Filmed in New York, Hold the Taxis and Radiators

When independent movies like “Rosemead” travel to a state for tax incentives, they save money but add creative challenges.

On a rainy morning this past January, Roosevelt Avenue in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens was a stream of yellow cabs, honking buses and weaving cyclists. Nearby, a film crew peering out the windows of a Chinese pharmacy discussed how to make all of that invisible.

The film it was making, “Rosemead,” starring Lucy Liu as an immigrant mother with a mentally unwell teenage son, was based on a real-life story and set in the San Gabriel Valley of sunny Southern California. Any signs of the East Coast would need to be hidden. No cabs, no buses, no bare trees and overcast sky.

“That’s a very New York-looking trash can,” said Liz Power, an assistant director, ruefully eyeing the green receptacle just outside the pharmacy’s glass door.

Filming “Rosemead” in Rosemead, Calif., would certainly have been easier. But the producers had decided on New York over California because of tax credits.

According to a survey by The New York Times, states have spent $25 billion on tax incentives over the past two decades to lure Hollywood, often competing against one another. New York State, which writes checks to studios of up to 40 percent of their costs producing a movie or TV show, has handed out more than $7 billion to entice productions from California, which has dedicated more than $3 billion to try to retain them.

The movie industry says the incentives help create jobs and spending in the communities where they film, but economists have long been skeptical of whether they create enough value to justify the taxpayer cost.