Genre: Dark, Romantic Comedy<\/p>\n
Logline: When a desperate California Film Commission bureaucrat tries to save her husband\u2019s doomed superhero movie with state production tax credits, she falls for a rebellious digital artist squatting on the preferred soundstage \u2014 unaware that a media mogul wants the movie to fail to justify moving his studios to a tax haven.<\/p>\n
The characters and events depicted in this movie are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.<\/p>\n
MARGOT (30s): A screenwriter-turned-executive at the California Film Commission, who uses tax credits to save a dying entertainment industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CHASE (40s): Margot\u2019s husband. A fading, arrogant cinematographer clinging to the old Hollywood, demanding 35mm film while the world moves on.<\/p>\n
LEO (30s): A charismatic avant-garde artist building immersive virtual worlds. He is aggressively independent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MAXIMILIAN \u201cMAX\u201d VANE (40s): A trust-fund billionaire who recently bought three legacy studios. His true plan is to grab state production tax credits, make a dud, write off the losses, and move his empire to Monaco.<\/p>\n
GOVERNOR \u201cHAIRDO\u201d HARDING (early 60s, looks 45): California\u2019s image-obsessed governor. He must stop his Hollywood donors from fleeing the state.<\/p>\n
MARGOT, at the California Film Commission, hews to a failing strategy of saving in-state movie production with tax credits that benefit wealthy producers. Her husband, CHASE, is the director of photography on Captain Chloroform, about a superhero whose power is making villains drowsy.<\/p>\n
Enter MAX VANE, who owns the studio behind Captain Chloroform. Max wins no matter what. He either doesn\u2019t make the movie, saving $150 million, or he gets tax credits, makes a bomb, and uses the failure to justify moving out-of-state.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Margot can\u2019t justify the credits under the commission\u2019s calculations of jobs and economic impact. But, desperate to save Chase\u2019s job, Margot finds an abandoned studio warehouse in a empowerment zone, to make the production eligible for wage credits. She goes to inspect it, expecting an empty shell. Instead, she discovers LEO and his collective of rogue artists using cutting-edge LED volumes and game engines to build stunning, participatory art. Margot demands they vacate so a real movie can save her marriage.<\/p>\n
Margot tries to bribe Leo to leave with state credits. Leo laughs in her face. \u201cYou\u2019ve been handing out those credits for a decade,\u201d he tells her, \u201cand Hollywood is dying anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forced to negotiate, Margot spends her days at the warehouse. The contrast is devastating. At home, Chase whines about the cost of vintage lenses. At the warehouse, the unsubsidized Leo is collaborative and free. A crackling romantic tension builds as Leo shows Margot that storytelling doesn\u2019t need Hollywood gatekeepers.<\/p>\n
Max Vane inflates Captain Chloroform\u2019s budget, demanding Margot deliver the credits and the warehouse immediately or he will publicly announce his studios\u2019 relocation. In a tirade, Chase blames Margot her for his failing career. Panicked, Margot bribes LA city councilmembers to get Leo\u2019s turned over to the state for filming.<\/p>\n
Margot immediately regrets her actions. Max Vane forms an alliance with GOVERNOR \u201cHAIRDO\u201d HARDING, who wants to show he is saving Hollywood jobs.<\/p>\n
The governor, with Max\u2019s support, plans a televised police raid to clear out \u201cthe squatters\u201d and reclaim the old studio warehouse. Margot discovers their plan. She realizes she has been manipulated by Max, and that she could destroy Leo, the only real artist she has ever loved.<\/p>\n
Margot makes her choice. She races to warn Leo.<\/p>\n
Leo won\u2019t run. Instead, his team rigs the warehouse with farcical traps designed to prey on Hollywood\u2019s and state government\u2019s bottomless hunger for money.<\/p>\n
Gov. Harding and Max Vane arrive with studio execs, SWAT teams and news crews \u2014 and find a house of nightmares:<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2004Police officers chase holographic projections of uncashed pension checks into dead ends.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2004Studio execs are lured into net-traps by illusions of real data on streaming viewership.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2004Max\u2019s phone, hacked by Leo, displays a forged alert that the IRS is seizing his offshore accounts. Max screams fascist insults at the crew, and admits to his entire scheme.<\/p>\n
The livestream breaks the Internet. Leo monetizes the video as an anti-establishment documentary, earning his artist collective millions.<\/p>\n
Max Vane is arrested for tax and securities fraud. Chase relocates to Atlanta to shoot infomercials. The governor brazens his way through the fallout, and wins the White House.<\/p>\n
As the sun rises over LA, Margot stands on the warehouse roof with Leo. They look out at a city where the corrupt old ways are crumbling \u2014 making room for something beautiful and new.<\/p>\n
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Z\u00f3calo Public Square.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Genre: Dark, Romantic Comedy Logline: When a desperate California Film Commission bureaucrat tries to save her husband\u2019s doomed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[14148,48,52,51,47,50,49,14880],"class_list":["post-469709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-california-film-commission","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-warehouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}