The film industry in Buffalo is starting to fulfill its immense promise. Hollywood insiders with a connection to Buffalo have taken notice.
Many people who once lived in Buffalo, who are familiar with its enticing proximity to urban vibrancy, share a tic.
They like to pull up residential real estate listings — Gilded Age mansions, stately tudors, mid-century gems, etc. — point out the shockingly low list prices and say a permutation of “crazy, right?”
I know this because I’ve done it with my family who pursued careers elsewhere, with friends who skipped off to successful lives throughout the U.S. and with occasional ex-pat strangers I’ve met along the way.
And now I’ve done it with Brian Sacca, whom I was interviewing recently for a Series B article on Buffalo’s resurgent film industry, and who took a break from the questions to share a Zillow listing on Delaware Avenue.
“I had four separate people send this to me, people who aren’t from here, and say ‘Look what you can get in Buffalo,” Sacca said. “To me that says there are so many eyes on Buffalo right now. It’s got so much potential.”
Sacca, a Lockport native who became a successful Hollywood actor and screenwriter, now lives in Los Angeles near the rest of his family. That includes his father (a former attorney in Lockport) and his mother (a former Buffalo State University professor). His brother, Chris Sacca, a renowned venture capital investor whose early investments included Twitter, Instagram, Uber and Kickstarter, lives in Montana.
But Buffalo has never been far from Brian Sacca’s heart. He now owns real estate here and flies back for Buffalo Bills games. When he comes back, he often visits with old friends from Nichols who have gorgeous homes in beautiful neighborhoods.
He’s conversant in the idea of Buffalo as a climate refuge. He’s the first person to point out that our restaurants and social-cultural amenities have moved well past their outdated reputation.
Now he thinks the time is right to bring films to his native city. Sacca is working on several movies as a writer and producer that he is pushing to shoot in Buffalo.
They are indie films, not major Hollywood productions, but they are a recognition of Buffalo’s emergence as a legitimate hub for film production.
Series B is largely focused on high-growth startup companies that can pave the way for a new era of growth in Buffalo. The film industry is a different take on that ethos. It leverages our tremendous natural environment, accessibility and diverse architectural legacy to create an entirely new industry that can pull economic activity and investment into Buffalo.
Sacca’s arguments for Buffalo are based on more than emotion. The local film industry is riding real tailwinds, including:
* A newly established and much more lucrative tax incentive for productions that choose New York state, and particularly Upstate New York. Tax incentives, which significantly lower the costs of filming, are a primary driver for decisions around filming locations.
* Buffalo is home to two high-quality production facilities that opened in recent years, including Buffalo FilmWorks, which now hosts the largest film stage in the northeast, and Great Point Buffalo, which inked a 24-film deal last year with Great American Media.
* An emerging class of unionized crews, skilled professionals and supply chain that can support filmed productions.
It all adds up to an exciting proposition.
“It’s my plan to make movies in Buffalo and continue to elevate Western New York as a production destination,” Sacca said. “It’s a place that my heart is still connected to. It is part of me. And I want to continue shining a light on it.”
Sacca’s career has mirrored the industry’s roller-coaster ride over the past five years. The pandemic and lengthy Hollywood strikes have added disruption to the new financial power structures brought on by streaming and changing consumer preferences.
Within this environment, financing initially flowed to “safer” big budget films, but there is renewed appetite on indie productions that tell stories on more creative terms.
Sacca now has about a dozen scripts in the development-production pipeline, with several that are entering final talks on being financed.
His desire to shoot at least a few of them in Buffalo is a change from the 2018 production of Buffaloed, which was primarily shot in Toronto, where they had the crews, contractors and infrastructure to support the film’s Hollywood directing and acting talent.
Buffaloed, on which Sacca was the primary writer, includes well-known Hollywood names including director Tanya Wexler and actresses Zoey Deutch and Judy Greer. The movie premiered in 2019 at the Tribeca Film Festival to positive reviews. It is about a relentlessly ambitious entrepreneur who flies too close to the sun in Buffalo’s seedy debt collection industry.
Buffaloed is peppered with references to Sacca’s hometown and seeks to imbue in its characters a relentless, scrappy zest for better surroundings. Sacca sees its portrayal of Buffalo as an act of loving self-deprecation, but not all local viewers were in a charitable mood.
One problem with “Buffaloed” is that the screenplay is written by a man who apparently prefers to evade his Western New York roots rather than embrace them. - Niagara Gazette
I'm beginning to wonder if a truly great – and very sophisticated – movie couldn't be made about a young person from privilege in a Rust Belt town who's so eager to "make it" and shed any whiff of provincialism that he sells his hometown down the river for cash and all the career points he can. Raw privilege can sometimes be used in dubious ways its wonders to perform. - Buffalo News
These patronized and defensive takes are nothing compared to what came Sacca’s way online. But for someone whose art is distinctly artistic, and whose stories explore the fulcrum of ambition and circumstance, any civic puffery from Sacca would be a disappointment.
We don’t have to preach to those, like Brian Sacca, who love Buffalo so much that he had beef on wecks at his wedding.
We can meet expats on their own terms.
