{"id":55403,"date":"2015-10-01T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=55403"},"modified":"2015-10-01T07:55:15","modified_gmt":"2015-10-01T12:55:15","slug":"guffaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=55403","title":{"rendered":"Guffaw"},"content":{"rendered":"

So after decades of ignoring the place, Hollywood has apparently set\u00a0some sort of television show\u00a0in\u00a0“North Dakota”.<\/p>\n

“Blood and Oil”, starring Don Johnson (who some of you may remember from, ahem, thirty years ago) airs on ABC – which is one of those “TV Networks” your parents used to talk about before even they\u00a0<\/em>switched to Netflix. \u00a0 It gives off the appearance<\/a> of being a\u00a0Dallas<\/em>-style soaper.<\/p>\n

How do you<\/em> think it turned out<\/a>?<\/p>\n

That was the question no doubt going through the minds of many people in the state when ABC\u2019s new drama \u201cBlood & Oil\u201d premiered last week to modest ratings. The show is ostensibly set in North Dakota\u2019s Bakken oil fields, though it\u2019s hard to tell, given the snowcapped peaks of the Rocky Mountains looming in the background of exterior shots<\/strong>.
\nThe Rockies, in case you needed an update on your geography, reside hundreds of miles to the west of North Dakota.
\nThere were other guffaw-worthy moments for North Dakotans in the show\u2019s first episode. A character killed a white moose at one point \u2014 moose aren\u2019t at all common on the prairies of North Dakota \u2014 and a scene depicting two characters wrestling in jet black oil was downright incongruous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But it could have been changed – with the help of subsidies, naturally. \u00a0North Dakota doesn’t offer them; Utah does:<\/p>\n

Turns out it\u2019s all about money. Utah offers filmmakers a 25 percent tax rebate. For filming \u201cBlood & Oil\u201d in that state, the Utah Film Commission gave the show\u2019s creators an $8.34 million tax credit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

North Dakota, on the other hand, offers filmmakers exactly nothing. Which is why some in the state think subsidies could fix \u201cBlood & Oil\u2019s\u201d scenery problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s the same reason\u00a0Gran Torino<\/em>, whose screenplay was set in Saint Paul, was filmed in Detroit; because Michigan has a program to transfer wealth from Detroit to Hollywood.<\/p>\n

Which is something North Dakota’s legislature turned down by a 2-1 margin.<\/p>\n

Which is roughly the ratio of Republicans to Democrats in the North Dakota legislature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So after decades of ignoring the place, Hollywood has apparently set\u00a0some sort of television show\u00a0in\u00a0“North Dakota”. “Blood and Oil”, starring Don Johnson (who some of you may remember from, ahem, thirty years ago) airs on ABC – which is one of those “TV Networks” your parents used to talk about before even they\u00a0switched to Netflix. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e","category-midwest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55403"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55423,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55403\/revisions\/55423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}