Clint Eastwood has joined the luvvie furore about the closure of the UK Film Council as part of the Government’s spending cuts. As you can read below Eastwood opposes the closure and says of his recent Matt Damon movie, <em>Hereafter</em>, made in Britain, ‘The Film Council gave us the crucial detailed information we needed to make our decision to shoot in the UK with information on tax credits, availability of crews and other support. Without such assistance in the early stages, the likelihood of a London shoot would have been greatly diminished. Locales with active, knowledgeable film commissions are far more appealing to us as producers.’

Fair enough. Movies create work and bring in money. Always have. But there is another side to this story and it’s worth mentioning. Back in the early 1980s I was arts correspondent on <em>The Times</em> and a very similar debate was going on about the loss of tax credits to movie companies – as you’ll note from Eastwood’s comment above they clearly didn’t stay away for long.

<!--more-->The minister for the arts at the time was that very interesting and charming man Grey Ruthven, 2nd Earl of Gowrie, Lord Gowrie in short. He was, I seem to recall, doing his bit for the cause but quietly made a very good point when I talked to him on the subject. The film business invariably, when it’s lobbying, talks of ‘support’. But in truth what we’re really dealing with here is something very different: subsidies. Saying to a movie producer, ‘Make your film here and we’ll make sure you pay less tax than you would somewhere else.’

Why subsidise movies more than, say, fast food or the banking industry or manufacturing, all industries that employ people<em> and stay around</em>? Where do you draw the line between art and mere commerce? Which would you rather have, spending on hospitals or tax credits for the movie business?

It’s never quite as simple as that, of course. But it’s not quite as simple as arts lobbies sometimes make out either. And some people could be forgiven for thinking that the message Eastwood (a man I adore for <em>Dirty Harry</em> and much else) is sending us from sunny Carmel is this...
<blockquote>Hey guys, you may have great directors, actors, and all those other important movie industry personnel we need. But if you don't bribe us better than some other countries we just won't come...</blockquote>
I wonder which way George Osborne is minded to go.

<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/eastwood-makes-plea-to-save-film-council-2047062.html">Eastwood makes plea to save Film Council - News, Films - The Independent</a>