"COLD MOUNTAIN" SENT U.S. JOBS TO ROMANIA?

EDITED! (passages newly inserted marked by asterisks)

In a letter to the editor of the Tacoma News Tribune, published on December 26th, David Garden of Tacoma wrote:

RE: "Rain, mud, and heat color 'Cold Mountain" (TNT, 12/22)

In a recent television interview, Anthony Minghella, director of "Cold Mountain" told Barbara Walters that he shot the film in Romania because he had looked at locations all over the American South and could not find any large expanses which "had not been touched by modern times".

Anyone familiar with the South knows that this is completely untrue. What is true is that wages for workers in Romania are considerably less than wages anywhere in America.

There is currently a great deal of discussion about outsourcing and its impact on our economy. I am outraged that many companies have exported their manufacturing, customer service, and technical jobs to foreign countries. "Cold Mountain" is no different. This movie represents many hundreds of jobs. The well-established communities of film workers throughout the Southeast would have benefitted.

When such an American story is taken away from its roots, it loses its soul. Those who have already seen the film and know the South say that Romania does not look like the Blue Ridge Mountains. Daily Variety (12/8) says it best: "There is an intangible something missing."

It's impossible to say whether this stems from the fact that the film was shot in Romania, from it being made mostly by foreigners, or from the variability of the accents by an Anglo/Aussie cast.

You can send a message. Do not contribute to "Cold Mountain's" profits by buying a ticket or a DVD.

DAVID GARDEN
Tacoma

Garden's letter ran into, I'll assume, the TNT's word count limit and was somewhat truncated because it is basically a pared down version of the factsheet sent out by IATSE to its dues-paying legions to stir them to outrage.

I let a buddy read this letter before I offered him my thoughts on it. The first thing out of his mouth upon commencement was "WHAT? Does that mean because '2001' wasn't shot in space, it loses its soul?!" On that note, let it be known that IATSE shames the achievements of its members in one fell swoop with this assertion of soullessness inherent in films whose locations do not match their placing. IATSE members have toiled in countless productions set in locales farflung from their shoots. Does this mean that, inherently, these productions lack "soul"? Or is IATSE ordained by the Heavens above to seep productions they work on with soul a shoot shot elsewhere would not likewise enjoy? That out of the way, let's move on to the economic foolishness.

"Cold Mountain's" budget is currently assessed at $83 million. Most likely, the costs incurred are higher. Now, I let my IMDb Pro account lapse and I doubt it would have Romanian to American wage scale information on hand anyway, but let's guess that the budget for this feature were it shot in the American Southeast would be much higher, perhaps as much as double if not more. Costs this high are passed on to whom? The cinema going public, who it is maintained (but ever doubtfully) craves quality in a motion picture that they attend. A higher budget, it is true, is no guarantor of higher quality. But that is no matter. It can be said with some certainty that in the minds of many cinema-goers a bigger budget = better quality. Naturally, however, cinema-goers are certainly budget-conscious where it counts... their own wallets. It cannot escape notice, not even by the great minds at IATSE, that cinema-goers worldwide are put off by the higher costs of attending a motion picture exhibition these days.

Since "Cold Mountain" is not alone in its budget conflations and large segments of consumers demand an ever-increasing amount of technical sophistication from the films they screen, further pressures are put upon the production end to reign in costs while maintaining high standards. Part of this is, obviously, achieved by shooting overseas.

Now, no American jobs have been "shipped" anywhere here. No one, no one sane anyway, can counter that making "Cold Mountain" is, whether within a general filmmaking industry or not, a Southeasten industry. The production of "Cold Mountain" was a one-time thing, no proud tradition of "Cold Mountain" crafting is indigenous to the American South. No more than suggesting that Romanian jobs were shipped to America when post-production moved from the Carpathians to Los Angeles, would it be accurate to suggest that American jobs were lost to sinister Romanian interests.

* The logic implied here by IATSE could be extended to other motion pictures currently in circulation. Films that opt instead to employ CGI technicians when real industries could build replicas themselves unfairly hurts those industries, does it not? In the extreme category, when George Lucas mattes, digitally, cityscape shots of an urban world in his new Star Wars prequels, the lament could be made that millions of American construction workers got screwed. The argument sounds absurd. Because it is.

Further, no one... anywhere... has deprived American filmmakers their ability to make films in the Southeast. If filmmakers, as individuals or as groups, wish to set and produce their films in the American Southeast, they are certainly free to. No one is stopping them. Well... except maybe city, county, and state governments in addition to and in a seeming paradox... IATSE itself. For a good, honest account of IATSE and SAG thuggery, watch the DVD special features for the Canadian film "$lasher$" and see for yourself what happens to the struggling indie feature filmmaker trying to keep costs low on his super-low budget film. No production is too small to escape the thieving and conniving of IATSE and SAG and the thugs they send to do their dirty work.

Now, because Miramax Films and the myriad other investors that took a gamble with "Cold Mountain" shrunk their budget by shooting on Romanian soil, capital is freed up to be spent elsewhere. Instead of collectively pooling capital and resources into a behemoth "Cold Mountain" project, capital is left over to be spent on other projects. What kind of other projects? Presumably, this includes, and by vast numbers, American stories shot on American soil employing American workers. More than anything, shooting "Cold Mountain" on Romanian soil most likely "saved" American jobs, if we're going to insist on speaking in this context, because instead of putting one mammoth project and a few others on the docket and cutting yearly output of other projects, projects in jeopardy are saved and their funding secured. To mandate or attempt to, via political or consumer pressure, to force "Cold Mountain" (moot, a done deal anyway) to be shot on American soil is haughty foolishness and begets wasteful economic destruction, the projects that would not be completed because no capital was there for them attests to this.

And as to the assertion by an IATSE eager to make up the minds of their dues-paying members for them that the Romanian locations do not resemble the American South, two souls on this Garden Web Forum had this to say...

PatrickD_NC

A county to the south of us is Transylvania County and I think it was named so because of an alleged resemblance to Transylvania in Rumania.

Rich7asheville

The mountain area of Rumania and the vegetation actually did look like this area of North Carolina. At times I thought the scenes must be local.

* And why isn't IATSE attacking shows or films like TV's "Smallville"? Anyone who's been to Kansas knows that Vancouver's a poor stand-in. And Canadian labor, excuse me... labour is cheaper than American labour. Scandal!