One for the home team
After five years of uncertainty, the state finally has a champion in Nicholas Paleologos
OK, so "The Departed" has made Boston the movie world's city-of-the-moment, with an armful of Oscars including best picture bestowed last Sunday on the film, which was set in Boston and partially shot here.
For the film community here, the big question is: Can we get another like that, please?
The answer: Chances are actually pretty good. They're certainly better today than they were six weeks ago.
The reason: Nicholas Paleologos -- movie producer, former legislator, and now chief marketer for the Massachusetts film industry.
After years of confusion over whom Hollywood studios and small filmmakers should approach if they want to do business in the state, Paleologos was hired in late January to be the executive director of the newly revived Massachusetts Film Office. For the first time in five years, the state has a designated point person charged with soliciting film business and paving the way to make things happen. With the new buzz for "The Departed," Paleologos's job will be to keep the state in the cinematic spotlight.
With his appointment, Paleologos becomes a key to what Governor Deval Patrick calls the state's "creative economy."
"This is an opportunity," says Paleologos, "to grow an industry that could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars."
The Massachusetts native is an industry insider in several senses of the phrase. He was a state legislator from 1976 to 1990, so he knows Beacon Hill. He produced "Ghosts of Mississippi," "Hurlyburly," and HBO's "In the Gloaming," so he knows Hollywood. He serves on the advisory council of the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, so he knows local film activism.
He also has deep roots in theater, having brought "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" to Boston's Stuart Street Playhouse, and a revival of Noel Coward's "Private Lives" to Broadway. That last one won him a Tony Award.
His appointment can only be good for the state film industry. While the number of film-related jobs increased in Massachusetts in the early 1990s, the number stayed flat through the end of the decade, and then declined every year between 2000 and 2004.
Citing the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, a report last May from the new Massachusetts consortium Alliance for Independent Motion Media noted that only 1,622 people had full-time film production employment in Massachusetts in 2004. That's less than 1 percent of the 222,495 jobs nationally.
The drop coincided with the collapse of the last state film bureau, which had its state funding eliminated in 2002. Its former head, Robin Dawson, went on to establish an independent Massachusetts Film Bureau. With the reemergence of a state-funded office, that operation will shut down (Dawson terms it a "merging") to allow the state to present a single face to the world.
The new film office is part of the Massachusetts Sports & Entertainment Commission, a private nonprofit that has $1.2 million in state funding for the current fiscal year. The commission has mostly focused on bringing sport events like last year's NCAA Women's Final Four basketball tournament to the state.
Paleologos's job is to make the process of shooting in the state easier for small films and to get more Hollywood movies shot here, like last year's "The Game Plan" and "Gone, Baby, Gone."
He's already started laying pipe, traveling for three days last month to Los Angeles for meetings with senior production executives at
"I want frank, off-the-record, unvarnished conversations," he says. He's planning follow-ups to the initial meetings over the next month.
Joe Maiella, president of the Massachusetts Production Coalition , a group that formed during the five-year vacuum of state leadership, says Paleologos's appointment finally gives the film community the structure it has been craving.
"When you open up a trade magazine, you see page upon page of advertisements by local film offices to 'come shoot in Arizona' or 'come shoot in Louisiana,' " Maiella says. "It's a wide-open marketing landscape right now."
Part of the film office's arsenal in soliciting business is a package of aggressive tax credits that were enacted at the end of 2005 to sweeten the deal of doing business here. The credits were designed to counter the lower wage rates and tax incentives provided by other countries, especially Canada.
Many give the nod to the legislation for bringing Disney's "The Game Plan" to Boston.
Paleologos says he'll also be addressing questions about the union climate in the state.
"If there's one perception that keeps popping up, it's that 'the union situation is a problem,' " he says.
Unions involved in the film industry include American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Screen Actors Guild, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, and the Teamsters, and Paleologos spent his first week meeting with their local leaders.
One is Chris O'Donnell, business manager for Local 481 Studio Mechanics of IATSE, which represents film technicians. O'Donnell says the tax credits have already made a difference for his group.
"Our Massachusetts membership increased 25 percent in the last year, and the amount that they made increased 50 percent between 2005 and 2006," he says .
O'Donnell describes Paleologos as a "very good choice" for the job.
"It took the tax incentive to make [film work] come back," O'Donnell says. To build momentum, "it's going to be critical to go out, possibly with a trade mission involving members of labor, including myself if necessary, to meet with studios and help heal any past relationships. That's a perception issue that the film office really can help with. There's a huge opportunity -- one I wish we had taken a year ago when the tax law first went into effect, but better now than never."
There are other signs of new traction. Ed Peselman launched his production company, Gray Matter Entertainment, in Watertown last year instead of in Los Angeles largely because of the tax incentives.
"I envision a lot of my projects produced here in Boston," says Peselman, who helped develop the television show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" with Scout Productions when that company was based in Allston (it's now headquartered in Los Angeles).
"I always wanted to do them here, but it takes a certain level of clout to do that if the economics didn't make sense. Now the economics make sense," he says.
There are wide hopes that Paleologos has the right connections and personality to give Massachusetts a big pop.
"The fact that they've put a high - level individual in that position speaks volumes for the great things that can come," says Julie Burns, director of the Mayor of Boston's Office of Arts, Tourism and Special Events.
The Massachusetts Production Coalition's Maiella, who with his wife runs CrewStar, a production crew and payroll company in Southboro, agrees.
"Nick is very professional, he's got a service mentality, and he's well-regarded by all of the constituency," Maiella says. "It's difficult to find someone with the portfolio of industry, legislative, and marketing experience, but he clearly has those traits across the board."
Paleologos started out in public service when he was a 19-year old-undergraduate at Tufts University and got elected to the Woburn School Committee .
"It was the early '70s," he says. "My high school graduating class of 1971 was right on the tail end of a lot of political activism and the end of the war, and I carried that activism."
His most recent film project -- "probably my last film for a while," he says -- is a documentary about US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis. Paleologos lives in Concord with his wife, Patti Worth, and three children.
As for his new role, he's approaching it as the ultimate executive producer, focusing on lining up resources so they work together in something like harmony.
"A lot of the ground work has already been laid," he says. "At this stage, I feel really optimistic. I don't feel like I've got obstacles; I feel like I've got a lot of partners who are genuinely enthusiastic about making this work."
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com. 
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
