, they will come.”

(Roger Donaldson, quoted in Onfilm 1 Oct 2006)

“It is not just a case of ‘build it and they will come’. There must be a reliable infrastructure backing the studios.”

(Jean Johnston of Film Wellington, quoted in Onfilm 1 Oct 2006)

Hollywood and Australia

• Before the First World War, less than 50%• 1923 – c.95% Hollywood films• 100 Australians in Hollywood 1920s – “gum-

leaf mafia”, Annette Kellerman, “Snub” Pollard (Keystone Cops), “Snowy” Baker

• 1930s-40s – Orry-Kelly, Errol Flynn

Hollywoodiens in Australia

• The Man from Kangaroo (1920)• For the Term of His Natural Life (1927)

1950s-60s

1980s

Current Issues

• Sustainability• Producer Offset - $83m into 19 films 2007-09• Genre• International and local production