“Mad Men” was set in 1960s New York, but it was mostly filmed at a studio just west of downtown Los Angeles. Sienna DeGovia was one of hundreds of people who worked on the show. Someone needed to re-create the food of that era, like savory Jell-Os and the carrots cut into one-inch cubes that used to be served on airplanes, and that’s what she does — she’s a food stylist. She started as an assistant 25 years ago and after learning the craft, became a lead stylist.

Los Angeles is full of weird jobs like that — or at least it used to be. But content production peaked in 2022, and the world’s entertainment capital has since been battered by a global contraction.

“The beginning of 2024, everything fell off a cliff,” DeGovia says. “I called all my old mentors and begged to be taken on as an assistant. I never had to do that in 20 years.”

The lack of work in Hollywood has renewed age-old calls for government intervention. Her father, Jack DeGovia, was a production designer who worked on “Die Hard” and “Speed.” In response to a downturn in 1999, he organized the Film and Television Action Committee, which took aim at “runaway production,” particularly the then-new phenomenon of shooting American films in Canada because it was cheaper.

“They were taking the bread out of our mouths and attacking our families,” says DeGovia, now 84. “They were making believe they were America. They’re not; they’re Canada. We were willing to play hardball with these guys.”

DeGovia led rallies in L.A. and Sacramento, where crews chanted “Film American!” and demanded a state tax incentive to match Canadian subsidies. That effort fizzled out. But a generation later, California has a production tax credit and is poised to double it in response to foreign incentives.

“We have to be more competitive,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said on May 14, noting that the business is on “life support.”

That may not be enough. Doubling the program should generate 4,000 to 5,000 jobs, according to state estimates. But in the past two years, California has lost 40,000 production jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Trying to be competitive, or close to competitive, is going to require not only a state effort but some sort of federal incentive,” says film producer Chris Bender, noting that at least 70 countries have a national subsidy. Jon Voight, a “special ambassador” appointed by President Trump, has pitched a national incentive as part of a plan to save Hollywood.

The industry has been dreaming about that idea for generations. Ronald Reagan backed a federal tax break to counter runaway production when he was governor of California in 1970. Twenty years before that, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, he lobbied President Truman on the issue.

“Runaway production is not new,” says Russell Hollander, national executive director of the Directors Guild of America. “What is different now is that we are experiencing a tremendous global contraction in film and television production.”

According to DGA data, every major production center — California, New York, Georgia, Canada and London — has seen a downturn in the past couple years. But it’s been more severe in the U.S. than overseas.

“Under these circumstances, every job that leaves the United States to chase foreign tax incentives takes on added significance,” Hollander says. “Recapturing that work has to become an even more important priority.”

In Canada, production subsidies are a matter of cultural sovereignty. Without them, Canadian movie theaters and TV screens would be overwhelmed by American content.

“We want to see ourselves reflected on our airwaves, as does every other country,” says Norm Bolen, former president of the Canadian Media Producers Association. Bolen is skeptical that the U.S. needs a federal subsidy. “From a Canadian perspective, that’s absurd,” he says. “Hollywood dominates everywhere. What’s the deficiency that needs to be addressed?”

He also disputes the idea that Canada offering subsidies to international producers caused a loss of U.S. jobs. “They weren’t really taking jobs away from Americans,” he says. “They were providing financial resources that allowed these productions to be made. They wouldn’t have been made at all.”

In 1986, Stephen J. Cannell was producing an L.A.-based action show for NBC called “Stingray.” Facing declining network fees, he hit on the idea of saving money by filming in Canada.

“We didn’t have much choice,” says Michael Dubelko, who was president of Cannell’s company. “We were a small company. We did it for survival.”

The company ended up in Vancouver, which had almost no production industry at the time. Cannell turned a former distillery into a TV factory, churning out “21 Jump Street,” “Wiseguy,” “The Commish” and other shows.

“We didn’t know what we were doing when we started,” Dubelko says. “It was crazy.”

In his view, filming on location in Los Angeles had simply become too expensive. Homeowners would demand $5,000 or $10,000 to rent their house for a day. Once the crew got there, a neighbor would fire up the lawnmower and demand to be paid to turn it off.

“We go to Vancouver, and they’d say, ‘Come on in and shoot for free,’” he recalls. “We weren’t being ripped off all the time.”

And with a favorable exchange rate, Dubelko estimates they saved at least $100,000 an episode — or more than $2 million a season. Of course, leaving L.A. behind created some backlash. “We took heat for it,” he says.

But soon, others followed.

The British Columbia film industry now employs thousands of people. Dubelko remembers being in Vancouver with Cannell a few years before he died. “We were going down the street, and people were stopping us, saying, ‘Oh my God, we’re in the business because of you,’” Dubelko says. “It was not one or two. Maybe 20 people came up to us and told us how grateful they were to him. He was really the one that pushed all this stuff. He was really a visionary.”

Lately, though, Vancouver has been hit hard by the contraction. According to the local crew union, only 25% of its members are working.

“We have been dead,” says Tonya Hartz, who has worked as a location scout in Vancouver for 28 years. “Production levels have been incredibly slow in 2025.”

Hartz knows people who have lost houses and are struggling to afford groceries.

Trump’s threat to impose a 100% tariff on foreign-made films, coming on top of blanket tariffs on Canadian goods and threats of annexation, has added to the strain.

“You can imagine the panic that rippled through our membership,” says Crystal Braunwarth, business representative of IATSE Local 891 in Vancouver, who fielded at least 50 calls after Trump’s threat.

While a movie tariff would probably be unworkable, some worry that U.S. producers may nevertheless shy away from filming abroad, exacerbating the downturn.

“This is a global industry,” says Spencer Chandra Herbert, B.C.’s minister of tourism, arts, culture and sport. “Trying to shut the door on it being a global industry misunderstands how the industry works.”

Canadian-based Gary Lam, an editor whose credits include “District 9” and “Terminator: Dark Fate,” says it’s not a zero-sum situation. “If it’s slow in Hollywood, it’s slow here,” he says. “We want Hollywood to be busy. When they get so busy they have trouble finding crew, that’s when we tend to get the call.”

Several in the Vancouver industry agree that the business moves in cycles, and they expect the slow period will not last forever. Lam says it’s also up to local governments to do what they can to help. “I do think that tax breaks and government support are the way to go,” he says.

So does the B.C. government, which recently increased its production incentive. “We’ve made this a priority,” Chandra Herbert says. “We’re responding to the same thing everyone else is. The major studios have reduced how much they’re spending. It’s been very hard on our workers.”

Dubelko isn’t convinced that a U.S. incentive is a great idea. When he was making TV, there were about 50 shows on the air. They would get Nielsen reports, and they all fit on one page. Now there are 500. “All this production that currently exists couldn’t have been done in one city or one state,” he says. “The business became very mobile in the mid-’80s. It was a very natural evolution that it would start being done outside Los Angeles.”

“How do you get that business back?” he says. “I don’t know. I don’t see how that happens.”

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In the days when overt racism was a thing (that is, the days of Jim Crow), it was often said that states’ rights had to be respected by the federal government. That same assertion of states’ rights and devolving power to the 50 states returned in the 1970s and was called the Sagebrush Rebellion. That dispute involved public lands in the West and demands that those lands be turned over to the respective states which would then issue permits for oil drilling, coal extraction, and so on.

The rights of states to make their own laws and set their own regulatory standards has been a primarily Republican complaint for the past decades. Federal government has become too strong, too powerful, it is said, so power needs to return to its “original” dual federalism model where decision making is divided between the federal and state authorities.

That was then, this is now. Whereas state authority was supposedly being taken away by a hyperactive national government in Washington, DC, suddenly the shoe is on the other foot in this day and age. On 22 May, The US Senate voted to nullify California’s planned transition to electric and hybrid cars by eliminating a waiver issued by the Biden administration to allow more stringent rules in that state to deal with air pollution as well as continued global warming. Suddenly, it’s okay to stomp on the authority of the state. Why is that so? Oh, it’s California, a supposed blue state.

Wyoming Senator John Barrasso feigned shock that a state might want to eliminate gasoline-powered automobiles, in effect, saying it’s a right to go to gas stations. Well, not everyone can and will drive an all-electric (EV) car (there’s not enough lithium-ION to make that workable), so Barrasso shouldn’t have to worry. Besides, if one drives a hybrid (guilty as charged), that would still be necessary even though fill-ups are less frequent (which is great, by the way).

The real issue is hypocrisy. When is it acceptable for the national government to supersede state power, and when is it not? In this instance, the Senate steps in to stop California. Little do Barrasso and other lawmakers know that many manufacturers are already planning on going all EV/hybrid in years to come. Volvo plans on transitioning to that combination in upcoming years while VW Group is planning on going all-electric in the 2030s.

Earlier in the week, one of the platforms pumping oil in the Santa Barbara Channel was restarted, as the company involved claimed that the California Coastal Commission lacked authority to stop them. This will inevitably lead to legal challenges in a court of law. What it does not change is that the oil off Santa Barbara is mostly gone. That is why the platforms closed to begin with. But let’s not have economic common sense stand in the way. Let’s let the federal government decide who gets their way, not what’s best for California. It does not take a lot of oil to do environmental damage, witness the relatively small leak at Refugio Beach, north of Santa Barbara, just a handful of years ago.

There are yet more double standards. The White House also jumped in on the same day (22 May) to announce that it would not allow international students to be accepted to Harvard, subject to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) approval. In what is supposed to be a capitalist economic system, how is it okay for the federal government to jump in and make decisions on behalf of a private institution? Where is the boundary between the government and private interests? In the interests of keeping “antisemites” out of Harvard, DHS reserves the right to intervene, meaning that only compliant and docile students may be allowed to enroll. Forgo any first amendment rights to free speech, and one gets in. What a wonderful message to send out to the world.

Here again, Washington decides to intervene in a matter that should be decided by a private entity and secondly, it jumps in on a matter in a particular state to say that no, this is a federal issue. This time, it’s the state of Massachusetts that apparently cannot manage its own affairs.

The late German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger once asked: why is consistency a criterion for deciding what is good and what is not? Enzensberger was not sure what the answer might be. But it is here. Beyond the consolidation of power itself, there is no reason to grant power to the federal government. That is not what happened with ending Jim Crow, but it is here. Leave the states alone.