LA Material: Can Congress save Hollywood?

Congresswoman Laura Friedman was a movie producer before she entered politics. Her oeuvre includes the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen 1995 vehicle It Takes Two (she says she couldn't tell the twins apart, but other people on set could) and 1996's Foxfire, starring Angelina Jolie. 

Friedman, a Democrat who now represents Glendale, Burbank, West Hollywood and parts of Los Angeles and Pasadena, remembers 1990s Hollywood: "There was a joke that if you wrote a good screenplay and you threw it out the window on the 405, someone would find it and make it," she said. 

But the industry she was once a part of looks quite different today. "We've been watching this industry shrink, and what that means is closed offices, unemployment, closed restaurants, coffee shops that aren't busy, caterers ... a kind of apocalyptic desperation around town about the industry," she says.

Last month, Friedman introduced the Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act, legislation which would create the first national tax credit for film and TV productions shot in the U.S. The bill, which she hopes Congress will pass before the end of the year, has gathered broad support including from President Donald Trump. Yet some here in her home district worry the bill may not provide the salve local workers need. They fear that other filming states like Georgia or New Jersey could benefit from the new credit at California’s expense.

Friedman joined L.A. World, L.A. Material’s new podcast, to talk about the bill, the challenges of getting it passed and her less-than-chill feelings about watching movies at the Alamo Drafthouse: "Get off your damn phones."