The most interesting thing about the film to me is that it was the first film made in Wisconsin under the film incentives legislation. It is reportedly also the film that sunk the film incentives legislation. The law was written with so many loopholes and the people who were administering it were so ill-equipped to do so that money was paid out to the production company that shouldn't have been.

Incentives were offered that didn't really exist, and whereas state officials saw a great influx of capital and glamour when this multi-million dollar film came to town, when they saw what they had to return to the production company, they buckled and withdrew the legislation.

As Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton has said, this law was intended to bring capital and jobs to the state, but it takes a while to develop and it takes an understanding of how the industry works to see the benefits. The film industry builds careers more than it builds jobs that exist all the time. You work picture to picture. Until there is actually an industry here, with a people infrastructure and a bricks and mortar infrastructure, so that films can be made constantly, you are not going to see the benefits, unless you are willing to look at closely at what is being said and how people are feeling who work daily to make entertainment.

There are key people in the government of this state who are unable to see beyond the next election and so first the state's film commission was sacked, inefficient legislation was passed, then that legislation was sacked, then a half-hearted attempt to replace it was made, and then, finally last week, the Governor, the Toad of Toad Hall of the fine State of Wisconsin, used his line-item veto to gut the little bit that remained.

The State of Michigan, to our east, has a bill that is fully supported by the state, which is so generous that more than nine major motion pictures have been made there in the last year. They are retrofitting defunct automobile factories to make sound stages. Education programs are being written to teach the crafts of filmmaking to autoworkers that are now out of jobs. They passed their bill to compete with ours.

The state of Iowa, to our west, has just passed an even more insane law that encourages people to come live and make movies, television, gaming video in their state. I'm told that there are 21 films slated to be shot in Iowa this year.

Here we are, stuck in the middle with a lot of talented people who got their hopes up aching to make movies here, and all we have to show for it is a big opening party for a so-so movie.

The filmmakers who live here are going to move somewhere else and the ones who thought about coming are going to go somewhere else. We like to blame people for things in this land of ours, so I am going to point my finger at the toad in the building on the other side of the river, but a lot of people are involved.