David Baddiel explains why film subsidies should be axed
Jan 2012 13

David Baddiel explains why film subsidies should be axed7

The Prime Minister recently said that the British film industry should support “commercially successful pictures”. The statement has obvious important implications for the British Film Institute, which takes taxpayers’ money and subsidises film-making in Britain.

Mr Cameron’s assertion makes sense, but many have pointed out the difficulty in selecting successful films before they have been made. In a discussion on Wednesday evening’s BBC Newsnight, film-maker David Baddiel explained to presenter Gavin Esler why films ought to be funded privately despite appearing to argue for more taxpayers’ money for his industry.

DAVID BADDIEL:
The problem is what constitutes commercial viability as far as David Cameron might think it.
To choose the example of the film I made last year or two years ago, it was funded independently, privately, cost a million pounds. It’s now taken over five million dollars worldwide so it’s commercially viable in his terms but it’s about a Muslim who discovers he was born a Jew.
Now, I am convinced (in fact I was convinced at the time because people did say “no”), that if I took this to the quango or whatever it is set up by David Cameron looking for commercial viability, they would say “that’s not a commercial idea” they would say it’s too niche that not that many people would come and see it. That turns out not to be true.

GAVIN ESLER:
But you got it made because you’re good doing these things so you perhaps didn’t need the money.

DAVID BADDIEL:
We did need the money. We absolutely needed the money: it took a while to come in and people took risks on it.

The fact that private investors take risks and therefore take their time to assess a project is precisely why they, not some bureaucrat spending other people’s money, should be controlling which projects get funding and which don’t.

Britain has a huge budget deficit and it’s a matter of practical urgency to axe things like film subsidies to help us avoid a sovereign debt crisis like those engulfing some of our European neighbours. But even if we didn’t, taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to cough up so that film investors don’t have to think before they take risks. We should scrap these subsidies.

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  • Anonymous

    Socialists (including people who don’t realise that they are) see the state as the fount of all wealth, or at least as a fount of employment for themselves.

  • http://twitter.com/rpkaye Robert Kaye

    We have a publicly-owned film producer (actually between the Film Council, BBC Films and FilmFour we had at least three at the time). AIUI BBC Films were initially involved in the Infidel but pulled out, not because of fears over commercial viability (which would have been misplaced in retrospect), but over content. That’s the reality of quango funding – the private sector funded a film that public quango ostensibly able to take non-commercial decisions funked.

  • http://profiles.google.com/bigdai100 David Williams

    There is a simple solution to Film funding in the UK. Commercially successful films, studios, producers and actors could establish a privately owned Film Council, perhaps via BAFTA. They could establish their own criteria for funding movies. We are constantly told that the UK movie industry is worth £billions, if those who benefit contribute 0.5% of their profit then the the funds available would be substantially bigger than anything the public purse has ever delivered. 

    There is only one problem with this idea, it involves some of the richest people in the business dipping into their own pocket. 

  • Bigscarynigel

    The problem with privately funded films is that leave the door open to sponsors who will only invest in a film if it says what they want it to, then the films stop being entertainment for the public, but instead become propaganda for the investors.

    • Anonymous

       I think sponsors are more interested in the film turning a profit than using it for propaganda. It seems to me that the state is the one that is more interested in the propaganda value of a film rather than whether it turns a profit.

    • Gjdavies

      Conversely, the problem with publicly funded films is that the ruling class will only invest in a film if it says what they want it to, the films stop being entertainment for the public, but instead
      become propaganda for the government.

      At least private propagandists a) don’t force people to pay for it and b)can be driven out by their competitors.

  • Baskingshark

    There used to be an excellent subsidy system in place for British film, the Eady Levy, which operated between 1957 and 1985. This saw a portion of all cinema ticket sales put into a central pool, from which subsidies were then paid to British film producers in proportion to the box office profits their particular film made – in other words, the government subsidy came AFTER the film was made and rewarded financial success, rather than taking the form of investment at the pre-production/development stage in an unknown quantity. This incentivised the production of commercially-viable films (if your film didn’t make a profit, you did’t get any Eady money) and brought production work to the UK in the form of foreign features which were made here in order to qualify for it.

    It is, of course, impossible for investment in film to ever be risk free, although there are criteria on which projects can be judged prior to their being made, in order to minimise the risk of investing into projects that wind up making financial losses (assessment of attached talent, genre, budget level, previous credits of those involved etc). However, the UK Film Council, with it’s focus on artiness and the old boy network never bothered with any of these, with the result being that its successes are far outweighed by its failures. I suspect the BFI will continue in the same vein until stopped.