The Hollowing-Out Of Hollywood

CAMBRIDGE, MASS

Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" opened strong in US theaters this past weekend, taking inover $25 million at the box office. Last autumn, "Kill Bill: Vol.1" opened to similar financial andcritical success. These films have generated a lot of media attention because of their "global"style: they appropriate stylistic elements from Hong Kong kung fu movies, Japanese samurai films, and Italianspaghetti Westerns, and wrap them all up in an exaggerated, comic-book sensibility. Yet the "KillBill" films are important not only for their global style, but also because their profitability restsupon a growing production trend - the offshoring of Hollywood filmmaking.

The "Kill Bill" films relied heavily on the labor of offshore workers and overseas locations. Yetoutsourcing is nothing new to Hollywood. Previous generations of Hollywood films have sent animation, visualeffects, and post-production work to companies overseas. There is a new sense of crisis among American filmindustry workers, however, over "runaway productions" - films and TV shows that for economic reasonsare shot wholly or almost wholly outside the U.S.

While runaways typically employ Americans as producers, directors, and stars, most of the crew and somenon-star actors are hired locally. Runaway productions have existed since the late 1940s, but their numbersincreased during the 1990s. According to a 1999 study commissioned by the Directors Guild of America and theScreen Actors Guild, runaways have increased from 14 percent of total US film and television productions in1990 to 27 percent in 1998. They have a total negative economic impact of over $10 billion a year. Today thepractice has reached what the Los Angeles Times calls "epidemic" levels and involves manybig-budget, high-profile pictures like the Academy-Award winning "Chicago". The DGA/SAG studycalculates that over 125,000 jobs were lost to runaways in the 1990s. A more recent study by the Los AngelesEconomic Development Corp. predicts that another 4,000 film jobs will likely disappear by 2005.

The studios' need to cut costs at the behest of their struggling parent conglomerates is driving workoffshore. Canada has been Hollywood's foreign location of choice, hosting more than 80 percent of all runawaysin the late 1990s. The Canadian government's program of tax rebates and incentives, combined with lowerproduction costs and a favorable exchange rage, can reduce a film's budget by about 25 percent. But just asMexico lost some formerly US-based factories to China, Canada is now facing increased competition fromcountries offering even lower wages and more generous tax breaks. Australia and the Czech Republic have becomepopular destinations over the past five years, and now Hungary, Romania, Brazil, and many others are vying tohost Hollywood productions. Quentin Tarantino shot much of "Kill Bill Vol. 1" - including theblood-soaked climax in which The Bride fights off dozens of armed assassins in a Tokyo restaurant - on a soundstage in Beijing, where production costs can be one-eighth what they would be in Los Angeles. Many of thescenes from "Kill Bill Vol. 2" were shot in Mexico for the same cost-cutting reason, including onescene which according to Los Angeles Times journalist Rachel Abramowitz was "shot in a real Mexicanbrothel, a tattered shack with makeshift tables, and real whores lying in hammocks." It is probably safeto assume that Tarantino did not pay these women union wages.

Critics of runaway productions argue that America is in danger of losing a key manufacturing industry, andinsist that because Hollywood is so fundamentally "American" its jobs should stay in the US. But isHollywood still an American industry? Do Americans really "own" those jobs any more than peopleelsewhere in the world do? Hollywood has been a global industry since the early 20th century, relying onforeign viewers, foreign earnings, and foreign talent to make its films. Hollywood movies have dominated theglobal market for filmed entertainment since the late 1910s, and today they take in about 80 percent of theworld's total box office receipts. Concomitantly, the viewers of Hollywood movies are increasingly foundoutside the US: like many other big Hollywood pictures, "Kill Bill Vol. 1" earned much more abroad($110 million) than at home ($70 million). Hollywood has also been drawing on a global labor market since atleast the 1930s, hiring promising actors (Ingrid Bergman, Russell Crowe), directors (Alfred Hitchcock, JohnWoo), and high-end technical workers (cinematographer Nestor Almendros, "Kill Bill" martial artsadvisor Yuen Wo-ping) away from other national film industries. While these global business practices havestrengthened Hollywood, they have often provoked angry charges of cultural imperialism and brain drain abroad.

Many who think Hollywood is an American industry claim that even if film production moves overseas, thecreativity that drives the industry is still firmly based in the US. But as the studios cut development costsby buying up the remake rights for foreign films, even that assumption is being called into question. A recentscreening of "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" was preceded by a trailer for "Shall We Dance?", aHollywood remake of a popular Japanese movie made in 1996. Judging from this brief excerpt, the remake notonly re-used the Japanese film's narrative and characters but also reproduced many of its shots exactly, fromcomposition to camera angles to actor gestures. When paired with Quentin Tarantino's heavy postmodern poachingfrom the archives of Hong Kong, Japanese, and Italian cinema, this preview raised the question of whoseoriginality and creativity is really being displayed in contemporary "American" movies.

Perhaps we should see outsourcing and runaway productions as signs that foreign film industries are finallyfinding a way to make global Hollywood work for them. Instead of being merely consumers of Hollywood moviesand unremunerated suppliers of Hollywood talent, these industries are becoming paid manufacturers of Hollywoodmovies. Hosting Hollywood productions may strengthen local film industries, as they build sound stages, investin the latest camera and sound technology, and develop the sophisticated digital post-production facilitiesthat Hollywood movies require. These investments could provide local film industries with the infrastructuralresources they need to make movies with both Hollywood-style production values and distinctive local content -a combination that in South Korea and elsewhere has proven successful at winning audiences away from importedfilms.

Christina Klein teaches literature and comparative media studies at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology. She is the author of  Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the MiddlebrowImagination, 1945-1961 (University of California Press, 2003).This article appeared in YaleGlobal Online, a publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, and is reprinted by permission. Copyright © 2004 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.