We’re months away from the next legislative session, but the Texas Senate Finance Committee was busy yesterday with a long and star-studded hearing about how to attract more film and TV production to the Lone Star State.

Politically, incentives (or more technically, rebates) for film, TV, commercial, and video game production in Texas through the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program has been an easy political kickball for Republicans wanting to beat up on West Coast liberals and anti-government types who oppose any kind of incentives or grants, especially ones for the arts. However, that’s a lot of front as behind the scenes Texas politicians love the movie biz. Gov. Rick Perry was more public about it and never missed a photo op on a sound stage, but Gov. Greg Abbott has quietly been a major advocate for TMIIIP. Now Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has joined the team, as he instructed the Senate to explore ways to bolster the program as part of his interim charges, released earlier this year, ahead of the upcoming 2025 legislative session.

As the Senate Finance Committee convened at the State Capitol in Austin yesterday, Chair Joan Huffman, R-Houston, began the session by explaining that the committee would be there to discuss two of Patrick’s interim charges – but the big crowd wasn’t there to discuss school enrollment trends. The big show was the big (and little) screen, and how to get more big-spending productions to Texas.

So why the Finance Committee rather than one that’s arts related? Because this is Texas, and it’s always going to come down to money. Adriana Cruz, executive director of the Economic Development and Tourism division within the Office of the Governor, wasn’t there to talk about culture or creativity, but raw numbers. Since the program was established in 2007, she explained, there has been $2.25 billion in in-state spending, created 189,000 jobs, and seen a 469% return on investment.

Yet for all the numbers, no one was there for an economics lesson. They were there to see Dennis Quaid and Yellowstone franchise creator Taylor Sheridan, over whom the senators gushed as they were promoting the merits of the TMIIIP.

While there was a TMIIIP and a Texas production industry before Sheridan, and will be one after, he has undoubtedly become a standard-bearer for TMIIIP as a way to bring the economic benefits of film and TV production to Texas. After a video intro that highlighted how Texan his shows are (with rah-rah militarism in Lioness, frontier justice in Lawmen: Bass Reeves and that good old drill, baby, drill mentality in Landman), he told the committee about the economic realities the program helps create. “We don’t have low-paying jobs,” he said, adding that “every show that I’ve shot here, I’ve had a crew member and regular cast member move [here].” Those comments reflect one reality, that Texas has spent decades losing crews to states with incentive programs such as Louisiana and Georgia: however, there were a few raised eyebrows about those comments, as Sheridan has been widely seen as being behind the push last session to cut the in-state cast-and-crew residency requirement for TMIIIP eligibility from 70% to 55% – making it easier for him to hire his preferred out-of-state crew-members.

“No one will be here without the incentives.” Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan

So, if it’s all so glorious and bringing in jobs and productions, why the hearing? Because TMIIIP has had a rocky history when it comes to running out of money. Established as the Film Industry Incentive Program in 2007, and then renamed (and finally funded by the legislature) as TMIIIP in 2009, the program is actually a post-production rebate for eligible in-state spending – but has historically been underfunded. As Cruz told senators, her office has often stopped accepting applications well before the end of the biennium. When asked by Sen. Bob Hall, R-Rockwall, whether productions would come here without a rebate, Cruz noted that in 2021, because TMIIIP was running out of cash, 74% of all applicants were either denied or, more worryingly, pulled their application and shot elsewhere. The biggest casualty that year was Fear the Walking Dead. After four years filming in the Austin area, Cruz said the governor’s office informed the producers that their allocation would be “substantially lower than what they received in the past, but they ended up going to Georgia.”

That’s a refrain that’s been heard for years from filmmakers: “We would have shot in Texas, but the kitty was empty.” The most recent headline case was Richard Linklater’s Hit Man: based on a true story from Houston, Linklater wanted to shoot where the story was set. However, because of a lack of available incentives, the production relocated to New Orleans.

However, last session TMIIIP received a massive boost in financing in 2023 to $200 million for the 2024-25 biennium. That money is already flowing out to productions: Cruz noted that, out of 96 applications already filed, 62 have been approved and a further 15 are currently under review.

But that number, while welcome, wasn’t as helpful as it sounds. The baseline appropriation was only $45 million – static from the 2023-24 biennium, and down 10% from the $50 million of the 2020-21 budget cycle. The other $155 million was a one-off supplemental appropriation, and the concern in the industry is that the one-off grant could be exactly that – one-off. One of the biggest historic issues of the program, beyond the fact that it’s often run out of cash well before the end of a biennium, is its volatility. Producers and production accountants value reliability, and if they don’t know that there’s going to be any money available after a year or two of development, why would they move a TV show there? As Sheridan explained, “What becomes a challenge for the network is not knowing how much, if any, incentive is going to exist for year three.”

The key, as just about every speaker noted, is making the funding consistent, and that will allow not just productions to move here, but encourage the growth of ancillary industries, like post-production houses, as well as develop local crew base. Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, pondered how Texas can attract more feature film production, but the reality is that the terms of the program are built around attracting the long-term investment of TV shows – but, as Cruz noted, since they keep running out of cash there are also concerns that the $200 million won’t be enough. Cruz noted that the fund is already down to $88 million, which means there’s a high probability that it will be turning applications away again before the Lege can set the 2024-25 appropriation. (Moreover, more than one producer in recent years has noted to the Chronicle that Sheridan’s advocacy for the program as a general boon for the state hasn’t stopped his productions from being their primary beneficiary, leaving only crumbs for everyone else.)

But while the hearing was supposedly about economics, the Republicans on the committee couldn’t help but engage in the culture wars. Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, went on a bizarre rant about the Austin-made Machete, calling it “a failed cultural model” and dragging up decade-old slanders from Alex Jones that the film was trying to start a race war. Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, clutched her pearls about scripts that take the Lord’s name in vain while Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, claimed that Texans don’t use the F-word. Both of them and Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, got upset about unions in the industry and seemed like everyone wanted to take pot shots at Hollyweird, which they portrayed as basically a fiscally incontinent Babylon spreading debauchery.

Those talking points got echoed by Quaid, who turned up in denim and pre-ambled his own testimony by saying that “I for one feel that the world is beginning to turn right side up again and common sense prevail, and I’d like to see that reflected in our films and entertainment.” Yes, those words came from the mouth of Dennis Quaid, who just gave his best performance in years in the gore-filled and hyper-subversive body horror The Substance.

However, Sheridan helped keep everyone on topic by making the situation clear: TMIIIP don’t simply help bring productions to Texas but will often be the ultimate deciding factor in whether a film or TV or commercial or video game is made here or not. “No one will be here without the incentives.”