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Buckley challenges Disney film job claims

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Film
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Producer Tony Buckley has challenged the Government to verify the economic benefits it claims will be generated by the Walt Disney Co. shooting 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo in Australia.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Arts Minister Tony Burke said the production would create up to 2,000 jobs and utilise goods and services from nearly 1,000 local businesses when they announced a $21.6 million incentive to Disney in April.

Buckley, who has produced more than 30 films, telemovies, miniseries and documentaries in a career spanning 50 years, describes those claims as “absolute arrant nonsense.”

He said the biggest offshore production in Australia, Steven Spielberg’s HBO miniseries The Pacific, employed approximately 480 contractors and freelance workers. He estimates that no more than 40 or 50 businesses, including post production houses, benefit from any single production.

"I believe the figures just don’t add up and this places a question mark over the validity of the information being circulated,” said Buckley, whose credits include Caddie, The Irishman, Bliss, Oyster Farmer and TV‘s Heroes Mountain, Jessica, Harp in the South and The Potato Factory.

The producer conveyed his concerns in a letter to Minister Burke. He got a reply from an Arts Department official which he describes as “patronising and ludicrous.”

Buckley plans to ask Screen Australia to commission one of the completion bond companies to conduct an audit of offshore productions to determine exactly how much money each spends in the country and how many people and companies benefit from that.

The 20,000 Leagues remake was due to shoot this year, probably at Fox Studios and the Village Roadshow Studios utilising that facility’s water tank, but has been postponed until 2014 due to casting issues.

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20 Comments

  1. Although I greatly respect Tony I do believe his take on the numbers on Pacific are very low. It is safe to assume that the Australian spend on that project was around $150m and more than 2000 people worked on that series. It would be really great that when articles like this are written that a bit of research is done and that at least Ausfilm is given a chance to counteract statements that are made with emotional good intention but nevertheless are uninformed.

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  2. $150 million spend in Australia? Mr Rosen, when the “above the line” and “cast fees” are removed, one can hardly believe the same old tired lines of the local “Benefits, etc” of 2000 employed; – or is more 480-ish?

    Mr Buckley, cites figures and facts. Where are your figures to refute his claims, while negating his opinion?

    Play the “Ball” and not the Messenger/s”? Mr Buckley’s output, demonstrates his understanding of the realities of Production and distribution.

    It is often repeated request in this Multi-million dollar industry. Transparency – Accountability?

    “The Pacific, employed approximately 480 contractors and freelance workers. He estimates that no more than 40 or 50 businesses, including post production houses, benefit from any single production.

    “I believe the figures just don’t add up and this places a question mark over the validity of the information being circulated,” said Buckley,”

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  3. Good article. No doubt the government exaggerates the benefits… no doubt… and there is also the Opportunity Cost of the money spent on Hollywood films. That is, the profit we could make from making our own films and exporting them. I guess Australian filmmakers are so used to making their money from the budget (in our case- handouts) they forget that films can actually see a return at the box office.

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  4. Thank You Brian for correcting this story ,yes it would be great if people could check facts before publishing.I am wondering what on earth Tony Buckley has as an agenda in this case?Is he simply trying to sabotage the jobs of Australian Film technicians?IS he trying to destroy the infrastructure of the companies that make it possible for him to make his income from productions that would not be possible without Australian suppliers and crew from cutting their own margins to the bone so he can make his producers fees or is he simply jealous of people who work on higher profile projects than he does.Seems like sour grapes from someone who should have done better and is bitter about someone else getting some funding or assistance when he feels he somehow deserves it.Smacks of entitlement and greed or as usual you have to belong to “The Club”to receive govt assistance in film/tv production.
    If you are one of the thousands of people who rely on offshore production to maintain a living please have a voice and comment on these kind of stories to prevent your incomes being compromised by some local producers who believe that offshore productions dont deserve to treated as a legitimate part of our industry.

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  5. I don’t know Tony, but according to the Herald Sun, The Pacific brought 4k jobs and generated 180 miillion for the AU economy.
    “Movies on a Roll”. Herald Sun (Australia). 3 August 2008
    The Hollywood Reporter was quoted at the time as saying the miniseries was the most expensive ever produced, at 200 million. It stands to reason that a lot of the money would have stayed in Australia. It utilised crew from every state and filmed in several. It was a unified Australian effort on the part of crew, as are most large foreign features.
    It won eight Emmys and was nominated for 15 others, as well as a Golden Globe. It could arguably be said that it influenced production location decisions to be made in our favour for several years afterwards.
    I would have liked for Don Groves to give us more information about Tony’s goals. Is his concern that the incentive should be offered first to fund local production? Local production is not enough to keep local crews working, a lot have spent the last two years travelling out of the country. Much local production is too small to keep crews relevantly skilled. I respect the opinion offered in the article but feel that there is a lack of detail.
    I am a veteran crew member with 15 years feature production in the US and six here. I can tell you that there is no benefit in keeping production local, as the major studios have been globalising for the last decade and shop all over the globe for the best deal. I respect the Australian craft film market, but in order to be relevant globally I feel we must attract offshore production.

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  6. My husband made a significantly large sum of money working for Baz Lurhman & Wolverine productions recently. He usually earns half that amount. We passed on our significantly large sum of money to plumbers, electricians, carpet installers and many other local trades and businesses since we could now afford to renovate our home for our expanding family. Without that money we’d just be chasing our tails – a bit like Mr Buckley.

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  7. Davis. Nail on Head
    A lot of Australian producers do make the money from the budget before distribution,they have no “skin in the game” when the film has to perform in the market beyond getting in line for the handout again.This breeds lo brow mentality that promotes budgetary emphasis on protecting the fees at the expense of making the film as well as can be,too many times a P and A or VFX budget has been gutted to sustain the ever expanding list of producers on some films and TV shows.I would like to state that this does not include all producers as some I have the utmost respect for but there is a breed of producers who seem to not have the interests of the industry at heart.I have seen more respect for our crews from US producers than some of our locals,go figure.

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  8. Tony Buckley is most certainly not trying to destroy the industry,only in search of the truth…hence my probing questions.My problem is that I am not uninformed for I have done my research and the figures I regret to say don’t add up.I lived in Port Douglas at the time of filming “The Pacific” and “South Pacific”(telemovie).
    “The Pacific” employed 480 salaried persons.I don’t count 1 day extras hired locally as salaried film technicians.
    I lost my gardener for 10 weeks because he could drive army trucks.Port Douglas prospered for three months and then they were gone.About 48 busines’s prospered,not 1000 !!

    I am most certainly not opposed to off shore production but I am when tax payers money is abused by people like Disney who want to reap the benefits but refuse to pay our award conditions,hours worked,penalty rates and honour our workplace and health agreements. Off shore productions are the same as Flyin Flyout miners,they are not the basis for or of a permanent work force sustaining a permanent film industry which we rebuilt in the 1970’s and 80s;.A Hybrid Hollywood is not an Australian film industry.

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  9. We can’t survive without offshore productions. Budgets for local productions are too small to keep us all afloat. What I would like to see, however, instead of money being tipped into individual productions, is money being used to make us more globally competitive i.e. raise location rebate from 16.5% to 30% for a start.

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  10. If Tony Buckley knew anything about on flow affects of overseas productions, he would know that those monies do not just effect grips, standby props, unit departments, but the local restaurants, corner stores, local industry that make specialised requests by these productions, local IT companies that would not normally see this kind of business… the local stationer that picked up a $30000 short term supply contract, or the local wine merchant that sold a half a dozen bottles bought with someone ADs per diem, to sooth the sole after a slogging 70 hour week…

    I guess Tony Buckley didn’t know this because he did not consider this whilst writing his negative prose…

    Cheers Tony… you’re not helping!

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  11. Tony ,I’m so sorry you lost your gardener ,maybe if you we’re paying him well enough he would not have had to leave to support his income.
    You have highlighted the problem exactly ,
    No US film here has refused award wages ,as you should know the only people on a Film crew who are anyway near the award wage are maybe trainees and office juniors,what I think you referring to is the agreements reached with studios before production to have a general employment agreement .Offshore films pay what I believe is a responsible rate ,it is far greater than some of the astounding rates being trotted out on local film which are the equivalent of 1980s rates,maybe it is just nostalgia for those times we are seeing in budgeting as well.
    The last 3 “offshore” films brought close to 400 million dollars in budgetary terms,yes some got spent or taken back overseas but just because Port Douglas didn’t see millions don’t think that hundreds of families in Balmain,Cronulla,Port Melbourne and Burleigh didn’t appreciate the ability to pay their bills for a time.

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  12. Dear Tony and readers, here are the cold hard facts from “The Pacific”, total Australian crew employed 1,517 (163,340 days), total Australian cast employed 210 (3,057 days), total Australian Extras mandays was approximately 24,400. There was also around 100 foreign employees who worked on the project. The project filmed for 40 weeks and had a six month pre-production period. Local VFX houses were also used and guess what, these don’t run without employees either that were not mentioned in the above figures. All the above mentioned crew, cast and extras including foreign paid taxes in Australia. In order for our Government to give incentives first they take. The Government still runs in the black on these projects. The production utilised the services of 2,622 Australian companies in the making of the series. Over $10M was spent on accommodation, $4.5M on catering, over $4M on construction materials and almost $5M on Warehouses and stage rental. The list of expenditure goes on. So Mr Buckley and readers, there you have it, the facts. This money can be spent anywhere in the world, why not get it spent in Australia. Dean Hood – Financial Controller “The Pacific”.

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  13. Did he say “Living in Port Douglas”?…

    “Lost my Gardener”?….

    Wonder what the maid was doing for those 3 months?

    Wow, I’ll be buying groceries with my credit card today…

    Thanks for your Probing questions Tony..

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  14. Where does the “48” come from? I imagine that’s just from the listed credits? The Pacific, was a major job for our Sydney based, period clothing company [ as well as for other companies in Syd, Melb & Qld, surely 20 jobs just there, for ongoing staff, not film crew.] Local films expect industry infrastructure to be there, but are all too often last minute,low budget,no script, – not enough to make a sustainable industry. A balance of both is good. These big international films do make an enormous contribution to keeping our engine running, which then enables us to help out the local projects.

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  15. Thank you so much Dean
    It’s not hard to find the facts,journalists should be more thorough in writing these stories as you can see that it would have been easy to go to the source to check if you were reporting an accurate situation or being played like cheap trombone at the bequest of self interested parties.
    And Tony ,if your going in to potentially compromise people’s livelyhoods ,best not to mention the gardener at your Port Douglas house,just a thought.

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  16. I am indebted to Dean Hood for opening the books on “The Oacific” and thank him for his generous spirit.It gives us all an opportunity to balance the pros and cons.I still question that there are 2622 ‘companies’ depending on a weekly cheque from the Australian film industry to keep their employees busy.Post production houses,most definitely,special fx studios ,absolutely,and sound mixing suites,always. But one has to be careful here and not include crew members who may also have an ABN number and a piece of equiptment the production requires and thereby count them twice.However with great respect to all respondents the case I am presenting seems to have escaped attention.I repeat I am not opposed to off shore production but I am when it comes to the use of tax payers money being abused by a company who is willing to accept our governments largess but not honour our industrial awards,hours worked,penalty rates,health and workplace regulations etc.Yes it’s great to get a job,but after all we have fought for to get where we are,it is not worth the price of prostituing ourselves to make others rich.I rest my case and say thank for taking an interest.

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  17. Dear Tony, Please stop insulting everyone involved in large budget productions. To think US funded films do not follow strict safety rules (which are law) is just silly, to think any Australian crew would let filming happen when they could see something wasn’t safe is just as silly. Everyone on set has a duty of care to one another to look out for potential risks. There are Federal laws in place that say no one paid under any contract can be worse off than if they were paid as per award minimums, this also must be followed – no exceptions. The fact is most crew on large budget films get paid 30% to 400% above scale rates with the exception of level 1 or 2 job titles. Level 1 or 2 employees will have to stay on standard awards. As far as abuse of tax payer money goes talk to the Government about handouts to Ford. The film business gets very little, the hand outs to Internationals is more than paid for by the additional taxes generated by the film shooting here in the first place, the way I see it, it’s not your personal tax money being used on these films, it’s everyone involved in the productions tax being used wisely to promote and industry.

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  18. Wow. What an interesting subject.
    (‘Sick of it’ with all due respect, best to use your name, otherwise it comes over as sour grapes)
    I must say, without knowing the facts, I was behind Tony’s comments 100% – without knowing the full facts. But since reading Deans fact sheet on the PACIFIC project, its obviously very beneficial to have these ‘offshore’ projects shooting here, with the terms & conditions spelt out. Thanks for enlightening me.

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  19. it is totally sour grapes Phil.
    The fact that two producers of yours and Tonys experience don’t understand the issue or have the facts when every assistant grip and art dept worker involved does is very troubling to me.A lot of people are concerned about raising issues or being seen as to much trouble when the next film needs to be crewed,unfortunately a truth.

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  20. I know Tony and am really sick of his anti-American rants. He is from the hand out generation of film makers produced by the 70s. He’s a nice guy, but still believes that any money or incentives should be garnered upon the country club elites of Australian filmmaking. World has changed Tony and people need jobs as the films local Aust producers make don’t for the most part, have an audience.

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