Apologies for pursuing this subject, but the situation does seem increasingly dire. Right now the US’ largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is heading for Trinidad and Tobago, where it will fetch up a few miles from Venezuela by the middle of November, joining the destroyer USS Gravely and the MV Ocean Trader, a US “ghost ship” disguised as a container vessel, “designed to go unnoticed while supporting covert operations.”
Yvan Gil Pinto, the Venezuelan foreign minister, has warned of a CIA false flag operation: “We have informed the government of Trinidad and Tobago about a fabricated operation run by the CIA. The fabricated operation consists of an attack on a moored US military ship to blame us and justify aggerssion. We respect the people of Trinidad and Tobago and trust their awareness in preventing their country from being drawn into a dirty war operation.” If only the people had a say in these matters!
Several interesting articles have appeared dealing with different aspects of the impending war. Naked Capitalism has two of them: Gunboat Stupidity by Haig Hoveness, and The Pushback Against Marco Rubio Begins, by Nick Corbishley, who suggests that the aggressive Caribbean buildup and the killing of fishermen is a project of Little Narco. It appears the Venezuelan air defences are more extensive than I guessed last week. Hoveness’ piece contains a useful table (as all his articles about the MIC do):
There’s a long piece on this subject in a military-oriented website, The War Zone: Venezuela’s Supersonic Anti-Ship Missiles Are a Real Threat to American Warships. The concern is that the Bolivarian Air Force’s Su-30 flighters may launch Kh-31 anti-ship missiles as the US naval vessels. The range of these missiles is limited: 31 to 100 miles, depending on the version. And it’s not known how many of these weapons Venezuela has. Perhaps The War Zone is laying the groundwork for that false flag attack here. Meanwhile Business Insider has pictures of All The Ships the US has sent to the Caribbean. Including one of the mysterious MV Ocean Trader.
Apparently the fleet, once the aircraft carrier arrives, will be approximately one quarter of the entire US navy. It’s an expensive and complex operation. The fact that US sailors and marines aren’t currently being paid, due to the shutdown in DC, adds to the complexity of it all. A couple of days ago, the MSM ran with a story that – horror of horrors – a Russian Il-76 heavy transport aircraft had touched down outside Caracas. It was suggested that members of the Wagner Group might be on board. Though the plane could carry 200 people, I doubt that any mercenaries were in it. They aren’t needed. Venezuela has a large army and a citizen milita of several million people. Whereas air defence equipment, and the technicians to operate it, would be quite valuable right now.
Above is a map depicting the location of Venezuela’s oil and gas resources. I am not sure it is complete.There’s a huge, disputed area to the east of the country, where it borders “British” Guyana, which contains massive oil reserves.
What is the plan here? The US government has authorised CIA activity within the country (Venezuela’s president laughed at that. “When did they ever stop?”). Western media speculates that the US may target airfields and military bases where narco terrorists hide. Moon of Alabama is quite witty regarding this today, with a story titled US Ready to Bomb Venezuela on Absurdly False Pretext.
Another US destroyer has joined the fleet confronting Venezuela. More civilians in small boats have been droned to death. The mainstream media report that more than 10,000 US troops are now present in the “anti-drug” task force, and hint that regime change is the real goal. US B-52 bombers armed with cruise missiles approach Venezuelan airspace.
The president of Venezuela has called for an expansion of the popular milita, from five million to eight million volunteers, and announced the start of a 72-hour national defense military exercise.
And a wealthy Venezuelan lady, who participated in coup attempts, supports US sanctions, a US invasion, and the Gaza genocide, has been awarded the Nobel peace prize.
The CARICOM economic alliance of Caribbean states issued a statement which “reaffirmed the principle of maintaining the Caribbean Region as a Zone of Peace and the importance of dialogue and engagement towards the peaceful resolution of disputes and conflict.” Trinidad and Tobago, a CARICOM member, refused to sign the statement. Its foreign ministry declared that Trinidad and Tobago “wishes to once more, categorically express its strong support for the ongoing military intervention of the United States of America in the region.”
All other CARICOM members – including Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, and Suriname – supported the peace declaration.
Trinidad and Tobago just announced that US troops will conduct “military exercises” there over the next few days. The destroyer USS Gravely will arrive in Port of Spain on Sunday, followed by the U.S. Marine Corps’ 22nd Expeditionary Unit (presumably aboard the USS Iwo Jima). The Gravely is scheduled to depart Oct 30. The island of Trinidad is located just seven miles from the Venezuelan coast.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rico, which managed to shut down a couple of US bases twenty years back, is being remilitarized. Since Sept 13, Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, a.k.a. Ceiba, has been home to ten F-35Bs from US Marine Fighter Attack Squadron #225. Roosevelt Roads is one of the largest US naval bases in the world, with a deep water port and 11,000 foot runway. Cargo aircraft, Ospreys, and and “King Stallion” helicopters are also present there. At Rafael Hernandez Airport, nearby, the US stores “Reaper” drones.
Some of the civilians killed by US drones have turned out to be Colombian citizens. Colombia has withdrawn its ambassador to Washington. Its president has condemned the killings. The US president has called the Colombian president “a thug” and stated, during a White House meeting with the NATO secretary general, “He better watch out or we will take very serious action against him and his country.” Colombia is one of NATO’s “global partners“, and is home to seven substantial US military installations and several hundred US personnel.
It is all so threatening, so bizarre. Yet I remember how the US behaved during the first years of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. US military planes dived low over Managua on election day in 1983, creating crashing sonic booms. After the Sandinistas won that election, the US drug-funded the contra rebels and staged massive military manouvres (Operation “Big Pine“) just across the border in Honduras, involving thirty-nine US warships and 7,000 US troops. But, in the end, it was all a bluff. The US did not invade.
There is a media/political fantasy that President Maduro will flee from Venezuela. We are also told that he has offered the gringos all of his country’s wealth in oil and gold and rare earth metals, if only he is allowed to remain, or decamp to Switzerland, or do whatever other fantastical thing the New York Times has dreamed up for him. This is daft, and shows how the western media, like the neocons, don’t know their imagined enemy. Maduro, like Chavez, is a proletarian. Chavez was a paratrooper. Maduro was a bus driver. Dedicated to the Bolivarian revolution, he isn’t going anywhere, and if necessary he will go down with the ship. Most likely this will not be necessary. Despite the sanctions, Maduro and his government are popular. The threat of US invasion, like the repatriation of Venezuelans who have been abused in the US and El Salvador, have added to their popularity. The military is behind them. And the military is substantial.
In my previous piece I mentioned the Venezuelan navy, which is a small affair, dwarfed by the American fleet. But the armed forces overall are large. One recent estimate says there are 330,000 military personnel in Venezuela, the majority of them army. There is a small air force: some twenty SU-30 MK2V fighter planes, and a couple of F-16s.
Over the last 20 years, the Venezuelan military has acquired a variety of Russian air defences. It recently moved several S-125 surface-to-air missiles closer to the coast. According to TeleSur “high-tech defense systems — including anti-aircraft equipment — have been installed at 73 strategic points across the country.” Venezuela is preparing for a US attack. But what form will that attack take? Since the US force consists almost entirely of Tomahawk cruise missiles – delivered by ship, submarine, and bomber – my guess would be… a Tomahawk cruise missile attack!
There are various Tomahawks. The missile was designed to carry a nuclear warhead to Russia. We don’t know whether these US ships are carrying nuclear bombs. Since Venezuela has no nuclear weapons, and an anti-nuclear Bolivarian constitution, let us assume the US will not start a nuclear war. The US still has total autonomy regarding war-starting, since from Puerto Rican waters Venezuela is in range of its missiles. Venezuela has no long-range missiles and cannot hit back.
A US attack will likely aim to knock out Venezuelan aviation, and – based on its tactics against nation-states like Iraq – to destroy civilian power generation and water supplies. This, presumably, to be followed by an expeditionary raid on Caracas (already devastated by the destruction of the adjacent military base) to collect the bounty money on the former president, and install the Nobel peace prize winner in the ruins of Miraflores. And, of course, the occupation of the oil fields in the east.
Given that the Venezuelans have all this figured out (and a lot more, besides), what’s their plan to prevent it? They lack long-range missiles. When a massive flight of cruise missiles is suddenly detected, incoming, along with a swarm of decoys and “Reaper” drones, how can they respond?
Venezuela has a number of mobile surface-to-air missiles, including S-300 VMs, Buk-M2s, S-125s. These have different ranges and speeds: the best can strike a moving target 60 or 70 miles away. Likely all types will be used in an attempt to intercept the Tomahawks. The Russians have considerable experience dealing with incoming NATO cruise missiles, and have no doubt shared it with their Venezuelan partners. US/NATO doctrine relies upon a massive saturation of missiles to achieve a shocking and awesome early victory. As discussed in my previous piece, such items are expensive: Raytheon is currently charging the Japanese $4.5 million for a single Tomahawk.
Let’s assume the Americans launch 100 Tomahawks in their initial salvo. We can guess that that half of them, plus drones, make it past the Russian air defences. Exploding, these devastate the civilian infrastructure – and population – of Caracas, Maracaibo, and other coastal cities. They also strike air bases – but don’t cause enough damage to prevent the take-off of most of the Bolivarian Air Force’s fighter planes.
At this point, the balance of the battle shifts. Incoming Ospreys and “King Stallions”, ferrying US troops and marines for the decapitation exercise, encounter serious fire from ZU-23 anti-aircraft guns and Igla-S missiles. The Venezuelans have hundreds of ZU-23 guns, and thousands of Igla-S single-launch missiles. Every one of them can take down a helicopter or a vertical take-off plane. Meanwhile, overhead, the Bolivarian Air Force flies out to sea. The SU-30 fighters carry air-to-surface missiles with a range of 40 to 70 miles.
US warships in the vicinity of Trinidad and Tobago receive incoming missiles within minutes. The bulk of the US fleet, still sheltering around Puerto Rico, also sees the Venezuelan fighters – and has ample time for air defence.
In Colombia, things will happen quickly. The president has spoken in support of Venezuela, and Latin American unity. The US has threatened him. Now Venezuela is under attack. Do the Colombian military remain loyal? Does Colombia scramble to support its neighbour? Or does a coup – spawned in the seven US garrisons seen above – immediately occur?
With the total loss of its first expeditionary raid, and perhaps also the USS Gravely, the US takes stock and launches another 100-missile strike. This one is directed almost entirely at civilian targets: Venezuelan civilian casualties are numerous, and – as with Gaza – video of the horrific destruction fo population centres goes viral around the world.
An attempt by the Iwo Jima to land a force of marines, supported by Harrier fighters, is soon bogged down. Venezuelan cities are in flames, but the nation’s topography is complex, and the militia’s numbers continue to grow. To attempt to invade this vast country, with its coastline of mountains,its inland plains, forests, jungle, and further mountain ranges, is a task as difficult as the American Wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan combined. In the end, the Americans may be forced to occupy the oil-rich eastern border and declare victory.
(Topographical map above.) Venezuela is more than 350,000 square miles in size – much larger than Afghanistan, or Ukraine. It has a population of more than 30 million people. 10,000 US troops can’t begin to conquer or subdue this country. The expensive Tomahawks will soon run out, fragile F-35s may collide on the runway, and who knows? Perhaps a Venezuelan pilot will make it through, and sink the Iwo Jima.
Officially, the USS Iwo Jima is scheduled to end its deployment some time in 2026. Then, if it is still afloat, the WASP-class amphibious assault ship, and its transport and logistical support ships, the USS San Antonio and the USS Ft. Lauderdale, will weigh anchor and go elsewhere. May they sail in peace! Perhaps they will pivot to China. Maybe they will sail proudly back to their homeport, Norfolk, VA, and quietly rust.
The only good outcome for the US here is to avoid a war. But the US wants Venezuelan oil, and may seize those oil fields regardless of the ultimate outcome. A Caribbean War will be a disaster, just like a real war with Iran, or Russia, or China. In the 1980s, President Reagan was stupid enough to send a provocative, useless US army to Honduras. He was smart enough not to use it against Nicaragua, and to bring it home intact. Let’s see if our current political elite can display a similar level of statesmanship.
An unfortunate update (24 Oct 2025): two days ago the US sent two B1-B nuclear-capable aircraft to Venezuela on a practice bombing run. And yesterday the US announced that it was sending an aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, to join its Caribbean fleet. The Ford is currently docked in Croatia. It will take several days for it and its five accompanying destroyers to reach Puerto Rico.
It’s been a month since the American fleet headed for Venezuela, and faced off against that country, from the shelter of the Caribbean island chain. Since then, the Americans claim to have killed several Venezuelan drug dealers in small boats, Puerto Rican airfields have welcomed American military jets, and a team of “Special Forces” operatives is said to have joined the flotilla, which consists of eight US warships and one nuclear submarine.
Three of the warships carry 2,500 US Marines (the “22nd USMC Expeditionary Force”) plus a thousand sailors. They have Harrier fighter jets and Osprey vertical takeoff planes to transport their expeditionaries ashore. The other vessels in the fleet are basically cruise missile platforms. They mainly carry the Raytheon Tomahawk missile, which is nuclear-capable, costs two million dollars, and has a range of over 1,000 miles. One ship carries the Raytheon RIM-116 ram missile, which has a much shorter range, costs a million dollars per unit, and flies much faster than the Tomahawks. It is intended to protect the Tomahawks from incoming fire.
The US government has described all this as a drug-interdiction mission. Yesterday the Daily Mail headline was, “US military ‘preparing to strike inside Venezuela.” The attack “would largely consist of drone strikes against leaders and members of gangs, as well as drug labs,” the Mail reported, citing NBC news.
But this flotilla isn’t set up for stealthy drone attacks. Tomahawk cruise missiles are not a useful weapon against a jungle laboratory or some men in a speedboat. These are big, serious, high-explosive devices which were originally intended to be used against Russia. Their range, as mentioned, is more than 1,000 miles.
How far is the US flotilla from Caracas, capital of Venezuela? About 500 miles.
It’s been suggested that the Americans are really planning a decaptiation strike on President Maduro. These things are normally done during peace negotiations, so now – while US envoy Richard Grenell says he’s keen to talk – might be the time. In theory, those 250 “special ops” fellows could sneak into Caracas (under cover of a drone attack, no doubt), kick down the back door to Miraflores, and spirit away the drug-dealer caudillo and his entourage. There is a fifty million dollar bounty on his head! And it is ours! All ours!
This is a silly plan. It relies on the Venezuelan military turning their backs while the Americans do this – the Syrian way. But I see no evidence that the armed forces have turned against Maduro or the Bolivarian experiment. Quite the reverse: the military and the population seem to be largely behind them both, despite the sanctions and recent demonization of Venezuelans abroad.
Let’s assume that the purpose of the US fleet is what it appears to be, which is a missile attack on Venezuela followed by an invasion of the “expeditionary force.” This must entail an attack on Caracas, in order to kill Maduro and install his successor. And, in order to succeed, it must be a large, preemptive attack which knocks out the Venezuelans’ capacity to retaliate. If they can get their planes in the air, they can counterattack and cause some serious damage to our flotilla. So the Venezuelan air force must be wiped out first.
It’s not clear how many military air bases there are in Venezuela. There may be 11, or 16, or more. Some of these are training bases, some may be inactive. Some will contain many aircraft: southeast of Caracas is a big base called Palo Negro/Base Aérea El Libertador, where most of the fighter fleet and helicopters are said to operate. In the west of the country is Maracaibo, with two long runways: the home of a special aviation group.
The Americans will know, via satellite, exactly where these aircraft are, and will set out to destroy them at the same time as they try to kill Maduro. They may also aim to neutralize the Bolivarian navy which consists of one frigate, two diesel-electric submarines, and some patrol boats. Or they may ignore it.
When the attack comes, what happens next?
Russia began supplying military material to Venezuela at the beginning of the century. Russians have built a Kalashnikov ammunition factory and sold fighter aircraft and helicopters to the Venezuelans. In 2008 and 2009, Chavez purchased new air defence equipment and armored vehicles from Russia for a total cost of $6.5 billion. The armored vehicles will have limited utitility against the Tomahawks. But Russian air defences are designed to defeat a cruise missile attack.
We have seen over the last three years the effectiveness of these air defences. Over that time, they have got better. But what air defences did Venezuela license back then? What was delivered? Did they get the software updates?
One hopes that Venezuela can defend not only its airfields, but its cities. “Our side” has shown a nasty propensity for seeking civilian casualties in its wars of choice, and Caracas is a big place – a dense city of three million people. And there is a military airfield, Miranda, adjacent to the capital.
One other possibility: that an attack on Caracas and the other cities is cancelled. Instead, the flotilla will head south and occupy the Essequibo region between Venezuela and Guyana. Drugs need interdicting there, and this vastly oil-rich area is coveted by Exxon/Mobil; its ownership is in dispute. Venezuela claims it; so does the former colony of “British” Guyana, supported by the US and the UK.
More than 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil are at stake in Essequibo. Think of all the electric cars and nuclear power plants that we could build! The drugs that could be interdicted!
Please forgive the click-baity headline. This is just a short note to report that several people with projects on crowdfunding platforms have emailed me to tell me someone is messaging them and offering to back their Kickstarter/IndieGoGo/other project at the producer level, claiming to be me.
In order to do this, they have copied some info from my Kickstarter page. The master criminal has also availed themself of an email address: alexcoxdirector@gmail.com
This is not me! You know that I would never use gmail. Nor would I use the bizarro hipster language of the would-be fraudster. And I would never, ever, call anyone “folks.”
So with luck nobody will be fooled!
If you receive such a communication from me (quite likely using a different bogus email address), rest assured that it is fake.
Any communication from me via FB, ex-Twitter, WatsUp, BlueSky, Truth Social, or any other social media platform is also fake. I have no social media.
And I cannot complain! Stanley Kubrick was impersonated in person by a man who claimed to be him, eating expensive dinners and staying in fine hotels and then saying he had forgotten his cheque book. He also lured men into liaisons by promising them roles in his upcoming film.
Meanwhile, I continue to work on Dead Souls. We have just over a month before its Almería premiere, followed by Sao Paolo.
Aplologies for returning to the subject of my last two posts, when nothing much has changed. I did find in Deadline an update about the US film “incentives” which includes a link to a letter which Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone, the studio produers, the motion picture guilds, and the Teamsters have all signed.
As the headline observes, Trump’s two “film ambassadors” and the studio/guild group are all in favour of incentives to promote film production in the US. But they don’t say anything about tariffs. The letter proposes instead two specific tax breaks: a 6% tax reduction for productions made in the US (from a 21% corporate tax rate down to 15%); and a separate tax deduction of up to $30 million ($40 million if a film is produced in “low income or economically distressed areas”). To qualify for the second freebie, only 75% of the “labor compensation” need be paid in the United States. In other words, 25% of salaries and therefore a substantial chunk of the picture can be shot abroad.
I am all in favour of shooting outside the country. The United States is a beautiful place, and the Western US has some of the best locations imaginable. But producers and directors should be free to film wherever they like. A few decades ago, that was what they did. George Roy Hill made Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid in the US. Sam Peckinpah filmed The Wild Bunch in Mexico.
Then “film incentives” came along.
“Film incentives” are financial encouragement to shoot in a certain location. The incentives might be cash, or they might be some form of tax relief. Either way, the money comes from the public purse: in other words, it is the taxpayer’s money. And it is gifted, one way or another, to the Hollywood studios and big tech companies so as to persuade them to shoot, or edit, in a particular place.
Theoretically, this leads to a wonderful outcome. The benevolent studio spends far more money on its production than it receives in incentives, and the local film workers and their industry prosper. This is the same argument made when city fathers decide to shoulder the cost of building a massive and unnecessary sports stadium: it will bring such prosperity!
In fact, film subsidies – like subsidies for data centers and sports stadiums and prisons – start a race to the bottom. A film which should be shot in Monument Valley, Arizona, is filmed instead in humid flatlands outside Atlanta, Georgia. The money “saved” via subsidies is spent flying in actors and crewmembers and putting them in hotels, because the local crew are all tied up on other subsidy-based work.
It used to be common knowledge that Los Angeles was the obvious place to make a film, simply because all the actors and the crew lived there. So did the big equipment houses. To a large extent, this is still true. Economically and logistically, it makes sense to shoot as much as possible in the city where the workforce and equipment are situated. But film subsidies create a manic logic all their own. In the subsidy-mad world proposed by Voight, Stallone, et al, it would be entirely possible to shoot half your film in LA (spending 75% of your crew money), the other half in Myanmar (war-torn and dangerous, but very cheap), then relocate to London for post-production. By now your budget is a little tight: but no worries! English film incentives are some of the richest in the world, and Sir Kier Starmer’s government will happily augment your budget, and throw in a Gold Star Creative Visa for your principal cast. If they fall sick or get injured, no need to insure them: that’s what the National Health Service is for.
I hope I’ve given a cohesive synopsis of why film incentives are an abomination. Briefly (because I posted about this before), here is why film tariffs are much better, and why every country in the world should apply them to foreign-made films: the importer of a small, low-budget foreign film will pay a relatively small tariff, while the importer of a big, expensive foreign-made film will pay a lot more. Film incentives are a net drain on the treasury. Film tariffs are a net income stream, from the get-go.
Trump’s other tariffs will fail to achieve their alleged goal of bringing back American industrial capacity because this is a long-term, expensive, difficult and demanding project. Whereas the film and TV industry is already based within the United States. Charge the studios a 100% surcharge on every print of their most recent, foreign-based expoldarama, and watch how swiftly their production relocates to the 50 states.
And the best thing is, almost every country can do the same thing: impose a 100% tariff on foreign-made films and TV, and use the proceeds to produce domestic films and television, employing locals and retaining the intellectual property rights.
In a couple of weeks the BFI will be presenting a season of films which long ago were shown on Moviedrome. It you’re unfamiliar with it, this was a British TV show where arcane features screened late on a Sunday night, preceeded by a contextual introduction. For five years I was the presenter; the series was created and curated by Nick (Freand) Jones, who delved into the depths of what the BBC had under license, and came up with amazing finds.
The BFI season starts on 4 July with The Wicker Man. This was the first film we screened and it has remained a major cult movie – indeed, it has become even more appreciated over the years. I watched it again recently and must admit to underestimating the film, the first couple of times I saw it. On 5 July there are screenings of the wonderful, magisterial Nicaraguan epic Walker in the presence of some of the cast, and also of Corbucci’s Il Grande Silenzio. Moviedrome’s was the first “official” British screening of The Great Silence: same for Django and Requiescant, licensed for the series. And on 6 July there will be presentations of The Fly and The Sweet Smell of Success. I shall attempt Movierome-style introductions to most of these films (though I will miss The Fly) and will try not to repeat what I said thirty years ago…
Later in the Moviedrome season, Two-Lane Blacktop, Get Carter, Shaft (original version) and other fine films will appear. The BFI has made an excellent selection, and I recommend them. In some ways this is an enhanced Moviedome, since the films are back on the big screen, for which they were intended.
Meanwhile, in the world of film tariffs, nothing seems to have changed. The US and UK announced a trade agreement, but it did not address the 100% film tariffs. In theory, they will be discussed in a separate deal. In the mean time, unless the policy is reversed, foreign films, and American films made abroad, are subject to this tarriff. As Jake Kanter wrote in Deadline on 8 May, “The UK would be particularly vulnerable to any movie tariff, given that the country has established itself as one of Hollywood’s top destinations for offshoring shoots, thanks to tax incentives, a skilled workforce, and a shared language.”
The Hollywood Reporter has also weighed in at length on this, in near-apocalyptic terms. In an article titled “How London Became the New Hollywood”, Lily Ford compares the tariff threat to a fire in a luxury hotel. She reports that US productions are moving to London in part because they seek to avoid “Trumpian turmoil.” Cast and crew (who are presumably not insured by the production) rely on the British NHS for health care. Some come under a visa scheme called the Global Talent visa — “the crème de la crème” of visa categories available in the U.K. — which permits Americans to work and live in Britain for up to five years.
Who can blame them, poor things? The wrong president was elected! They must flee their country. And dear old London, that bastion of freedom of thought and speech, and of propriety, welcomes them in. What could possibly be wrong with American productions basing in London, importing American cast and crew, and also hiring limeys?
Actually, there is a lot wrong. Netflix and Universal don’t shoot or edit in London because they hate Trump, or love Old Blighty. They do it because they receive vast tax breaks and cash refunds. As Lily Ford reports, “The tax breaks from the U.K. are among the best in the world. Until 2034, film and TV producers seeking to shoot in the U.K. can receive a 40 percent reduction on their final bill as of this year. The Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit provides them with a tax credit worth 34 percent of their U.K. production costs, and as of April 1, filmmakers can claim a credit of 39 percent on their visual effects costs. Indie films with budgets of less than £15 million ($20 million) can claim a whopping 53 percent back thanks to the new Independent Film Tax Credit, in place since October.
As Ms. Ford observes, Hollywood comes to London because it’s cheaper than shooting in LA. The tax relief is massive. “Disney, for example, is reported to have received more than a third of a billion dollars in U.K. tax credits the past decade. After taxes, Hollywood producers in Britain can claw back a net 20 percent of the cost of the production.”
There was once a time when British governments had some cojones, and levied a tariff of their own. American features were ubiquitous after the Second World War and – since they were in English! – threatened to swamp the British film industry. To prevent this, a government minister, Sir Wilfred Eady, recommended a levy on cinema tickets. This was collected by Customs & Excise, and went to the British Film Fund Agency, a government body tasked with funding British films.
“Eady Money” was responsible for many of the original British films made in the 1950s and 1060s. Not the massive projects like Lawrence and the James Bond franchise – those were Hollywood movies just passing through. But the real British films which showed originality and and wit and daring and were a genuine contribution to the culture of the world: Billy Liar; I’m All Right, Jack;Things to Come; Darling; Villain; Get Carter; If… and The Wicker Man.
Today the money flows in reverse. British taxpayers (sorry for the formulation, but it’s true) subsidize Hollywood films. A third of a billion dollars gifted over a decade to just one studio. This situation is absurd. The great white towers of Google and Amazon and NBCUni are not our friends. They are the Martians, staring down at us from their fighting machines, wondering what to destroy next. And the weird thing is, despite all the incentives and tax credits and free money and British talent they receive, Hollywood films have never been worse.
Hollywood movies are boring, sentimental, propagandistic, over-long, take no risks, and worst of all are far too expensive. It doesn’t cost $100,000,000 to make a film. It doesn’t cost $20,000,000 to make an “indy”. These are grossly exaggerated figures designed to inflate the high pay of those at the top of the tree — men like Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav, who will receive $52,000,000 in salary this year, despite an attempt by 60% of shareholders to block the payment.
Imagine if London adopted the same policy as the US. No subsidies for foreign films, and a 100% tariff paid by those who import them, based on the actual cost they pay to distribute the film. The importer of many copies of a big, Hollywood film, will pay a large tariff. The distributor of a independent film made in Péru, will pay a small tariff. And all that money will go to finance British film production — not just in London, but all over the country.
This is what regional filmmakers, in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Scotland, Wales and many other places were trying to do in the 1990s and early zeros, when New Labour and its London Film Council began the process of selling the farm. The farm is in foreclosure now, and overgrown with weeds. It’s time to take it back.
London filmmakers! You must remember this… Even if you work for a big US company or their UK subsidiary now, this will not last. The Americans and their admirers will replace you with AI just as quickly as they can. These Globally Talented Hollywood liberals are not your friends. As soon as Chelsea Clinton is installed in the White House, they will all troop home, leaving their luxury homes and apartments funished as Air B’nBs.
The picture above is Charles Burnett and me at Gates’ Pass in Tucson, during the Loft Film Festival a few years back. Charles still resides in LA, and I am but 666 miles away. We look forward to assisting the return of American Cinema to its home, Los Angeles.
Post-production on what will probably be called Dead Souls continues well. We hope to have a version to present to festivals in June, although the film won’t be entirely complete until July or August, due to the credits sequence and ambitious animated flashback by Tom Gibbons & co.
But I did see a couple of items in the news which prompted me to want to babble a bit about politics and their impact on creativity and the future of the cinema. The first is the news that President Trump’s tarriffs will now apply to foreign films, as well as tangible goods.
I know the selling point of the tarriffs is that they will bring back manufacturing to the US of A. But reshoring factories is a complex, costly, and time-consuming business. It demands an industrial policy which will remain consistent over the years. Such things exist in so-called “authoritarian” countries. Any socialist would see the need for them. But the US does not have an industrial policy. Nor is it making any real effort to rebuild its decaying infrastructure, or future-proof its water supply or its electric grid. All that matters is that oligarchs and monopoly corporations make big bucks. Tarriffs without industrial policy are tactics without strategy.
Variety ran a sobering piece, “How Trump’s Tariffs Could Derail the Cannes Film Festival”. Could this really be so? Oh happy day! If no poor independent filmmaker, invited to the margins of the festival and forced to share an AirBnB with ten other people, ever had to trudge to Cannes again, the world would be a better place. Said filmmaker could save money and get on with making films. Sadly, the article exaggerates Cannes’ imminent demise. Its great fear is that somehow these tarriffs will derail the gravy train:
“Pulling off a premiere at Cannes is an expensive proposition. Smaller indies with big stars attached will spend in the low six figures for private travel, makeup artists and stylists, as well as security. That climbs past $1 million for an ensemble cast in a studio picture like “Mission: Impossible,” which also needs to tow along publicists and managers. It’s a check most are willing to write…”
Who cares about this stuff? What “indy film” has hundreds of thousands of dollars or euros to spend on “private travel” (i.e. private jets) and security guards? There are literally thousands of film festivals in the world, and it is not necessary to throw away obscene sums of money to get your film seen at one of them. What’s most striking about the article is how its author fears Americans will be targeted in some way, perhaps with unkind glances, for sharing a nationality with Trump. One of the producers interviewed insists that he will make sure everyone knows he is Canadian, even though he represents an American studio. Poor dears! Perish the thought that anyone might not like us Yanks or Limeys. In my experience, most foreigners are very kind to us, and do not punish us for our oligarchs’ sins.
As far as independent films are concerned, what do these 100% tarriffs really mean? Suppose you make an independent film in Spain. Funded by government and local agencies for a budget of a million euros, say, this is possibly a “europudding” with EU money in it. Either way it qualifies for the tarriffs. But so what? Most likely your Spanish language film will play in Spain, and in some other EU countries. If you’re lucky you might get distribution in some Latin American countries, and probably a lousy “VOD” deal for most of Latin America which gains you very little reward. Your film may play in a US festival, but distribution is unlikely.
And if you do get US distribution? If your film is a magical hit at Sundance and gets picked up by Amazon you might recoup the shooting cost. More likely a small US distributor will offer you an advance – it could be twenty thousand dollars. It could be five. That is what you are charging them for the right to distribute your movie. The distributor has many expenses and it’s likely they won’t recoup them for some time. Their margins may be very thin. So what they’ll do is offer you an advance of ten thousand dollars instead of twenty; or two and a half instead of five.
This is a drag. But does it destroy world cinema? Hardly. Does it upset the Hollywood studios? Probably, but only because they’ve been outsourcing their product for decades. American films receive English tax incentives to shoot and post-produce in London. Filmmaking is an agile industry. It will be very for the studios to relocate production to the US, and make their rubbish there.
The piece which alarmed me was by a Substack writer, Stephen Follows. He has done a deep dive into the many “creative” patents Netflix has recently aqcuired, and written about it here. Part of the article is behind a paywall (goes away if you subscribe), but what is free to read is disturbing enough. In addition to lots of patents describing ways of more effectively locking Netflix customers into Netflix products, Netflix has acquired patents describing the automation of editing. Netflix has three patents for AI-generated trailers and previews; three patents for automated VFX and object tracking; and two patents for “Automated editing via match cuts and scene analysis.” Follows writes: “Systems suggest possible match cuts and transitions by analysing video content and shot changes, helping make editing faster and more consistent.” This, of course, will lead to the dullest and most repetitive editing strategies. But what does Netflix care?
How long ago were the anti-AI strikes? What did they achieve? How long will that last? The politics of this are much more concerning to me, as a “creative”, than those silly tarriffs. Because Netflix – and you can bet it is not alone – is laying the groundwork for a future where AI writes the scripts, avatars staff them, and the editing app spits out the result. No human intervention necessary.
The shoot of My Last Movie is complete – more or less. There is still a visual effects sequence – the young hero at the orphanage, circa 1830 – but that will be in the hands of Phil Tippett and his crew. All Merritt and I have to do is prepare a good cut of the great material our dps Chance and Ignacio gave us, hand it over to Phil, the composer, and the sound designer, and kick back! Our work will be done…
Only it won’t, of course. Once the film is finished, we must find it festivals to visit, then must send out DVDs and blurays and posters to our 1000-or-so generous Kickstarter backers. I’ve been sending updates directly to the backers: if you’re interested in the film’s progress it’s not too late to support it! You can visit the project’s page here.
My plan had been to film everything in Spain. But the Almeria sets were mostly booked – thanks to a plethora of production, Westerns Dutch, German and French occupying almost everything. So we shot five days in Almeria, and eleven in Arizona – mostly at the Mescal Western location, seen above. A big budget film like The Good, The Bad & The Ugly or Straigtht to Hell would probably house its actors in one of the top hotels in Almeria city. Back in those days this meant the boomerang-shaped, six-storey Gran Hotel. But if yours is a low-budget production, you may opt to house your small crew closer to the location … and so, we made our base in small hotels and posadas in the desert mountain town of Tabernas.
And when we filmed at Mescal, we ventured not to the megalopolis of Tucson, but resided in nearby Benson, Arizona. Benson is a railroad town beside the highway. It has two diners, three or more motels, a Mexican place, an oil-change place, a gymnasium, and a supermarket with funny and outspoken baggers and checkers. Benson was celebrated long ago by John Carpenter, whose debut feature Dark Star ends with a (thoroughly generic) ballad in celebration of the town.
Staying in Benson and Tabernas, we become attached to the town. We film in desert canyons or Western poblados for about ten hours. Then the sun sets, and we head for base – ten minutes to Tabernas, fifteen to Benson. Most of our hours are spent here, sleeping (and being woken twice a night in Benson by the freights as they roll through), figuring out where to eat, or meet for a drink, or doing laundry, or (in the case of the hard-working and devoted actors) practicing our lines at the Quality Inn. Before long our displaced involvement shifts to the real place from the fantasy one…
(Above pic features me and Zander Schloss, who plays Borracho, seated in some dusty, distant burg. Where are we? Thank you for the photo, Pablo. Thank you, Benson and Tabernas!}
We shot Tombstone Rashomon in six days. There were two units running the whole time. One crew filmed interviews with the principal characters; the other crew shot the action they were talking about. When the interview unit wrapped, they joined the main unit as a second camera crew.
The Western I’m about to direct is scheduled for eighteen days: five of them in Spain, eleven in Arizona, and two in California. This is more leisurely, of course. But we’ll still have to go fast, shooting four and a half pages on an average day. Straight to Hell was shot in four weeks; Repo Man took six; Walker was filmed in nine. The longest shoot I ever undertook was for Love Kills a.k.a. Sid & Nancy: eleven weeks: enough time to shoot two films, at least!
In 2018 Christopher Frayling produced a massive volume titled Once Upon A TIme in the West: Shooting a Masterpiece. It would not be wrong to call this a coffee-table book, since it is the size of a coffee table. And rightly so, because it deals with one of the longest, grandest, most beautiful, and most pretentious Westerns ever made: the film most critics think of as Sergio Leone’s masterpiece. Christopher is a meticulous scholar, and the book is densely packed with information. There are cast and crew interviews, of course, but also Carlo Simi’s original costume design sketches, and blueprints for the buildings and the small city he raised from the desert beside the railroad tracks in LaCalahorra, Spain.
For me, the most fascinating section of Christopher’s great book is the chapter dedicated to the shooting schedule. I have gazed at this in wonder many times, but now, embarking on a new Western which may be my last movie, I decided to read the whole thing and see how much time was spent – back in 1968, when a mega-Western could be made for half of what a series segment costs today – filming this stunning film. Here’s my report.
Once Upon A Time in the West was shot in three different places: Rome, the south of Spain, and Monument Valley, Arizona. The Roman scenes were studio interiors, shot at Cinecittá and the CentroSperimentale, over six weeks. The Spanish shoot took two-and-a-half months, in the Tabernas desert of Almería and near Guadíx in the province of Granada.There followed two weeks in the legendary stamping grounds of the American Western, Monument Valley. Including downtime, the entire shoot lasted four-and-a-half months, on 104 shooting days.
Assuming the script was the length of a normal Western, 80-90 pages, say, Leone shot less than a page a day. This doesn’t mean that he and his crew were lazy – far from it. They were shooting Techniscope, an Italian film format which was half-way between 16mm and 35mm: recording images as tall as 16, but as wide as 35: an “unsqueezed anamorphic” super-wide-screen frame. 16mm is not the ideal film format. The frame is smaller than 35mm, which means you have to light more, and more carefully, not only on interiors, but on the exteriors, as well. So almost every setup demanded a lighting change. John Ford shot mostly from the tripod. Leone was keen on dolly moves, crane shots, and zooms.
Above are Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, and their director in one of the Italian studio interiors. These began on Monday 1 April, and the first actors to work were Cardinale and Henry Fonda. Using Fonda and Cardinale on day one was a publicity move: it was a short shoot at Cinecittá, with the press present, and canapés, and sparkling wine. The next day, Fonda flew home, and the interiors continued: a Chinese laundry, various stables (none of which appeared in the finished film), the carriage of the railroad magnate, the lengthy interior at the posada, where Cardinale, Charles Bronson, and Jason Robards meet, plus some interiors at the ranch.
Six weeks passed, and the company moved to Spain. On Tuesday, 14 May, Leone began with exteriors at Sweetwater – the imposing ranch house which Simi built in the Tabernas desert, with logs purchased from the Chimes at Midnight shoot. On 20 May, Fonda returned for the scene where he murders the last of the McBain family. The ranch house featured a practical downstairs interior, where numerous scenes involving Cardinale, Robards, and Bronson would be filmed. On Wednesday, 5 June, Fonda and Bronson’s duel began. This filming continued over several days.
On Monday, 10 June, the train arrived at Sweetwarter. Simi had excavated a ravine and built a railway line: the track which ultimately reaches McBain’s property. There were many extras, and much coverage of the steam engine. But every day, Leone shot more of the duel. A helicopter arrived, and the crew filmed the departure of Bronson and Robards, and the latter’s demise. The chopper was meant to be a camera platform for this final shot – but it proved unstable, and was sent away. On 19 June, a convoy of trucks left for Guadíx, where Simi had built the new city of Flagstone. The steam loco was hauled by road to this location, a process which took several days.
At the end of Week 12, shooting in the Flagstone saloon began. Several scenes in stables and the streets of Flagstone followed, never to be used. On Saturday 6 July – the end of week 14 – 23 carpenters and 3 electricians began building a new location on a railway branch line: the huge expanse of wooden boardwalk where the opening scene takes place. Meanwhile Leone went back and forth between Flagstone and Sweetwater, where he reshot Robards’ death scene. On the Linares-Baeza line, a week of train interiors and the death of the railroad magnate was filmed.
Week 16 began on Monday, 16 July, back at Flagstone. The production must have been running late, because this was the beginning of a fifteen-day, non-stop shoot with no time off. An entire day was dedicated to Sc. 32 – “Harmonica follows Wobbles” – a scene which lasts maybe 15 seconds in the finished film. But every scene in Flagstone was a complex one: there were extras, horses, wagons, smoke, and dust. And there were railway engines running in both directions on the tracks. On Tuesday, 23 July, the company moved to the opening scene location, where the bad guys – Jack Elam, Woody Strode, and Al Mulock – were waiting for Bronson to arrive. Leone shot here for seven days straight.
Near the end of this exhausting week, Mulock fell from his hotel window in Guadíx and was killed. Leone finished the scene with a double. The Spanish shoot wrapped on Monday, 29 July – the end of Week 17 – and after a day’s respite, Leone and crew flew to the United States.
Week 18 began on Friday, 2 August, in Monument Valley, Arizona, with Henry Fonda and the flashback at the hanging arch. In Kayenta, nearly, Simi had built an Anasazi ruin in a cliff face, and there were two days of filming here. Then the company returned to the hanging arch.
Simi’s faux-ruin can be seen above. It’s most impressive – as was the arch, which still existed as an exposed wooden skeleton when I shot Edge City/Sleep Is For Sissies there in 1980.
At last, the monumental shoot was winding down. The crew repaired to the Mittens – the most iconic area of Monument Valley – to shoot the exterior of the posada, and to follow Claudia Cardinale’s wagon through the railroad workings. On Saturday, 10 August, after her coach sent the railroad workers running for their lives, Leone said “cut” for the last time. One of the producers no doubt shouted that this was a wrap. It was the end of Week 19: the hundred-and-fourth shooting day.
Am I envious of Leone? Of course I am! It would be a fine thing to shoot a Western of such grandeur, such ambition, with so talented a crew and cast. But things like this happen once in a lifetime, or a blue moon. Indeed, it’s noteworthy that one of the most ambitious, greatest Italian Westerns, and one of the boldest, most remarkable American Westerns – Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch – were filmed in the same year.
But that was another time. Shortly I’ll be embarking on a tiny variant of Leone’s megalithic, tripartite undertaking. What have they in common? Well, they are both Westerns. They both ride the same mythic trail. And they are both, I hope, good films.
UPDATE FOR MY LAST MOVIE BACKERS:
As of 15 July 2025 more there have been more than 3.500 downloads of the Dead Souls script. Since the project has approx. 1000 Kickstarter backers, I suspect bots are scraping these away.
So the script is no longer here! I’ve you’re a genuine backer and didn’t download a copy, email me and I’l send you one.
After Pablo Kjolseth and I reached a hundred podcasts on behalf of the International Film Series at CU Boulder, I felt that was enough. One hundred podcasts is sufficient for any two humans to be involved in, and I vowed that I would do no more (you can still listen to our hundred podcasts here).
Yet over the last five weeks I have done many more podcasts. There is a reason for this: to promote My Last Movie: the project for which I’m fundraising on Kickstarter. When invited to do a podcast, I would ask one question: will it go live before the Kickstarter campaign ends on 29 July? If so, I’ll do it. One podcast, run by a famous father-and-son team, haughtily put me in my place. They told me I would have to get in line, that the recording wouldn’t go out until long after that date, and that in any case they chose not to promote projects, but rather “to celebrate artistry and artists’ careers.”
For me, this kind of talk is total bullshit. There is only one reason for a creative person to babble about themself and their work: to promote their latest creation (soon to be available in a medium near you!), or – even better – to raise funds for it. What sane artist wants to engage in blither-blather? The works should speak for themselves.
So I am very thankful to all the broadcasters who’ve given me an opportunity to promote My LastMovie over the last five weeks — just as I’m eternally grateful to those who have supported the campaign thus far. Interestingly, there’s been no mainstream media coverage of this thing at all. Once upon a time, it would have been picked up by the English press, and by the LA entertainment media. Repo Man 2 – the Wages of Beer – which never existed beyond a script and a press release – got a fair bit of MSM coverage earlier this year. But for some reason my adaptation of Gogol’s Dead Souls – quite likely the last feature I will ever direct – has generated mainstream media crickets on both sides of the pond.
Yet we have done extremely well! The initial goal of the project was $75,000 – enough to make the film with glove puppets in front of a green screen. They would have been excellent glove puppets, admittedly, riding on Australian Cattle Dogs and voiced by the finest thespians. The backdrops would have been the Leone sets in Almeria, and the Saguaro Monument in Arizona. Now, with a week to go, the project has raised almost $150,000, and we are casting real actors and full-size animals.
This is due, I think, to the quality of the project and its creative team – in particular to two very able collaborators, Guillermo de Oliveira and Zack Coffman, who have shown me the way to properly crowdfund a feature. And the entire creative team is thrilling. Gianni Garko, legendary star of the Sartana films, is my co-screenwriter. Zander Schloss, Sarah Vista, Del Zamora, Eric Schumacher, Karen Wright, and Ed Tudor Pole have all agreed to appear in the film. Dan Wool will write the music. Merritt Crocker – my partner on Tombstone Rashomon – will be our Arizona producer and editor. And Phil TIppett will design the flashback, in which our hapless hero is abandoned in a snowstorm as a child.
Shooting starts in October, in the Tabernas desert in Spain. We’ll film in the location Carlo Simi built for Leone’s For A Few Dollars More, and in the ruins of the El Condor fort where long ago I made a video for Joe Strummer’s song Love Kills. In November we’ll shoot at another fabled location: the ghost town of Mescal, in Arizona.
If you want to follow the progress of the film, you must back the Kickstarter campaign! In the past, I’ve posted regular updates about my works-in-progress on this blog. But in the case of My Last Movie, my reports will be exclusive updates to our Kickstarter backers.
So! If you’ve backed the project, thank you! Please stand by for more updates and, eventually, DVDs or blu-rays or posters, and much more. And if you haven’t backed it yet, please do so here.
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