TRUMP SAVES HOLLYWOOD?

FILM AT 10 - OR MAYBE NOT.

Ruins of the sets for STAR WARS in Tunisia.

Ahead of his inauguration, President Trump appointed three film stars - Jon Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone - to be special ambassadors. He tasked them with promoting business opportunities in Hollywood, which he described as a "great but very troubled place". Despite resembling less Gaspar, Balthasar, and Melchior than Larry, Curly and Moe, this glittering trio, he assured us, would “bring Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries, BACK—BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!"

Which foreign countries…sorry Foreign Countries… are those, Mr, President? I can’t remember the last American film shot in France or German. Nor, with the spaghetti and paella western cycles things of the past, do the backlots of Cinecittà or the plains of Almeria any longer echo to the music of Ennio Morricone or the sound of Clint Eastwood’s .45s.

Maybe you’re thinking of the antipodes? The studios built in Australia by George Lucas and other producers are going strong, it’s true – but the $809 million spent there last year on film production was almost entirely for digital and visual effects work on US films; American producers look for profits and Australians work cheap.

Donald Trump says he will hit movies made in foreign countries with 100% tariffs. He blamed a "concerted effort" by other countries that offer incentives to attract filmmakers and studios, which he described as a "National Security threat".

I don’t suppose we should be surprised to see a US president working one of the oldest tricks of politics, that of misdirection. After all, the US practically invented it. When the FBI in the ‘thirties couldn’t defeat the Mafia, it targeted the rural bandits, who were easier to kill. Unable to defeat the Soviet Union in the late forties, it looked for Reds under US beds, and sent Hollywood writers to jail. Now, as Netflix and other US-based streamers bulldoze theatrical cinema, the people responsible suddenly have foreign accents.

A few decades back, the US industry was up in arms about France’s policy of limiting foreign films on its screens to 50%, which represented, they charged, “restraint of trade” . Director Bertrand Tavernier led a delegation to Washington that met with studio heads and presidential representative Jack Valenti.

“I told them,” said Tavernier, ‘You accuse us of monopolistic practices. But do you know the percentage of foreign films shown on American screens? One and a half percent!”

He smiled in rueful reminiscence. “Looking around the group, I saw the same thought on every face. ‘That much? How can we make it even less?”

Tavernier, incidentally, objected just as vigorously to chauvinism when it appeared on his own doorstep. The 1985 L'appât/Fresh Bait, based on a true story, was his acerbic comment on a voguish Americo-philia among France’s post-1968 generation. Three young Parisians rob rich bourgeoises, the girl luring the men into the hands of her murderous partners. “They wanted to open a clothing shop in New York,” he said scornfully of the trio,”yet none of them had passports. And none could speak English.”