More than 50 years ago, long before a film tax credit transformed Georgia into one of the country’s largest moviemaking destinations, then-Gov. Jimmy Carter laid the groundwork for the state’s multibillion-dollar film industry.
He created the state’s first film commission in 1973, recognizing that the few productions coming to Georgia were pumping money into the communities in which they filmed, and there was a business opportunity in continuing this momentum.
The idea came to him from journalist Ed Spivia, who, upon a visit to the set of the 1972 film “Deliverance,” discovered the cast and crew were patronizing local restaurants and hotels in rural Rabun County. After the release of the film, which followed four Atlanta businessmen who venture to northeast Georgia for a canoeing trip and face danger from the locals, the area enjoyed a boost in tourism from people looking to test the river’s rapids just as the characters do.
But the impact could be traced as far back as the 1939 film “Gone With the Wind.” Despite the fact that much of it was shot in California, tourists from all over the world flocked to the state to experience the locations within the film.
Carter’s film commission still exists today. The Georgia Film Office, as it is called, celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023. Though not without its criticisms, the decades of investment in the industry have created thousands of jobs that would’ve otherwise gone out of state.
After the creation of the state’s film tax credit program, now Georgia’s largest corporate incentive, studios have spent billions to shoot some of the highest-grossing films of all time in Georgia, developers quadrupled the amount of soundstage space and cities like Senoia or Covington turned into tourist destinations after they played host to “The Walking Dead” and “The Vampire Diaries.” (Though the latter ended in 2017, you can still buy a fruit punch-filled “blood bag” at a few spots in downtown Covington.)
Craig Miller, who runs a production company in Atlanta and has worked in the industry for more than three decades, calls Carter the “original light in the darkness” that opened Georgia to production companies. The same sentiment is held by other leaders in Georgia’s film industry.
There was a flurry of production immediately following “Deliverance.” Many of the films, including “The Longest Yard” and “Smokey and the Bandit,” starred Burt Reynolds, who became a close friend of Carter and Spivia.
“I think it’s pretty incredible that Carter’s vision led to something that is a rare issue that Republicans and Democrats can agree upon,” said Kelsey Moore, the executive director of the Georgia Screen Entertainment Coalition, a lobbying organization affiliated with the Georgia Chamber.
Carter, ever the movie lover himself, figured out early on that the state could attract projects by offering what other major film hubs couldn’t: no — or less — red tape.
“We would do anything that was legal,” Carter told his biographer Douglas Brinkley in a 2023 Vanity Fair article. “Sometimes we would stretch the law to make it easy for them to make the films.”
Credit: File
Credit: File
For instance, Carter explained to Brinkley, when producers wanted to make the 1974 Reynolds-headlined film “The Longest Yard,” the state met every single one of their needs. They secured access to the now-shuttered Georgia State Prison in Reidsville as a filming location, convinced Coca-Cola to put up old-fashioned advertisements around the field and placed newspaper ads for a 1932 gray Ford pickup truck needed for the film. When Reynolds was looking for a place to stay, Carter said they talked to the prison warden, who offered up his home and moved temporarily into a motel.
When the film’s producers needed to film a cheering section of gay Black prisoners, which Carter said was a “very sensitive thing for Georgia back then,” he greenlit it. He told the director of the prison system to approve the section, he told Brinkley.
“So that’s the kind of thing,” Carter told Brinkley. “If they wanted to burn down a building or set some woods on fire — whatever they wanted, we would do.”
Carter met with producers in New York and Hollywood to pitch Georgia as a filming location. During his final year as governor, about 26 films shot in the state, Carter said in the Vanity Fair article, a number that is far below the state’s average monthly total of active productions.
Lee Thomas, the deputy commissioner of the Georgia Film Office, met with Carter in 2018 with former film office directors Norm Bielowicz and Greg Torre. He was proud of the success of the industry, Thomas said in a statement.
“He knew well that his idea to create the Georgia Film Office had been a good one,” Thomas said.
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