Comments on: No $$$ Anywhere: Notes on a Typical Roundtable

By: D'Urville Martin

D'Urville Martin — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 23:36:00 +0000

Idea #1: The various State lotteries should pay for indie film production. This is how it worked in the UK for years.

By: Nandan Rao

Nandan Rao — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 22:39:00 +0000

Thanks Josh – I had been reading up on the NEA (this is a nice intro piece – http://www.nea.gov/pub/how.pdf) – which states that the NEA’s budget was $148 million in 2012, of which 80% went to grants ($118 mil), and then I read that less than one percent of arts funding in the US comes from the NEA – So, I extrapolated to figure it’s definitely over $10 billion, which I decided counts as ‘tens of billions’… On your calling me out, I just now found this report (http://www.giarts.org/article/overview-revenue-streams-nonprofit-arts-organizations/) that states that $12 billion was funded/donated to arts non-profits in 2000… so maybe ‘more than $10 billion’ is a more accurate/safe term (how about ‘many billions’, that’s a fair term, right?).

By: Adrian Manzano

Adrian Manzano — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:28:00 +0000

Funny I thought you guys had the answer : Make small movies for ZERO budget, so even $1000 in DVD sales is something… Doesn’t Swanberg live off his Library?

By: Josh Welsh

Josh Welsh — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:00:00 +0000

Good piece, thanks for writing this. Curious about your mention of “tens of billions of dollars” of grants and donations that flowed into arts funding in 2012. My initial reaction was that that sounded way too high a figure, but maybe I’m wrong. Can you elaborate a little bit?