- Coming up on "Austin InSight," could Texas be the new Hollywood?

Some lawmakers think so, with a new incentive plan for half a billion dollars.

Plus meet Austin's first ever poet laureate.

"Austin InSight" starts right now.

- [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from Sally and James Gavin, and also from Suerte, Este, and Bar Toti restaurants, bringing Austin together around culinary excellence to celebrate creativity, conservation, and culture in Central Texas.

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) (bright music concludes) - Hi there, and thanks for watching.

I'm Laura Laughead.

"The Lone Ranger," "The Highwaymen," and 2022's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," iconic Texas stories all shot in other states, even other countries.

But a new bill making headway at the Capitol is aimed at making sure that never happens again.

Last month, the Texas Senate passed a bill allocating a historic amount of money to attract more productions to the Lone Star State.

Senate Bill 22 would provide $500 million every two years for the Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund until 2035.

That's $2.5 billion over 10 years.

It would be the largest amount that Texas lawmakers have ever granted for media production since the state first started funding a film incentive program almost 20 years ago.

The bill was drafted by Republican Senator Joan Huffman from Houston, and the companion bill is now being discussed in the House.

This incentive plan has strong bipartisan support and the backing of major celebrities like Taylor Sheridan, Woody Harrelson, and Matthew McConaughey.

Here's McConaughey speaking before the House.

- Hollywood does not have a trademark on telling good stories.

There's no patent on that.

I know that we Texans take a bit of pride in being able to tell a good story ourselves.

So as we all know, a good story well told is worth telling.

So why don't we Texas our Texas, and tell some ourselves?

We were gonna make T-shirts.

Don't make us go to Georgia.

(audience laughing) - [Participant] Yeah, don't, don't.

- The bill could cover up to 31% of the cost of making a production in Texas.

Incentives like this make Texas more attractive to filmmakers who've taken advantage of incentives in other states, namely our neighbors New Mexico and Louisiana.

The bill has been one of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's top priorities this session.

Patrick has said, quote, "The production incentive is an opportunity for us to export Texas faith and family values to the rest of America and the world while growing our economy and enriching Texas Workers," end quote.

However, there are concerns about aspects of the bill.

It would give the governor's office broad discretion over which projects receive funding, and the office could revoke that funding at any time in the production.

It also incentivizes films that represent, quote, "family values."

Even some supporters are concerned about the subjective language.

- Well, I don't think the promotion of family values would ever be in the propaganda category, but that's, again, my opinion.

- Of course, whose family values would always be the question.

- Projects can get bonuses or additional incentives for things like hiring veterans, shooting in a rural area, and faith-based projects.

And to note, Austin PBS is one of a number of productions in Texas that has applied for and been approved for reimbursement under Texas's current incentive program.

We previously spoke to the co-founders of Media for Texas about the bill.

Joining us now are Chase Musselwhite and Grant Wood, co-founders of Media for Texas, a non-profit advocating and supporting the film, TV, and media production industry in Texas.

Also, I might add Native Texans, Chase, Grant, thank you so much for joining us.

- Yes, thanks for having us.

- Excited to be here.

- Some of our viewers might not know that Texas actually already has a film incentive program in place.

How is this new bill different?

- Right, so this bill kind of breaks down the funding mechanism, whereas before you would have a cash or you still have a cash grant system, but isn't necessarily a long term component of the bill of the current program.

You have programs across the country where they have a timeline of 10 years or so, and that creates a lot of consistency and what's the word I'm looking for?

A lot of consistency for producers and stability for producers wanting to film these programs across the globe.

And in Texas, unfortunately our program is allocated or it's based off the two year preparation cycle of legislative process.

So all the money that we have every two years has to go back to the chopping block essentially.

- Yeah, so basically the real issue is that we have a two year program.

Everyone else has at least a 10 year program.

And if you have a TV show and you wanna know where you're gonna shoot seasons two through five, you're not gonna pick Texas.

'cause you don't even know if we have funding in years three, four, or five.

If you wanna build a studio and pour $300 million into an infrastructure build that's gonna take longer than two years, you don't even know if we're gonna have a program by the time you're finished building a studio.

- How would y'all describe, or what would you say are the biggest benefits from this new incentive fund for Texans and the state of Texas?

- I think that the long-term stability that Grant was referencing, now this program says Texas is here to stay and we're here to be competitive.

I would say right now Texas is not high on the list when it comes to programs and on its level of like competition.

And compared to the other 37 states that have programs, we're the only short term program.

So for Texans, it's really the instability that hurts us the most.

And we've seen tons of our crew, up to 70% of our crew base has left our state and moved to Georgia, moved to New Mexico, moved to Louisiana.

So I think first and foremost, just having the stability, getting rid of this anxiety about what's gonna happen to our program every two years is the biggest thing for Texans.

And the biggest thing we hear day in, day out, and what Texans and former Texans who wanna move back to the state are most excited about.

- And back to the specifics of the Texan incentives, there have been some concerns, you know, $2.5 billion over 10 years, it's a lot.

And some people have said, well maybe this money could be spent on other things like safety or public schools for one.

What might you say to that?

- I think this program has such a strong ROI component because whenever a film production comes to town, they are pouring millions of dollars a day into a single local economy.

Think Strong, Texas, for example, with a population of 540 people.

They were the host city for a episode of "Lawman Bass Reeves."

And they poured $1.4 million on average a day into that local economy.

And you're hiring local police officers, local medics- - Electricians, carpenters.

- Electricians, you know, hiring restaurants for the day, essentially just pouring so much money.

And when you look at the return on investment for every dollar in, it's $4 out in economic activity.

- Yeah.

- So when there are some opponents saying, oh, this will raise my property taxes, or this is using taxpayer dollar to fund movies, this is really a true investment for the state of Texas because of the long-term return on investment.

- And I think it's one of the only industries that directly puts cash into the pockets of a vast variety of different Texans.

So it really is so incredibly beneficial and it can touch just about anybody.

I think it's really important to note when we talk about, oh this is $2.5 billion that the state is giving out over 10 years, if we got $250 million a year, this would still only really put Texas at number seven of the top seven programs.

It wouldn't be above that.

Other states, our biggest competitors, Georgia, is giving out 900 million a year.

Illinois giving out 700 million.

New York, 700 million.

California is creating a bill to get it to 700 million.

Right now it's at 400 million.

When you look at the per capita of Texas as well.

If we actually wanted to be the most competitive, we would look at giving 700 million a year.

But this is also Texas and we're not trying to use taxpayers dollars willy-nilly.

And so I think 250 million in compared to what other states and what other countries are doing is a really good fit for Texas and is not an overspend, but is also gonna get us right there at that level of competition to enable Texans to stay in Texas, which is their number one goal.

- Another concern about this bill is that it would give the governor's office total discretion over which projects receive the funding, which is not something new here in Texas.

But this bill states that any film project must portray Texas and Texans in a positive fashion and also incentivizes films that showcase quote unquote family values.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has said as much on X, even some supporters have expressed some concerns over that subjective language.

What does that mean and how do y'all define those things?

- It's really interesting people point this out, but the actual language is a film or a film project or moving image project must not show Texas in a negative light.

If you look at the codes that are actually were created in passed into law in every other state that has a program, they have the exact same language.

It's just not talked about as much in other states.

So the governor's office has always had control of this.

They've always had this exact same language.

The only thing that's changed is that there is now being an added uplift opportunity.

And for us, we're really excited about that because what's wrong with just adding uplift?

You know what's wrong with giving out more to different types of projects?

And then speaking to the faith-based, this will really help faith-based projects because they're normally on the lower end of the budget scale.

So they might not hit that $1.5 million buy-in to get the 25%, This would enable those projects which have kept people employed.

"The Chosen" has kept people employed over our sort of drought period for the past five years.

This would help them keep going.

And so we're really just a proponent for all the uplifts.

We would love even more uplifts if it were up to us.

- And if this bill passes in the house, where do you see and what do you hope for the Texas film and TV industry 10 years from now?

- Yeah, I think this bill is just the start.

Essentially our ultimate goal of Media for Texas is to help shepherd the state into its own robust industry.

Something independent from other markets across the United States.

Our ultimate goal is to see Texas become a place where products can be financed.

They can be developed, distributed, and made all here within our borders.

And then hopefully just be a well-oiled machine to help export our culture and our values across the globe.

- Sort of what I said earlier, we really envision that the future of film is Texas.

I love saying that when people ask me what do we think is gonna happen for the film industry in Texas, but it's actually about the film industry for our country.

I think Texas is gonna become the leader in the number one exporter of, you know, moving image content outta the United States.

We're gonna become that in the next 10 years.

I think when you're walking around, you feel that energy here in Texas, I think the industry is ready for a change as well.

Or just, you know, some fresh ideas, some fresh ways of doing things.

Let's look into how we can finance things differently.

Let's look into distribution.

We need to sort of change things up.

And I think Texas is gonna be the answer to a lot of those questions.

- Well this is definitely something we'll be watching as this session unfolds.

Chase and Grant with Media for Texas, thank you so much for your clarification and being with us today.

- Of course.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for your time.

(mellow music) (mellow music continues) (mellow music continues) - And the movies would of course be nothing without a good script or story.

Even a poem can be inspiration.

Austin recently announced its first ever poet laureate, a theater artist and spoken word poet named Zell Miller III.

(audience cheering) Miller got a rock star's welcome at Austin Central Library at the ceremony honoring him for his new role.

Miller's been a fixture on the art scene in Austin for nearly 30 years, writing, directing, producing plays, and teaching.

Austin is the last major city in Texas to name a poet laureate, which is a program administered by the city's library system.

- One of the things that I love about our choice of Zell is Zell has lived in Austin since he was four years old.

He has seen this city grow and change so much over the decades, and he is so rooted in this community.

So I think that he is gonna be able to really speak to that, what Austin was, what Austin is becoming, and not just Austin isn't one thing, it's lots of different communities, it's lots of different people, and Zell has so much experience working with different communities.

I love the way he talks about bringing poetry to kids and senior citizens and everybody in between.

So yeah, I do think there's something really valuable about having someone who's so rooted here, being able to speak to all the things that make Austin great and weird, and being able to bring that to everyone.

- As Austin's poet Laureate, Miller will be an ambassador for poetry and lend to support and art to the community in various settings.

He says poetry literally saved his life.

(mellow music) (mellow music continues) - I was taking a nap.

(laughing) I was taking a nap, phone rang, and I didn't see a name and I almost was gonna hang up and my wife was asleep too.

So I stepped out of the room and, you know, spoke with Allison and you know, when she told me, man, I just, every cell exploded with joy.

(mellow music continues) For me personally, it literally saved my life.

I say that without fear of anything.

And so Nikki Giovanni, my brother, left me, my brother left town, he left me a Nikki Giovanni book, "My House."

And he was like, "You need to read this."

And so I was in a very, very dark place.

I literally had a gun sitting on my bed and I picked the gun up and I looked down and the book was on the ground, set the gun down, read the book, unloaded the gun, took it to a pawn shop, and went to a library and then started writing again.

So when I say poetry can save your life, I'm a testament of that.

(mellow music continues) I think poetry matters in the city of Austin, Texas, art form, because I think poetry is really the real bloodline of everything else that is getting the juice around what we're doing.

You know, you can't have, unless you're doing jazz or instrumentals, someone's having to write those words down.

Somebody is giving you a piece of their soul through their words.

(mellow music continues) At one point in Austin, poets, you know, they had a really good stronghold and a lot of attention coming to them.

But, you know, giving away things have changed.

The Slam not necessarily having national slams anymore.

That kind of offering kind of going away.

I think that people have kind of forgotten about it.

But, you know, now that I'm in this position, I definitely wanna bring poetry back, back onto the Austin scene and give these artists who sweat their blood, sweat and tears, you know, an opportunity, a chance as well.

(mellow music continues) I am trying to say, at the end of the day, we need to love each other.

That's it, 'cause if we can love each other, all of this things around us, these circles, these silos that we live in, if we can just love each other, all of that goes away.

So that is what I do as an artist, at the core of what I'm writing is coming from love.

Sometimes that love is tough, you know, and that's like my relationship with my city.

You know, given being a Black male walking around the streets of Austin, Texas, sometimes it ain't always great.

And there's literally moments where when my son walks outta the house, I don't know if I'll see him again.

So we have to make eye contact.

We have to say I love you.

He says it back.

But I also know that there is a beauty and an amazing heartbeat of this city.

And so that's what I do.

I'm bringing love, I'm bringing hope through my work.

(mellow music continues) - Poetry is no doubt, beautiful, but it's also an art form of literature that's accessible even with our internet-inundated short attention spans.

A leading researcher on this topic estimates that our attention spans have shrunk from more than two and a half minutes of time spent on one screen in 2004 to only 47 seconds today.

Screens and social media, namely TikTok, are often blamed.

For young people, the ability to focus on reading long form content and do other schoolwork has posed challenges for educators and new research from book data company Nielsen and publisher Harper Collins shows that less than half of parents even find it fun to read aloud to their young kids these days.

To explore this further, we are joined by Dr. Douglas Bruster, a Shakespeare scholar and American and English literature professor at the University of Texas, and also one of my former professors.

Dr. Bruster, thanks so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- So, Dr. Bruster, you've been a professor for years.

You've seen the classroom before and after the iPhone, and also after Covid.

So these days, what would you say are the most concerning behaviors when it comes to paying attention from reading ability?

- Well, part of it comes with students trying to multitask and we all do it.

We like to have our phones open, maybe something else going on, another screen perhaps, or a telephone call.

But it's very hard to read well, to read carefully, to process difficult language and complicated ideas if you're trying to do more than one thing at a time.

- And it is so hard.

It's such a siren song to multitask, I admit.

And that being said, how are you adapting, if at all, your approach to teaching and to reading assignments given these shorter attention spans?

- Well, I think everybody has, you know, as a teacher, everybody's come to the realization that we can no longer teach as much material as we used to, or even as long of works as we used to.

So cutting syllabi down, doing more oral recitation in class, reading passages aloud, and essentially kind of not relying on students to read long, difficult texts outside the classroom.

'cause it's just not happening anymore.

- Hmm, and that's gotta be hard to stomach as a professor, especially one of these beautiful works of literature that just are longer form and may come across as intimidating to your students.

- It's sobering.

But on the other hand, what you want to do is get the students the skills to go on and read these longer works on their own.

So rather than teaching, you know, 10 plays a semester or even eight, you try to teach six or even four and go a little bit more slowly and do more work in class.

- And how do you foresee this maybe impacting students and others long term, not being able to really sit and, like you said, read deeply and intentionally a long work or just have a shorter intention span for anything?

- Well, it's going to make a difference in their careers.

It's gonna make a difference to their success as citizens.

To be a good writer means being first, I think a good reader, both of others' prose and poetry and your own.

But it's also going to be the kind of bare minimum for making a serious advance in your career.

The good readers tend to do well in social interactions.

They tend to have insights and experiences that they might not have if they didn't pursue complicated text, literary and otherwise, on their own.

- And what's your advice or suggestions on how to manage this and fall back in love with reading?

- Well, if you've got kids, read to them, please read to them.

Read to them early and often, and let them see you read.

Try to resist, you know, handing them a phone or an iPad on a trip.

But break open a book, maybe talk to them about what you are reading, if it's a different kind of book than they might be interested in.

Take them to a library with you.

Take them to a bookstore with you.

And if you are, you know, all grown up, go to a library, go to a bookstore, go hear our local authors read, go to plays, you know, kind of fall in love with the English language or whatever language that you speak all over again.

- Wow, and well said, it's something I'm taking as a personal challenge to myself.

It was my New Year's resolution to read more.

And you're gonna hold me to that, Dr. Bruster.

Technology, a wonderful, terrible thing.

And Dr. Bruster, thank you for coming on the show and sharing your thoughts with us.

- Thank you.

(mellow music resumes) (mellow music continues) (mellow music continues) - It is got conspiracy, intrigue, big egos and backstabbing.

No, we're not talking about our current political environment.

We're sticking with the topic of literature, but taking it back a few hundred years.

A new adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar opens this week at the Hillside Theater in Zilker Park.

The show is presented by Austin Shakespeare, a local professional theater troupe.

Joining us now are Babs George, who plays Cassius and Ray Schultz, who plays Caesar.

Thank you both for joining us.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And first I wanna point out, there is an interesting twist in the casting for the show.

Most of the conspirators are played by women, Cassius yourself, Babs.

Can you both talk about what that was like as actors to reinterpret this classic story in this way?

- I think it's been a challenge because of the nature of, for example, the assassination of Caesar, taking those knives and plunging them in over and over and over in dear Ray here.

And you all the other aspects of it.

I think as women, we have done, we have been soldiers, we have been senators and continue to be, but that assassination has been the hardest thing for me to sort of take in as a woman.

- I also think in terms of the current, you know, current modern day political landscape, it's been interesting because these days women are in positions of political power.

And so this version shows women sort of taking the reins.

- It's definitely very topical and hey, women can be killers too.

They can do everything men can do, right?

Including take a life.

- Well, they can, they can, but you wonder in combat, you can, and sometimes maybe in domestic violence you do, but this is a whole different thing.

This the conspiracy against the one man.

- It will definitely be really interesting to watch this.

I'm a big fan of Julius Caesar and I'm especially excited for this interpretation.

And I know for a lot of folks, especially younger generations though, the language of Shakespeare can be intimidating.

What is your message to people who feel that way and how do you as actors try to engage the audience and keep their interests through Shakespeare's language?

- Oh, well, in certain ways, modern performative Shakespeare will sometimes help the audience by modernizing some parts of the language.

So in some cases we've modernized some of the, what I would consider thornier passages to sort of help people give people a window into Shakespeare's language.

But I think the basic emotional situations people can pick up on that pretty, pretty quickly and easily, I think.

- Yeah, and actually in Shakespeare's day, he created 1700 words, 1200 of which we still use today.

So his people didn't know every single thing that was coming out of the actor's mouths, but they could understand the story, they could feel the story.

And it's our job as actors to make it clear line by line what is important for them to hear.

- And why do you think it's so important to keep Shakespeare's work and alive in front of audiences all these a hundred years later?

- Well, I don't think it would still be alive if people didn't want to see it and people didn't want to do it.

It's been translated into so many languages.

I think the stories, many, many of the stories are universal and they keep, the same situations keep happening over and over again.

- Yeah, I think each individual society can see themselves reflected in Shakespeare in some way and performing it rather than just reading it creates a different, I think, dynamic.

- Absolutely.

- And thanks to productions like yours, there's always a new take that makes it more accessible to a new generation and new audience each time.

- Exactly.

- Well, so excited.

Congratulations on your production.

Julius Caesar runs May 15th through the 25th on stage at Zilker Parks Hillside Theater.

Thank you both Babs and Ray for joining with us.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And I should say break a leg on your production.

- Yes.

- Okay.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - That's our show.

Thanks for watching.

Check out our stories in the Austin PBS YouTube channel or catch up on full episodes in the PBS app.

We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from Sally and James Gavin, and also from Suerte, Este, and Bar Toti restaurants, bringing Austin together around culinary excellence to celebrate creativity, conservation, and culture in Central Texas.

(bright flute music)