Between the Movie and the Money: Packaging the 1970s Motion Tax Shelter

Abstract

Histories of 1970s American cinema have often positioned tax shelter financing as the economic base that allowed for a flourishing of the “New Hollywood,” a cinematic period characterized by auteurist breaks with the narrative and stylistic conventions that previously standardized Hollywood filmmaking. This article investigates how such tax shelters operated in practice and made the motion picture industry part of a growing tax shelter industry. Specifically, I detail the work of the tax shelter “packager,” an industry figure who emerged as a liaison between motion picture organizations and sources of financing. In so doing, I argue that, while tax shelter financing did not give outside investors or firms meaningful control over the content of 1970s films, this practice placed motion picture investment within the growing financialization of the American economy and attendant strategies of high-income tax avoidance.