Matt Damon: Mass. is failing in film industry

Actor and Oscar winner Matt Damon said his home state is losing out on millions of dollars in revenue from movie and TV productions that other states are claiming because they provide creative financial incentives and a unified marketing effort that he says do not exist in Massachusetts.

''Entertainment-wise, we're like Third World on the state level. We just don't get it," said Damon, who will star along with Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, and fellow Bostonian Mark Wahlberg in Martin Scorsese's upcoming movie, ''The Departed." ''We've got to get on the stick or we're just not even going to be in the business."

In a wide-ranging telephone interview last week, Damon weighed in on the confusion fueled by dueling film offices in Massachusetts and the state's lack of tax incentives to entice big-budget productions to the region.

As has been reported, Scorsese wanted ''The Departed," a remake of the Hong Kong hit ''Infernal Affairs," to be filmed entirely in Massachusetts (the script is set in Boston), but couldn't make the bottom line work without the kind of enticements that now exist in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and a growing raft of other states. Instead, producers will reap a 15 percent tax credit and other perks by shooting at least 75 percent of the $90 million movie in New York, with filming now slated to begin in New York next week. Scorsese, who has been in Boston the last few days scouting locations, will make do with the five or six weeks he gets to shoot here during two separate visits beginning in June.

When Damon and his ''Good Will Hunting" collaborator Ben Affleck were growing up in Cambridge, he said they dreamed of being in a film shot in New York, because New York was then so expensive that shooting there surely meant you'd made it. ''Well, cut to 18 years later and my own city is losing out to New York because we're more expensive," Damon said. ''It's totally absurd."

What's worse, Damon said, is potentially allowing an $80 million to $100 million Tom Hanks-produced miniseries on John Adams, which represents at least eight months of high-profile filming -- to walk off to Virginia's colonial Williamsburg, Philadelphia, or some other locale. ''I mean, it's a John Adams movie and we're losing it," Damon said. ''Maybe part of it is arrogance, because we think there's only one Boston and if your movie takes place in Boston then you have to shoot it here. But the reality is you can find practical locations anywhere that can double as anything, and people will never know."

Though much has also been made of dueling Massachusetts film offices that Damon says only serve to confuse the movie world at large, there is no competition or controversy as he sees it. His support lies squarely with Robin Dawson, former head of the now-defunct Massachusetts Film Office, who runs the nonprofit Massachusetts Film Bureau.

''I don't even know that other guy," Damon said of Mark Drago, director of film and entertainment at the Massachusetts Sports & Entertainment Commission. ''My personal opinion is you stick with somebody who knows the business and knows the people, somebody who's worked with all the A-list directors who've come in in the last eight or nine years. That's who everyone in town knows to call."

Damon spoke before the contents of a letter Dawson sent last week to Governor Mitt Romney's office became public. In the letter, Dawson claimed that Drago's actions were detrimental to the state's overall efforts to lure film and TV business. But Drago said through a spokesman yesterday that there was no confusion in the industry and that Damon's comments were welcomed.

''As the state's official liaison to the film industry, we are always encouraged when one of our hometown stars expresses interest in filming in the Commonwealth," Drago said in a statement. ''We are glad that Matt had a great experience when he filmed 'Good Will Hunting' here 10 years ago. Adam Sandler told me [Damon] was a wonderful person to work with and we look forward to working with Matt soon on 'The Departed.' "

For his part, Damon said the lack of tax incentives is the biggest hurdle to more movie business coming to the state, especially since the ''new-look" Teamsters, as he calls them, aren't the well-publicized roadblock to hassle-free production that they used to be.

''The Teamsters are at the point where they're making deals now that are surprising people in Hollywood," Damon said. ''I worked with them a couple of years ago on a Farrelly brothers movie ("Stuck on You"), and it's a whole new ballgame. This should be a gold rush for Boston. ''It's a matter of [Governor] Romney and the legislators getting together and pulling the trigger on it."

Carol Beggy of the Globe staff contributed to this report.