Film Industry

Melissa Lynn "Stanley" Cohen, a Baltimore film production coordinator who worked on movies including Failure to Launch and Ladder 49, died of breast cancer Wednesday at Mercy Medical Center. She was 36. Cohen, who grew up in Ellicott City, graduated from Mount Hebron High School in 1989. She attended classes at Catonsville Community College but quit to follow her mother, a hair and makeup artist, into the film industry. She moved to Los Angles when she was 18. After finding she wasn't getting her calls returned in the male-dominated film world, she borrowed her dad's name and began sending out resumes as "Stanley Cohen."

BOMBAY, India -- Fans of the world's largest film industry were unlikely to tune in for the Academy Awards. After all, their favorite stars carried off their trophies more than a week ago right here in Bollywood.Bollywood, as Bombay is known to fans of Indian cinema, is the capital of an industry that produces some 800 feature films a year in several Indian languages. That's well over double the number made in Hollywood, and almost one-fifth of the world's total. Revenue from India's colorful song-and-dance extravaganzas and melodramas surpasses $1 billion a year.

HONG KONG -- Jackie Chan rules -- except in his hometown.The martial-arts master, who defeats the mob in all his movies, is being trounced by the Hong Kong criminal gangs known as "triads." Here in the heart of unregulated capitalism, as video piracy reaches epidemic proportions, everyone in the local film industry -- even power players such as Chan -- is losing money.Chan recently announced that his film "Rush Hour" lost at least $1.25 million last year because of declining attendance at cinemas and reduced home-video sales.

During Saturday's Preakness Stakes, Michael Styer, head of the Maryland Film Office, was at another race track on the other side of the country, playing host to 200 television and movie executives.To say the least, the timing of this long-planned "Preakness in Hollywood" party was awkward. The event was intended to help lure film production to Maryland, but it came just two days after filmmaking here received its worst ever setback. On Thursday, NBC canceled "Homicide: Life on the Street," the critically acclaimed television series that had greatly enhanced Baltimore's credentials with Hollywood studios and established its credibility in television production.

If the first Maryland Film Festival doesn't draw at least 3,500 moviegoers and produce an economic impact of at least a half-million dollars, says its founder, Jed Dietz, he will be stunned.To distinguish his April 22-25 event from the more than 600 other film festivals worldwide -- including 220 in North America -- Dietz said, he hopes to make a gift of between $20,000 and $30,000 to film preservation.The beneficiary is well chosen and might help draw industry people and moviegoers, said moviemaker John Waters.

LONG after the New Year's Eve champagne is just a fuzzy memory and millennial fever has faded, city leaders and others will ponder how to move Baltimore forward in the new century.With this in mind, we are running a four-part series of interviews with people who feel passionately about the city. We asked them to share their dreams for Baltimore.In the last installment of the series, Jed Dietz, director of the Maryland Film Festival and president of the Maryland Producers Club, lays out a plan for government to play a greater role in luring film productions to the state.

BEIJING -- This capital's Hua Shi Theater was scheduled to play a sure-fire hit last month: "Rush Hour," a Hollywood blockbuster starring Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan.But at the last moment, the government ordered the theater to show old propaganda movies in preparation for this year's 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.Instead of the Hollywood action comedy that would have drawn huge audiences, theater manager Li Lihua had to screen such fare as "Dragon Year's Policeman," a state-made tribute to hard-working Chinese police officers.

When a set decorator needed a rusty mop bucket as a prop in the feature film "Liberty Heights" last month, the operator of a local antiques mall went to her utility closet and pulled out the perfect model.Elaine Ezell, president of AAA Antiques Mall Inc. in Hanover, has been doing business with the film industry for several years, working from lists to provide items quickly.Each film that comes in represents $15,000 or $20,000 in revenue to the 450 antiques dealers at her mall, she said. This year, she estimates, the film industry has brought in at least $50,000.

Early yesterday, about 130 Baltimore-area business executives gathered in a hotel conference room to discuss "Homicide: Life on the Street," the new Tim Allen movie, "For Richer or Poorer," and Oprah Winfrey's latest film endeavor, "Beloved."They weren't actually fans; at the breakfast meeting organized by the BWI Business Partnership at Linthicum's Doubletree Guest Suites Hotel, story lines and stars were of secondary interest.The main issue was money: how to bring more film crews -- and the dollars they spend -- into Maryland.

LOS ANGELES -- In a toned-down sequel to his speech last year accusing Hollywood of promoting depravity, Bob Dole traded stick for carrot yesterday and praised the film industry for making movies that reinforce basic American values.Citing such financial and popular successes as the moonshot drama "Apollo 13" and the barnyard fable "Babe," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told studio executives they could make money by making movies with positive themes."If our ticket windows are a kind of cultural ballot box, then the results are in and we can call a winner," Dole told about 200 employees and a sprinkling of movie executives at the 20th Century Fox studio here.

Baltimore filmmaker Barry Levinson urged lawmakers yesterday to authorize a rebate for the state's film industry, and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller expressed support for the measure. Levinson said he has opted to shoot movies in Canada over his native Maryland because of tax incentives. Several Maryland-themed movies, such as Hairspray and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, have also been filmed elsewhere. "It's a shame these Maryland movies move out of state," Miller said.

City prosecutors, police create cases Although a series of Baltimore search warrants and arrests last week resulted in federal charges for drug dealing and firearms violations ("Raids yield arrests, heroin," Sept. 12), the investigations that led to those cases were conducted in large part by local prosecutors and police. In many proactive investigations that result in federal drug and gun charges, Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy and her assistant state's attorneys work with Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III and his police officers to obtain evidence through wiretaps and search warrants and pursue other investigative leads.

Tax credits now critical to region's film industry I would like to set the record straight on a number of inaccurate statements made by Sheldon H. Laskin in his column "Leave film tax credits on the cutting-room floor" (Commentary, July 14). Mr. Laskin wrongly suggests that state and local governments provide police, fire personnel and other public services "at taxpayer expense." To the contrary, these services are paid for by the production company and are not charged to Maryland's taxpayers.

Melissa Lynn "Stanley" Cohen, a Baltimore film production coordinator who worked on movies including Failure to Launch and Ladder 49, died of breast cancer Wednesday at Mercy Medical Center. She was 36. Cohen, who grew up in Ellicott City, graduated from Mount Hebron High School in 1989. She attended classes at Catonsville Community College but quit to follow her mother, a hair and makeup artist, into the film industry. She moved to Los Angles when she was 18. After finding she wasn't getting her calls returned in the male-dominated film world, she borrowed her dad's name and began sending out resumes as "Stanley Cohen."

Discussion Film in Baltimore A panel that includes a produc er, a writer and actors on The Wire will dicuss the future of the film industry in Baltimore. Using clips from The Wire and several films shot in the area, the mem bers of the panel will discuss ways to make film production one of Maryland's major eco nomic sectors. The free event takes place at 7 p.m. at the Bal timore Museum of Industry.

As many who have been stuck in some monumental traffic jams know, this is a busy time for film crews in Baltimore with two big-studio action films - Live Free or Die Hard and Shooter - filming on city's streets. Some of the thanks, or blame, for bringing Bruce Willis and his entourage to town goes to Hannah Lee Byron, director of the Baltimore City Film Office. In two years on the job, she has not only used events like the Baltimore Screenwriters Competition to raise the profile of local filmmaking, she has made the Division of Film, Video and Television in the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts a key partner with the Maryland Film Office in drumming up regional business from Hollywood and independent producers.

Baltimore writer-director Mark Redfield's The Death of Poe, a dramatization of the famed mystery writer's final days (he died in Baltimore, under circumstances still not fully explained, on Oct. 7, 1849), will have its world premiere Wednesday at The Charles, 1711 N. Charles St. Redfield plays Poe; others in the cast include Kevin G. Shinnick, Jennifer Rouse, Tony Tsendeas, Kim Hannold and J.R. Lyston. Tickets are $10. Information: 410-409-5465 or thedeathofpoe.com. Focus on cinematography Director Lodge Kerrigan and cinematographer John Foster will be on hand Monday night to discuss their 2004 film, Keane, the tale of a man who loses his daughter at New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Less than 24 hours after winning an Oscar for best foreign language film, Gavin Hood is on the phone from Los Angeles. Asked how he's doing, he chuckles, in a voice raspy from a long night of celebration. "I'd lie if I said it wasn't good," he says. Hood's film, Tsotsi (pronounced "SOT-see") was the first from South Africa to win an Academy Award - and a signal of hope to its small but burgeoning local film industry, and to the many people who worked to get Tsotsi made. But as Hood raced to the podium on March 5, he was confronted with a roadblock as formidable as anything he faced while making the movie: a ticking clock.

Say "Film Wage Rebate Grant Program" and your eyes might film over. But for businesses relying on Maryland's TV and film industry, wage rebates can mean employee health care and retirement plans. The program means jobs, its beneficiaries also would testify. Now, say Annapolis - that's the recently released film about the U.S. Naval Academy that was filmed not in Baltimore but in Philadelphia. It has become the poster movie for Maryland's struggling entertainment industry. "That's embarrassing to us," said Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. on the corner of Guilford Avenue and Federal Street.

MOSCOW - In recent years, the Russian film industry has found itself swamped by Hollywood productions, abandoned by its stalwart audience and limited mostly to making art films or gangster flicks. Now comes the film Turkish Gambit to the rescue, sabers flashing in the sunlight, hooves pounding across grassy meadows. Since it opened Feb. 22, the historical spy thriller, set on the battlefields of a 19th-century war on the Balkan peninsula, has had more than $17 million in ticket sales.