Former Saturday Night Live star David Spade is blasting California Democrats Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for the destruction of the film industry in Hollywood.
Spade spoke of his dismay over the fall of Hollywood during a recent episode of his Fly on the Wall podcast, during which he asserted that said “the Hollywood industry is dying” and that he’s “just trying to put the blame somewhere.”
Spade brought up the bankruptcy of the CBS Radford Studio Center in Studio City, California, the film studio facility that has been the home of decades of movies and TV productions in Los Angeles.
“Dude, I’m so old,” Spade said. “I was on the lot at CBS Radford when we were doing ‘Just Shoot Me.’ … And also they were doing ‘Seinfeld,’ and I’d see him on his bike. It was the greatest lot. Of course, just filed for bankruptcy, the lot. Terrifying in LA Thanks, Karen Bass. Thanks, Gavin.”
Spade’s co-host, Dana Carvey, agreed that the “Hollywood studio system is dying” and said that something needs to be done to save it.
“The amount of productions is dying, and so they have to do something so more production comes back, and that starts with negotiating with the union and also subsidizing the industry tax breaks to compete with Romania,” Carvey suggested.
Mayor Bass’ press office responded to the two SNL comedians by claiming she has created tax incentives to save Hollywood.
“Mayor Bass has championed the entertainment industry because it’s a bedrock of our middle class,” the mayor’s statement reads. “The fact of the matter is that Mayor Bass oversaw the creation of California’s first Film and TV Tax Credit Program as speaker of the State Assembly and backed its expansion last year.”
But despite the mayor’s spin, it is undeniable that Hollywood is quickly fading as the center of the world’s entertainment industry.
Hollywood lost another 17,000 jobs in 2025, which was 18 percent more than the previous year.
Early this month, Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan, who is the president of the Directors Guild of America, said that employment for his members is down about 40 percent and the trend marks a “very worrying time for the industry.”
And Industry production tracking service FilmLA also reported that filming permits in Los Angeles had declined 16 percent last year, which is on top of the 50 percent decline since 2018.
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