As I was endlessly scrolling for something, anything, to watch on a recent Saturday night, Netflix warned me that Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 was leaving at the end of August. This was an excellent reminder. It gave me a short window to once again experience the hour and 32 minutes of excruciating pablum set mostly in the Wynn Las Vegas.

I've seen it three times before. I can confidently say that after each viewing, it somehow gets more terrible. Maybe it's the unfortunate sequence where tourist/protagonist Paul Blart (played by Kevin James) violently fights an exotic bird owned by the casino property only a couple of years after such real-life bad behavior was universally condemned and continues to cause consternation. 

Perhaps it's the unfavorable caricatures of hotel operations and its employees, or the creepy, dialogueless cameo of a makeup-caked Steve Wynn intended to vault him into mythic figure status … just a short while before his entire empire came crashing down in scandal.  Ultimately, it may simply be the pervasiveness of all-too-common tropes, reductively portraying the city as a place for idiots, run by idiots, all of whom misbehave without care or consequence. In other words, Las Vegas as an utterly unredeemable, unserious place.

Overall, Blart 2 is arguably the worst film of 2015, and that's saying a lot in the year of forgettable big-name flops such as (look 'em up) Hot Pursuit (Reese Witherspoon and Sofía Vergara), Fant4stic (the non-Marvel Fantastic Four abomination with Miles Teller) and Pixels (also starring Kevin James). Even 2015's Human Centipede 3 (don't look it up) had greater cultural import. 

Still, I am captivated. And I'm not the only one. Some of my favorite podcasters revisit the singular horribleness of the film each year on Thanksgiving in a show called Til Death Do Us Blart. But for me, the fascination comes less from its lack of discernible plot/acting/purpose than the fact of its prominence as the biggest project by far supported by the Nevada Film Tax Incentive program established in 2013. In fact, Blart 2 got almost half of the $10 million allotted to lure movie production to our scenic, story-rich state. 

So I'm reminded of all this as Blart 2 leaves Netflix. I also remember we are rapidly approaching the 2027 legislative session and, with it, a likely resuscitation of the latest, controversial Nevada film tax credit proposal. After all, it sucked up a disproportionate amount of air in the 2025 session and gave birth to a late, albeit failed, 2025 special session. It maintains a high degree of celebrity and union star power support. Hence, the high likelihood of it coming back, as so many horror movie monsters do. 

Still, despite all the emotional debate over the effort to lure big studios to our state, I think one aspect has been tragically left out of the conversation: Can this scheme guarantee good movies? 

Look, I'll admit the details of the various bills and structures offered to date are made of the kind of financial maneuvers, union-placating measures, bells, whistles, strings and convoluted incentives that only a CPA sitting in a soon-to-be-leveled dive bar, snorting ketamine off an old Excel CD-ROM while a warped Blu-ray of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas plays on a 1986 Toshiba wall-mounted television could love. Still, proponents and opponents have done a good job in boiling it down:

Pro: It's more of a common-sense tax break than a giveaway. Isn't an incentivized break from big taxes to get big film studios to build long-term infrastructure (presumably with homegrown labor) worth it? Why shouldn't we encourage increasingly lucrative moviemaking? In turn, it will elevate the creative locals and tradespeople from inertia in our dusty landscape into something magical, as only a new "Hollywood East" can. It's the secret sauce to finally diversify our economy.  

Con: Giving public money to billionaires never works out on the balance sheet for the benefit of the people. The specific use of transferable tax credits means that other industries, maybe good taxpaying ones or those without significant ties to the state, will receive an unintended windfall that doesn't stay home. More than that, however, nothing binds the big studios to act in the best interests of Nevada and its citizens.  

But whether or not we expand the film tax credit in 2027, I'm concerned about how we only talk about the proposal in terms of potential money and jobs, not the type of creative output that will likely come. Even if our Legislature is convinced that a robust film tax credit program will be an economic boon, what's to prevent a dystopian culture spiral that makes Nevada even less attractive to serious people and businesses to move here? What's to stop the kind of films coming out of said studios from only being Blartesque?

Look, there have been objectively excellent films memorably made, at least in part, in Nevada. Others with interesting cultural import or at least compelling storytelling. Even intriguing art flicks. Far more are just plain crap.  Familiar titles such as Casino, Leaving Las Vegas, The Godfather II, California Split, Lost in America, The Misfits and Hard Eight in the cinematic pantheon from great directors. 

There have also been cultural landmark movies (The Hangover(s), Ocean's Eleven(s), Showgirls, Rain Man). Art films have had their day in the sun, too. Small, independent features that hit hard or at least transcend the obvious stories. I'm thinking movies you may never have heard of such as The Motel Life, Queen of Diamonds, Frank and Lola, and that segment of the film Aria where Bridget Fonda and her lover commit a sensual suicide on Fremont Street while Wagner's Liebestod makes you uncontrollably sob.

All of which proves that important or at least interesting films about the places, people and plans that happen within our state can be told. They may not all be cheery or positive, but they can be real and moving — not Blart 3s that characterize Nevada as a disposable dumping ground for sloppy slapstick and clichés.  

But the way these "incentives" are set up, it seems we're encouraging little more than wealth extraction from our soil by cinematic miners. 

Hear me out. Why not instead directly give public money millions to our writers, directors, production companies and the like? Why not help them cook to make quality and compelling Nevada films? Let Nevada shine through its own art and culture. No Fortune 500 company wants to be based in Blartville!

Think about what we already do with our home team WNBA players. Each gets a $100,000 "sponsorship" of public funds every year (on top of their salaries and endorsement deals) to "represent" Las Vegas. People liked that because of a general feeling that they were underpaid and not fully appreciated. Not sure how arduous the commitment connected to that money is, but imagine if the best imaginative folks in the state were given the same — and the only task required is to tell their best, most complex stories about our state. 

As most proponents of the film tax credit point out: Tons of folks are already here, waiting for our movie infrastructure to shine. So instead of creating the next wave of Blartification, let's first encourage and protect the talent that's already here. Build that field of exemplary dream-weaving, and assuredly, without bribes incentives, the studios (and maybe others with money and businesses) will come.

Dayvid Figler is a criminal defense attorney, freelance essayist and former host of the City Cast Las Vegas podcast. He received the State Bar of Nevada's Medal of Justice in 2019. He also publishes a Substack that muses about all things Las Vegas.