Hollywood star, former California resident lobbies for Texas filmmaking comeback: 'Really business-friendly pl

May 16, 2023 at 13:47 PM EDT

While California's film industry is filled with "so many regulations," Dennis Quaid persuades Texas voters to pass a state bill aiming to incentivize productions to move to Texas.

After joining a number of prominent Hollywood celebrities in a push to move productions from California to Texas, "The Parent Trap" and "On a Wing and a Prayer" actor Dennis Quaid expanded on what makes the Lone Star State so great for movies.

"I'm an independent. This is not really a blue or red state issue. It's a business thing, and bringing filmmaking back to Texas," Quaid said on "Varney & Co." Tuesday.

"We want to bring them back, make it a really business-friendly place to be and not be any kind of welfare program or government subsidized program," he continued, "but actually, for Texas to get a return on its investment."

Quaid is joining the "Good for Texas" campaign along with fellow industry names like Owen Wilson, Billy Bob Thornton, Woody Harrelson, Matthew McConaughey and Glen Powell to convince Texas voters to pass House Bill 3600, which would provide tax credits and rebates for multimedia productions.

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Texans are getting ready to vote on the proposal Wednesday – and Quaid explained why constituents should check the "yes" box.

"We hardly make movies in California anymore because it costs so much money, and there's so many regulations. It's tough," the actor said. "About 10 years ago, I made a lot of really great movies there and they had an incentive program… we want to bring that back to Texas and make it a little bit more business-friendly to do movies in Texas."

Even though Hollywood, California, has been home to the movie industry and culture for decades, Quaid said he recently moved to Tennessee while noting it isn’t the same town he knew in the 1970s.

"But Texas is," he said. "There's a lot of people that might think that the incentive goes out of the state, that goes to Hollywood producers or actors like me, but the money actually gets spent in the state and goes to pay carpenters, painters."

"The vote is tomorrow," Quaid added, "and we'd love to see it pass."

Last week, the actor joined "Jesse Watters Primetime" where he spotlighted this opportunity in Texas because there are a "lot of people" there, and having money to pay for crew members like carpenters, painters, hotel workers and others will "rev up the economy there."

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"Texas did a really good job at taking a big share of the tech industry away from Silicon Valley. You go down to Austin and you can see that really clearly," Quaid told Watters. "And the same thing can be done with movies and television shows. It's a great place to shoot."

"Think of the California gold rush, you know? It's like a few people did strike it rich, but the people who really made money were the shopkeepers and people selling shovels and spades and stuff like that who were doing other things besides mining for gold. And that's kind of what happened here."