Mississippi Film Office Celebrates 50 Years

When the mostly-rave reviews for Robert Altman’s 1974 film Thieves Like Us came out, there was almost universal praise for the film’s distinct, and sometimes uncanny, sense of place. The world of Depression-era Mississippi—with its worn clapboard houses spaced between dirt roads and brambly overgrowth, chairs rocking on screened porches, its wild undercurrent of gun-violence—is rendered, as Pauline Kael at the New Yorker put it, “… beautifully and without artifice.”

That characteristic authenticity was achieved in part by Altman’s decision to shoot the film on location in Mississippi, where he received assistance from the state as the first-ever project of the Mississippi Film Commission—which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year.

The commission was originally formed in 1973 in response to the growing trend of on-location filming spurred by the New Hollywood movement, led by directors like Altman, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola. The founders saw an opportunity to capitalize on Mississippi’s open spaces, visual beauty, and historic backdrops—presenting it as the ideal setting for a range of Hollywood projects.

Over the past fifty years, the Film Commission has assisted in bringing major productions like John Korty’s Emmy-award-winning The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974), Mississippi stories like Alan Parker’s Oscar-winning Mississippi Burning (1988), Joel Schumacher’s groundbreaking adaptation of John Grisham’s A Time to Kill (1996), the Coen Brothers’ Academy Award-nominated film O Brother Where Art Thou (2000), and Tate Taylor’s 2011 Civil Rights story The Help. Of more recent acclaim is the Laurel, Mississippi-based HGTV series Home Town—a reality television show on the work of restoring and renovating properties in the historic district.

In 1973, the Film Office's founders saw an opportunity to capitalize on Mississippi’s open spaces, visual beauty, and historic backdrops—presenting it as the ideal setting for a range of Hollywood projects.

Much has changed over the last five decades, which has brought monumental shifts in the film industry globally, including moves from analog to digital, celluloid to streaming, and theaters to handheld devices. Nina Parikh, who has served as the Director of the Mississippi Film Office for twenty-five years, said that the state’s industry has continued to grow with these changes, while maintaining the qualities that make it an attractive site for filmmaking, including offering familiar locations like historic town squares, supportive communities, and a growinOg pool of talent. “Mississippians can’t resist a good story, and we can’t help but be gracious hosts, so it’s sort of a perfect match,” she said.

Traction has only increased during Parikh’s time at the office. “When I started in 1998, we were fortunate if we were able to host a couple of feature films per year,” she said. “And most of those projects were specific in subject matter to the South or Mississippi.”

Since the Office implemented its Mississippi Motion Picture Incentive Program in 2004—today offering up to 35% cash rebates on eligible expenditures and payroll for projects made in Mississippi—local production has significantly increased. Over the past three years, Parikh said that the Office has seen over twenty feature-length projects in genres ranging from thrillers to comedies, with settings ranging from Mississippi small towns to Paris, Boston, and Chicago.

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The impact of these projects goes beyond screen credits. The film industry brings with it hundreds of high-paying, creative jobs for a vast variety of backgrounds to Mississippians, while also stimulating “tremendous” amounts of money within communities at local restaurants, hotels, Mom and Pop-owned hardware and paint stores, gas stations, landscaping businesses, and much more. “Those are the quantifiable impacts,” said Parikh, “but what is harder to track, but equally important, is the marketing value of hosting a production. In all cases, non-residents coming to work here generally have a great experience, and tend to spread the good word about Mississippi.”

In the future, Parikh said that she hopes to see even more stories told by Mississippi storytellers, made for the screen by Mississippi filmmakers, and to get to the point where the industry allows local crew and cast to make their living exclusively on films year-round.

Visit filmmississippi.org/ and visitmississippi.org/film to learn more.