“The Hollywood industry is dying,” says “Saturday Night Live” great Dana Carvey. “The amount of productions is dying. … They have to do something so more production comes back.” That includes, Carvey noted, competing with foreign countries.
The 61-year-old actor/comedian was speaking to fellow “SNL” alum David Spade, who was part of a superb group that included Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider and Chris Farley. They often did cameos in one another’s movies. They were hilarious. But Spade isn’t laughing about what’s happening in Hollywood, and he pointed blame at Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. “Thanks, Karen Bass,” he said sarcastically. “Thanks, Gavin.”
Hollywood’s struggles are very real, and self-inflicted. The outrageous tax structure in California and Los Angeles, plus the wokeism and politicization of the industry, has pushed filmmakers to greener, freer pastures. I know this personally. The 2024 movie “Reagan” starring Dennis Quaid, based on one of my Reagan books, was filmed largely in Guthrie, Okla. The taxes and regulations in California were so punitive that we couldn’t make the movie there.
Currently, I’m involved in a film project based on my book “A Pope and a President,” on John Paul II and Ronald Reagan. The company is the excellent Pensé Productions, founded in Pittsburgh by Scott Sander and his sons Christian and Colin. The plan is to shoot the film not in California, nor even America, but in Poland. Pensé is filming a blockbuster on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler. It’s being filmed locally, far from some Hollywood studio lot.
Filmmakers have fled Hollywood for cities like Nashville, Pittsburgh and other Pennsylvania locations (such as Ligonier for the “Hershey” biopic last year), and even other countries. Hollywood can blame itself.
And yet, here’s the crazy thing: Who’s rushing to the defense of Hollywood and its Democratic politicians and perpetrators? Donald Trump. Yes, Donald Trump.
Trump wants to impose 100% tariffs on movies produced abroad. “The Movie Industry in American is DYING a very fast death,” says Trump. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated.”
Well, as I said, that’s Hollywood’s fault. Why would Trump rush to its defense, especially given how unfriendly Hollywood has been to conservative actors and Trump friends like Jon Voight, the late Chuck Norris and Mel Gibson? Gibson has had to shoot his films in countries like Italy and Malta. He’s not welcome in Hollywood. They hate his guts. They detest his message and movies.
Conservative filmmakers have been forced to make movies independently, having been blacklisted by the Hollywood left. Trump surely knows that. Why would this businessman be against friendly competition from foreign filmmakers? The answer is Trump’s America-first patriotism.
“We Want Movies Made in America Again,” Trump declared. (He also claimed some nonsense about foreign movies constituting “a concerted effort by other Nations and a National Security threat.”)
And thus, we have some strange bedfellows: Donald Trump and Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass and California liberals teaming up to preserve Hollywood’s lock on the film industry, regardless of their terrible fiscal-political-ideological actions.
Trump is their most unlikely savior. Here’s hoping they fail or they change. The movie industry needs to be at long last unshackled from Hollywood.