Lights, camera, politics

For the most part, the fight has been waged in the gossip columns and celebrity tip sheets: a nod from Matt Damon here, a sighting with Martin Scorsese there. But really, it is a drama about Massachusetts politics.

How else to explain how a state could have two offices aimed at attracting major motion pictures, each claiming to be the legitimate one?

Both are helmed by veterans of the Weld and Cellucci administrations. Both have champions on Beacon Hill. Both have been engaged in a months-long exchange of name-dropping and dirt-dropping, complete with leaks and legal threats. The fight has made it to the film industry press; Daily Variety's headline was ''Mass Pix Confusion."

And as local wags continue to take sides, Hollywood operatives seem befuddled.

''Anybody that has ever had anything to do with Massachusetts in the industry is talking about it," said Carol Patton, publisher of Imagine, a local entertainment trade magazine. ''People just think it's the silliest thing that ever happened."

In a state famous for its political blood matches, the battle between Robin Dawson and Mark Drago has been off-script, played out in the press instead of back rooms, driven by the siren call of celebrity tete-a-tetes. But insiders say there's also serious money at stake. If a $100 million blockbuster were to be filmed in Massachusetts, Patton said, $25 million would probably be spent directly in the state.

It's unclear how much one person can do to lure big films, given the competition from Canada and other states, which offer studios generous financial incentives.

Scorsese's upcoming film, ''The Departed," is set in Massachusetts, but the bulk of it will be filmed in New York to qualify for the state's tax breaks. A Tom Hanks-produced miniseries about John Adams is being filmed in Virginia because of the bottom line.

And while two tax incentive bills have been filed in the Massachusetts Legislature, some insiders fear they have little chance of passage while confusion remains.

For years, life was simpler. Like many states, Massachusetts had a division of state government, the Massachusetts Film Office, which is charged with attracting movies and assisting producers. Robin Dawson, 47, started there in the early 1990s, after a stint as an assistant to Lieutenant Governor Paul Cellucci. She worked her way up to director, earned about $80,000, and says she had a hand in luring films including ''The Crucible" and ''The Perfect Storm."

But in 2002, as Clint Eastwood was heading east to film ''Mystic River," the state axed the office's $600,000 budget.

The answer to why that happened depends on whom you ask. Some former state officials say times were tight. Dawson's allies hint at payback for her federal grand jury testimony against the Teamsters.

At any rate, even without state backing, Dawson found a way to keep doing the job. Three months after the film office closed, she collected private funding and opened the nonprofit Massachusetts Film Bureau. Someone had to deal with film producers, she said, ''because we are established in Hollywood; we receive the calls."

So they did. Until Mark Drago appeared. Drago, 43, worked for years as an advance man for Cellucci and Governor William F. Weld and landed a $74,000-per-year job as destination marketing manager at Massport. After he lost that post in October 2001 layoffs, he was appointed president of the Massachusetts Sports Commission, a quasi-public entity that attracts big sports events.

In 2003, the Legislature gave the office a new name, the Massachusetts Sports and Entertainment Commission, and a new mandate that included luring films. Last year, at Governor Mitt Romney's suggestion, it hired a new president: Don Stirling, a longtime sports marketing manager who worked with Romney on the Olympics in Salt Lake City.

In the fallout, Drago got a new title, vice president of film and entertainment.

Suddenly, Drago and Dawson were competing head to head. When Scorsese's staff started inquiring about ''The Departed," Dawson first talked to them about hotels and parking. But it was Drago who ushered Scorsese around town to scout locations.

Eventually, things got ugly. Dawson wrote Romney, accusing Drago of threatening Scorsese's crew. Drago hired a lawyer who threatened to sue for defamation.

In recent weeks, it seems, everyone has been taking sides, fighting over who is the hero and who is the hack. Dawson's admirers speak of her in saintly terms and praise her deep contacts in Hollywood, beginning with her twin sister, an executive at NBC. ''She's Scarlett O'Hara incarnate," said Jennifer Heffernan, cofounder of the local development company Dream Alley Pictures, who recalls Dawson scrambling to assemble a fund-raising gala with no cash, and said she met top studio executives when she accompanied Dawson to Los Angeles.

''Everything in life, as you know, is about relationships," Heffernan said. ''She has their ear."

''I think she's the best film commissioner in the country," said Charlie Harrington, a Los Angeles-based location manager who says her edge is experience.

But others say the connections a film office really needs are the local ones. ''If you have a film coming in to shoot in Concord, you know the town manager," said John Alzapiedi, a state tourism official who worked under Dawson for years. ''Those are the kind of contacts Mark Drago has."

And many say a single film office could get more done, especially when it comes to managing state resources and talking to government offices.

And it's not clear who really has the state's blessing. Drago's commission received $450,000 in last year's state budget, while Dawson's got $5,000. But tied to that small appropriation, Dawson points out, is a small proviso designating the Massachusetts Film Bureau the official state film office.

The Romney administration is staying neutral. ''It's time for people to stop throwing sand," spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said.