I'm thinking about moving to Atlanta.

I’m looking for a place to operate a movie studio. Contrary to just focusing on production, I’m additionally looking to build creative story teams to develop stories. In fact, that’s the most important part.

We’re currently in NYC. New York is a great place to live if you are rich or you like setting your money on fire. Creative people tend to be on the poorer end of the economic spectrum. Every creative person I know has left New York. New York is creatively dead. There is no street culture here. There is no street art unless it was commissioned by a luxury condo building. The culture that does exist is dying every day and is almost at Chicago levels.

The data back this up. After nearly 10 years of growth, NYC saw it’s first population outflow last year – And New York State leads the nation in out-migration.

Creative people are leaving NYC for LA or out of country. LA is cheaper and the weather is nicer. In my experience, the people in LA on average are pretty dumb and lazy. With regards to entertainment, LA is ruined by the precedent of “How things are done.” Every time I talk to someone in LA about an innovative idea, all I hear is, “well - this is how you have to do it…” - “yeah you can’t do that because…” And I actually like most of the people that are telling me that stuff. But, they are just too deep in their own shit and super myopic. I’ve also never met anyone in LA with a burning desire to make great shit.

I’ve been hearing rumblings about Atlanta. Because Georgia is one of the last US states to provide a film tax credit, (tax credits don’t actually work), the greater Atlanta area produces the most TV and film content in the US. I’ve heard that because the tax credit is limited to crew, and most of the content produced is actually developed in LA, above the line talent, (people that do the creative work), don’t stay in Atlanta for any longer than they have to. This means that very little actual development is going on in Atlanta.

Yet, there seems to be so many great creators in Atlanta. So it doesn’t make any sense that some of the best stories in movies and television aren’t being developed there.

So I went to Atlanta with some friends to explore the opportunity of building an end to end studio.

And it was great. We were introduced to really great people and we said yes to everything.

Pros:

• Raw Creative Talent - Everyone we met was focused on creating things.

• Rich Culture - The street art there is beautiful. Great music.

• Cheaper To Live - Way cheaper than NYC. The most expensive meal I ate in ATL was $16. NYC $28 burgers are basically normal now. You can buy a 3 bedroom house in ATL for $250k – you can’t buy a 1 bedroom apartment for under a million in NYC.

• Entrepreneurial Spirit - Most people we talked to wanted to create businesses or focus on creating sustainable or scalable art.

• Can Do Attitude - Upon talking about the studio idea, everyone was like, “Dude - let’s just do it!”

• Production Infrastructure - Tons of warehouse studio conversions and purpose built film studios. Tons of quality crew.

• Separated Checks at Restaurants - The waiters in ATL remember what you order and separate the bill for each person. Do they do this everywhere outside of NYC?

Contras:

• Few Experienced / Few Above the Line Creative Talent - You can’t just easily staff up a writers room because there aren’t a ton of working screenwriters in ATL. But in many ways, this is actually a good thing! That’s an opportunity to give voices to people with unique points of view that typically haven’t had an opportunity. And an even greater opportunity to build the future.

• Very Little Financing - As far as I can tell, there are a couple C Tier VCs that invest in boring shit like enterprise software. And there’s like 0 film finance in ATL. Which, also, is oddly nice, because it forces more with less, which is exactly what entertainment development and production needs right now.

Huge Contras:

• Public Transportation Sucks, Everyone Drives Drunk - I didn’t see one bus. There’s like one train that goes from nowhere to nowhere. The roads are huge, yet the traffic is bad because everyone drives like idiots. After dark, assume everyone driving has had 3 beers, but they say they’re good, because they do it all the time. I think biking and scooters could be really great, and in the medium future, self driving cars / buses will eliminate this problem in ATL.

• Atlanta is Surrounded by Religious Extremists – Old white dudes, some caught fiddling kids, some just meeting them for private physical mentorship, know best how to govern your vag. So, why won’t you be grateful?

• Climate Change - In 30 years, ATL will be unlivable. That’s not like a maybe thing. That’s a mfkn fact. We all did this, and no one cares. I hope we all make enough money in ATL so we can move to the edge of god’s green flat earth to Canada with all the kids we were forced to have.

So what do you think? Should I move to Atlanta? Am I missing something?

Huge thanks to: Dave, Pasquale, Laura, Darrah, Graham, Brian, Rostam, Austin, Britt, Andrew, Kate, Wil, Luke, Susanna, and anyone else I’m forgetting! You guys really made this trip great!