Re: [MV] Fw: Letter to the editor

From: chance wolf (timberwolf@wheeldog.net)
Date: Mon Jan 29 2001 - 10:07:17 PST


> Aren't you in the film industry? Yeah, the director likes the look....
He
> likes the look of money coming back to his pocket when he picks a certain
> prop company to do things for him and keep his budget down.

Oh, it certainly works that way on some of the 'B' string stuff (typically
Movie-of-the-Week TV offerings), but others will go on and on forever about
what they think is 'correct', then when you break out the reference books,
they override you and select the M135 or the M38 or M37 for their bajillion
dollar WWII project because the real ones 'don't look right' or something
equally asinine.

For us, a WWII Jeep rents for the same price as a 151 or M38, so there's not
an awful lot of incentive to dig your heels in and commit another bunch of
wheeled anachronisms to celluloid for the dubious benefit of future
generations. Check out the M43 playing a WC54 in the upcoming "Pearl". And
in all the theatrical trailers, no less.

>I have a good
> friend in the film industry, and his guess is that about 10% of production
> costs payed out come back to people in key positions in the film via
"gifts"
> or "consulting fees" paid either before or after the film in question is
> actually produced.

There's an 'underbudget bonus' for many productions, but there have also
been people fired from features for not turning the budget allotted into the
expected production values. Seen both. As for rampant graft, corruption,
bill padding, and other miscellaneous 'discretionary funding', you'd find
about the same in public disbursements of all sorts. All I know is they've
never disbursed any of it in my direction, or those piles of parts I have
would have sprouted a 151 and an M37CDN radio by now.

Andy Hill
MVPA 9211
Vancouver, B.C. (whose favourite on-set argument had to be with the director
of "The Aladdin Window" who swore, "being ex-Navy", that the USN
                            never used camouflaged 1008 or 1009 vehicles as
we'd supplied. Coincidentally, we had some photographs from Dr. Mo of just
                            such vehicles, with "US NAVY 97-10236"
stencilled almost-evenly across both doors. Wonder if crow tastes the same
in California as it does
                            up here.)



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