From Mitchell Olson
Editor’s Note: The writer of the opinion piece in reference is Cole Murphy, a graduate of Georgia Tech and part of the Joseph Rago Memorial Fellowship program with the Wall Street Journal.
I spoke to The Wall Street Journal for two hours. They printed eight words. Here’s the rewrite…
On January 16th, family members of mine sat in major theaters across the country to watch an independent film I’d helped produce—a near impossible outcome for a movie made outside of the Hollywood system. A week later, The Wall Street Journal published an article that called the film industry in Georgia—where our movie was born and raised—absurd and unsustainable and not-so-subtly suggested we close our studios and turn them into AI data centers. And it quoted me in the process.
See additional commentary from Randy Davidson on this matter.
A reporter from the Journal reached out last November saying he was working on a story that explored how the film industry outside of Hollywood operated and how it was adapting to changes in the entertainment industry—did I want to talk? Hell yeah, I did!
For nearly two hours, I talked. I bragged about Georgia’s state-of-the-art facilities. I touted its investment in training a skilled labor force—some of the best crews in the world. I celebrated the collaboration across the Department of Education and the University System of Georgia to develop curriculum pipelines from middle school through graduate programs that nurture the next generation of storytellers. I highlighted nonprofit mechanisms that help emerging filmmakers get projects made and suggested there should be more.
I’d moved from LA to Atlanta to become a professor of screen and television writing; I speak at conferences and festivals around the country about the depth of talent here; I’d just produced a movie, Signing Tony Raymond, that was written, directed, financed, filmed, edited, and distributed entirely in Georgia.
I also gave the author a bunch of names—good, smart people who understand how hard this business is, who care deeply about it, and who are working every day to sustain it. I personally connected the reporter with some of them.
So it was surprising to read, once the article was published, that it wasn’t really a piece of reporting at all, but an opinion piece—one that characterized Georgia’s film industry as a “box-office bomb.” More surprising still was seeing myself quoted in a way that suggested I agreed. Out of nearly two hours of conversation, just eight words appeared in print: “Georgia was essentially the Walmart of shooting locations.”
Here’s the thing: he used a period where a comma belonged.
As I’ve said many times—at conferences and in conversations like this one—Georgia was the Walmart of shooting locations. Past tense. It once won on price. It no longer does. That line is always followed by how far the state has come, what it has built, and why it is positioned to lead in the post–Netflix–Warner Bros. era.
That part didn’t make it into print.
I understand that no article can include every word from a two-hour conversation. But there’s a meaningful difference between selective quoting and using a fragment in a way that advances an argument the speaker does not hold.
Journalists may not choose headlines, and they face real constraints. But they can have the integrity to be clear about their intent, and to represent a source’s position as it was actually expressed. Sadly, I’m not the only one. Another person the reporter contacted has published how they were misled—I’ll link to that in the comments. And there will likely be more.
I’m not pretending Georgia’s film industry doesn’t face challenges. I said as much in the interview. Other states and countries offer incentives. Competition is real. The entertainment landscape is shifting everywhere. But it’s dispiriting to know that a partial quote—divorced from its meaning—will now appear when people search my name.
That’s perhaps the most personal part of this.
For the writer, this was just another story to file. For me, Georgia is where I’ve built my career and my home. It’s where I teach students whose futures I care about. I’ve already heard from people I respect and care about who read the article. I know this article will follow me, and that my response will reach only a fraction of the audience.
Buried in the article’s penultimate paragraph—where good news often goes to disappear—is this line: “Unlike other ex-production hubs, Georgia is saturated with cutting-edge infrastructure and crews. Independent producers are still making movies written, directed and shot by local artists.”
That sentence is true. It matters. And it points to what the author largely omitted.
Instead, the article treats the health of the film industry as synonymous with the health of one mega-franchise: Marvel. One franchise, one corporate model, can’t stand in for an industry that is far bigger, more varied, and more resilient than that. When tentpole blockbusters become the proxy for all filmmaking, independent films, regional voices, and emerging talent are rendered invisible by definition.
But those are the films being made here. They’re being written, directed, shot, and finished by local artists. They’re being taught in classrooms, workshopped in nonprofits, crewed by professionals who’ve spent decades building this infrastructure. I watched that reality play out on January 16th, when a small Georgia-made film quietly opened in theaters across the country—and families like mine were able to see it. That’s the industry you find when you look past franchises and box-office abstractions. That’s the industry I love, and the one I wish the Journal’s readers could have been introduced to.
And I can’t help but wonder why they weren’t.
