Last week, The Boston Globe ran a fascinating exposé on the Plymouth Rock film studio initiative that has been developing over the last few years in Massachusetts. The Boston Globe reports on the matter inside …

So began one of the most buzz-generating projects in recent state history, a $650 million plan to build 14 sound stages and a virtual entertainment city in the woods of Plymouth, making Massachusetts the production center for countless movies and TV shows. Plymouth officials have scrambled to help Plymouth Rock Studios create the 2,000 studio-related jobs the company predicts, while people mobbed job fairs to chase their dream of making it in show business.

A Globe Spotlight Team investigation has found that, despite their cultivated image of Hollywood know-how and deep pockets, Kirkpatrick and his oft-changing cast of partners never obtained nearly the resources to build one of the world’s biggest studios. Members of Kirkpatrick’s group have been sued at least 11 times in the past three years by writers, investors, consultants, and others who say they weren’t fully paid. Kirkpatrick and his various collaborators were so desperate for funds that they turned to dubious sources for help, including a convicted embezzler and an obscure Florida financier whose former business partners were recently sentenced to prison.

While many Hollywood classics have used New York as their backdrops, with images of the city etched in time, Los Angeles will forever be the playground of the major studios while New York has held the image of the gritty underbelly of independent cinema, embodied by the cinema verité of the 1970’s. This dichotomy has solidified over the past year as New York based studio spin-offs such as New Line, Picturehouse, and Miramax all withered and were swept under the rug by their west coast governors.

The 1930’s were good to the movie studios as people were looking for a cheap thrill in those bleak times. The current recession has not as financing has dried up and slates have been reduced. Like most American dreams hit hard by the economy, Plymouth Rock Studios has turned into a tangled web of financial posturing and broken promises. Like the machinations of Mr. Madoff and the facade of Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns, this film studio has proven to be nothing but broken promises and leaves the good citizens of Plymouth, MA to pick up the pieces of what went awry.

Hollywood East remains a dream deferred, drying up like a raisin in the sun, but the spirit of independent film lives on to test the wits and mettle of audiences throughout the world.