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San Antonio stars on list of best places for moviemakers to live and work in 2022

UNESCO’s City of Gastronomy Project San Antonio

UNESCO’s City of Gastronomy Project was one of many pieces of work recently filmed in San Antonio.

Courtesy of Screenville Films

San Antonio is in the spotlight again, ranked for the fourth consecutive year as one of the principal locales for filmmakers.

MovieMaker, a quarterly magazine and website based in Los Angeles, has just released its annual list of the Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker in 2022. San Antonio made a great showing as the No. 22 city nationally and third-ranked Texas city.

Though the No. 22 ranking is impressive for the Alamo City, it is a bit of a dip from the Capital City’s MovieMaker ranking of No. 20 on the 2020 list.

Texas is the best-represented state on the MovieMaker list, with four cities ranked as tops for moviemakers. Aside from San Antonio, Lone Star State locales making the list include:

Austin: No. 8, down from No. 6 in 2020
Dallas: No. 15, down from No. 13 in 2020
Fort Worth: No. 25, and making the list for the first time ever

MovieMaker compiles its annual list based on a variety of factors, among them surveys, production spending, tax incentives, additional research, and personal visits.

Of course, as the publication notes, the ongoing pandemic has put a wrinkle in the usual production of most movie-industry projects.

“The COVID pandemic continues to rage on two years after the virus landed on American shores, and one of the few silver linings has been a revolution in telecommuting — giving us all more freedom than ever before to live and work where we want, how we want. The movie industry is no exception,” MovieMaker says. “Post-production coordinators are managing workflow between editors and animators from the comfort of their own homes, and the writers’ room may also be a bedroom. Production, however, can’t always be facilitated through Zoom calls. So, for on-set crew, producers, and directors, it remains essential to be close to someone yelling, ‘Action!’”

It makes sense that San Antonio rated highly on the MovieMaker list, as it features a spectacular range of film-industry organizations, locations, and incentives.

MovieMaker specifically highlights San Antonio’s walkability, celebrated culinary scene, vibrant creative culture, and centuries of history as lures for filmmakers.

“San Antonio offers a welcoming film community and timeless locations for any type of project,” says MovieMaker editor-in-chief Tim Molloy. “The countless filmmakers moving to Texas from Los Angeles and California should take a serious look at this charming, friendly, affordable city, the seventh-biggest in the country, for a vibrant and dedicated film culture and lots of opportunities to work.”

It’s no accident that San Antonio is consistently noted as a filmmaking city. In fact, San Antonio has made strategic efforts to develop its film scene, including offering free film permits for City-owned properties. The magazine also considered the Department of Arts & Culture’s new Individual Artists Project Grants Program, which provides $5,000 grants to San Antonio artists, including filmmakers, to produce new, original, and high-quality work.

“With increased demand for filmmaking due to the pandemic and how content is consumed at a rapid pace, San Antonio’s talented cast and crew, diverse locations, and free film permits are key selling points to productions,” says Krystal Jones, Department of Arts & Culture interim executive director. “This trend can even be seen within San Antonio with local organizations transitioning to streamed or hybrid options for events that are typically held in person. They were able to make this pivot with the help and expertise of San Antonio’s filmmaking community.”

Then, of course, there’s the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program managed by the Texas Film Commission, which has itself increased the number of projects being made in the Lone Star State since its inception in 2005. According to the TFC, between September 1, 2007 and August 31, 2021, that program has generated $1.74 billion in in-state spending, created 162,000 jobs, and produced a 510 percent return on investment.

San Antonio has hosted a variety of notable productions in the past year alone. They include:

FX on Hulu’s Pistol, directed by Danny Boyle and featuring Louis Partridge, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Anson Boon, Emma Appleton, and Toby Wallace
HBO Max’s HA! Comedy Special, with talent including Danny Trejo, Carlos Santos, and Paul Rodriguez
Motortrend TV’s Built for Business, led by Cameron Davies of San Antonio-based Cruising Kitchens and Davies Entertainment
60 Second Docs featuring Becky Hammon
TLC’s Outdaughtered
PBS’ Generation 9/11
VH1’s My True Crime Story
HGTV’s House Hunters
Facebook’s Hot Pants

Albuquerque, New Mexico, claimed the No. 1 spot on the MovieMaker list for the fourth year. And on MovieMaker’s correlating list of the Best Small Cities and Towns to Live and Work as a Moviemaker in 2022 — which included no Texas cities — New Orleans landed at No. 1 for the second year (though many would question the designation of the Crescent City as a “small” city or town).

The full rundown of the MovieMaker list for 2022 appears in the magazine’s new winter issue.

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Movie Review

Amy Adams works like a dog to keep up with motherhood in Nightbitch

Photo by Anne Marie Fox/courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

Amy Adams in Nightbitch.

There have been many movies about the struggles of being a mother, from ‘80s films like Mommie Dearest and Baby Boom to more recent films like Bad Moms and Tully. The takes those films offer vary wildly, but it’s that last film to which the new Nightbitch can be most easily compared, as each has a mother who manifests an alternate reality in response to their personal issues.

The unnamed mother (Amy Adams) in this film is a former artist who’s now a stay-at-home mom to a toddler. Her days are filled with things like Mommy and Me gatherings at the library or fruitlessly trying to get her son down for a nap. Her husband (Scoot McNairy) travels for work; he’s nice and somewhat helpful when he’s home, but also oblivious to her issues in the way men often can be, especially in movies.

All of the stress of being a single mom for much of the time catches up with her, and she starts believing that things like extra hair growth and sharper teeth are evidence that she is turning into a dog. When she wakes up one morning to a pile of dead animals on her doorstep, her suspicions are confirmed, and she leans into the idea, going so far as to have her son pretend he’s a dog as well by eating out of a dog bowl and sleeping in a dog bed.

Adapted from the book by Rachel Yoder by writer/director Marianne Heller, the film derives a lot of its humor and pathos from the things the mother thinks she can’t say or do. The pressure of living up to the ideals of other moms or her husband’s expectations often has her holding back her true thoughts, although the audience is occasionally privy to them through short fantasy sequences.

The dog part of the film is clearly not supposed to be taken literally, but it’s also leaned into so much that one could reasonably think it was actually happening. Whether the mother is experiencing a mental health episode or is merely using the dog persona as a defense mechanism against stress is up for debate. Regardless, it allows Heller to indulge in a number of outrageous scenarios, some of which work better than others.

What she definitely wants to get across is how underappreciated mothers are in society, and how that can lead to internal thoughts that nothing they do will ever be good enough. The mother in this film is far from perfect, but she’s also doing her best to give her son an engaging and entertaining life, often to her own detriment. If anything, her dissociation that she’s a dog is a chance for her to finally put herself first.

Adams is a six-time Oscar nominee, although she’s not gotten a lot of love for her recent roles. While this part is ridiculous in some ways, Adams also makes the character wholly believable, both mentally and physically. McNairy makes you want to punch him at times, which means he’s doing his job well. Zoë Chao, Mary Holland, and Archana Rajan play fellow moms who each get a few good moments.

The prime audience for Nightbitch is mothers, especially those who feel like they haven’t gotten their proper recognition from their husbands or the world at large. The lengths the film goes to prove its point make it compelling, as does the star performance by Adams.

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Nightbitch opens in theaters on December 6.

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