Anyone who knows Jon Hendry knows he talks fast….and if you’re gonna keep up you better have some skills…skills I tried desperately to sharpen as I sat down with Jon for an interview recently at the Sheraton Uptown, the meeting place for this year’s IATSE conference, which is the movie workers’ union Jon has represented for years. We shuffled over to a quiet corner in the lobby where John tested his mic by singing in his fine Scottish brogue a few lines from an old Frankie Valli song: “You’re just to good to be true…” and this is where I joined in “Can’t take my eyes off of you…” and that kinda ruined it so I decided just to proceed with the interview since I ask questions much better than I sing. Jon forgave me…and how could he not? Our history is rather parallel and overlaps at times, dating back to the early, early EARLY days of film in New Mexico.

Before his foray into film, Jon was a self-professed “music-guy” traveling with bands that made several stops in New Mexico, specifically mentioning being on tour with ACDC…but by 1988, he was finished with rock and roll and decided to switch to pictures. He says at that point and time his film career was good enough to where he could work anywhere. Jon always thought Santa Fe was a nice place to live and he wanted to be home more with his kids. But Jon says he never expected NM to be a hub of movie activity: “I never really thought there’d be a film business indigenous to New Mexico…there are a lot of strikes against us here…we’re faraway from places, there’s not a big population…there’s not an ethnically diverse population…there’ are a lot of problems in making movies here…but I thought I’d do most of the westerns and science fiction stuff. I had a good enough reputation that I could pretty much be the first call on every movie.” And that’s how it was for awhile….not nearly a gold rush but not a drought either. And then without much warning, the productions here started pulling up and moving out.

Photo’s by Garnett Burk

Jon’s epiphany came in 1994. “Earth 2 said it was going to leave NM because they were tired of paying the gross receipts tax. “That was back when we believed movie companies.” Jon says with a smile. Jon suspects they had other reasons for pulling out of NM…such as Spielberg leaving Earth 2 to direct Schindler’s List and he says the scripts got really bad and that’s why they left, but they blamed it on the gross-receipts tax. So Jon saw an opportunity to run to the Legislature, seeking an exemption for movies companies bringing their productions to NM. Jon says lawmakers were pretty sympathetic because these were some high-paying jobs. ”I learned a lot about the legislative process during that negotiation.” So it worked, but it was too late to persuade the movies being made here at the time to stay here rather than looking for greener pastures in places like Alberta and Saskatchewan. Jon says it was like “A lady went out for cigarettes and you notice later she took the dog and the bags with her, but we didn’t notice the dog and the bags for a couple of years…we didn’t realize the jobs moving to Canada weren’t coming back.”

That void solidified between 1994 and 1996 when Canada started passing meaningful incentives. That translated not only to past productions lost to Canada, but future projects as well. Jon says it wasn’t until 1998 that NM realized that the lady who went out for cigarettes really, REALLY wasn’t coming back. Lots of struggling crew members scraped along with side jobs, trying to hang on until the next project came in. Those jobs proved to be few and far between. More than once, Jon had a revolving-cast of crew members staking a claim to his guest bedroom for lack of a better place to stay. I remember joking with Jon about that, telling him “better your couch than mine” as I had hosted my share as well. My brother, Casey Davis, was one such starry-eyed youth trying to break into film. He remembers working for Jon and Lisa van Allen (Jon’s partner) on “The Missing” back in 2001. “I lived in Taos and my position didn’t rate a hotel room, so Jon and Lisa offered me their guest room when the long shooting days made it impossible to commute. It was an offer that had been extended to many crew members over the years, an open invitation. The room had a private entrance and I had the key. It’s hard to say just how many people had keys to that room. As I stumbled in one night after a 20 hour day in the Jemez, I was startled to find a large snoring Teamster in the bed. He had a key from an invitation that preceded mine and had fallen asleep after bringing a truck in from L.A… Even Jon and Lisa were oblivious to that fact that he was there. First come, first served, as they say.” Davis says film industry folks have always had a sense of brotherhood. Jon and Lisa have always supported that idea, in word and in action.”

Those lean times also led to Albuquerque-L.A. commuter grind for lots of workers who, like Jon, had to go where the jobs were to keep their pensions and health insurance rolling…and that meant flying back and forth to L.A. after weeks of brutally hectic schedules. Jon remembers a hellish calendar of arriving in “We’d arrive in L.A. late Sunday night, being on set at 6 am the next morning…you know they do that rolling actors schedule…then we’d fly back to home Friday night, lose another hour on the flight, drive up to Santa Fe with no sleep…catch up on sleep Saturday for half a day…see the kids Saturday night and part of Sunday then fly back to L.A.” Well, it didn’t take too long before Jon realized that was no kind of life. He says while the frequent flyer miles were nice, he decided he couldn’t take it anymore and he did something about it.

Serendipitously, it seems, his opportunity came swiftly. A chance meeting led to an association with then-Governor Gary Johnson. Jon had been talking to a group of painters at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Santa Fe and said if you ever need work…give me a call. One of the painters mentioned the governor’s daughter had been to their worksite the day before asking for a job. She had recently graduated as a fine arts major at Colorado College. So Jon took a chance and called the governor’s mansion directly, and asked to speak to the governor’s daughter. They said “Which one?” And Jon guessed correctly: “The older one.” They put him through and that conversation led to her getting a job on All the Pretty Horses, and led to Jon having the governor’s ear.

With his legal background, Jon used his new relationship to start talking incentives. He joined with Senator Shannon Robinson (D) and they came up with a bill for the film investment program, granting state loans to bring in more films, and it passed in the 1999 session. And the jobs started to come back.

There was, however, a serious learning curve for lots of crew try to their hands at carrying cord, cameras and props. Davis recalls one of those pioneer-style meetings where he and many others began to see Jon in a new light…the catering guy was becoming a valuable political ally to resuscitate and sustain the flat-lining film economy. For Davis, that “new light” was shed during a lunchtime meeting on the 2000 set of Tortilla Heaven. “I was brand new. I was enamored by the industry and, at the age of 25 I was a sponge, listening and watching everything that went on around me.”

Davis joined in a lunchtime political debate being moderated by Jon, who was the Craft Service key on that show.” Casey says Jon had recently been voted in as Business Agent for the local, which at that time was a group of less than 200 members- all of whom had second jobs. Film work was a hobby. And while Davis remembers being WOW-ed by Jon’s negotiating skills, he wasn’t so impressed with the Scotsman’s salsa making-abilities “Jon was elected to the office, I am told, to prevent him from pursuing his career as a caterer. Scottish…caterer…’nuf said. As I listened to Jon, dipping a tortilla chip into the salsa he had just stretched by adding Ragu pasta sauce, I understood why he MUST make the move.” Who can say if anyone ever told Jon to his face that his salsa-skills were lacking…but he certainly got the attention of his movie-making friends. Davis says “The minutes of that meeting, had they been kept, would become the framework of the New Mexico Film Industry that we marvel at today.”

Encouraged by the support of his colleagues and the success of working with the 1999 legislature, Jon and a few other NM visionaries worked on several bills in the 2000 session, including free filming on state land and getting the prison system involved. Jon says they were smaller bills, but cumulatively, they were very helpful. But in 2001, Jon worked with Eric Witt, who was then working for the Speaker of the House, Lisa Strout, who was Deputy Film Commissioner and Elizabeth Gaylen-Baker, who was with the Lieutenant governor’s office. Together they drafted a bill sponsored by Robinson which created the first NM film production rebate, which was 15-percent.

That was followed by a 20-percent rebate in 2002 then 25 percent in 2004. Since then the program has attracted more than 115 major film productions. In 2007 alone, 30 films were produced in NM generating 253-million in spending benefiting the NM economy and generating higher state and local tax collections. As impressive as those numbers sound the cumulative total of NM Film Production Activity has gone from $29 Million in 2003/04 to $673 Million in 2007/08. Estimated Production Activity for 2008/09 is in excess of $924 million. (See NM Film Credit Impact Analysis @ nmfilm.com)

That snowball started to roll when Governor Richardson took office…Jon had known Richardson for years and he’d finally found a kindred spirit in politics who saw the film industry as a huge opportunity in a state where opportunities are often limited. They talked a lot about the possibility of bringing in the high-paying union jobs…Jon says people forget that when Bill Richardson came back to NM to run for governor, he wasn’t the rockstar that he is today…he was just an ex-congressman to a lot of people, especially in southern NM. Jon spent a lot of time with Richardson while he was campaigning and he says back in those days, a lot of times it was just himself, the Gov and his spokesperson, Billy Sparks sitting around by themselves. “We’d show up for meetings and get our coffee and realize nobody was showing up but us.” But when Richardson got elected, he immediately made it a priority to put film production on the front burner. “Even though a lot of stuff passed before the Richardson administration, I cannot emphasize enough what it took to get allthis stuff going…everything was in place but NOTHING was happening.” Jon says Richardson was an active and engaged governor pushed all the departments. He appointed a good film commissioner who was union, and the governor himself got meetings with Hollywood producers like Sherry Lansing or Rob Reiner, when Jon could not. Jon says while Richardson was eager to help, he didn’t go to every meeting in L.A….”We only pulled him out when we needed the big guns.”

When asked why the governor had such a personal interest in developing film here, as opposed to other options, Jon says “That’s just the thing…there AREN’T many options.” He says being as far away from the marketplace as possible means the cost of distribution will always be too high. “Look, you’re never going to get a Toyota plant. You’re not going to get a Cessna or a Boeing. We don’t have the educated workforce, the means of distribution.” He says Richardson knew that, and he was in a hurry to create jobs. He didn’t want to take 10-15 years to build a plant and the infrastructure necessary to manufacture jobs. With film, Jon says, those jobs are instant.” The governor narrowed his vision to five things…light aircraft manufacturing, space commercialization, film and multimedia, green energy and education. “These were alternatives we could do without having infrastructure in place. High-paying union jobs are hard to find, but that’s exactly what we have now.”

But what we don’t have now is an adequately educated workforce to FILL the movie jobs NM is bringing in, and Jon says unfortunately, that means union workers from L.A. and other places are brought in to fill the spots where NM lacks qualified or trained professionals. The NM industry hopes to change that with a series of PSA’s airing in February 2009, focusing on creating jobs for young people in the industry and starting film programs in the public high school system. The goal is to train high school students through dual enrollment in high school courses as well as courses at Central New Mexico Community College. “They can either go into a four-year school or go straight into the film business.” With some of the lowest graduation rates in the nation, any incentive to keep kids in school is a valuable tool. Jon says the film program has an added secret benefit and he hopes the kids won’t figure it out: “What’s really cool about this is that it’s actually a stay-in school program as well. If we get 100 high school classes teaching 20 at a time, we don’t need 2000 people a year coming into the film business…and not all of them will go into the film. But they will stay in school for another year and learn marketable skills.” Jon says whether we teach them to be a grip, carpenter, or an electrician, these jobs require problem-solving, and whatever business these kids go into the extra experience will be invaluable. “If we say we’re gonna teach you how to wire houses in Rio Rancho, nobody would come to the class…but if we say we’re gonna teach you how to learn wiring for the movies…they’re interested and they stay in school for another year.”
“Movie people are amazing…we put up a huge tent, build a town, shoot the film then 8-10 weeks later we break it all down and do it again somewhere else.” He adds the skills you learn are unique to the movie industry but there’s so much crossover that the life skills learned translate into every other imaginable career.

And it’s not just kids making the career choice either…lots of adults are being wooed by the allure of something new, foreign and definitely better-paying than they jobs they’ve previously held here for years.

Jon says he hates to pick on her, but he always tells the story of one of the greatest production managers he’s worked with. She was 35, working at a credit union, raising her kids. She walked over to the set one day and started talking to the craft services manager and said “I’ve been working this job for so long…and I am not even sure how my life came to this point. I never wanted to work at a credit union.” She really wanted to make a switch to movies but didn’t know how or if it was even possible. The union set her up with some classes…she used her numbers experience to learn payroll accounting for the movies and by educating herself she went from credit union employee to production manager on a 7-million dollar movie for Italian TV. “You’d think I’d be kidding ya if I told you just two years. But she’s a better producer than half the people I’ve worked with. If she’d never come to craft services to ask she’d never have that career and that’s sad. There’s thousands of people out there like that now…it’s depressing.”

But while some New Mexicans have found success working hard…Jon says many more need to work much harder. It’s crucial that those who want to be in film to take control of their own experience level. He says local actors need to use their downtime improving. He suggests taking classes or doing local theater. “Teaching will make you better because you gotta think about it.” But whatever you do, constantly improving your skill is the best way to keep getting hired, and he can’t stress it enough. “Good film people realize this job is 50-52 weeks every year. If they work 50 weeks, they spend the other two getting better at what they do.” Back in 1998, there were only 75 union members when Jon started scratching out plans in the desert of NM…today there are 1400 in the union roster, and Jon would love to see that number continue grow. But as Jon reminded me before he ran off to yet another IATSE meeting, “You don’t get the job sitting at home watching court shows.” That’s good advice, Jon. There’s not a Law and Order I haven’t seen. But if you don’t mind, I’ll stick to my own salsa recipe.

By:
Erica Viking
Senior Reporter
FilmSavage.com