After twenty-six years as a location manager in the film industry working on films such as Captain America, Winter Soldier, The Sopranos, Russo Brothers Cherry and others, Bill Garvey has been named President of the Cleveland Film Commission.
Following this he has added another prestigious award to his resume - Motion Picture Location Managers Guild International Awards - best Location Management for a Period Feature - Judas & the Black Messiah. This is the equivalent of an Academy Award.
Garvey is the son of the late Mayo-born John Garvey and Ann Gorman. He was born in Woodside, Queens but was raised in Great Neck, Long Island. Both of his parents were New York school teachers.
Appearing on the Gerry Quinn Irish Radio Show in Cleveland, Garvey said: “We are tasked with bringing economic development money into Cleveland and workforce development.
"We currently have a small but mighty staff, dedicated to the organization’s mission to bring jobs and economic impact to Greater Cleveland through a thriving film and media production industry.
"Ohio lags behind our neighbors and others with tax incentives for film making. Tax incentives are mistaken for outright cash to film makers. However, it is about money that is not here. The residual monies from making a film outside of the tax incentive brings in millions of direct spend money by actors, film crews, carpenters, electricians, hotels, restaurants and the like. It’s short-sightedness by politicians to not be aware of all this.”
"Creating and keeping a workforce development is a very key component, to generate a crew base to populate these jobs on movies. It saves a producer money. They want to hire locals, they want to come here to fill out these jobs. This is one way to keep talent in Ohio."
As one can imagine, Garvey has numerous contacts in the movie industry. He will be traveling to Los Angeles to lobby movie studios about the benefits of making movies in Cleveland.
The commission is also lobbying Ohio lawmakers to make them aware that Ohio’s relatively-small forty million dollar tax incentive cap needs to be kicked up several notches to bring more movie-makers here. Kentucky just kicked its cap up to one hundred million dollars. Georgia has an uncapped tax incentive, while New York has a four hundred fifty million dollar cap.
Garvey and his spouse Carol, a native Clevelander, live in Rocky River, Ohio with their nine-year-old daughter Sara.
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