On a rainy morning this past January, Roosevelt Avenue in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens was a stream of yellow cabs, honking buses and weaving cyclists. Nearby, a film crew peering out the windows of a Chinese pharmacy discussed how to make all of that invisible.
The film it was making, “Rosemead,” starring Lucy Liu as an immigrant mother with a mentally unwell teenage son, was based on a real-life story and set in the San Gabriel Valley of sunny Southern California. Any signs of the East Coast would need to be hidden. No cabs, no buses, no bare trees and overcast sky.
“That’s a very New York-looking trash can,” said Liz Power, an assistant director, ruefully eyeing the green receptacle just outside the pharmacy’s glass door.
Filming “Rosemead” in Rosemead, Calif., would certainly have been easier. But the producers had decided on New York over California because of tax credits.
According to a survey by The New York Times, states have spent $25 billion on tax incentives over the past two decades to lure Hollywood, often competing against one another. New York State, which writes checks to studios of up to 40 percent of their costs producing a movie or TV show, has handed out more than $7 billion to entice productions from California, which has dedicated more than $3 billion to try to retain them.
The movie industry says the incentives help create jobs and spending in the communities where they film, but economists have long been skeptical of whether they create enough value to justify the taxpayer cost.
What almost everyone agrees on is that the tax breaks are influencing not only where, but also how shows and films are made.
Moviemakers have long excelled at making one location look like another. The 2002 musical “Chicago” was filmed in Toronto, and “Detroit” (2017) capitalized on Massachusetts’s generous incentives by shooting in Boston.
Hollywood itself has stood in for New York numerous times — some of the most famous sitcoms about Manhattanites, including “The Odd Couple,” “Friends” and “Seinfeld,” were primarily shot in Southern California. Now the reverse is happening.
“Rarely can you ever shoot where the film is set anymore,” said Mynette Louie, who is a producer for “Rosemead,” along with Andrew D. Corkin and Liu. “You basically have to go where the tax credit is and figure out how to sell that place.”
But selling one place as another may lead to all kinds of thorny filming conundrums, as the crew of “Rosemead” discovered.
Which house in New York would most closely resemble a ranch-style home in the San Gabriel Valley? How do you convince an audience it is seeing Southern California when a snowstorm is raging outside?
‘Soft Money’
The idea for “Rosemead” came in 2017 when Corkin and Theo James, an executive producer, read a tragic article in The Los Angeles Times about an Asian American mother and her schizophrenic son, who both lived in Rosemead. To bring the story to the screen, Louie knew that receiving a tax incentive — a form of “soft money” that does not have to be paid back — would be essential.
“To even get any kind of film financed these days, you really have to show that you’re mitigating the investors’ risk by loading it with soft money,” said Louie, who teaches a film financing course at Columbia University.
Initially, Louie had planned to film in California, where “Rosemead” is set.
Then two of the film’s investors backed out during the actors’ strike and Louie learned that it had been wait-listed for California’s tax credit, which favors films that employ more people. Shooting entirely in the San Gabriel Valley became out of the question.
Louie considered filming “Rosemead,” which she said had a seven-figure budget, in Oregon or Hawaii because of generous tax incentives. But Hawaii was too expensive, and Oregon did not have enough locations that would match those in Southern California.
New York ultimately made the most sense because of its tax credit and because many members of the cast and crew lived in the area.
Once they decided to film in New York, the producers considered setting the plot in an entirely new place that would be easier to represent from afar, including Michigan, Ohio and Virginia. But for the narrative to make sense, they needed a locale with a sizable Chinese American population and a specific waiting period to buy a handgun, because of a plot point that leads to a shooting. No place besides Rosemead seemed to fit those criteria.
In a cruel twist, Louie eventually found out that “Rosemead” had been approved for California’s tax credit. By then, it was too late. A full crew had already been hired. “Rosemead” would be shot primarily in Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island.
Stitched Together
The director Eric Lin revised the “Rosemead” script to transform several exterior scenes into interior ones, simplifying the tricky work of making winter in New York pass for the sunny skies of California.
Since it was frequently overcast during filming, the crew had to add warmer light. Two scenes that had originally been set in a parking lot and in an outdoor office complex would now take place in a mall. And at one point, the crew realized it could not film Liu walking outside because bare trees would be visible.
Before touring the pharmacy in Flushing, the crew had visited the New World Mall, a large glass building sandwiched between Chinese jewelry stores.
Dressed in a black winter jacket and an orange beanie, Lin, the director, prowled about the mall’s management office, searching for the best camera angles and looking for any anomalies.
Another scene that originally involved high schoolers hanging out at a parking lot was instead filmed at a virtual soundstage inside a warehouse in Brooklyn. Four actors sat inside a silver S.U.V. while a giant wraparound screen displayed a continuous loop of footage that mimicked a drive through Los Angeles.
Finding the right locations in New York took some detective work. Many of the city’s schools have lockers inside the classrooms, not in hallways, said Ryan Piotrowicz, the team’s location manager. To find houses that looked like ones in Los Angeles, the crew had to avoid fireplaces, radiators and too much brick.
“There’s all these clues that you have to watch out for,” Lin said.
After the pharmacy, some crew members headed to a tan house in Queens to see if it could pass as a house in the San Gabriel Valley where a party would be set. Inside, they wove around a long, ornate dining room table and examined the walls.
“How do we feel about the molding?” one crew member asked. “Is it West Coast?”
Even after changing exterior scenes to inside ones, the crew often had to cover windows and angle cameras to hide the snow that was fiercely falling outside, said Lyle Vincent, the cinematographer. While filming at the pharmacy, the crew covered the windows with an opal diffuser and increased the exposure on the cameras, making sure they would not capture passing taxis.
After three and a half weeks filming interior scenes in New York, the crew spent four days in Southern California to shoot exteriors that would conform to those locations. A scout was charged with finding windows in Venice, Calif., that would match those in the New York high school.
In one pivotal scene in which Liu receives some disturbing news about her son, she exits a gun shop set up for the film in dreary New York and steps outside into sunny California. The movie illusion forced the crew to confirm that Liu was carrying the same props on both coasts.
“Making sure this thing stitches together has been challenging,” Lin said a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean on a mild 62-degree day.
The adjustments were complicated and laborious, Louie said, but worthwhile to earn the subsidy from New York.
“For a small film like ours it’s critical,” she said. “Every dollar we save counts.”
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