In what is becoming quid pro quo in the Screen Actors Guild's presidential election campaign, candidate Melissa Gilbert on Tuesday again lambasted her opponent Valerie Harper, this time for proposing an entertainment summit to discuss the problem of runaway production in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks (HR 9/25).
"The proposal Valerie Harper announced (Monday) on runaway production is a naive, feel-good plan that undermines our effort to achieve a real, long-term solution to the problem," Gilbert said in a statement. "By suggesting that producers might be persuaded to voluntarily keep production in the U.S., Valerie has both raised false hopes and weakened our argument for tax-incentive legislation."
Harper and Gilbert are at odds over the decision by SAG's national board to support the Film & Television Action Committee's ongoing petition drive to get tariffs implemented on film and television production that is shot on Canadian soil but intended for the U.S. entertainment market. Gilbert is opposed to the petition drive, while Harper supports it.
On Tuesday, first vp running mate Anne-Marie Johnson issued the following statement on behalf of Harper: "The only official position that SAG's national board has taken on runaway is to support all possible avenues to fight runaway. Part of that decision was to support Sen. Barbara Boxer's request to petition the Commerce Department to look into the legality of what Canada is doing. My opponent and her advisers are blasting me for advocating a multipronged approach to the problem. If my opponent is against asking producers to reinvestigate their decision to shoot outside of this country in favor of the remote possibility that tax legislation alone might pass Congress this year, then who exactly is my opponent representing?"
Said Gilbert: "What Valerie is offering members is a jumble of conflicting sound-bite proposals. She says she supports tax-incentive legislation, yet she also supports a petition calling on the U.S. to punish Canada for having such policies of its own. And now she issues a proposal suggesting we don't really need tax incentives to keep productions in the U.S."
For more stories from The Hollywood Reporter Click Here