Today's guest is Adrin Nazarian—former California State Assemblyman who helped triple the film tax credit from $100 million to $330 million during his decade in Sacramento, and now an LA City Councilmember who's fought to get that credit up to $750 million.

Back in March, Adrin filed a motion with ten specific permitting reforms that passed city council unanimously unanimously to direct the Chief Legislative Analyst (CLA) to report back within 30 days on the feasibility of these proposed changes using input from the LAFD, LAPD, Recreation & Parks, DWP, DOT, Bureau of Public Works, and FilmLA.

It's now November. As of this recording on October 29th, the CLA report is 150 days overdue.

So yes, I ask the hard questions. Where is that report? (I'm told it's coming any day now!). What does it mean to be "nimble" in the world of politics when everything takes so long? We get into the real progress that is happening, even if imperfect.

We have an honest dialogue about what we've lost. How tentpole productions left while the streaming boom kept everyone busy, until that bubble popped and companies realized the spending wasn't sustainable. How we've spent a decade training workforces in other states while our decline was masked by volume. And how policymakers took entertainment for granted because tech wealth was flooding in.

But we also talk about how we're building it back. Adrin is refreshingly honest that the industry has been so successful for so long that nobody could have imagined it would ever cease to exist, much less look at the trajectory with concern because the receipts were still coming in.

But now we're here. And there's a generation hungry for this work, ready to innovate and push the industry to new limits. That's what this fight is actually about. Not preserving nostalgia, but building the future.

xx CG

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