They're doing it again.
About four months after Hurricane Andrew, I went home for a visit. And as my mother was driving me home from the airport, we reached an intersection where the traffic light was still dead. She needed to turn left, so she did what she was supposed to do: stopped at the intersection, waited for traffic to clear, started to nudge forward and then stopped again. "Wait for it," she said, and I had no idea what she was talking about.
A moment later, a car tore through the intersection from the direction we were about to take. It didn't stop, it didn't slow down, it just barreled through at top speed. "Okay," Mom said, "now we can go."
As a passenger, I was never so terrified in my life. Mom explained that once the traffic lights went out, many Miami drivers simply decided that what that meant was that they now had carte blanche to do whatever the hell they wanted. They had utterly abandoned the rules of the road, and if we wanted to stay alive, it was our responsibility to look out for them because they sure as shootin' weren't looking out for us.
The same thing happened after Hurricane Katrina took her little practice-swing at South Florida before moving on to her New Orleans grand slam. And in the wake of Wilma, Miami drivers are doing it again.
I have never understood this; maybe I don't understand such behavior because I do understand why we have traffic laws. Traffic laws, you see, are not there to personally inconvenience you; they are there to make sure we don't kill each other, plain and simple. Traffic laws are one of the purest examples of how we are all interdependent on each other, particularly in a big city. If drivers just do what they want, without a thought for anyone else, then accidents are guaranteed. Big bad nasty accidents. One driver in a hurry goes through an intersection and meets another driver in a hurry, the hard way. As sure as the night follows the day.
Here in L.A., the liquid nature of traffic patterns is particularly apparent. There is so much traffic around here that if one driver, only one, does something that is, shall we say, not quite enlightened, traffic will immediately back up right down the line. Here's an example:
On the Pacific Coast Highway (one of the world's great roads), right at the intersection with Sunset Boulevard, when driving south-to-north a lane opens up just before the intersection. Its purpose is to allow drivers to turn right onto Sunset, but it is not marked as a right-turn-only lane. Just past the intersection, the road is also widened for a short distance, to allow room for drivers to turn from Sunset onto the PCH; they must merge almost immediately into the regular flow of traffic. But what inevitably happens is this: south-to-north drivers on PCH swing into the open lane and, when the light turns green, they charge forward, thus allowing them to cut in front of most of the people in the real lane who waited their turn. When these drivers then have to merge in, the rest of us have to slow in order to make room. This makes the real lane back up, and when other unenlightened drivers see how long the line is at the intersection, they swing into the open lane.
All they see is their convenience. They do not see, or choose not to see, that in fact they are the reason why the lane is so backed-up in the first place. If no one pulled that little stunt, there wouldn't be nearly so much merging, and traffic would move better. Their personal convenience becomes a great deal of inconvenience for dozens, sometimes hundreds of people who do actually appreciate how this stuff is supposed to work.
Same with these Miami intersection-crashers. They want to go as fast as they want; the traffic lights are dead, which means that they are free to do as they want, particularly with the police so busy, you know, helping people; in the process, everyone else gets delayed, and lives are put at serious risk.
There's a word for people like this. Starts with an A, ends with an E, and has SSHOL in the middle.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Holocausts in Art
I recently watched Atom Egoyan's film Ararat, which deals (not quite directly) with the Armenian genocide. Egoyan is himself of Armenian descent, and after The Sweet Hereafter I have been a fan of his work. (Even so, it took me a couple years to get around to seeing this film--my Netflix list is very, very long.) I've seen some reviews complaining that this movie "could have been Egoyan's Schindler's List," given the superficial resemblance of genocide at the heart of both stories. But Schindler's List was about doing good in a time of great evil; Ararat is about the weight of the past on those who cannot escape the burdens of history. Different subjects altogether, and I think that taken solely as a work of art, Ararat stands very well on its own.
But one of the responsibilities of this burden, as the movie makes very clear, and as Egoyan clearly believes, is the duty to show the world what happened during the Armenian genocide. (Here is a Wikipedia article on the subject.) The trouble with Egoyan's effort, as I see it, is that no one has ever made a version of Schindler's List dealing directly with the Armenian story. What Egoyan presents is a multilayered tale (including a film within a film in which a director is making a movie that does in fact aim to tell the story of the genocide) about a young man whose mother is an art historian who has written a book about an artist whose mother was a victim of the genocide (see how complicated these story-threads already are?); about an actor in the film, a Turk playing the worst of the Turks; about a Customs inspector trying to wrangle a secret out of the young man; and about the young man's half-sister, who has her own crusade, her own truth she is trying to reveal to the world.
I know an Armenian and was discussing the movie with him. I asked if he had seen Ararat and he said "I think every Armenian has seen it." But what he wanted to know from me was how the movie played to someone unfamiliar with the subject of the genocide--he has lived with this knowledge all his life, and therefore comes to the movie with full awareness of its background and viewpoints; I saw the movie simply as a work of art, and liked it very much on that basis. But as a testament to the atrocities of the Armenian genocide, I think that Egoyan was too much the artist and not enough the historian.
If there had been some Armenian version of Schindler's List, then Egoyan's work might have succeeded better--then, you see, there would have been room for a more complex treatment of the peripheral themes. But to an audience that knows nothing of the genocide, Egoyan's attempts to be even-handed only succeed in muddling the history lesson. He is, for example, scrupulously fair in allowing the Turkish actor (played by Elias Koteas, whom I always confuse with Christopher Meloni because they could be brothers) to express his view that the genocide might not have been a genocide, that it was simply one of the horrors of a more straightforward civil war. In his director's commentary, Egoyan notes that he lifted direct quotes from the official Turkish position on the genocide question (Turkey's ongoing denial that it ever happened is one of the things that most rankles Armenians today) and assigned them to Koteas's character. So I'm sure that what the character says resonates with an Armenian audience very differently than it does with me--to my ears, it all sounded reasonable. Koteas's character then goes further: he says to the young Armenian man, in essence, Listen, we were both born here in Canada and what's past is past; let's go share this bottle of champagne and be friends. In his commentary, Egoyan nearly shudders in horror at the idea; to me it sounds like the only way through such difficulties.
But then, denial of the truth is one of the principal themes of the film, and Egoyan is very interested in how people's lives are affected when they can't get at the truth of something, or when others try to deny what they believe is true. This, again, is a great subject for a film--but it interferes with the history lesson Egoyan was trying to get across. He urges viewers to go and research the subject themselves and make up their own minds, which is fair enough as far as it goes, but really, how many people will actually do that?
In short, Ararat makes for a curious object lesson. It tries to be both a polemic and a work of art, but it can't be both. If someone else had first made the polemic, then there might have been room for the work of art; but Egoyan really should have made up his mind which was more important to him, to tell the tale of the Armenian genocide or to tell the tale of the people affected by it. Films are surprisingly compact things, more like short stories than novels, and in most cases they really only have room to do one thing well. Egoyan's artistic ambitions ended up sabotaging his desire to tell a story that needs telling. Which is a shame, really, because that just leads to a sense of disappointment with the film itself, which then spreads to the subject matter and leaves me that little bit less anxious to do the research myself and determine what happened. This too would probably make Egoyan shudder with horror, but there it is.
But one of the responsibilities of this burden, as the movie makes very clear, and as Egoyan clearly believes, is the duty to show the world what happened during the Armenian genocide. (Here is a Wikipedia article on the subject.) The trouble with Egoyan's effort, as I see it, is that no one has ever made a version of Schindler's List dealing directly with the Armenian story. What Egoyan presents is a multilayered tale (including a film within a film in which a director is making a movie that does in fact aim to tell the story of the genocide) about a young man whose mother is an art historian who has written a book about an artist whose mother was a victim of the genocide (see how complicated these story-threads already are?); about an actor in the film, a Turk playing the worst of the Turks; about a Customs inspector trying to wrangle a secret out of the young man; and about the young man's half-sister, who has her own crusade, her own truth she is trying to reveal to the world.
I know an Armenian and was discussing the movie with him. I asked if he had seen Ararat and he said "I think every Armenian has seen it." But what he wanted to know from me was how the movie played to someone unfamiliar with the subject of the genocide--he has lived with this knowledge all his life, and therefore comes to the movie with full awareness of its background and viewpoints; I saw the movie simply as a work of art, and liked it very much on that basis. But as a testament to the atrocities of the Armenian genocide, I think that Egoyan was too much the artist and not enough the historian.
If there had been some Armenian version of Schindler's List, then Egoyan's work might have succeeded better--then, you see, there would have been room for a more complex treatment of the peripheral themes. But to an audience that knows nothing of the genocide, Egoyan's attempts to be even-handed only succeed in muddling the history lesson. He is, for example, scrupulously fair in allowing the Turkish actor (played by Elias Koteas, whom I always confuse with Christopher Meloni because they could be brothers) to express his view that the genocide might not have been a genocide, that it was simply one of the horrors of a more straightforward civil war. In his director's commentary, Egoyan notes that he lifted direct quotes from the official Turkish position on the genocide question (Turkey's ongoing denial that it ever happened is one of the things that most rankles Armenians today) and assigned them to Koteas's character. So I'm sure that what the character says resonates with an Armenian audience very differently than it does with me--to my ears, it all sounded reasonable. Koteas's character then goes further: he says to the young Armenian man, in essence, Listen, we were both born here in Canada and what's past is past; let's go share this bottle of champagne and be friends. In his commentary, Egoyan nearly shudders in horror at the idea; to me it sounds like the only way through such difficulties.
But then, denial of the truth is one of the principal themes of the film, and Egoyan is very interested in how people's lives are affected when they can't get at the truth of something, or when others try to deny what they believe is true. This, again, is a great subject for a film--but it interferes with the history lesson Egoyan was trying to get across. He urges viewers to go and research the subject themselves and make up their own minds, which is fair enough as far as it goes, but really, how many people will actually do that?
In short, Ararat makes for a curious object lesson. It tries to be both a polemic and a work of art, but it can't be both. If someone else had first made the polemic, then there might have been room for the work of art; but Egoyan really should have made up his mind which was more important to him, to tell the tale of the Armenian genocide or to tell the tale of the people affected by it. Films are surprisingly compact things, more like short stories than novels, and in most cases they really only have room to do one thing well. Egoyan's artistic ambitions ended up sabotaging his desire to tell a story that needs telling. Which is a shame, really, because that just leads to a sense of disappointment with the film itself, which then spreads to the subject matter and leaves me that little bit less anxious to do the research myself and determine what happened. This too would probably make Egoyan shudder with horror, but there it is.
Friday, October 21, 2005
Briefly
Roberts v. Miers
Lord knows, I wasn't crazy about the John Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court--but my objections were purely ideological. Even a casual look at his credentials made it evident that the President had done an admirable job of selecting a stealth candidate: one whose conservative bona fides were obscure, but whose qualifications were impeccable. And it didn't take long at all for me to realize that this is how the process is supposed to work: the President gets to name his nominee, and has every right to pick someone whose views conform with his own; the Senate may decline to confirm the nominee, but they have no real say in who gets nominated in the first place. (The "advise" part of "advise and consent" is by far the weaker part of the equation.) So, as much as I may dislike it, I was obliged to admit that the selection/confirmation process was followed fairly, and that in the end a qualified candidate was seated on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Then came Aunt Harriet. And by now you already know where I'm going with this, so do I really need to continue on?
The interesting question for Democrats is this: should they oppose or embrace her? Ideologically, she may end up being more moderate than the other "strict constructionists" whom Bush could have named; but she is plainly not qualified for the job, and to my mind that's the part that really matters. Call me crazy, but I never have been able to work up the kind of high dudgeon that most liberals feel about Antonin Scalia because I've seen Scalia's mind at work and I know that he's brilliant and thoughtful, even though I disagree with him almost all the time.
To me, the thing that really matters on the Supreme Court is that it be comprised of the best and brightest legal minds. Agreement or disagreement ideologically is a distant second. Therefore, if I were a Democrat--and wait, I am!--then I would take a stand against Ms. Miers, even knowing that Bush is likely to then nominate Ms. Rogers Brown or someone like her. But at least the candidate would have something resembling the ability to do the job, which has to be the part that really matters.
Murrow and Friendly
I saw Good Night, and Good Luck last week, and enjoyed it a bunch. The movie is exactly what I said was needed after the last election: more political art. I realized last November that over the last several years, liberals I think decided that on many of the important social issues they had already won the national argument. Their thinking, I think, went something like this: "My position on [fill in the blank--abortion, religion in the classes/courts, etc.] is so demonstrably right, so logically unassailable, that surely everyone can see it, and I can go back to my cheese-and-wine parties." Trouble is, the conservatives never for an instant stopped making their arguments, and in the absence of a real debate, the side that never stopped yammering slowly made inroads in the public consciousness.
Therefore I welcome a film like Good Night, and Good Luck. And even while I recognize that it is not fair and balanced (despite being scrupulously fact-checked), I rejoice in the fact that it doesn't try to be. Clooney had something he wants to say, and he's got a right to say it. Sure, you can make the argument that Murrow's role in McCarthy's downfall wasn't as central as Clooney makes it out to be, but I don't really care: it's a good story that makes a compelling point worth making, and that to me is the part that matters. We need more art like this, and I hope that writers and musicians and moviemakers all across the land are hard at work putting out their unvarnished, deeply-felt viewpoints just as Clooney did.
And while I'm on the subject, I felt like mentioning that Fred Friendly (Murrow's producer, played by Clooney, who literally sat at Murrow's feet during the McCarthy broadcasts) was the commencement speaker when I graduated from Emerson in 1987. He gave a great speech about journalistic ethics and I became an instant fan. I highly, highly recommend that if you ever get the chance, you should watch his brilliant 13-part PBS series called "The Constitution: That Delicate Balance." As Friendly himself put it, the aim of the programs was to "make the agony of decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking." He accomplished this by gathering together in a round-table format top minds of the time, from former President Ford to Supreme Court justices like the aforementioned Antonin Scalia and Potter Stewart, plus others like the then-head of Planned Parenthood, Faye Wattleton, and the brilliant think-tanker Willard Gaylin. A moderator, usually Harvard's Arthur Miller (not the playwright), would pose a theoretical question and the panelists would begin to discuss how they might approach the problem; then the moderator would turn the screw and make the problem harder to deal with, then yet harder again. The results were often brilliantly revealing, and consistently challenging. Very, very much worth seeing if you ever get the chance.
Lord knows, I wasn't crazy about the John Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court--but my objections were purely ideological. Even a casual look at his credentials made it evident that the President had done an admirable job of selecting a stealth candidate: one whose conservative bona fides were obscure, but whose qualifications were impeccable. And it didn't take long at all for me to realize that this is how the process is supposed to work: the President gets to name his nominee, and has every right to pick someone whose views conform with his own; the Senate may decline to confirm the nominee, but they have no real say in who gets nominated in the first place. (The "advise" part of "advise and consent" is by far the weaker part of the equation.) So, as much as I may dislike it, I was obliged to admit that the selection/confirmation process was followed fairly, and that in the end a qualified candidate was seated on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Then came Aunt Harriet. And by now you already know where I'm going with this, so do I really need to continue on?
The interesting question for Democrats is this: should they oppose or embrace her? Ideologically, she may end up being more moderate than the other "strict constructionists" whom Bush could have named; but she is plainly not qualified for the job, and to my mind that's the part that really matters. Call me crazy, but I never have been able to work up the kind of high dudgeon that most liberals feel about Antonin Scalia because I've seen Scalia's mind at work and I know that he's brilliant and thoughtful, even though I disagree with him almost all the time.
To me, the thing that really matters on the Supreme Court is that it be comprised of the best and brightest legal minds. Agreement or disagreement ideologically is a distant second. Therefore, if I were a Democrat--and wait, I am!--then I would take a stand against Ms. Miers, even knowing that Bush is likely to then nominate Ms. Rogers Brown or someone like her. But at least the candidate would have something resembling the ability to do the job, which has to be the part that really matters.
Murrow and Friendly
I saw Good Night, and Good Luck last week, and enjoyed it a bunch. The movie is exactly what I said was needed after the last election: more political art. I realized last November that over the last several years, liberals I think decided that on many of the important social issues they had already won the national argument. Their thinking, I think, went something like this: "My position on [fill in the blank--abortion, religion in the classes/courts, etc.] is so demonstrably right, so logically unassailable, that surely everyone can see it, and I can go back to my cheese-and-wine parties." Trouble is, the conservatives never for an instant stopped making their arguments, and in the absence of a real debate, the side that never stopped yammering slowly made inroads in the public consciousness.
Therefore I welcome a film like Good Night, and Good Luck. And even while I recognize that it is not fair and balanced (despite being scrupulously fact-checked), I rejoice in the fact that it doesn't try to be. Clooney had something he wants to say, and he's got a right to say it. Sure, you can make the argument that Murrow's role in McCarthy's downfall wasn't as central as Clooney makes it out to be, but I don't really care: it's a good story that makes a compelling point worth making, and that to me is the part that matters. We need more art like this, and I hope that writers and musicians and moviemakers all across the land are hard at work putting out their unvarnished, deeply-felt viewpoints just as Clooney did.
And while I'm on the subject, I felt like mentioning that Fred Friendly (Murrow's producer, played by Clooney, who literally sat at Murrow's feet during the McCarthy broadcasts) was the commencement speaker when I graduated from Emerson in 1987. He gave a great speech about journalistic ethics and I became an instant fan. I highly, highly recommend that if you ever get the chance, you should watch his brilliant 13-part PBS series called "The Constitution: That Delicate Balance." As Friendly himself put it, the aim of the programs was to "make the agony of decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking." He accomplished this by gathering together in a round-table format top minds of the time, from former President Ford to Supreme Court justices like the aforementioned Antonin Scalia and Potter Stewart, plus others like the then-head of Planned Parenthood, Faye Wattleton, and the brilliant think-tanker Willard Gaylin. A moderator, usually Harvard's Arthur Miller (not the playwright), would pose a theoretical question and the panelists would begin to discuss how they might approach the problem; then the moderator would turn the screw and make the problem harder to deal with, then yet harder again. The results were often brilliantly revealing, and consistently challenging. Very, very much worth seeing if you ever get the chance.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Talking About Walking
For the past several months I have done that unheard-of thing in Los Angeles: gone for a walk. I started walking mostly for health reasons, since I was obliged to quit my old health club in February and had not been getting any consistent exercise since then. But since I never owned a car until three years ago, walking is something I've always done a lot of and always enjoyed--until the car came. Then, despite my best efforts not to, I became a typical Angeleno, driving to anything that wasn't extremely close. Indeed, one of the great surprises has been how easy it is to walk to places that seemed distant--from my apartment to Westwood, with all its movie theaters (a couple miles away), is about twenty minutes. (Bear in mind, twenty minutes on the 405 may not cover even that much ground.) I even discovered that I could walk to and from work in just over half an hour, and on a nice cool day, that's no hardship at all.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that if you want to get to know your neighborhood, there is no substitute for learning on foot. Already, my walks have shown me where, as a driver, the best escape routes are when the obvious ones get backed up (and here in West L.A., it doesn't take much for these roads to get clogged). (Although if you think I'm gonna tell you what that escape route is, you're crazy. Crazy I tell ya, crazy!) Sometimes, walking around can be a lot like going into a bar and checking out the women: "Yeah, I wouldn't mind inhabiting that space," or "God no, not in a million years."
But you can also learn a lot about the history of a neighborhood by walking it, in ways that might not seem so obvious. The population density of West L.A. has been increasing in recent years, and it becomes easy to see why as I wander from block to block. Most structures are now small apartment buildings, with some upscale (but modestly-sized) condos here and there; the bigger condo towers are just a little further north and east, lining Wilshire. So for the most part the neighborhood still feels pleasantly residential, but then you start noticing that there are some scattered single-family homes dotting the area, and then you notice some lots where a structure has been recently torn down, and where construction is beginning on a small apartment building. Clearly, then, this neighborhood used to be filled with those classic L.A. bungalow-styled houses, modest little homes with modest little yards, but as real estate values rose, the owners probably sold for a big profit and moved somewhere more upscale. Those homes were torn down, and the same space was made to hold more people (more people paying more rent, further increasing local property values and the pressure on homeowners to sell and move).
In this way, the area's population density never has a big spike upward; rather, the pressures of more people and more cars ratchet up slowly, one small apartment at a time. It's not so awful when the neighborhood manages to retain its calm residential flavor; but locals react with considerable alarm when some ham-handed developer comes along with a scheme to build a massive apartment complex in the heart of the neighborhood--namely, on a section of the nearby VA Center. Bear in mind, the land for the VA Center was donated over a hundred years ago on the strict provision that it only be used for the benefit of local veterans; but now, with funding being cut and property values high, it must be a nearly-unbearable temptation for the land's trustees to sell off a portion and reap big profits.
Locals, though, have watched the slow ratcheting-up of population pressures, the increased traffic on the roads, the fact that you really can't add new roads to relieve those pressures, and they react aggresstively to the notion of a giant new complex coming in.
And now, after several weeks of prowling this neighborhood I've been living in for nearly three years, I am finally beginning to really feel like one of those locals. I'm beginning to feel the slow, quiet pulse of the place, to value these little streets and the few little homes that remain. Quite suddenly, simply because I needed a little exercise and wanted to do a bit of walking, I have gained something I never expected: a whole community that I can call my own. I no longer say that I have an apartment that happens to be in West L.A.; now I say that West L.A. is my home.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that if you want to get to know your neighborhood, there is no substitute for learning on foot. Already, my walks have shown me where, as a driver, the best escape routes are when the obvious ones get backed up (and here in West L.A., it doesn't take much for these roads to get clogged). (Although if you think I'm gonna tell you what that escape route is, you're crazy. Crazy I tell ya, crazy!) Sometimes, walking around can be a lot like going into a bar and checking out the women: "Yeah, I wouldn't mind inhabiting that space," or "God no, not in a million years."
But you can also learn a lot about the history of a neighborhood by walking it, in ways that might not seem so obvious. The population density of West L.A. has been increasing in recent years, and it becomes easy to see why as I wander from block to block. Most structures are now small apartment buildings, with some upscale (but modestly-sized) condos here and there; the bigger condo towers are just a little further north and east, lining Wilshire. So for the most part the neighborhood still feels pleasantly residential, but then you start noticing that there are some scattered single-family homes dotting the area, and then you notice some lots where a structure has been recently torn down, and where construction is beginning on a small apartment building. Clearly, then, this neighborhood used to be filled with those classic L.A. bungalow-styled houses, modest little homes with modest little yards, but as real estate values rose, the owners probably sold for a big profit and moved somewhere more upscale. Those homes were torn down, and the same space was made to hold more people (more people paying more rent, further increasing local property values and the pressure on homeowners to sell and move).
In this way, the area's population density never has a big spike upward; rather, the pressures of more people and more cars ratchet up slowly, one small apartment at a time. It's not so awful when the neighborhood manages to retain its calm residential flavor; but locals react with considerable alarm when some ham-handed developer comes along with a scheme to build a massive apartment complex in the heart of the neighborhood--namely, on a section of the nearby VA Center. Bear in mind, the land for the VA Center was donated over a hundred years ago on the strict provision that it only be used for the benefit of local veterans; but now, with funding being cut and property values high, it must be a nearly-unbearable temptation for the land's trustees to sell off a portion and reap big profits.
Locals, though, have watched the slow ratcheting-up of population pressures, the increased traffic on the roads, the fact that you really can't add new roads to relieve those pressures, and they react aggresstively to the notion of a giant new complex coming in.
And now, after several weeks of prowling this neighborhood I've been living in for nearly three years, I am finally beginning to really feel like one of those locals. I'm beginning to feel the slow, quiet pulse of the place, to value these little streets and the few little homes that remain. Quite suddenly, simply because I needed a little exercise and wanted to do a bit of walking, I have gained something I never expected: a whole community that I can call my own. I no longer say that I have an apartment that happens to be in West L.A.; now I say that West L.A. is my home.
Monday, October 17, 2005
The California State Tax Ripoff
What was that about me waiting to blog till I find a subject that won't piss someone off? To hell with that. I have every intention of pissing someone off.
--------------------------------------------
The following is a public service message for anyone contemplating the formation of an LLC in the State of California. Please follow closely; you will thank me for it later.
A Limited Liability Company offers some important legal protections, particularly for a small organization with limited resources, in any state; in California, most of the little film companies form as LLCs. (Look at the end-credits of any movie, and there will almost always be a line about, say, "Good Night and Good Luck LLC." That means that although there were various producers and studios involved, the "author" of the movie is this LLC that was formed for this one purpose.) Obviously, that means there are an awful lot of LLCs in California, maybe a disproportionately higher number than in other states. I don't know for sure, but maybe.
In any event, in the State of Californa there is a price to be paid for forming an LLC, and that price is a minimum of $800. What they don't tell you is that unless you can afford to pay professional accountants right from the git-go, your $800 will be, to put too nice a word on it, supplemented by some extra money: penalties and fees. This is because the state's Franchise Tax Board, the entity that oversees California's tax-collection efforts, has rigged the game long before you ever got here.
There are two principal ways they do this. They are both tax variations on a shell game: while you're looking over here, they get you over there.
Trap No. 1: Let's say your new LLC was incorporated in mid-November of this year. You don't know it yet because no one tells you, and the information that does tell you is buried miles deep under tax-code language that you are required to find yourself, but at the moment you incorporate you already owe $800 to the state. That amount is not pro rated at all: you owe $800, no questions, period. (The only exception is if you incorporate within the last 15 days of the calendar year--after Dec. 17, as long as you don't actually conduct any business, you're fine.)
So. You incorporated in mid-November of 2005, and you do what seems to you to be due diligence, and you find out that in April of 2006 you must file Form 568 with the Franchise Tax Board. You work very hard to interpret all the language and to fill out what is a very complicated form, and you write your check and you pay your $800 and you forget about it all until next year. You don't know it, but you're already screwed.
Here's what you probably won't have noticed: the tax return, the Form 568, will read at the top "2005." But the voucher that accompanies your payment will read "2006." Turns out there's a reason for this: your payment was due the moment you incorporated, as I said. It was supposed to have been paid by January 15 of the following calendar year. The FTB will do one of two things: apply your check to 2005 and then charge you penalties for paying in April rather than January, or apply your check to 2006 and charge you penalties for never having paid for 2005.
And bear in mind, they wait at least six months before sending these notices out. This allows the interest to build up nice and high before you even know there's a problem. And the notice they send to inform you of these penalties and interest? It will contain a single line to "explain" the problem, with reference to a set of codes that supposedly explain the explanation, but good luck because those codes are even more arcane than anything you've seen heretofore. (And these contain yet further references, to FTB publications that supposedly make it all clear.) Long story short: if you happen to get caught in Trap No. 2, you may think that that is why you're being penalized, and never realize till the next year that instead you got caught in this other trap. (Which is exactly what happened to us.)
So what is Trap No. 2? Glad you asked.
That $800 amount is due regardless of whether your LLC has generated any income or not. If you've made nothing whatsoever, too bad, you still owe $800. Now there are two lines on Form 568, one right below the other. Line 2 is where you report the LLC fee amount; line 3 is where you report the LLC tax amount. Now anyone would think this: a flat amount due regardless of whether there is or is not income, that would be a fee; an amount that applies only after you have income above a certain amount, and then varies depending on how much income there is, obviously that would be a tax.
Wrong. Reverse it. The $800 amount is the tax; the other variable amount is the fee. So when you fill out your form and put $800 on line 2, you have just filled out your form incorrectly. The FTB will wait six months, then send you a notice that you filled out your form incorrectly and owe penalties and interest. (That's what happened to us last year.)
Why does the FTB do this? I'm convinced that this offense against logic has only one reason: to generate more money for the State of California. The $800 amount would seem to be egregious enough, but by inserting this blatant bit of illogic into the code they are guaranteed to confuse a very high number of small businesses that cannot yet afford professional accounting help, and really the only way to discover the problem is to get fined for it. It's what I call official extortion, and there oughta be a law against it, but the legislature writes the laws and the legislature writes the tax code, so guess what? Too bad for you and me.
Rat bastards.
Please, I beg you: if you're thinking about ever forming an LLC in California, print out this post and keep it somewhere safe and close. Because the only way to get back at the FTB is for everyone to get this nonsense right; that would then force them to rewrite the tax code in some other massively confusing way, which might actually succeed in causing them ten minutes of trouble.
That's about the only solace we get. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find a ridiculous amount of money that does not actually exist in any of my accounts. Good luck to you--you're gonna need it.
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The following is a public service message for anyone contemplating the formation of an LLC in the State of California. Please follow closely; you will thank me for it later.
A Limited Liability Company offers some important legal protections, particularly for a small organization with limited resources, in any state; in California, most of the little film companies form as LLCs. (Look at the end-credits of any movie, and there will almost always be a line about, say, "Good Night and Good Luck LLC." That means that although there were various producers and studios involved, the "author" of the movie is this LLC that was formed for this one purpose.) Obviously, that means there are an awful lot of LLCs in California, maybe a disproportionately higher number than in other states. I don't know for sure, but maybe.
In any event, in the State of Californa there is a price to be paid for forming an LLC, and that price is a minimum of $800. What they don't tell you is that unless you can afford to pay professional accountants right from the git-go, your $800 will be, to put too nice a word on it, supplemented by some extra money: penalties and fees. This is because the state's Franchise Tax Board, the entity that oversees California's tax-collection efforts, has rigged the game long before you ever got here.
There are two principal ways they do this. They are both tax variations on a shell game: while you're looking over here, they get you over there.
Trap No. 1: Let's say your new LLC was incorporated in mid-November of this year. You don't know it yet because no one tells you, and the information that does tell you is buried miles deep under tax-code language that you are required to find yourself, but at the moment you incorporate you already owe $800 to the state. That amount is not pro rated at all: you owe $800, no questions, period. (The only exception is if you incorporate within the last 15 days of the calendar year--after Dec. 17, as long as you don't actually conduct any business, you're fine.)
So. You incorporated in mid-November of 2005, and you do what seems to you to be due diligence, and you find out that in April of 2006 you must file Form 568 with the Franchise Tax Board. You work very hard to interpret all the language and to fill out what is a very complicated form, and you write your check and you pay your $800 and you forget about it all until next year. You don't know it, but you're already screwed.
Here's what you probably won't have noticed: the tax return, the Form 568, will read at the top "2005." But the voucher that accompanies your payment will read "2006." Turns out there's a reason for this: your payment was due the moment you incorporated, as I said. It was supposed to have been paid by January 15 of the following calendar year. The FTB will do one of two things: apply your check to 2005 and then charge you penalties for paying in April rather than January, or apply your check to 2006 and charge you penalties for never having paid for 2005.
And bear in mind, they wait at least six months before sending these notices out. This allows the interest to build up nice and high before you even know there's a problem. And the notice they send to inform you of these penalties and interest? It will contain a single line to "explain" the problem, with reference to a set of codes that supposedly explain the explanation, but good luck because those codes are even more arcane than anything you've seen heretofore. (And these contain yet further references, to FTB publications that supposedly make it all clear.) Long story short: if you happen to get caught in Trap No. 2, you may think that that is why you're being penalized, and never realize till the next year that instead you got caught in this other trap. (Which is exactly what happened to us.)
So what is Trap No. 2? Glad you asked.
That $800 amount is due regardless of whether your LLC has generated any income or not. If you've made nothing whatsoever, too bad, you still owe $800. Now there are two lines on Form 568, one right below the other. Line 2 is where you report the LLC fee amount; line 3 is where you report the LLC tax amount. Now anyone would think this: a flat amount due regardless of whether there is or is not income, that would be a fee; an amount that applies only after you have income above a certain amount, and then varies depending on how much income there is, obviously that would be a tax.
Wrong. Reverse it. The $800 amount is the tax; the other variable amount is the fee. So when you fill out your form and put $800 on line 2, you have just filled out your form incorrectly. The FTB will wait six months, then send you a notice that you filled out your form incorrectly and owe penalties and interest. (That's what happened to us last year.)
Why does the FTB do this? I'm convinced that this offense against logic has only one reason: to generate more money for the State of California. The $800 amount would seem to be egregious enough, but by inserting this blatant bit of illogic into the code they are guaranteed to confuse a very high number of small businesses that cannot yet afford professional accounting help, and really the only way to discover the problem is to get fined for it. It's what I call official extortion, and there oughta be a law against it, but the legislature writes the laws and the legislature writes the tax code, so guess what? Too bad for you and me.
Rat bastards.
Please, I beg you: if you're thinking about ever forming an LLC in California, print out this post and keep it somewhere safe and close. Because the only way to get back at the FTB is for everyone to get this nonsense right; that would then force them to rewrite the tax code in some other massively confusing way, which might actually succeed in causing them ten minutes of trouble.
That's about the only solace we get. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find a ridiculous amount of money that does not actually exist in any of my accounts. Good luck to you--you're gonna need it.
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