Lights, Camera, Jobs!
Forget glitz, glamour and multimillion-dollar Oscar contenders. Movies with budgets under $10 million shine an important spotlight on jobs and economic development across Washington state, creating an important, thriving industry.
Although the lion’s share of feature-length movies, commercials and movies of the week are produced in Western Washington (since 2007, 42 have been produced on the west side of the mountains, 17 on the east), for the past 20 years, a Spokane company has followed a script that annually pumps millions of dollars into the Inland Northwest economy and has made it the top feature film production company in the state.
In 1990, when Rich Cowan was working for Spokane’s NBC affiliate, KHQ-TV, he wanted to go out on his own and make movies, but relocating to Los Angeles or New York was not in the program. “We had kids, and this is a good place to raise a family,” Cowan says. “So I thought let’s start a company and bring in the work.”
The business plan jelled and Cowan created North By Northwest Productions in Spokane, later opening a second office in Boise. In the past 21 years, North By Northwest has produced 40 feature-length movies and hundreds of documentaries, commercials and corporate videos. It recently added a multimedia division. Today, North By—as employees call it—averages four to five movies a year with budgets ranging from $2 million to $8 million each. Most of those dollars come from outside the area and stay in the Inland Northwest.
Some flicks, like 2006’s Home of the Brave, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Jessica Biel, enjoy moderate box-office buzz, while most go straight to DVD or are made for TV. And some, like the recently completed thriller The River Sorrow, starring Ray Liotta, Christian Slater and Ving Rhames and directed by Cowan, are optioned by Sony Pictures for worldwide distribution. Its high-profile buzz resulted in a red-carpet premiere last month at the Cannes Film Festival.
In March, North By signed a contract to film Thunderballs, a TV-sitcom pilot, in Spokane. Centered on three 30-something guys who belong to a beer-league bowling team, the pilot was shot in May. If the series is picked up by the male-oriented cable-TV channel Spike, it will be shot in Spokane. Casting has not yet been determined.
“It’s all about jobs, keeping local people working,” Cowan says. “By producing smaller-budget films, we can hire locally and keep
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