Читать книгу Texas Got It Right! - Sam Wyly - Страница 10

I went to college at Denison University, a

small liberal-arts institution in Ohio with

only a few thousand students. One year

I invited my schoolmate, a guy from

Newark, Ohio, to come with me on a

visit to Dallas to see my dad. Driving

from the airport, I noticed that my

friend kept looking out the car window

with a perplexed look on his face.

“Where is the desert?” he asked.

“What desert?” I replied.

Like many people visiting Texas for the first time,

my friend assumed that the state looked like some-

thing out of an old Western movie, a place where men

wore ten-gallon hats and boots with spurs, and the

landscape was all tumbleweeds and oil wells. But here

we were in a teeming, modern city filled with people

of every age and race, and bustling with commercial

and cultural activity. Given all the mythology sur-

rounding Texas, I guess it’s not surprising that

outsiders might still harbor some old-fashioned notion

about the place and its inhabitants, but the disconnect

between fantasy and reality never ceases to amaze me.

I’ve got an interesting perspective on the Lone

Star State. Growing up, I split my time between Cali-

fornia and Texas. Shortly after graduating from

college in 2004, I decided to leave Los Angeles and

move to Dallas. It was a career decision as much as a

personal one: Sure, California had a great climate

and nice beaches, but the business environment,

even in those prerecession years, felt stagnant, bur-

dened with some of the heaviest taxes in the nation

and some of the most restrictive regulations. Texas,

by contrast, felt vibrant, alive with opportunity.

I also couldn’t believe how much cheaper

it was to live in Texas. Actually, it was

cheaper to do almost anything here,

including starting a business, which is

what I did in 2007, establishing a film-

production company in Dallas in

order to pursue my dream of making

movies. The fact that I started a career

as a film producer after leaving Los

Angeles says a lot about how much more

attractive Texas is than California for young

entrepreneurs.

I found that out the hard way when it came time

for me to start making my first film. Bowing to con-

ventional wisdom, I decided to shoot most of it back in

L.A., figuring that’s where so much of the skilled talent

in the industry was concentrated. I quickly learned,

though, that L.A. is a terrible place to shoot a movie. It

is a nightmare of endless paperwork, unscrupulous

contractors, and property owners trying to milk extra

dollars out of their burdensomely expensive real

estate. A common exchange would go like this:

“Hello, I would like to rent your parking lot for a

week.”

“Sure, it’s $100 a day. What do you need it for?”

“I’m making a movie.”

“Oh, in that case it’s $200 a day.”

Months after we finished principal filming, I

returned with my crew to Texas to shoot some pickup

scenes. I was shocked at how much easier it was.

Above: Andrew Wyly poses for David Wright’s painting The

Alamo in Dripping Springs, Texas. Opposite: The not-in-my-

backyarders in other states fight against expanding offshore

drilling, but that attitude doesn’t fly in Texas.

TEXAS GOT IT RIGHT!

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