Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538245
8 FALL 2025 Keep California Rolling Keep California Rolling For more than a century, the entertainment industry has been dominated by Hollywood, where iconic movies were shot, dreams came true, and ordinary people became stars. Soon the industry was associated with the biggest names in the business: Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Humphrey Bogart—the list goes on and on and on. With each new shining star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Hollywood became more and more glamorous, with everyone aspiring to their movie stardom dreams. But for every Star Wars or Marvel A C T I V I S M By Kathleen Qiu productions ran onto the lots, filling the gluttonous appetites of people forced to stay at home, craving entertainment and amusement they used to fill with the outdoors. But work crawled to a standstill with rumors of the strikes, and it has only dropped since then. Once filled with constant cries of "QUIET ON SET," production lots have now hushed into a permanent quiet that's unsettling for the future of the home of film. "I've been in Local 705 for 25 years; I've been costuming professionally since I got out of college. This is my job, this is what I do, I work all the time. But the past two years have been like what am I doing with my life: What's going on? I just feel so out of control. This is not what it's supposed to be," laments Robyn Simms, a Women's Custom Made Costumer. "Even when it was rough, it was steady. I've never seen it like this in 30 years. There's always been weird ups and downs, but it's like a cultural shift." And it hasn't just been internal California workings at play here. Productions have been leaving the state (and even the country!) in record numbers over the last few years for a variety of reasons, but at the forefront are tax incentives and credits that other states like Georgia, where Marvel has shot the vast majority of their films, offer. While tax incentives can get complicated easily, Georgia offers 20%-30% off of base expenditures, with no annual spending cap. In contrast, California offers 20% off with an annual spending cap of $330 million through the Film and Television Jobs movie, there are thousands of below-the-line workers who made it all happen. These names don't go up in bright marquee lights or on movie posters, but without them, there wouldn't be lights, cameras, or even sometimes, action. There would be no sound, no costumes, no hair, no makeup, no sets, no locations, not even shooting schedules. And for more than a century, for as long as Hollywood dominated the entertainment industry, thousands of people made livings behind the scenes performing stunts, creating creatures, spinning costumes; doing everything and anything to keep their dreams alive and make the show go on. Recently though, there's been a noticeable shift in this formula. Where once was a reliable career path (filled with long hours and hard labor, but nonetheless steady and available), now lies a choppy road twisting and turning into stoppages and holes. First, there was COVID, then there were the writers' and actors' strikes, and then there was the fires. And every time, there would be whispers of hope that the work would come back, that the work would pick up soon. And after COVID, work did boom. A slew of new Benjamin A. LaRiviere, PAT Co-chair, with Julia Bly and Selby Van Horne