Spielberg’s LINCOLN has Estimated Economic Impact of $35 Million

Governor Bob McDonnell, Motion Picture Association of America Chairman and CEO Chris Dodd and renowned producer Kathleen Kennedy highlighted the economic benefits of film production in Virginia during a midday press conference in Richmond at In Your Ear Studios. The press conference followed a visit by the Governor and Dodd to the set of the new Steven Spielberg film “LINCOLN,” of which Kennedy is a producer. The movie is currently filming scenes at Virginia’s historic State Capitol. 
 
“Film production means job creation,” said Governor McDonnell.   “Here in Virginia we are committed to partnering with the film industry to bring more productions to the Commonwealth in order to create more good jobs for our citizens. Today Richmond and Petersburg are bustling with the production of Steven Spielberg’s “LINCOLN,” which will have an estimated economic impact of $35 million in our state. The big screen is big business, and we want that business right here in Virginia.”
 
MPAA Chairman Dodd reinforced that message saying, “there are more than 1,100 businesses – mostly small businesses – in Virginia working in the production sector and because of the bipartisan efforts of Gov. McDonnell to secure production incentives, we are here today to tell the story of Virginians working in this vibrant industry.”
 
LINCOLN is currently being shot on location at the State Capitol in Richmond and at locations in the greater Richmond-Petersburg area, including the Executive Mansion.  It is based on the book, “Team of Rivals” by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and James Spader.
 
While a candidate for Governor in 2009, McDonnell promoted investment in the film industry in the Commonwealth as one of many ways to help spur private sector job creation. In the 2010 session of the General Assembly, the Governor’s first in office, McDonnell put forward legislation to make Virginia more attractive to film makers. Virginia now has $4 million in the Governors Motion Picture Opportunity Fund; a new $2.5 million refundable tax credit program (the state’s first ever) which began on January 1st of this year, and exempts productions from paying the Virginia sales tax. The economic impact of the film industry in Virginia in 2010 was $344 million with 2,700 Virginians actively working in the sector.

A video of the event is available here.

The Hartford Courant asked several key political figures how Sept. 11 unfolded for them. Former U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd gave this account via written statement:

My memories of Sept. 11 and the days that followed are of powerfully mixed emotions. Our first daughter, Grace, was born just two days after the attacks, and I remember holding her in my arms in the hospital maternity ward in Arlington, watching from the window as smoke rose from the Pentagon, and trying to balance joy with fear.

Grace is named for her grandmothers, but it also seemed as though grace was what we all needed in those terrible first hours, as the immense and horrifying toll of that day became clear. Over a hundred people from Connecticut had lost their lives, and as I talked later with one mother who had lost her own child on Sept. 11, I felt helpless as I asked whether there was anything, anything I could do. Hug your daughter, she said. I did.

Grace is a tall, lovely, soon-to-be 10-year-old now, and she and her sister Christina astonish me each day with their energy and wisdom. America and Americans have endured two wars, the loss of millions of jobs, a global crisis in our financial system, and more, and we remain standing, though it has surely not been easy. Thousands of families are still learning to live without the fathers and mothers, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers they lost on Sept. 11.

If I wondered then, at first, into what kind of world Grace had been born, my fears lifted in talking with the doctors who had attended her birth. They were born in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Lebanon, and had come to America in search of the opportunity and freedom that are and have always been the enduring promises of this nation. In that awful week we all felt proud to be Americans, and I knew that as long as America did not abandon its faith in the ideals that had brought them to our shores, neither terrorists nor their weapons could change who we are, or what we stand for. I believe that still.

This piece was originally posted on the Hartford Courant's website and can be read in its original format here.

The website demandprogress.org, a paid lobbying organization that promotes itself as a progressive voice, forgets that being anti-labor is hardly progressive.  In fact, in its latest campaign to generate attention, demandprogress appears to have allied itself with at least one – and who knows how many more – offshore rogue websites that promote the theft and illegal marketing of American products like movies, video games and software.  Is that progress?  For the 2.4 million workers in the entertainment industry, and for the millions of others who owe their livelihoods to other forms of creative content, the resounding answer is NO!

Even as demandprogress is boasting of hundreds of thousands of signatures in its drive to protect offshore rogue websites, we learned today that one of their partners in this business is demonoid.me, a Montenegro-based online trafficker of stolen content, which is hosting the so-called demandprogress grassroots petition against the PROTECT IP Act. 

So, in the end we have a website that is content to ally itself with criminal enterprises that have a strong, direct, personal and commercial interest in continuing to steal from American creative workers and businesses.
And we have a petition that allows anyone to sign on.

Unlike many other petition gathering organizations that provide safeguards against abuse, the demandprogress site allows literally anyone to sign on.   Anyone.  Just to see if we could, we signed on twice using arbitrary names, bogus emails, and random U.S. zip codes. 

We can assure you, StripeytheLizard (StripeytheLizard@gmail.com, zip code: 90008) and Zedonk, (Zedonk585858@gmail.com, zip code: 91011) are both now listed as petition signers; neither are voting constituents of the stated zip codes; neither have real emails; and both were entered by the same individual.

Contrast this petition with the letter-writing campaign launched by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, whose over 110,000 members make it the largest labor union in the entertainment industry. 

Stagehands, makeup artists, and costume designers are only a few of the crafts served by IATSE.  These hardworking, middle-class Americans are real people who are facing the all-too-tangible consequences of online theft: disappearing jobs, declining pensions, and diminished health and retirement benefits.

In a personal appeal, IATSE President Matthew Loeb explains how online theft works, what’s at stake, and how his members and supporters can advocate for a solution, directing them to an online advocacy form to support the PROTECT IP Act.  Writing a support letter to your U.S. Senators requires a title, a first and last name, a full address, email and local number, if applicable. 

We hope that at the end of the day, the scores of letter-writers fighting for their livelihoods – building a groundswell of support for protecting American jobs from foreign, criminal interests – are the ones being heard.