The glitz and glamour that was supposed to enter Iowa after the state began handing out tax credits to the film industry has hit a standstill. An internal audit of the program found glaring problems with this growing Iowa industry, prompting the state’s economic-development director to resign Sept. 18.

Two high-ranking officials have also left the department over the controversy.

For those UI students who hope to enter into the elusive field of show business, you just might have to check your passion at the door. Of course, you all hope to one day work with Scorcese or Tarantino. The thought of working with those giants makes you feel as good as Brad Pitt killing Nazis. But regardless of how much talent you have, this multibillion-dollar industry is one big greed factory.

When Hollywood executives flew on their private jets to Iowa to take advantage of our tax credits, they forgot to leave their egomaniacal habits in “La La Land.” We Iowans obliged their arrival with a good old helping of corn-fed hospitality.

In return, they bought fancy new cars for themselves with taxpayer money. Filmmakers claimed payments for themselves, along with large payments to family members, according to the Des Moines Register. And, most importantly, film producers in these Iowa projects claimed credits for expenses made outside of Iowa — a clear no-no.

All the blame does not fall with these well-tanned, Armani-wearing desk jockeys. The amount of oversight by our state to block these swindlers and con artists was mishandled from the beginning.

This industry was to bring in economic capital with film productions coming to town to shoot their big-budget action flicks or tearful melodramas where Leonard DiCaprio makes teens swoon and cougars melt. Unfortunately, my fellow UI cineastes, these jobs that Iowans count on are now as destroyed as a movie set on a Michael Bay film.

UI students who major in cinema and comparative literature may not have to worry at this moment about the job outlook. They are too busy exploring their talents and their passions through the lens of a camera or through a tablet of paper, growing ever-so-closer to hammering out that next brilliant screenplay that could catapult them to stardom like UI alum and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody.

Certain professions students work toward in their days at the UI are without distractions and moral miscalculations. If you’re a medical student, you study the body and how to repair it. An accountant’s day is filled with thousands and thousands of numbers all telling a story of our financial history. But for a UI film major or theater major, the infinite details of corporate greed and decreasing ethics are always present. A job market for these folks is much like the famous quotation from Glengarry Glen Ross: “First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado … second place is a set of steak knives … and third place is you’re fired.”

With these recent revelations, the Iowa imbroglio highlights this “win-at-all-costs” lifestyle.

The life of a UI film student may feel like sugarcoated gumdrops, as UI alum Gene Wilder portrayed in Willy Wonka, but in a few short years, your passion may turn sour from the extended recession of your ethics. As of this moment, enjoy your time as a film major. Experience the freedom of exploring this wonderfully artistic field in a safe and secure environment, away from all these desperate leaches of humanity.

But beware of that “greed is good” mantra so often heard in our society. As legendary author William Faulkner said, “Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.”

Thank God for elevators.