Can Congress save Hollywood?

Good morning, it’s Thursday, October 8. An extreme heat watch is still in effect but today should feel very slightly cooler than yesterday.

Congresswoman Laura Friedman was a movie producer before she entered politics. Her oeuvre includes the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen 1995 vehicle It Takes Two (she says she couldn't tell the twins apart, but other people on set could) and 1996's Foxfire, starring Angelina Jolie. (The top Letterboxd review reads: "angelina jolie tattooing her own titty to mazzy star was a cultural reset.")

Friedman, a Democrat who now represents Glendale, Burbank, West Hollywood and parts of Los Angeles and Pasadena, remembers 1990s Hollywood: "There was a joke that if you wrote a good screenplay and you threw it out the window on the 405, someone would find it and make it," she said. 

But the industry she was once a part of looks quite different today. "We've been watching this industry shrink, and what that means is closed offices, unemployment, closed restaurants, coffee shops that aren't busy, caterers ... a kind of apocalyptic desperation around town about the industry," she says.

Last month, Friedman introduced the Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act, legislation which would create the first national tax credit for film and TV productions shot in the U.S. The bill, which she hopes Congress will pass before the end of the year, has gathered broad support including from President Donald Trump. Yet some here in her home district worry the bill may not provide the salve local workers need. They fear that other filming states like Georgia or New Jersey could benefit from the new credit at California’s expense.

Friedman joined L.A. World, L.A. Material’s new podcast, to talk about the bill, the challenges of getting it passed and her less-than-chill feelings about watching movies at the Alamo Drafthouse: "Get off your damn phones."

FEAR AND SCROLLING: Daniel Kolitz, of viral-article-about-gooners fame, has a new treatise, this time about the boom and looming bust of microdramas, "TV shows for your phone." He spoke to more than 80 stars, directors, executives, agents, managers and crew members who've worked on shows with titles like My Gorgeous Wife Is an Ex-Convict and Found a Homeless Billionaire Husband for Christmas. The result: A portrait of the rise and fall of an industry as vivid and short as a fever dream. 

THE KELVIN WAVE ARRIVES : A Kelvin wave is bearing down on Southern California this week. The wave won't necessarily cause flooding, but it will add 6 to 12 inches to baseline sea levels — potentially for months — and "if there are storms forecasted or a high tide coming up, that is when the Kelvin wave could exacerbate damages," says Dillon Amaya, an assistant professor in North Carolina State University's Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

THE KAMALA CONUNDRUM: A trio of Washington Post political reporters digs into the question looming over the Democratic party: Should former Vice President Kamala Harris run in 2028? Can she lead the party back to power, or would she be an albatross whose candidacy "could pull Democrats back toward a painful political era"?

ADELANTO LARVAE REMAIN: In last week's L.A. World episode, we discussed how a detainee exposed the "worm-like creatures" in the water at the Adelanto detention facility. Los Angeles Daily News reporter Ryanne Mena confirmed in August that the creatures were in fact drain fly larvae. A monitor appointed by a federal judge to oversee conditions at the detention center found that there is still larvae in the water although overall conditions have improved.

For today’s peek inside our member-only forum, @seanyoo valiantly posts through his shame to inform us if the Porto’s x Ggiata collab is worth trying.

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Home” by Carl Sandberg.