Quentin Tarantino's Final Film Will Get Made Thanks to the Help of Millions of Taxpayers
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
As the father of a large family, I often get remarks made to me at the grocery store, usually they go something like this:
“Are they all yours?” or “Don’t you know what causes that?”
However, my favorite by far is, “Don’t you own a TV?”
That one always baffles me. First of all, I don’t know about you, but the process involved in making a child is infinitely more enjoyable than binge-watching the latest true-crime drama on Hulu.
But more than this, the response demonstrates a weird reversal of social priorities. After all, wouldn’t it be better for young people to be having more children than watching the next Marvel movie?
Some countries, like Hungary, think procreation is so important it encourages couples to have children with tax credits.
In the United States, tax credits are going to director Quentin Tarantino to make another vulgar and gory film.
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter;
“The state’s film office on Friday said that California’s Film & TV tax credit program will welcome a trio of feature films, including Quentin Tarantino’s The Movie Critic, as well as a roster of 13 independent films. (No studio is currently attached to The Movie Critic yet.) …Netflix ($20 million) is the only major studio nabbing credits in this allotment for an untitled film. Lionsgate ($21.1 million) led the way in the previous round of incentives and Netflix and Warner Bros. in the previous four before that.”
You heard correctly, the state of California, which has the fifth highest debt among U.S. states (behind Democratic bastions New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Massachusetts), and the highest taxes, is expanding that debt and putting those tax dollars to good use in promoting yet another Hollywood monstrosity.
Now, one might think that this would be a good way to get business, in the sense that some towns and cities could use the jobs a movie-making endeavor could provide, as well as a tourism boost that might be generated by being featured in a film. However, that justification would be a bit of a stretch in California, the home of Hollywood.
After all, isn’t tourism a big reason why visitors go to California anyway?
Now another argument might be that tax credits could help out a small business, like an upstart director and a new production company.
However, one only has to take a glance at Tarantino’s net worth (approximately $120 million) to realize that “welfare” is the last thing this dude needs.
But for what the director has already announced will be his final film, according to The Hollywood Reporter, welfare is exactly what his work is going to get. The production company behind “The Last Critic,” L. Driver Productions, is due for $20.2 million in state money, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Now, there are those who would say to all of this: “Who cares?”
After all, Tarantino films do have a real audience, and do have artistic qualities to them, even if I find them a bit over-the-top personally. But hey, they aren’t for everyone. Some people like VW Beetles and mayo on their hot dogs. (Who am I to judge?)
Regardless of how they feel about Tarantino’s work, however, millions of taxpayers are going to be kicking in money to support it, compliments of the California Film Commission.
But at some point, when you have an actual demographic crisis, a drug crisis, and the erosion of those fundamental religious and family values that make the building of a successful society possible, it seems a bit preposterous to take tax dollars from an already overburdened public and give it to millionaires so they can make more crap in order that people can continue to lose brain cells in front of a screen.
I have already mentioned Hungary as an example, which has been inspiring many on the populist right for encouraging the country’s birth rate and marriage through tax incentives.
There are those on the populist right who love this. There are those on the libertarian right who do not. And there are conservative positions in between. But let us consider the notion in principle: If you are going to use tax dollars for something to help a society turn around from a bad place, wouldn’t this be a good place to start?
Indeed, a country concerned enough about the institution of the family to levy funds for its support seems to indicate that at least the leadership of that nation has its head screwed on correctly.
What does this say about the leadership of California? You would think, with needles and feces making a national embarrassment of one of its major cities, perhaps that money could be better spent elsewhere?
We need to turn around our society and we need to do so by making changes at home. If we don’t want our tax dollars to go to Hollywood elites we need to stop supporting their drivel to the point that they think such an expense is justifiable. Spend that time making more God-fearing Americans instead.
In doing my part, I know exactly what I will say next time someone asks me when they look at my brood of Christian kiddos in the check-out line:
“Don’t you own a TV?”
I’m going to say:
“No, I clearly have better things to do.”
Maybe if we all do that, California will finally get the hint.
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