As a sixth-grader who wanted to grow up to be a special-effects artist, Tom Biolchini created a horror-movie zombie, cut off at the waist and laid out across a table he could hide underneath and pull strings to move the zombie’s eyes, mouth, arms and fingers.
Of course, Biolchini’s career path changed somewhere along the way, and he became chairman of the locally owned Vast Bank. And he was inaugurated Thursday as the 2023 chairman of the Tulsa Regional Chamber.
His childhood interests have, nonetheless, reasserted themselves in recent months as Biolchini began working on a documentary film about movie props, with the production originating in Tulsa but filming in six different states and four countries.
His new role at the chamber of commerce will also, in a manner of speaking, put him in the movies business, Biolchini said.
People are also reading…
“Film and television production are becoming a booming business in Oklahoma,” he said, specifically mentioning “Reservation Dogs,” “Tulsa King” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” among 28 different projects that came to the Tulsa area in 2022.
“It makes sense,” Biolchini said, “with the cost of doing business being low compared to California and other states. Moreover, Oklahoma offers various geographic landforms and small towns in which to film, along with tax incentives. And the world is taking notice.”
During his inauguration Thursday at the Cox Business Convention Center, Biolchini framed the chamber’s 2023 goals around a well-known phrase from the movie industry: “Lights, camera, action!”
“Lights enable you to focus attention on the most important parts of a scene,” he explained. “In the same way, we as a region need to illuminate both our challenges and our opportunities in order to understand and address them.”
The chamber also needs to help Tulsa show the kind of confidence that performers demonstrate in front of the camera, Biolchini said.
“People are now, and always have been, attracted to confidence,” he said. “If others perceive you as confident in what you are saying about your own city, they will feel the culture and sense the opportunity that Tulsa offers.”
As for “action,” Biolchini recommended that Tulsa focus on “fewer but larger projects” with “true blockbuster potential” rather than spreading the city’s resources too thin.
Priorities should include a convention-center hotel “of a scale that will allow us to attract conferences and events that currently pass us by” and a Hollywood-style sound stage for film productions, he said.
“The worst mistake we can make, as individuals or as a region, is to become complacent,” he said. “Classic films are well-remembered, but there’s always an emphasis on coming attractions. We will never be finished improving Tulsa and northeast Oklahoma.”
Featured video:
Stories by Rhett Morgan, Michael Overall, Curtis Killman and Kevin Canfield
