Daniel A. Deadbeat

Like every other red-blooded American, I like to see films that are filmed in my state. And I’m one of those whose motto is “accept no substitutes.”

Just the other day, my husband I watched Conviction, starring the marvelous Hillary Swank in the true story of a blue-collar single mom from Massachusetts who put herself through college and law school so she could get her unjustly convicted brother out of prison. After nearly twenty years, she succeeded.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the movie – it had among the best local accents I’ve ever heard faked – I kept looking at the country-side (much of the film took place in rural-ish Ayer, Mass., and there was even a scene set in Worcester) and saying, “something doesn’t look quite right.”

As indeed it didn’t, as I learned when I watched the credits. The film was made in Michigan, which looks kinda-sorta like New England, and kinda-sorta doesn’t. (I’ll have to pay more attention to the clues if I ever see the film again. Were there no stone walls? Were the farms set just a tad too far apart? Was it not hilly enough? At least they got the accents right…)

But while I like to see films making it in Massachusetts, I’m less enamored of the tax credits that are used to woo them here. As with hosting the Olympics or some other grand event, the net result of having a film made in your state is as often as not a negative number, with the tax credits outbalancing the use of the local catering companies and local actors with speaking parts.

And I’m especially less enamored of those tax credits when they’re part of a scam. As was apparently the case of a Cape Cod-based filmmaker named Daniel Adams. (Source for this info: Boston.com)

Adams, a Massachusetts native, managed to suck $4.7M out of the state coffers by jacking up his expense tally.

Prosecutors allege that Adams overstated expenses on “The Golden Boys,’’ a romantic comedy about retired sea captains vying for a wife, and “The Lightkeepers,’’ a 2009 romance starring Richard Dreyfuss.

Under the law, filmmakers can apply for a credit of 25 percent of their production expenses. But prosecutors said Adams overstated those expenses, in one instance claiming to have paid Dreyfuss $2.5 million, when he paid him $400,000.

Not that I’m the world’s foremost movie buff, but I’ve never heard of these gems, so I’m guessing if they made general distribution, they weren’t very well advertised or received. But, hell, not being Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg is totally forgivable.

What’s less forgivable is scamming the Commonwealth’s tax payers.

And what’s even less forgivable than that is ripping off the local merchants on the Cape, which is also on his list of offenses:

[Adam] has left a trail of unpaid bills and anger in his wake, according to interviews and court records. From failing to return valuables to antique dealers to stiffing landlords and limousine drivers, Adams has earned a reputation as a deadbeat from Barnstable to Martha’s Vineyard.

In the charming town of Barnstable – where Adams hung his own, personal hat – he took the owners of a three-bedroom house he rented for a film’s producers and managers for nearly $8K – this after they had given him a colossal discount to begin with.

He also screwed a limo-service owner for the fees racked up shuttling the likes of David Carradine and Mariel Hemingway around. (Did I mention that Adams is no Martin Scorsese. Not that I’m holding that against him.) Fortunately, the limo guy was able to get most of his money back in small claims court.

Speaking of luminaries like Carradine and Hemingway, Adams had  initially had his eye on a roster of what was described as A-list actors. The list included Burt Reynolds. Is there a parallel universe in which, just a few short years ago, Smokey and the Bandit’s Burt Reynolds was considered an “A-list actor”?

Meanwhile, Adams has a few other items on his sketchy résumé that won’t help anyone trying to defend his truthiness.

Both wikipedia and IMDB list him as having matriculated at Fair Harvard. Now, Adams doesn’t necessarily have control over what gets out there in the old public domain, but someone started this one going. (And the wikipedia article sounds like Adams or someone in his family or employ wrote it.)

In real life, having dropped out of the University of Vermont, Adams had taken some courses at Harvard Extension. But saying that he matriculated at Harvard is like saying that I studied economics at Harvard because I took Ec 10, Ec 1010A, and Ec 1010B at their night school (i.e., Harvard Extension).

Sorry, neither Adams nor myself is one of the vaunted “10,000 Men of Harvard.”

A scan of wikipedia provided a few further Adams tidbits, including a note that he is working on a bio of James Otis (of “taxation without representation fame”). Then there’s the mention that he’s making a big screen version of Big Valley, with Jessica Lange starring as Victoria Barkley, Barbara Stanwyck’s signature role. (LOL on a Big Valley remake. No word on who will pay the “impetuous Audra,” temperamental Nick, brooding Heath, stalwart Jarrod, or the short-lived Eugene, the kid brother who went MIA after the first year of the show.)

Then we read that “as a novelist, he conceived, edited and contributed to the serial novel, Out Of The Fog, working with a dozen of the nation's best-selling authors.” I did find a couple of Out of the Fogs: a novel that doesn’t appear to have been serially written by a dozen of the nation’s best-selling authors. And a web-site for those with family members suffering from personality disorders. This Out of the Fog does have a multi-author e-book out. If Adams is involved here, it may suggest an element of his defense.

Meanwhile, his lawyer, Douglas Brooks, has stated:

“The case is far more complicated than it appears on the surface.’’

I’ll bet it is.