After working nearly 27 years in Hollywood, props master Joe Connolly was just two years shy of retirement when the sun set on his dream.
Wearing a plain white tee, hair peppered with gray, Connolly sat upstairs in his North Carolina home and beamed with pride as he detailed his extraordinary Hollywood career. However, in the past 17 years, Connolly mentioned that his career has undergone a dramatic change.
“I’m currently working as a deckhand on a ferry, one of the Outer Banks ferries,” Connolly said. “I love the ocean. I love boats. And the pay is about 3% of what I normally make, but it gets me on the water, it keeps me sane, and I don’t bring my work home at night.”
Like thousands of Hollywood creatives, it all came down to hurdles that many in the entertainment industry are facing.
In the past five years, the whirlwind effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2008 and 2023 actors’ and writers’ strikes, the advent of AI, and productions filming outside of California and the greater U.S. have meant that the glamorous “Hollywood” industry has become more of an ideal rather than a physical setting.
Little opportunities for work and a series of union strikes left Connolly with few opportunities, leading him to take a job on a North Carolina ferry. There, working toward a captain’s license that would allow him to work on water-based film sets, he hoped to jump-start his “career 2.0” — all in hopes of accomplishing his elusive dream of retirement.
Now, many others like Connolly have chosen to leave California behind and pursue other opportunities while they wait for a new dawn to rise.
A Declining Industry
“For a long time, Hollywood thought that they were the only ones who could make movies, much like Detroit thought that they were the only ones that could make cars,” Connolly told L.A. TACO. “And they were proven wrong.”
Productions have increasingly moved away from Hollywood, with more films being made out of state.
“It isn’t the same kind of work that it used to be. [Creatives] can pick up jobs doing various kinds of productions, but major television programs and films are leaving at a startling rate,” Michael Curtin told LA TACO. He is a professor emeritus at the University of California Santa Barbara who has studied workplace practices and the globalization of media since 1984.
Los Angeles film shoot days have decreased by 35 percent annually since 2019, according to a 2024 FilmLA report. Specifically, television's annual shoot days are down by nearly 50 percent.
California’s film industry has encountered competition from the likes of Canadian and European studios (with specific competition in Texas and Atlanta, as well), all advertising higher tax incentives and more opportunities for work.
The result is fewer pilots in production and by extension, fewer available spots in writers’ rooms, according to Curtin.
According to a 2023 study done by Otis College, Entertainment employment dropped 17% following the 2023 Writers and Actors strikes, as many executives began to cut production costs by minimizing writers’ rooms, laying off workers, and using below-the-line crew members to fulfill missing roles on set.
Josiah Rizzo — a 33-year-old screenwriter and content creator — chose to make a career pivot in 2022 after witnessing the toll that being a Hollywood creative had taken on his friends and himself.
“I guess I kind of saw the writing on the wall, and I could see that jobs were coming few and far between,” Rizzo said. “I could also see that the jobs that were being offered were definitely getting shorter and shorter. People were placing more expectations on fewer departments, so I was very lucky that I took a step back before that became a thing.”
For Rizzo and others, making the shift away from working in the entertainment industry wasn’t easy, as it meant steering away from the dreams they have carried since they were children.
Rizzo had been writing scripts since the age of five. However, after realizing that working solely as a screenwriter was leaving him financially unstable, he began working full-time with his best friend on a YouTube channel, “The Pink Popcast,” to make a steadier income. However, his yearning for the industry never quite faded, and he continued to write in his free time.
“It's like all the expectations and the thoughts of a young man came to a screeching halt, and I realized that I needed to have a consistent job,” Rizzo said, “And I figured I might as well be as close to the action as possible.” As a YouTuber, he stays updated on the entertainment industry by making reaction videos for movies.
For Rizzo, even early on, the entertainment industry was already suffering from financial issues that led to cutting corners on productions. However, in content creation, he found a sense of identity and recognition that he never got on a set.
“I’m sticking to what I do now, which is based in my own home,” he said. “I’m in control of my own schedule, I’m in control of how much value I can make for myself, as opposed to waiting on producers who I’ll never meet to try and view me as more than a number.”
Pandemics and Pandemonium
Like Rizzo, Connolly had noticed a decline in work leading up to the 2007-2008 WGA strike, which ignited a protest demanding increased residual rates from new media and DVD sales for writers.
“I had left California to go and chase the tax incentives around the country to try and find work, because everything had dried up at that point,” Connolly said. “So I've pretty much been on the road since 2008.”
However, while Rizzo and Connolly had experienced early corner-cutting in production spending that put many people’s livelihoods at risk, it was the effects of COVID-19 and the creation of AI that caused the biggest uproar in the entertainment community.
After COVID-19 shut down over 5,000 of the country’s cinemas, it pushed many businesses into bankruptcy, while the lack of box office sales cost production companies billions of dollars.
These losses threatened the long-term health of the industry as viewers began ditching their TV and cable subscriptions in favor of cheaper streaming services. Meanwhile, many studios moved their blockbuster release dates back or released straight to streaming services.
The industry’s pivot to streaming services ultimately led to even greater disputes in compensation for talent who were working on films sent straight to streaming. It drastically cut actors’ residuals from the reruns of their shows and movies, leaving many without a stable income once more.
This all came to a head in the dual SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) in 2023, which saw the biggest closure of production since the pandemic, sending production costs even further into turmoil.
In the strikes’ aftermath, despite successes in improved labor incentives, pay, and regulations over the use of AI in the industry, some creatives like Connolly and Rizzo felt like producers simply used the strike to justify the shift to filming abroad. In doing so, it worsened creatives’ job security and made the need for Hollywood even more superfluous.
“My belief is that they went into negotiations knowing that they had plenty of product on the shelves,” Connolly said, reflecting on the strike resolution’s influence on production cuts.
Rizzo agreed with this statement, likening the strike agreement to a partner trying to end a romantic relationship by acting awful, hoping that the other person will end the relationship for them instead.
“That's what the strikes felt like to me, watching producers go, ‘Oh man, sucks. Anyway, now to move on to my second piece!,” Rizzo said.
For these creatives, it felt like the aftermath of the strikes and COVID did more harm than good. According to Curtin, fewer shows were being greenlit, fewer writers were needed to fill writers’ rooms, and fewer precautions were being taken on set, forcing one person to do the job of three. Suddenly, hundreds more were out of work, with nowhere to turn.
Some actors and writers have reported struggles to meet their union health insurance thresholds, meaning they had to resort to quick, low-paying gigs or even social media in order to retain their health insurance.
However, due to the spotlight on writers and actors, the fate of other entertainment workers faded into the background. For costume and prop rental businesses, the shutdown of production meant that various designers, prop masters, makeup artists, and customers experienced a severe and sudden loss of income that they were not initially prepared for, according to Connolly.
Jessica Kaminsky, a TV writer who experienced the 2023 strikes firsthand, came to a similar conclusion: despite better contract terms, the strikes caused collateral damage.
“One thing that I'm so acutely aware of is that when the writers and then the actors went on strike, we dragged along all these other departments and industries: costume, post production, the production staff that works on the show. So many different departments ended up being participants in this mess,” Kaminsky said.
According to Connolly, to alleviate the financial burden that many of them were facing, some below-the-line workers pivoted to revenue from second jobs that utilized their skill sets or new business startups, with some even participating in swap meets and autograph signings to make ends meet. Kaminsky even worked as a substitute teacher, published a book, and ghost-wrote another
Fight or Flight
Many creatives have recognized that the trickle-down effects of a disappearing Hollywood go much further than people may think. According to Connolly, even local restaurants and catering businesses have felt the toll of the waning industry, as much of their client base has no reason to come in anymore.
As he explains, the trickle-down from budget cuts has meant that even grocery stores aren’t making as much: “The film people and the carpenters and the vendors, the gas stations and, all the way down to a gardener — if you're home, you don't need somebody to cut your lawn, because now you're going to do it.”
For Rizzo, the most disheartening thing about seeing the industry fade is not feeling enthusiasm towards working on new projects.
“I know that no more than five years ago, if I had to reach out to my friends and say ‘Hey, I have a short film,’ I would just have people say ‘I'm busy, but as soon as I'm free, let's do it!’,” Rizzo said. “There's an excitement in the air that's not there right now.”
In recent years, many popular TV shows and movies have begun to realize that production costs are oftentimes cheaper when shot outside of L.A.
For example, “Yellowstone” was primarily filmed in Utah and Montana, Netflix’s “Hit Man” in New Orleans, and the new show “Adults,” while taking place in New York, was largely shot in Toronto.
Tax incentives and on-location shoots drew people to Texas, Atlanta, New York, or even overseas, taking away from income that the state of California relies on.
Curtin believes Hollywood’s film production flight goes much deeper because of a lack of respect for L.A. talent.”
There’s not only the relentless pursuit of cost savings,” Curtin said. “But there’s also a way in which the logic of the system is reducing people to inanimate objects that get shuffled around a board.”
In response to the nationwide competition to lure film productions, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1138 last month, which doubles the tax credits that the state can offer to producers who film in the state from $330 million to $750 million.
However, no matter where industry creatives may turn for work, many believe that it will be impossible for the entertainment industry to fully leave California.
According to Rizzo, while outside states might allow for more career growth (especially for actors), many creatives must hold onto their connections in California to look for future opportunities or even just to have a place to call home after traveling around the world to film.
“I think at least in our lifetime, there will always be a foothold in L.A.,” said Rizzo.
Like Rizzo, many creatives are cautiously optimistic that eventually Hollywood will revive itself once more – even if it has changed.
Curtin believes that while Hollywood will face various challenges from difficult contract negotiations with guilds and competition from streaming platforms, it will ultimately survive.
“There’s this circulation within the different skill sets on any production across the community. And this circulation of knowledge is something that makes a place like Los Angeles valuable,” Curtin said. “There’s a lot of capacity there. My guess is it will always be there.”
Inevitably, years of economic decline and mistreatment of industry workers have led to many entertainment creatives being overworked and underappreciated. However, those who are still holding out hope that Hollywood can return to what it once was believe that once you’ve hit rock bottom, things can only improve.
As Kaminsky puts it, “It has to get better, right? So it better get better.”
