Should we campaign to save the UK Film Council?
The government is to axe the UK Film Council. No longer will your taxes be spent paying people to make films they can't persuade anyone else to pay for voluntarily.
No doubt outra ged Guardianistas will whine about the impossibility of any great films ever being made again. We’ll be earnestly told that the “investment” our taxes made in UK film production actually earned us £zillions in return (In which case, why need the subsidy in the first place?)
But before being taken in by these Balph Eubanks* , take a look at the UK video games industry. It seems to get by without a government quango overseeing it. Or with subsidises that price out would-be entrepreneurs. Indeed, those video games bods have had to go and make entertainment that people want to pay for. So much so, they now really do earn £ billions.
In film making, as in publishing, apparently it’s normal to expect two or three turkeys for every hit. Done properly, the revenue from the hit more than makes up for the turkeys. But who do you think has a better track record backing box office hits as opposed to flops? Folk investing their own money in a production or people sinking tax-payers cash into a film?
Titanic. ET. Gone with the Wind. The English Patient. Sex Lives of Potato Men. Guess which work of high art was made possible by state handouts?
* - Atlas Shrugged is finally being filmed - with not a grant in sight.