Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson spotlight film incentives during Texas Capitol visit

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By Karen Brooks Harper | Dallas Morning News (TNS)

AUSTIN — Hollywood hit the halls of the Texas Capitol on Monday when actors Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson brought star power to a debate on revitalizing the state’s film industry.

The pair are pushing for the state-funded program aimed at bringing more television and film productions to the state. They’ve appeared in ads and met with state leaders since January.

The Texas born-and-raised McConaughey told lawmakers on Monday that he and Harrelson had given up 15% of the salaries they’re making from “Brothers,” a TV series currently in production in CITY, to keep the filming in his home state.

“One of the only regrets of my 33 year career in film and television is not making more my films here in Texas, especially the ones that were about Texas or set in Texas,” said McConaughey, who was born in Uvalde and raised in Longview and now lives with his family outside Austin.

State budget writers want about half a billion to revive the incentive program, an effort that has bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.

The program was created in 2005 but funding has fluctuated, and Texas has had a hard time competing with other states.

McConaughey told the Senate Finance Committee that if such an incentive was available, there’d be more stars in the Lone Star state.

“More Texans who left Texas and went to other incentivized states for work, because there wasn’t enough work here, are going to move back,” he said. “Because one, they’d rather live here, and two, now they can work here.”

Harrelson, a close friend of McConaughey’s, sat next to him at the witness table in the drab Capitol hearing room but did not testify.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Houston Republican who put the film incentives on his list of priorities for the Senate this session, sat in the front row of the hearing room audience – directly behind Harrelson and McConaughey.

Texas gets a $4 return for every $1 it spends on the film industry in Texas, Patrick has said.

The committee was expected to approve the bill later Monday.

Senate Bill 22, by Finance Chair Joan Huffman, R-Houston, would create the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program through $450 million in tax credits and $48 million in grants, require residency workers for Texas on those projects, and restrict the type of content that would be funded. The bill has additional incentives for films and shows to be shot in rural areas.

The bill stipulates that tax dollars won’t be used for “inappropriate” content or content that portrays Texas in a negative light. Some Republican senators on the committee expressed concern that profanity wasn’t more explicitly outlined as dealbreakers for state incentives.

“We’re talking about F-bombs,” said Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels.

Other senators objected to “micromanaging” scripts and content down to specific words, suggesting that the language limiting inappropriate and anti-Texas content did enough.

“You can’t police this stuff,” Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston. “You start to get into some infringements here.”

The bill is opposed by some conservatives who don’t believe Texas should get into the movie-making business.

“They could make movies about William F. Buckley [a conservative commentator and public figure], and I’d oppose it,” Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, posted later on X.

McConaughey, whose own films include scripts that run the gamut from the family friendly to the profane, acknowledged the concerns and said he would not support a program that didn’t represent Texas values. And particularly not if it insults the Lone Star State, he said.

“It’s my understanding that the rub against the film incentive in Texas is more philosophical than economic,” he said. “You don’t want to help a movie get made in Texas that throws rocks at Texas… let them go shoot in some other incentivized state, like Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, or go to Malta and do it. But not here. I’m with you.”

McConaughey encouraged senators to consider the longer game, in which the state partners with colleges and schools to provide industry training — much like it does in tech and engineering fields — to raise an entire generation of film workers who can make great films in Texas.

Eventually, he said, the infrastructure would get built up, and Texas would become its own industry pipeline, with no more need for incentives from the state.

Dressed in a simple black suit and tie with a crisp white shirt, McConaughey dropped most of his well-known folksy persona and went with a more formal presentation, addressing the senators with the traditional hearing-room decorum.

But the mischievous actor didn’t leave it all at the door.

At one point, he was discussing all the people who would get work when more productions come to the state when he shot a glance at the partially-bald Harrelson.

“Local Texas restaurants, hotels, coffee shops, dry cleaners, street rentals, home rentals, even Woody’s barber,” McConaughey said with a smirk and a nudge at his buddy. “Gotcha. Threw it in there, babe!”

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