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Wednesday, August 2, 2017
Film / Humor / Media Vermont Gets ClickHoled: No Indie Films Here, Please
Posted
By Rachel Elizabeth Jones
on Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 1:17 PM
Vermont will be taking no part in mumblecore™ — at least not according to ClickHole. Yesterday, the Onion's delightfully irreverent content platform posted the piece, "Supporting the Arts: Vermont Is Offering a Tax Credit to Incentivize Indie Filmmakers to Stay the Fuck Out of Its State With That Bootleg Duplass-Brothers-Rip-Off Bullshit."
The title pretty much lays it all out, but it's a great full read anyway, especially if you get thrills every time you see the word "Vermont" in a major outlet, real or otherwise.
It's always nice to feel seen by national media. It's even nicer to be credited with a love of the arts and discerning taste in filmmaking, even if only fictionally. Among the things fake government representative "Jeremy Graff" says Vermonters will not be tolerating are:
1. Cookie-cutter manic pixie melodramas
2. Fucking midlife-crisis family road-trip drama where everyone piles into a big quirky van (Name the movie: L_____ M__ S_______.)
3. Some fucking animated title sequence or xylophone score
And here's a quote from "Graff": "We’re proud to give [indie filmmakers] the financial incentive they need to keep their wannabe Richard Linklater passion projects the fuck out of Vermont’s scenic mountain ranges."
In actuality, Vermont is not especially under threat by out-of-state, soft-hearted emerging filmmakers with tight budgets. In 2011, the already slim Vermont Film Commission folded into the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, as the Vermont Office of the Creative Economy. (Here, just try going down this clickhole.) As Seven Days' Margot Harrison reported, the commission was never in the business of offering tax incentives to draw outside filmmakers, anyway.
After being downsized and restructured, the office's film-related efforts meant recommitting to supporting and growing in-state talent. But the OCE bottomed out in 2014, when its office — a single cubicle — was vacated by its lone employee, Lars Hasselblad Torres. Funding was not renewed.
All in all, it's kind of a shame: Dilapidated barns make excellent backdrops for existential crises, and the fraught comedy potential of cow crossings is one of Vermont's most renewable resources.
P.S. Even if we're not welcoming to sad indie features, we've got a heck of a hold on Bollywood.
The title pretty much lays it all out, but it's a great full read anyway, especially if you get thrills every time you see the word "Vermont" in a major outlet, real or otherwise.
It's always nice to feel seen by national media. It's even nicer to be credited with a love of the arts and discerning taste in filmmaking, even if only fictionally. Among the things fake government representative "Jeremy Graff" says Vermonters will not be tolerating are:
1. Cookie-cutter manic pixie melodramas
2. Fucking midlife-crisis family road-trip drama where everyone piles into a big quirky van (Name the movie: L_____ M__ S_______.)
3. Some fucking animated title sequence or xylophone score
And here's a quote from "Graff": "We’re proud to give [indie filmmakers] the financial incentive they need to keep their wannabe Richard Linklater passion projects the fuck out of Vermont’s scenic mountain ranges."
In actuality, Vermont is not especially under threat by out-of-state, soft-hearted emerging filmmakers with tight budgets. In 2011, the already slim Vermont Film Commission folded into the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, as the Vermont Office of the Creative Economy. (Here, just try going down this clickhole.) As Seven Days' Margot Harrison reported, the commission was never in the business of offering tax incentives to draw outside filmmakers, anyway.
After being downsized and restructured, the office's film-related efforts meant recommitting to supporting and growing in-state talent. But the OCE bottomed out in 2014, when its office — a single cubicle — was vacated by its lone employee, Lars Hasselblad Torres. Funding was not renewed.
All in all, it's kind of a shame: Dilapidated barns make excellent backdrops for existential crises, and the fraught comedy potential of cow crossings is one of Vermont's most renewable resources.
P.S. Even if we're not welcoming to sad indie features, we've got a heck of a hold on Bollywood.
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About The Author
Rachel Elizabeth Jones
Bio:
Rachel was an arts staff writer at Seven Days. She writes from the intersections of art, visual culture and anthropology, and has contributed to The New Inquiry, The LA Review of Books and Artforum, among other publications.
Rachel was an arts staff writer at Seven Days. She writes from the intersections of art, visual culture and anthropology, and has contributed to The New Inquiry, The LA Review of Books and Artforum, among other publications.
