Scene Magazine - April 2010

APRIL 2010

HBO’s Treme

HITS PRIME TIME

Louis Prima

LIFE OF A LEGEND

Second Line Stages STARTS GREEN

David Simon

RENEWS NEW ORLEANS

Harold Clarke’s DRESS CODE

ANTHONY MACKIE So Good It Hurts

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VOL. 1, ISSUE 5 | April 2010 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kevin Barraco

EDITOR’S LETTER

Getting excited about different productions coming into Louisiana is part of being on the Scene, but I don’t recall ever being as excited as I am for the highly anticipated new series Treme, premiering this month on HBO. I’m a fan of HBO’s Sunday lineups in general

and will be seated in front of my television for this one!

In my interview with David Simon, co-creator of Treme, he discusses his love of New Orleans and how the series will showcase the culture and music of our region.

On our cover this month, we wanted to celebrate the Oscar connection to Louisiana and applaud New Orleans native Anthony Mackie for his success and for being a part of the winning team that earned Best Picture honors for The Hurt Locker. Anthony Mackie is a unique talent and fast rising star in Hollywood who has recently moved back to his hometown of New Orleans.

Entertainment is our king crop this season, with over

a dozen film and television projects in production.

Now lighting up the new Second Line Stages is Warner Bros’ Green Lantern.

Louisiana also had a huge presence at this year’s South By Southwest Festival in Austin.

Scene Magazine was there to support Louisiana films and musicians. Stay tuned for our coverage in the May issue.

The soft launch of our Digital Edition has been a success far beyond our initial predictions. In the first thirty days, Scene’s readership more than doubled. A special thanks to all of our new readers.

KEVIN BARRACO EDITOR-IN-CHIEF editor@scenelouisiana.com

CONTRIBUTORS

LISA M. DALIET is a New Orleans girl, freelance writer and communications consultant.

For nine years, she worked in the local film and television industries in a variety of positions including location coordinator, assistant location manager and APOC. Today she writes for a variety of publications, assists businesses and organizations with social media marketing and website content management, is a board member and communications consultant for the nonprofit Save Our Schools NOLA, and is on the planning and advisory board for the new nonprofit Gulf Coast Green Living.

GREG MILNECK is founder and president of Digital FX, Inc. The Baton Rouge-based

company specializes in commercial and feature film production and visual effects work for broadcast and features for clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies, Hollywood studios and advertising agencies.

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER Lana Hunt CREATIVE DIRECTOR Erin Theriot COPY EDITOR Micah Haley EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT Ashleigh Scheuermann SALES Donna Cook Jon Bajon, Stacy Schliewe, Brooke Wilson Chapman, Drew Aizpurura, Drew Langhart, Cyndi Wiseman, Allie Clements, Jessica Mason CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Ashley Merlin, Matthew Paul Spriggs, Skip Bolen, Vaughn D. Taylor, Christine Cox GRAPHIC ARTIST Burton Chatelain, Jr. PUBLIC RELATIONS & MARKETING Julie Nathanson, Rogers & Cowan CONTRIBUTING WRITERS AJ Buckley, Saree Schaefer, Lana Hunt, Thomas Merkel, Nathan Olney, Dave Weber, Greg Milneck, Chris Jay, Arthur Vandelay, Emily Paige, Lisa M. Daliet, Jennifer Sherdon, Adam Tustin, Danielle Nelson, Chris Schultz Scene Magazine 4528 Bennington Ave., Suite 300 Baton Rouge, LA 70808 877-517-2363 info@scenelouisiana.com www.scenelouisiana.com Published By Louisiana Entertainment Publishers LLC Display Advertising: Call Louisiana Entertainment Publishers for a current rate card or visit www.scenelouisiana.com All submitted materials become the property of Louisiana Entertainment Publishers LLC. For subscriptions call 877-517-2363 for more information and rates.

DANIELLE NELSON is a New Orleans-based freelance writer and the Outreach

Director for the New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC). Previously, she worked as an on-air host, producer and the Director of Development and Outreach for New Orleans PBS affiliate, WLAE-TV. With a love for public media and background in creative development, Nelson is an active proponent for the growth of the film, television and digital media industries in the Greater New Orleans area.

4 | April 2010

Copyright @ 2010 Louisiana Entertainment Publishers.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used for solicitation or copied by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording by any information storage or retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher.

CONTENTS ON THE COVER

Anthony Mackie New Orleans native and star of The Hurt Locker shines on the big stage at the 2010 Academy Awards.

BEHIND THE SCENES

12

Hear from cast and crew and take a look Behind the Scenes

BEFORE THE SCENE

18

A Conversation with Carmine Giovinazzo

PRODUCER’S CORNER

10

On set with David Simon, Co-Creator of Treme

LAST LOOKS

20

Inside Second Line Stages

ABOVE THE LINE

24

Melissa Leo Anthony Mackie

MUSIC / SOUND SPEED

46

Kristin Diable Jazz Fest 2010 Prima Time Living Room Legends

FASHION / THE RED CARPET Alegria Fashion Show Dress Code by Clarke Saree’s Style OverScene

ON THE SCENE

68

SCENE EXTRAS

36

56

The Styled Fashion Show at Republic New Orleans New Orleans Saints Championship Film Premiere News, Resources, and Celebrities on the Scene

COLUMNS Today’s Scene 8 Full Speed Casting by Arthur Vandelay State of the Artist 44 Composing a Career by Dave Weber In the Mix 34 Hands on with the Optitek by Greg Milneck Good Seats 32 An Interview with D.I.Y Filmmaker David Beier

by Chris Jay Coast to Coast 64 Cobblestone Carpet by Emily Paige Crew Up 30 An Interview with FBT’s James Brooke

by Danielle Nelson

FRAMES PER SECOND

by James Sheppard

THE UNSCENE

The Subtle Transition 6 | April 2010

72

71

TODAY’S SCENE

FULL SPEED CASTING Clarke Peters on the set of Treme with guest actors who are members of the Mardi Gras Indians

W

hile FOX’s short-lived series K-Ville may have been set in New Orleans, the show’s haphazard cultural references left many Louisianans feeling that the gumbo didn’t quite pass the smell test. With this month’s premiere of HBO’s Treme, locals will have another opportunity to see, and play a role, in how New Orleans is portrayed to a national audience.

“With this series, we are telling a story about New Orleans, about its music, its struggles, its truly unique culture,” say Meagan Lewis, Treme’s New Orleans casting director. “We can’t tell that story with Hollywood actors exclusively. We need the voices of New Orleanians.” After working with David Simon in Baltimore on The Wire, Lewis chose to relocate her company, RPM Casting, to New Orleans. “A project such as this gives me the opportunity to reach out to not only the established acting community, but into niches of society, like local musicians and the Mardi Gras Indians.”

Simon’s well-deserved reputation for delivering authenticity has made the transition to New Orleans as well. “We are trying to accurately portray the city and its people, “ says Lewis. “With each new script, I review which characters require professional actors and which are appropriate for community members.” So far, those local community members have included news reporters, courtroom bailiffs, Tulane students, priests and street musicians. “All walks of New Orleans life come through our doors,” says Lewis.

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by Arthur Vandelay

The pace of casting an episodic television show is dramatically faster than that of feature films, which are typically shot over two or three months. “Each episode [requires casting] numerous day players and recurring roles, not to mention hundreds of extras, within a timeframe of days,” says Lewis. She also points out that feature films also usually allow more time to prepare. Casting calls can sometimes be held early in preproduction for large crowd scenes set to be filmed months later.

To illustrate the magnitude of the most demanding days, she offers an example. “We have recreated Mardi Gras parades,” she says, “With the help of hundreds of locals that were there to help us get it right.” Lewis refers to the authentic, local additions to Treme’s cast of characters as “cultural ambassadors.”

“It’s exhausting at times!” she admits, “but it’s also very exciting to be involved in a project of this caliber.”

Not only does a show like Treme create a sustained economic impact on the local economy, it also provides a steady supply of opportunities for local talent, both aspiring and established. While series leads Melissa Leo and Steve Zahn will be applying their veteran talents to the task of becoming New Orleanians, fellow lead and The Wire alum Wendell Pierce will have little difficulty. He was born in New Orleans. S For more information on applying for a part in Treme, visit www.rpmcasting.com.

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the project: on the set of Treme with David Simon

by Kevin Barraco The most highly anticipated television series to ever film in Louisiana, Treme premieres this month on HBO. While filming on location in New Orleans, Scene Magazine was on the Scene with creator David Simon to discuss the vision for the show, crafted with co-creater Eric Overmyer. Simon and Overmyer also created the award-winning HBO series The Wire.

I sat down with Simon on set last month. The production was filming a scene at the B.W. Cooper Apartments, housing projects that were shut down after Hurricane Katrina. A character is trying to break into his shuttered home in the apartments, better known to locals as the “Calliope Projects” or simply “Calio.”

After arriving on set, Simon led me away from bustle of the working crew to find a quiet spot on the steps of a housing unit. With the door at our backs, we sat with a view of a community slowly coming back from Katrina. Treme is a dramatic series portraying the power of people and culture to renew a city.

“Unlike The Wire, which has a very political delivery, Treme is about culture,” said Simon. “However, culture intersects with politics and economics.” Simon addressed how the recent past would be handled in a fictional setting. “We are trying to follow certain historical realities post-Katrina and reference certain events and circumstances that were typical of the period, three to nine months after the storm. We may cheat here or there to make the story work, but hopefully we know where we are cheating. We’re trying to stick to a credible timeline.”

Central to the show’s cultural focus is the music of New Orleans, 10 | April 2010

which Simon believes is the city’s greatest export, brought to life every episode by cameos from real New Orleans musicians. Treme’s talent includes a mix of actors and authentic locals.

“We want to spread it around and have as many south Louisiana musicians [as possible] represented in the show,” said Simon, “But we’re trying not to do general cameos, [instead] introducing them organically at venues where musicians would normally show up.”

One example is trumpeter Kermit Ruffins playing at Vaughan’s Bar, a small venue located in the Bywater, a neighborhood in New Orleans. The limited space available in such authentic locations creates challenges. “We have had to learn how to film music,” said Simon. “It’s a very hard thing to do while preserving the unique New Orleans culture, whether it be in the street or in a venue. That has been the learning curve for us, presenting a performance as a part of a film narrative.”

More Than Just Music Treme will incorporate “not just music but cuisine and dance. Again, this is a show about culture and what culture means to a city,” says Simon. “For New Orleans, the culture is the driving force of this city and the city is incredibly attached to its culture, a result of it being an American city in every essential way.”

“It is a veracious melting pot,” says Simon. “This is great evidence of what Americans are capable of. Because we are mutts. We all come from somewhere else and drag our traditions behind us, throwing them

| FILM into the pot.”

Getting it right is every day’s struggle in the writer’s room and on set, continues Simon. “We have gotten a lot of good will from many people who help us make the right decisions for the story line.

Sometimes we add a scene and we know most of the details about that particular scene and we think we can get by with a few lines of dialogue, then we meet with real locals who lived this scene and describe it differently, so we adjust on the go.” Having famous locals appear on Treme as themselves also presents unique challenges. “Sometimes we write a scene with the real musicians and plan for changes because once we get on set, the musicians will help us pull out the real facts and get us there faster than the writers will. We want it to all be organic.”

Still sitting on the steps, the props departments interrupted us to ask Simon how many toys should be displayed in the apartment to be filmed to reflect that a family had left their home because of the storm. It was obvious every last historical detail was important.

Memory and Historical Truth “New Orleans people don’t always agree with each other. And we will not please everyone,” said Simon. “One thing I have found is the power of memory is limited. Everyone has a specific, different recollection of what happened after the storm: who did what or what event happened where. Sometimes when I research what people’s distinct memories are, even New Orleanians don’t get it right. It was a powerful time and there were a lot of emotions. Although they remember very specific things, they may not remember it exactly.”

The writing staff of Treme has a researcher. Each script goes out to a variety of consultants, such as Donald Harrison, who advises on modern jazz and the Mardi Gras Indian culture, Kermit Ruffins for brass band culture and Susan Spicer for cuisine.

“But the truth is, every now and then you want to cheat,” admits Simon. “For example, in the pilot, we wanted to have a moment with

a Hubig’s pie. However, the pilot is set in November after the storm and Hubig’s didn’t reopen until February of the following year. But we cheated. Because I wanted that character to pull that pie out of her purse. Sometimes you can do that because the audience depicts this as OK in their memory.”

Simon gave a counter-example to illustrate where boundaries lie.

“What you can’t do is have Road Home money landing in November,” he said, referring to the problem-plagued federal funding program created to assist storm-displaced residents with housing repair costs.

“We want to be responsible when making this drama and the trick is to know when to cheat and when not too.”

When asked how the local community will react to the show, Simon was reserved. “I’m not presuming anything,” said Simon. “But I’m sure there will be some CD sales. We hope to just be a conduit for South Louisiana culture.”

Politics and Treme Simon revisited how political realities would be depicted in the series. “There are moments where the infrastructure of the political culture may want to reflect. Some things went wrong. As we sit today at this public housing, a place where they had five thousands units go offline but were undamaged, at a point when people were living at nearby army bases, is inexplicable to me. Sometimes your leaders have to lead when your people don’t want them too. Displacing a community when housing is available and undamaged is wrong.”

Especially wrong in New Orleans, according to Simon. “What makes New Orleans New Orleans is a function of very poor, subsidized living. People can live very cheaply here. These are the people that make this culture. Great musicians and artists have always emerged from these communities. I think we tried to capture this, and later, New Orleans has a big resurgence again with the Saints success. We’ll play that if the show gets follow up seasons.” S

“New Orleans people don’t always agree with each other, and we won’t please everyone.”

- David Simon Wendell Pierce and David Simon on the set of Treme

Photos courtesy of HBO, photography by Skip Bolen www.scenelouisiana.com | 11

FILM |

Steve Zahn, Kermit Ruffins and Wendell Pierce in Treme

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TREME on location: New Orleans, Louisiana

Premiering on HBO April 11th, Treme is the anticipated dramatic television series about the New Orleans music community and the rebuilding of the city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Co-created by David Simon (The Wire, Generation Kill) and Eric Overmyer (The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Streets), Treme has been shooting throughout New Orleans over the last six months.

The story of Treme begins in the fall 2005, three months after Hurricane Katrina and the massive levee failure that resulted in the flooding of 80% of the city, displacing hundreds of thousands of residents. Fictional events depicted in the series will honor the actual chronology of political, economic and cultural events following the storm.

The drama unfolds as Antoine Batiste, a smooth-talking trombonist, struggles to make ends meet, earning cash with any gig he can get, including playing in funeral processions for his former neighbors. His ex-wife, LaDonna Batiste-Williams, owns a bar in the Central City neighborhood and splits her time between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, where her children and new husband have relocated. Concerned over the disappearance of her younger brother David, or Daymo, unseen since the storm, LaDonna has turned to a local civil rights attorney, the overburdened and underpaid Toni Bernette, for help.

12 | April 2010

Photo courtesy of HBO, photography by Skip Bolen

The government’s inconsistent and ineffectual response to the devastation has spurred Bernette’s husband Creighton, a university professor of English literature and an expert on local history, to become an increasingly outspoken critic of the institutional response.

A rebellious radio disc jockey, itinerant musician and general gadfly, Tremé resident Davis McAlary is both chronicler of and participant in the city’s vibrant and varied musical culture, which simply refuses to be silent, even in the early months after the storm. His occasional partner, popular chef Janette Desautel, hopes to regain momentum for her small, newly re-opened neighborhood restaurant.

Elsewhere in the city, displaced Mardi Gras Indian chief Albert Lambreaux returns to find his home destroyed and his tribe, the Guardians of the Flame, scattered, but Lambreaux is determined to rebuild. His son Delmond, an exile in New York playing modern jazz and looking beyond New Orleans for his future, is less sure of his native city’s future, while violinist Annie and her boyfriend Sonny, young street musicians living hand-to-mouth, seem wholly committed to the battered city.

The ensemble cast of Treme includes Wendell Pierce as Antoine Batiste, Khandi Alexander as LaDonna Batiste-Williams, Clarke Peters as Albert Lambreaux, Rob Brown as Delmond Lambreaux, Steve Zahn

FILM | as Davis McAlary, Kim Dickens as Janette Desautel, Melissa Leo as Toni Bernette, Michiel Huisman as Sonny, classical violinist Lucia Micarelli as Annie and John Goodman as Creighton Bernette.

The series will also feature cameos by notable real-life New Orleanians, as well as the talents of many of its extraordinary musicians and other artists associated with the city’s music. Early episodes feature appearances by Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, Kermit Ruffins, Donald Harrison Jr., Galactic, Trombone Shorty Andrews, Deacon John, and the Rebirth and TremÊ Brass Bands.

Wendell Pierce in Treme with Second Line Funeral; Photo courtesy of HBO, photography by Skip Bolen

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XTINCTION on location: Baton Rouge, Louisiana

On set of Xtinction in Baton Rouge

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| FILM

On set of Xtinction in Baton Rouge

From the producing team of Anytown, Xtinction is a film about a prehistoric alligator that is brought back to life and threatens a bayou community. Executive producer George Kostuch of K2 Pictures and producer Matt Keith developed the story, together with Marvista Entertainment for the SyFy Network. With Amir Valinia directing, the film stars Lochlyn Munro, Mark Sheppard, Paul Wall and Lacey Minchew.

“We have a great formula for making low budget indie films that have an audience,” said Kostuch. “I work most of the time with my same local crew and our investment dollars are all from Louisiana. We have seen a demand for science fiction films, which sell well in the foreign distribution market.” Xtinction was shot entirely on location at Alligator Swamp in Baton Rouge. K2 Pictures is a Baton Rouge-based production company, focusing on low budget, genre films, where Kostuch and Keith have produced over twenty films together. Currently, George Kostuch is working on establishing a film center, Vox Studios. For more information, visit www.voxmediagroup.us. www.scenelouisiana.com | 15

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On set of Knucklehead in New Orleans

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WWE STUDIOS on location: New Orleans, Louisiana

WWE Studios has made a commitment to New Orleans, producing multiple consecutive pictures back to back. The studio has previously focused on action films but is creatively expanding with dramas and comedies. WWE Studios is building a slate of family friendly productions featuring wrestling superstars surrounded with great actors.

Their first film, Knucklehead, starred Mark Feuerstein, Melora Hardin and WWE Superstar Paul “Big Show” Wight. Director Michael W. Watkins helmed the comedy adventure, which is scheduled for theatrical release later this year.

Knucklehead follows the on-the-road adventures of a trio of misfits: a naïve giant and church orphan-turned-amateur fighter Walter Krunk (Big Show), former mixed martial arts championturned-manager Eddie Sullivan (Mark Feuerstein), and church aide-turned-chaperone, Mary O’Connor (Melora Hardin). The trio fights their way across the South to the annual Pro-Am mixed martial arts tournament in New Orleans.

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“I asked Michael Watkins to join our team because he is the consummate director and he makes me laugh harder than anyone I know,” said WWE Studios executive vice president Mike Pavone.

“He was also the perfect director to help set up the template moving forward for WWE Studios’ new slate of films.”

With years of experience directing for television, Watkins brought a fast passed tempo to the production style. “Producing the new set of films was a perfect fit for Louisiana,” added Pavone, “We utilize the incentives and the vast resources available. We are very happy to be working with the amazing crews and support services.”

In February, WWE Studios wrapped their second film, Brothers Keeper, produced in New Orleans starring Patricia Clarkson, Danny Glover and John Cena, set to be released in September. This past month the studios wrapped their third picture, Big Red, starring Ed Harris, Amy Madigan and Randy Orton.

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BEFORE THE SCENE WITH CARMINE GIOVINAZZO

by AJ Buckley

Before the Scene is where we all start. In a small town with our families. In front of a mirror with our friends. The days spent sleeping on a couch. The nights working at a bar. Living with the unknown and surrounded by uncertainty. It’s about the times that define us. It’s about the darkness just before the limelight.

For the past six years Carmine has starred as detective Danny Messer on the CBS hit CSI:NY. After an injury ended his athletic career, Carmine moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting full time. He got his break with a part in the pilot episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and has since appeared in Black Hawk Down, The Red Zone, In Enemy Hands and more.

He is also one of few actors to have appeared in all three CSI series.

Carmine spends time off set playing guitar, golfing and riding his Harley.

Q: What made you want to become an actor?

A: Watching films like Mean Streets and anything by John Cassevettes

inspired me to want to be involved in film. I happened to be going to a school that had a theatre program while I was playing baseball.

When baseball ended abruptly (and painfully) due to an injury, I just dove into acting. I had done many, many short films by this time. It was something I did growing up all the time, from sketches to little stories to visuals that had a lot to do with the music. We’d do everything...editing, titling, shooting. This was early on using “on the shoulder” VHS cameras. Anyhow, I dove into class in New York and started responding to ads in Backstage. You could find great student films in there…indies, extra work…I did all of that. I’ve always had a [creative] outlet (that I would realize later was necessary) drawing, painting, music and acting. When it’s right, acting can be so inspiring and relieving. And the fact that people respond to it at times is a bonus.

Q: What was your biggest fear?

A: Being in front of an audience and maintaining the focus to be

inside what I was working on. It’s an odd physical relationship, making movies and television (theatre is obviously different). But [retaining] that sense of concentration and not losing it [can be difficult].

Q: What kept you from walking away?

A: Probably a year or two before I got CSI:NY was the first time I

started contemplating going back home to New York and changing my priorities. I had been in L.A. just long enough to get annoyed by it and recognize a side of the business one tries to avoid. I don’t know if I was really going to get out of the business but I was ready to go back and be with my family and just stop fighting for something that seemed to be about all the wrong things.

But I didn’t. I didn’t walk away. Because I don’t do that. Maybe it was my history as an athlete that kept me from backing off.

Q: What did you walk away from?

A: I left my hometown at twenty-one and all that support, which

was my closest ally. My family has been behind all that I’ve tried and I don’t have that here in L.A. I’ve created a home base here at this point, but I left [home] to be out here alone and broke while trying to break into the toughest business next to becoming a professional athlete.

18 | April 2010

Q: What were you doing the morning before the audition that changed your life?

A: The morning before, I was sweeping the leaves in my

backyard. I like doing that. I never did create a yard where I could invite people over but I would always straighten it out.

Q: What were the words that kept you going?

A: “Conscience and the prompting of the heart dictate at once what one must tell.” (from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot)

Q: How have you changed?

A: I have a few grey hairs near my sideburns. And like Henry David

Thoreau, I believe we should take care of our own lot and I disagree with the way in which we are taxed.

Q: What words do you have to inspire others?

A: Be original. Find the right folks before you to follow but make your view a unique one. Realize at the end of the day all you need is a cozy corner and someone to love.

Over the past five years AJ has starred as Adam Ross on the hit TV show CSI:NY. Originally from Dublin, Ireland, he has spent the past ten years in Los Angeles, California, acting and writing. Buckley’s latest project, Skateland, is currently screening in the film festival circuit. He is also currently writing and starring in the upcoming web series GhostFacers for Warner Brothers.

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THE START OF SECOND LINE STAGES

Sceond Line Stages

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ew Orleans is way ahead of the curve on this,” said Susan Brennan. “We’ve had the tax credits in place to bring the productions here. All that was missing was the infrastructure.

Now we have a facility that matches the top of the industry standards.”

These were the words spoken at the ribbon cutting ceremony in March, celebrating the official grand opening of Second Line Stages, a $32 million project from developer Susan Brennan and film consultants Trey Burvant and Diane Wheeler-Nicholson.

At 220,000 square feet, Second Line Stages is the first state-ofthe-art, full service media production facility in New Orleans and the first, independent green studio facility in the United States.

Second Line Stages is built to comply with the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Silver Certification standard, which is awarded to structures that achieve superior environmental performance.

Second Line’s operations are designed to enable cleaner, smarter, more responsible physical production practices. The new stages give filmmakers the opportunity to build sets and produce segments in a controlled indoor environment. Second Line Stages is equipped to accommodate everything from feature films and television shows to commercials and music videos.

20 | April 2010

“What New Orleans needs more than anything right now is new, positive economic growth,” said Brennan, a New Orleans native, “And we have built Second Line Stages to be a first class facility, generating hundreds of jobs in the city.”

The facility includes three soundstages measuring 18,000, 12,500 and 7,400 square feet, each with a sound rating of NC-25, light grid, show power and silent air-conditioning. Also included are 18,000 square feet of production support space plus 73,000 square feet of warehouses.

Included in the office building is 20,000 square feet of office, plus dressing rooms, make-up and rehearsal rooms. In addition, there is a fifty seat digital screening theatre, ample onsite parking and a roof top terrace with spectacular views of the city. Hollywood Trucks, TM Equipment Rental and Storyville Post are a few of the support business located on the lot.

At the beginning of the year, the facility opened its doors to its first productions to test the newly developed stages. Millennium Film’s The Mechanic built sets and filmed on one of the stages. The first big fish to bite was the Warner Bros summer 2011 tentpole Green Lantern, which reserved the entire facility for months and is still filming there currently.

“We want Second Line to become a vital hub of production activity here in New Orleans,” says Burvant.

| FILM

Second Line Stages’ Grand Open Celebration Ribbon Cutting L-R Mitch Landrieu, Susan Brennan, Stacy Head, Sherri McConnell, Chris Stelly, Jacquelyn B. Clarkson and Robert Mendoza

www.scenelouisiana.com | 21

FILM | last looks

“Meeting the current demand and furthering the growth of a self-sustaining industry remains the ultimate goal.”

“Second Line Stages will transform New Orleans from a film location to a true production destination,” said Jennifer Day, director of New Orleans Office of Film and Video.

“With many other support services in place, the stages mark a level of maturation for the New Orleans’ film industry.”

Conveniently located in the Lower Garden District of New Orleans, Second Line Stages leads in the commercial revitalization of this historic district. The development of the stages involved both restoration of existing buildings and an addition of a new structure, focusing on integrating old New Orleans architecture with modern technology.

Second Line Stages was awarded film infrastructure, new market and historic tax credits. New market investors include CCG Community Partners, Value Advisor Fund and National New Markets Fund. Historic tax investors are Tax Credit Capital of New Orleans and US Bancorp. The financing was provided by Whitney Bank. Local architect John Williams led the design and local general contractor Landis Construction Company performed the work.

“Film is a major part of Louisiana’s cultural economy, creating jobs and contributing to the quality of life here in our state,” said Louisiana Lt. Governor and New Orleans mayor-elect Mitch Landrieu. “2008 was a record year, with more than eighty major projects produced here in Louisiana. We will continue to develop the necessary infrastructure to make Louisiana a global leader in the film and television industries.”

For more information, visit www.secondlinestages.com. S

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FILM |

last minute leo

by Nathan Olney

Melissa Leo in Treme

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POILER ALERT! The new HBO series Treme is “about several family units in New Orleans post-Katrina.” This is all the normally-effusive Melissa Leo will reveal about her new show, currently filming all around the neighborhood of the same name in New Orleans. And even this tidbit, the Oscar-nominated actress says, is spoken in the same manner a prisoner of war might divulge his name, rank, social security number…and nothing else.

“We have all been sworn to secrecy. I guard her in that way too.”

The “her” in question is Leo’s character, Toni Bernette, just one of half a dozen main characters in the David Simon and Eric Overmyercreated show that centers around musicians, their families, friends and all the people caught up in the red tape of trying to put their beloved city back together after one of the worst natural disasters to ever occur on American soil. And if you have ever seen a David Simon series, you know that can and will include just about everyone in town.

One would think, after cutting her teeth with Simon and Overmyer on Homocide: Life on the Streets for five seasons as Det. Sgt. Kay Howard, Leo would have been a shoe-in for their next project, but no. The Hollywood casting angels work in more circuitous ways. “David Simon and the amazing people he’s gathered around him over these past few years are all very known entities to me. They do a lot of stuff around and about, and I hadn’t heard diddly squat for years from them. I happened to run into [casting director] Alexa Fogel and was just blabbing, because

24 | April 2010

Photo courtesy of HBO, photography by Skip Bolen

she’s a casting person I’ve known for years, and expressing a great interest in getting back into TV. I had no idea she had been their caster all along and a few days later, got a call from David, it’s just the funny way this business works. I doubt I would be here if I hadn’t happened to run into Alexa and hadn’t happened to say the things I said to her.”

That last sentiment is surely debatable seeing as how, in the years following her stint as Det. Howard, Leo’s starred alongside Oscarwinner Robert De Niro in no less than three pictures (Hide and Seek, Righteous Kill, and Everybody’s Fine), worked with Oscar-nominated writer Guillermo Arriaga on 21 Grams and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and, finally, scored her own overdue Best Actress trip to the Kodak theater for her remarkable turn as a financially desperate mother who turns to human smuggling in Frozen River.

Not bad for someone who started out on soap opera stalwart All My Children and refers to herself frequently as “Last Minute Leo.” “I literally have been a last minute hire on the biggest things that I’ve done. I am somebody who comes in and very quickly I go to the script and dig the woman out of there, not from my imagination. In my training I was taught to start on the page. The page is our blueprint so we all are building the same house. So I can do it overnight, as has been required of me on certain jobs,” she says. “I’m not that actor who’s had all that prelude to the roles that I’ve played. It’s very rare in my work that I’ve known a woman for long before I’m playing her.” It is a technique that has served

| FILM her well but that she may not need now that she is back on the small screen.

“I’ve been looking for a while to get back into TV. There’s a discipline about television that is my next goal in work. It’s a really fascinating prospect. What I get is this incredible array of writers that kind of know what they’ll be writing over the next five years.” It is a future she looks forward to, but with particulars she avoids. “I don’t want them to tell me that, because that’s my future,” she says of the detailed paths the creators have devised. “Whatever they know about her history, what we’ve shot so far and what happened before we started shooting, those are the questions I ask my writers about. The great plus in it is she’s my responsibility and how I play her might inform how they grow her.”

This technique of sensory denial led her to mostly miss out on her first New Orleans experience during the filming of Sundance favorite, Welcome to the Rileys. For the role of Lois Riley, a guilt-ridden mother who has not left her house for eight years following the untimely death of her daughter and finds herself having to trek to New Orleans to retrieve her errant husband, Doug ( James Gandolfini). She finds him on a plumbing convention trip turned platonic house making with a Bourbon Street stripper (Kristin Stewart). Leo abstained from taking in the sites. “I spent a month and a half down here with a nice young man driving me around, who was so proud of his city and wanted to share with me every little inch and corner, and me telling him, ‘Sam, don’t tell me, don’t tell me.’ I would blinder myself and not take any of it in, because Lois comes into this city not knowing it and not liking it.“ But even with her self-imposed restrictions, the city still seeped through to her. “New Orleans in Rileys is so beautiful, it’s just such a part of the film, it’s just really sort of where [Doug and Lois] happen to end up, but everything about the city adds to that story in ways that probably only New

Orleanians can understand. Jake [Scott, the director] was very careful that all of that was shown. Those houses were sitting there on Piety Street as you see them in the film. You get the city so much. Even though there is the Bourbon Street scene it’s not where the movie takes place.”

It’s this fuller vision of the city that she hopes to explore with Treme. “A month and a half after filming [Welcome to the Rileys] I get a call to come back to New Orleans. But now, I play a woman who is from here, who loves being here and I get to know the city,” she says.

“Not only are you shooting in the city and you have the backdrop of the place you are shooting, you also have the local crew working and so you get to know the people of the area in a way that no tourist or traveler ever does.” Which includes private sessions with the program’s real headliner. “The music is the star of the show,” the always humble “Last Minute Leo” confides, “I think in a way I’m a little spoiled with that. We did shoot a second line that we created ourselves for the show and just had an amazing time out in the streets of New Orleans with the bands. The music is a very sweet part of the show, to share it with folks that know and love it and to share it with folks who don’t know enough about it yet, is really a prideful part of being here in New Orleans.”

And though she won’t spill any details of her Treme alter-ego’s plot lines, there is at least one character arc Leo would like to see for Toni. “I’m probably the most unmusical person you’re ever going to talk to. I’m the one on the offbeat, happily clapping my hands at the back of the room, singing my lungs out in the shower with everyone cringing that can hear. Thus far we have not seen Toni’s musical abilities come forward; though in my heart, in Melissa’s heart, I would love it because I would have a chance to act as if I know music. Maybe I’ll keep noodling [the writers]. We’ll see what happens.” See and hear. S

www.scenelouisiana.com | 25

FILM |

BIG MACKIE

by Thomas Merkel

Anthony Mackie in The Hurt Locker

A

nthony Mackie has a lot to smile about these days.

On stage with his co-stars at the Academy Awards this year, he was all smiles as The Hurt Locker received its seventh statue of the night, this one for Best Picture..

A talented actor, Mackie is a classically trained graduate of the Julliard School of Drama who was born in New Orleans, where he also attended the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA). He was discovered after receiving rave reviews for playing Tupac Shakur in the off-Broadway play Up Against the Wind. Immediately following, Mackie made his auspicious film debut in as Eminem’s nemesis, Papa Doc, in Curtis Hanson’s 8 Mile. His performance caught the attention of Spike Lee, who subsequently cast Mackie in the 2004 Toronto Film Festival Masters Program selection Sucker Free City and She Hate Me. “Everybody knows when you’ve got a role in a Spike Lee movie, you’re gonna blow up,” says Mackie, “But I happen to be the only person who’s had the lead in the two Spike Lee movies nobody saw. It was a humbling experience, but Spike taught me more about how to fall on my face in this business than anybody else.”

As a child in New Orleans, Mackie grew up wanting to be an engineer like his brother. But, after attending NOCCA, he knew his passion was acting. Plus, other motivators were on his mind. “You never see girls running after engineers,” says Mackie.

Another New Orleanian, fellow NOCCA graduate Wendell Pierce of The Wire and Treme, was a mentor to Mackie. To this day, he holds a close relationship with the actor. “I’ve always wanted to follow in his foot steps and [I’m] doing my best to continue that path.”

His promising feature film career has included appearances in many other notable films, including Clint Eastwood’s Academy Award- 26 | April 2010

Photo courtesy of Summit Entertainment

Anthony Mackie with Kathryn Bigelow, Academy Award-winning Director of The Hurt Locker, which won for Best Picture, at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party

FILM |

Anthony Mackie with Academy Award nominee for Best Actor, Jeremy Renner

winning Million Dollar Baby, opposite Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman and Eastwood, as well as Jonathan Demme’s The Manchurian Candidate, alongside Denzel Washington and Liev Schreiber. More recently, Mackie could be seen in Dreamworks’ Eagle Eye, starring Shia LaBeouf, and reprised his role as Tupac Shakur in Notorious, a biopic of slain rapper Notorious B.I.G. While Mackie has been nominated for numerous awards, it is his role in The Hurt Locker that is garnering him more attention than any of his previous work. He caught director Kathryn Bigelow’s eye during his performances in We Are Marshall and as a menacing drug dealer in critically acclaimed Half Nelson.

“He completely controlled the screen in a relatively small part,” Bigelow remembers. “You couldn’t take your eyes off him. Anthony has that cunning magnetism that has true star quality.” While casting the The Hurt Locker, she remembered him.

In The Hurt Locker, Mackie plays the role of Sergeant J.T. Sanborn, opposite Best Actor nominee Jeremy Renner. “Sanborn hides behind his machismo,” says Mackie. “There has to be a kind of superhero aspect to these soldiers. If they wake up every day in fear that every minute is the last, they’ll drive themselves crazy. Down deep though, he’s very humble.”

“I’m so thankful to have worked on this picture and so proud of Kathryn for making history by being the first woman that took home the Oscar for Best Director. This film is just another project that proves 28 | April 2010

Photo courtesy of Summit Entertainment

you don’t need a huge budget to make good movies,” adds Mackie.

Intertwined throughout his film career, Mackie has crafted theatrical performances, both on and off Broadway. He made his Broadway debut as the stuttering nephew, Sylvester, alongside Whoopi Goldberg in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. He was the lead in Regina King’s modern retelling of Chekov’s The Seagull. Currently on Broadway in Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding In Spokane, Mackie is starring alongside Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell and Zoe Kazan.

The young actor also has several biopics coming out soon.

These include Bolden!, an account of the great New Orleans cornet player Buddy Bolden, which was shot in New Orleans. He also stars as the titular character in Jesse Owens, a feature based on the late, great Olympic star. Plus, Mackie stars opposite Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau, slated to be released this summer.

Anthony Mackie continues to prove his talent on every project he works and it won’t be surprising to see him on stage at the Oscars again in the near future. But despite his rising star, Mackie hasn’t let the fame take him permanently away from the city he loves. The actor recently moved back to New Orleans and returns home in between projects. “New Orleans is the optimum playground for a creative background and my goal is to work hard to establish my career and just come home to make movies in New Orleans.” S

CREW UP

MONEY TALK$:

by Danielle Nelson

L

ouisiana ranks third nationally in film and television production.

But to be a truly self-sustaining, competitive industry, we must grow the amount of development, pre-production and postproduction done in the state. FBT Film and Entertainment is one of the groups working to diversify the scope of the film industry in Louisiana.

James Brooke is a partner at FBT Film and Entertainment in New Orleans, which has fostered projects such as Battle: Los Angeles for Sony, The Hungry Rabbit Jumps for Endgame, The Last Exorcism for Lionsgate and Yellow Handkerchief for Arthur Cohn Productions. With a background rooted in production, Brooke’s television producing credits include work for HBO, BBC, CBS, NBC and ABC, and he has produced feature films for Nu Entertainment and Cinemavault Releasing.

NOVAC’s outreach director Danielle Nelson sat down with him to discuss how FBT is helping to change the landscape of pre-production services offered in Louisiana.

Q: First, tell me about FBT Film and Entertainment.

A: We offer full service production company support. We are not solely focused on selling Louisiana film tax credits. As a subsidiary of First Bank and Trust, we combine the strength and expertise of our affiliates while showing production companies how to enhance their “Louisiana budgets” (and tax credits) while getting better pricing on most line items.

Q: How does working with First Bank and Trust set you apart from other Louisiana film incentive programs?

A: Our association with First Bank and Trust allows us to combine the trust and security of a bank along with the flexibility and oversight of an investment firm. We offer production insurance through our subsidiary First Insurance Agency and also act as general agents for completion bond providers. These factors combine to make us [a] “turn-key production partner.”

Q: Turn-key production partner? I like the sound of it, but what does it really mean?

A: Our goal is to work with producers at the earliest stages of pre-production to help the producer understand the “Louisiana advantages.” Producers are evaluating production incentives nationwide – we work with the producer to show that FBT is not just about incentives – and that Louisiana has a first-class production infrastructure encompassing experienced crews, equipment vendors and production facilities.

Q: You have so much experience as a producer- this obviously makes you an asset to FBT. What is your 30 | April 2010

specific role within the company?

A: My job is to call on the film community worldwide to market and promote FBT’s services and to bring projects to FBT for the purchase of tax credits. Of course, this means I’m also promoting the state of Louisiana and the generous production incentives. I work closely with Lenny Alsfeld, President of FBT Investments.

Most queries that come to FBT from producers who are seeking information about filming in Louisiana are referred to me. Obviously, the initial conversation is about budget: does the project meet the minimum threshold of $300,000 spent in Louisiana? We’ll then discuss the incentives: thirty percent for Louisiana production expenditures plus five percent for hiring resident labor and how the incentives are applied to earn tax credits.

Customarily, I will ask to see the screenplay, the production budget detail, finance plan and background information on the production team. These are essential elements that will give me an idea of what stage the producer is at in the pre-production process – and, of course, how well they understand the process of accessing the tax credits. If a producer has done a tax credit analysis, I will review and corroborate - and look for expenditures the producer may not have included or didn’t realize qualified for a tax credit. If an analysis has not been completed, I’ll work with the producer to create one.

Q: Why is it important to remain involved in the creative development of a project?

A: Reading the screenplay helps me understand the specific production elements needed to lift the story from the page to the screen: practical and/or exotic locations, a sound stage facility, special visual effects, post-production. We work with the producer to find ways to secure all these elements in Louisiana. To optimize the production expenditures and maximize the value of the tax credits.

Of course, I’m not waiting for the phone to ring – no matter how many potential projects flow through our “Louisiana pipeline.” I try to pursue projects at their earliest development stage: a screenplay purchased for production, a television pilot announced for series, a book optioned for movie adaptation. We understand the development process and know the steps a producer has to take to get into pre-production. Most finance plans now include a tax credit rebate integrated into the business model.

Q: You’re based mostly out of Los Angeles, where the entertainment industry does a large amount of development work. What are some of the reasons we aren’t seeing more development done here in Louisiana?

A: The development process includes shaping a concept, idea, screenplay, book, manuscript, or magazine article

Danielle Nelson, James Brooke, Lenny Alsfeld and New Orleans film commissioner Jennifer Day

into a “pitch” or presentation that will essentially attract a buyer. The buyers (studios, networks, cable companies, film financiers) are in Los Angeles and New York.

The evolution of motion picture project starts with the major considerations of costs, return on investment, and a project’s potential in the global market – to the particulars of story selection, development, financing, pre-production, principal photography, post production and distribution. At each stage of a picture’s evolution, the economic, business, legal, creative, and practical issues are examined. Decisions and choices are made by producers in consultation with agents, lawyers, talent, rights holders, distributors, and studio or network executives. Filmmakers and storytellers in Louisiana need to find ways to network into the executives responsible for a “project greenlight.”

Q: For those storytellers and filmmakers reading this article, where would you recommend they start?

A: As I stated before, the buyers are in New York and Los Angeles. However, one needs to reach out to those buyers. One method is through an agent, be it a literary or talent agent. But again, that networking doesn’t really exist here. I don’t know if we’re going to build that community up, I have a desire to see that occur, but again it comes back to knowing the producers and filmmakers that can help young filmmakers here. With technology being what it is, you can sit anywhere in the world and pitch a project. That said, the issue of how to get the project in front of a buyer is the age-old dilemma in our industry.

Q: Physical production is something that we’re doing with regularity but what about post-production work?

We’re far from operating at full capacity and that’s where so much of the really lucrative job market lies in filmmaking. What do you identify as the “next steps” for attracting and retaining meaningful post-production work in our region?

A: Essential to building post-production services in Louisiana is the ability to provide skilled, creative film editors. [Special Effects (SFX)] has strong growth potential in Louisiana. SFX is expensive and labor intensive, producers seek ways to reduce the costs of this increasingly important element in many films – a thirty percent discount will be very attractive. Pixel Magic, a major digital visual effects company based in Los Angeles, has set up a facility in Lafayette.

We’re working with Pixel Magic to train editors in New Orleans.

Q: Part of your job is selling New Orleans as a destination for filmmakers, producers and investors. Undoubtedly much of your pitch has to do with tax incentives, how do our incentives compete nationally?

A: With incentives of thirty percent on the production spend and five percent on hiring resident labor, Louisiana is competitive with other states – and has proven experience in successfully providing tax credits to producers. Louisiana’s skilled crew base has grown by over 400 percent since the start of the tax incentive program, and infrastructure continues to develop to answer the demand from film and television producers.

In 2008, Louisiana set a production record with more than eighty major film and television projects, representing more than $800 million in production budgets, including about $500 million spent in-state. The state’s previous mark was fifty-six projects, set in 2007.

Q: Finally, what resources would you recommend to those looking for more information about the business of film financing and film development?

A: Attending sales markets. Attending film festivals. Reading the trades and online blogs [such as] Daily Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Screen International, and Deadline Hollywood Daily. S For more information about FBT, visit www.fbtfilm.com. For course listings and more information about NOVAC, visit www.novacvideo.org. www.scenelouisiana.com | 31

GOOD SEATS AN INTERVIEW WITH

D.I.Y. FILMMAKER

David Beier

by Chris Jay

H

aving a conversation with twenty-six-year-old Shreveport resident and do-it-yourself filmmaker David Beier is like listening to an audiobook of Rick Schmidt’s Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices. Beier, whose short film You Better Run recently won several top prizes including Best Short Film, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor at the San Diego Black Film Festival, has some advice for low-to-no budget filmmakers.

Beier’s insights are useful and sometimes hilariously simple. “If you’re shooting outdoors, bring an obscene amount of sandbags,” he says. “If you’re attending a festival where your film is playing, take your cast along if you can. While they’re networking, they’ll talk up your screenings.”

You Better Run tells the story of a young man who, through a series of mistakes and coincidences, finds himself in debt to a local drug kingpin and has to fight his way out of a corner. While the premise of the film is certainly familiar, Beier’s cast – led by Nikki Daniels Jr. as the young man and Jevon Miller as the drug dealer - bring to life the danger and the breathless immediacy of the story in a convincing and compelling way. On the topic of casting, Beier offers up more good, common sense advice. Mainly, that a filmmaker should become as familiar as possible with the aspiring actors in his or her community.

“None of the principal actors in the film ever auditioned for me,” he said. “But I was there when they auditioned for other projects. I saw Nikki Daniels audition for Streets of Blood and I thought ‘Okay, I want him in my film.’” He met Odessa Sykes, who plays a concerned mother in the film, at a local actors’ showcase in Shreveport and was impressed by the confidence she exuded. As he discusses casting, Beier frequently cites the commitment and hard work of the unpaid cast as his motivation to make the film as good as it could possibly be. ”You work a lot harder when you don’t have any money,” Beier said.

“Your film is going to be competing for the attention of an audience that’s accustomed to hundred million dollar movies and all of the production values that come along with a budget that size. Your actors are busting their butts on behalf of your vision. You don’t want to let them look stupid.”

Beier utilized withoutabox.com to submit the final, thirty-two minute film to festivals across the country. Having entered fifteen festivals and been accepted by four, he feels like the festival circuit “is a crap shoot as far as acceptance or rejection goes,” but definitely appreciates the experiences he had at the San Diego Black Film Festival, where he and his cast rubbed shoulders with the likes of Spike Lee, Bobby Brown, KeKe Shephard and aspiring filmmakers like himself. Beier described the San Diego Black Film Festival, the third-largest black film festival in the U.S., as “a really cool and welcoming environment” for him and his cast. The first prize awarded during the festival, the Filmmakers’ Choice Award, went to You Better Run, a turn of events that helped generate huge audiences for the film throughout the course of the festival.

Currently, Beier is developing the concept of You Better Run into a feature film and drafting a fundraising plan to get the picture made. When asked what impact the growth of the major motion picture and television industry in Louisiana has had on low-budget,

32 | April 2010

Nicki Daniels, Jr. as “Josh” in You Better Run

Jevon Miller as “Doc” in You Better Run

D.I.Y. types like him, Beier sees in the industry both a source of encouragement and a challenge. “The entertainment industry taking root here has energized everyone I know. But I hope to see more local people putting that energy to use creating their own films, as well.”

He cites writer/director/actor Blayne Weaver’s recently wrapped production 6 Month Rule and Jeffrey Goodman’s 2008 thriller The Last Lullaby as examples of what can happen when that “energy” spreads among local filmmakers determined to make their own projects.

“Most of my good friends are working on crews in town, but not working on bringing their own ideas to fruition,” Beier said. “I’d love to see more of an independent Scene crop up here.” S

www.scenelouisiana.com | 33

IN THE MIX

HANDS ON WITH THE OPTITEK OPTIMATOR

by Greg Milneck

O

perating a facility 1500 miles from either Los Angeles or New York can present challenges. After all, we can’t just run down the road and collimate our lenses or check the back focus on our Red One cameras. We have learned to adapt, and, in the process, built our own rental facility to meet our needs for top quality equipment and services. But until recently, we were still forced to send our cameras and lenses out to check for proper flange focal depth or back focus issues and lens collimation. Fortunately, some new affordable products have become available that allow us to handle this locally. These optical collimation devices allow us to set the PL mount of a digital cinema camera relative to the sensor.

Several months ago Abel CineTech released the IB/E Null Lens for the RED One camera. At the time, the Null was the only option shipping – until now. Optitek has released the Optimator. Optitek claims this new tool improves and expands on the Null concept with greater ease of use and makes all tests “laboratory condition” compliant regardless of location. Accuracy really isn’t an issue here, since both devices are accurate to within five microns.

In other words, it only matters if you are actually splitting hairs.

We just got our grubby hands on the Optimator and our tests have proven very promising.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS The Optimator is an impressive looking piece of equipment. It has an odd, almost bullet-like shape, and a heft that is surprising considering its size. It appears to be well built and very solid. It features a stainless steel optics housing, stainless mount adapters, interchangeable lens mounts and high-resolution optics capable of resolving in excess of 5000 lines per inch.

I do have to note that the first unit shipped to us had to be sent back as it was malfunctioning. Whether this is indicative of the quality of build or not, I can’t say. Only time will tell. Otherwise, the unit ships in a very nice compact pelican case with two stickers for use on the back focus collar, useful to check the collimation of your lenses.

IN USE While the Null was a fantastic piece of equipment and certainly serviceable for years to come, it has it drawbacks. The single biggest complaint I’ve always had was that calibrating with the null required a very specific and inconvenient set of circumstances. Because of its super-wide angle lens, it is designed to focus at infinity, forcing you to settle on a target at least fifty meters away. If you don’t have a football field for a studio or live in a skyscraper in New York, it means you have to use it outside. That’s not always feasible and is 34 | April 2010

extremely inconvenient as working outside is not the optimal way to set up a camera. The Optimator, on the other hand, has a built in test chart meaning we could actually use this sucker inside a closet.

Using the Optimator is a simple process. First, you mount the device and punch in to get a one to one pixel display. Second, you loosen the collar every so slightly to allow for fine-tuning of the PL mount. The built-in chart is great and allows you adjust the camera distance very quickly. Not only is it convenient, it’s easy to read and its detail leads to extremely accurate calibration. The built-in LED light allows the user to adjust brightness, though we found anything over a setting of “2” blew out the chart and made it basically unusable.

The high-resolution targets are particularly useful. This unique target design makes any sensor tilt evident and the center target helps to detect sensor-centering problems.

Finally, you tighten the collar back up and remove the Optimator. We were able to properly calibrate the flange focal depth in ten minutes or less.

PRICE Our Optimator unit was priced at $2195. When you compare that to the Null, priced around $1700 without the optional target (an addition the company is making for another $1000, but is still not available), it’s priced very competitively.

CONCLUSION After testing the Null, I noted on the IB/E website (www.ibe-optics. com/NulllLens) that: “[After] fifteen minutes, two RED Ones are now spot on focus. Very cool new tool, which should be considered a must have for any serious RED owner…. for now this is the only option shipping and it works exactly as advertised. Overall, I am very satisfied with the RED Null. It is very simple to use and takes only a few minutes to verify the RED’s back-focus.”

I stand by those words. It performs exactly as it should and was the first and best product available for the RED. However, today we have a new contender in the Optimator, which has the Null beat… for now, at least. The Optimator is more convenient and easier to adjust. Once the Null Target ships we’ll see how they compare.

The bottom line is this: when I use the Optimator, our customers are 100 percent confident that we are providing a perfectly calibrated camera. Confidence in our products, our services and our results is worth its weight in gold. S Greg Milneck is founder and president of Digital FX, Inc. The Baton Rouge based company specializes in commercial and feature film production and visual effects work for broadcast and features for clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies, Hollywood studios and advertising agencies.

www.scenelouisiana.com | 35

scene The cast of HOT TUB TIME MACHINE rides in New Orleans’ Krewe Of Tucks parade

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his past Mardi Gras, the stars of MGM’s film Hot Tub Time Machine were special guests in the Krewe of Tucks parade. Rob Corddry, former correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Craig Robinson, who plays Darryl Philbin on NBC’s The Office, and Clark Duke from the hit show Greek rode on a specially designed hot tub float.

Corddry and Robinson have both worked on films in Louisiana before but this was their first Mardi Gras experience.

Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson and Clark Duke, members of the cast of Hot Tub Time Machine

WHO DAT KREWE TURNS SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST

by Chris Schultz In 2009, New Orleans tech organization Net2NO concocted a plan to evangelize the doubtful at South by Southwest (SXSW), where film, music and digital media converge. The message? That the state of Louisiana and city of New Orleans are hotbeds for digital media. We called the trip “NOLA <3 SXSW” (geek speak for “New Orleans loves South by Southwest”).

The plan worked. Twenty-five people got on a bus in New Orleans, road-tripped to Austin, crashed in a house together, manned a booth in the tradeshow, paraded around the conference in matching t-shirts, supported a member panelist and threw a kicking party like only New Orleanians can do. How awesome was it? SXSW invited us back to host a panel to talk about what this trip has meant to the New Orleans tech and entrepreneurship Scene, entitled “Uprising Tide: Inciting Online Communities into Offline Movements.”

At last year’s SXSW, Net2NO met Sloane Berrent, a resident of Los Angeles. “SXSW changed my image of New Orleans. Maybe I would have learned about the emerging entrepreneurial opportunities from a website or a newspaper, but I wouldn’t have felt it if I hadn’t met New Orleans at SXSW; I wouldn’t have been invigorated by the spirit, the warmth or the ‘we’re doing this’ attitude. And if I hadn’t met the people leading these efforts, I wouldn’t have decided to move to New Orleans myself,” says Sloane. She now proudly calls 36 | April 2010

New Orleans home.

This year’s pilgrimage is appropriately called the “Who Dat Krewe” and plans are to make it bigger and better than last year. The buzz is already all over Twitter as people we connected with from New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles are excited to reconnect with the Who Dats this year. Most importantly, this annual grassrootsmarketing event is having a measurable impact on the digital media Scene in Louisiana. Out of it has sprung a co-working space, the Launch Pad, a new technology conference TribeCon, many new tech organizations, such as the Social Media Club, multiple new startup companies and a tech blog, NewOrleansTech.net. Most importantly people we met at the conference who have moved to New Orleans to build careers, companies and a new life here.

The goal this year is to continue to recruit digital media talent and companies to Louisiana. The renewal of the digital media tax incentive last summer provides up to a thirty-five percent tax credit back to companies and creates a clear competitive advantage for locating a company here. Creating awareness of this incentive and the tech and startup community that exists in Louisiana is the goal of this campaign. As you can imagine, the Who Dat Krewe will be creating a lot of content on this road trip. You can follow the tweets, pictures and video along the way at neworleanstech.net.

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PRODUCTION UPDATES

GREEN LANTERN continues filming in New Orleans. Ryan Reynolds stars as the titular comic book superhero. The film also stars Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong and Tim Robbins. Green Lantern is one of the latest films to jump on the 3-D bandwagon in the wake of Avatar’s massive box office take.

TREME continues filming in the Big Easy. Premiering this month on HBO, the dramatic series chronicles the rebuilding of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina through the eyes of local musicians. Starring Wendell Pierce, Melissa Leo, Clark Peters and Steven Zahn.

DRIVE ANGRY continues filming in Shreveport. Starring Nicolas Cage, the film also co-stars the beautiful Amber Heard and Prison Break‘s William Fichtner. The film will be the second 3-D project for director Patrick Lussier, who also directed 2009’s My Bloody Valentine 3-D. JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME begins filming in the New Orleans area. New Orleans natives Jay and Mark Duplass return home to shoot this stoner comedy starring Jason Segel of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Ed Helms of The Hangover and NBC’s The Office. Jason Reitman, the director of Best Picturenominated Up in the Air. THE GATES is filming in Shreveport. The network series about a metropolitan police officer who becomes chief of police in a quiet suburban neighborhood continues shooting this month for Fox and ABC. DELTA BLUES begins shooting in New Orleans. The Warner Bros/Horizon television series concerns a decorated Memphis cop who lives with his mother and happens to be an Elvis impersonator. Shooting nine episodes, the first starting in late April.

SHOTGUN WEDDING continues shooting in New Orleans.

Jay Chandrasekhar, director of Dukes of Hazzard, returns to Louisiana with this comedy. Produced by Robert Rodriguez.

THE LEDGE wraps filming in Baton Rouge. The low budget feature starring Liv Tyler and Terrence Howard finished shooting in late March.

NORTHERN LIGHTS begins filming in Baton Rouge. Starring Patrick Dempsey, the independent feature film is scheduled to begin shooting in early May. LA ART SHOW begins filming in Shreveport. From Fox/New Regency, the feature recently changed its name from Change of Heart.

MORE SCENE EXTRAS  www.scenelouisiana.com | 37

SCENE | A&E’s BILLY THE EXTERMINATOR returns for Season Two and STEVEN SEAGAL, LAWMAN renewed

Billy Bretherton, A&E’s Billy the Exterminator

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he hit real-life series Billy The Exterminator (previously titled The Exterminators) recently returned for an all-new season of creepy, crawly on-the-job adventures, on March 10, produced for A&E Network by September Films. Twenty new, half-hour episodes follow Billy Bretherton and his family of Vexcon, one of Louisiana’s busiest pest removal companies, as they balance family life with the drama of running a successful business together.

In the second season, Billy and the team try to capture a beaver wreaking havoc at a summer camp, search for a rattlesnake slithering around a funeral home, go head-to-head with an angry raccoon trapped in a dumpster, tangle with ornery water moccasins and wasps, match wits with an alligator 38 | April 2010

in a family pond, and confront the largest roach infestation of their career.

Also on A&E, Steven Seagal: Lawman has been renewed for a second season picking up an order for sixteen episodes, three more than season one’s thirteen episodes. Lawman’s first season was a success for the network, averaging 2.1 million viewers, making it A&E’s best freshman performance by an original series in total viewers. Seagal and his sheriff ’s department colleagues will again protect the people of New Orleans, including episodes covering patrols during Mardi Gras.

“It presents some unique challenges to the police force and Seagal.

There’s such a high volume of people you never quite know what you’re going to get,” said Robert Sharenow, Lawman’s executive producer.

|SCENE

Steven Seagal: Lawman

SCENE |

L-R Gary Goetzam, Tom Hanks, Joseph Mazzello , John Seda, James Badge Dale at The Pacific premiere in New Orleans

THE PACIFIC premieres in New Orleans

T

om Hanks was in New Orleans to open The National WWII Museum’s hit 4-D cinematic experience just last November, and the Oscar-winning star returned to the Crescent City for a premiere of The Pacific, HBO’s epic, ten-part miniseries that debuted on March 14. The Playtone and DreamWorks production is executive produced by Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman, the producing team behind the Emmy®- and Golden Globe-winning 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.

Museum executives and other celebrities including series stars James Badge Dale, Joe Mazzello and Jon Seda, walked the red carpet inside New Orleans’ Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

“The Museum is thrilled to welcome Tom back, and we’re proud to be part of the premiere of this important television milestone,” said National WWII Museum’s President Dr. Nick Mueller. The Pacific tracks the intertwined real-life journeys of three U.S. Marines, Robert Leckie ( James Badge Dale), Eugene Sledge ( Joe Mazzello) and John Basilone ( Jon Seda), across the vast canvas of the Pacific Theater during World War II. The miniseries follows these men and their fellow Marines from their first battle with the Japanese on Guadalcanal, through the rain forests of Cape Gloucester and the strongholds of Peleliu, across the bloody sands of Iwo Jima and through the horror of Okinawa, and finally to their triumphant but uneasy return home after V-J Day. Principal photography was completed on location in Australia’s Far North Queensland and Victoria over a ten month period beginning in August 2007.

40 | April 2010

Wendell Pierce Photos by Ashley Merlin

MORE SCENE EXTRAS 

www.scenelouisiana.com | 41

SCENE | FROM GOSPEL TENTS TO SUMMER TENTPOLES

H

opes are high every May for a Jazz Fest with clear skies and mild temperatures, as festival attendees pray they can return to work on Monday unscathed by sun or storm.

Festival planners are luckily a little more realistic and smartly decided some time ago that, in the event of inclement weather, a Gospel Tent would be infinitely more popular than a Gospel Stage.

The company providing the massive white tents for more than ten years is New Orleans-based Gulf Coast Tent Rentals. In addition

to providing staging and the signature tents of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, they have also been tapped to service the booming film industry by providing productions with portable air conditioning and heating, dining facilities, tables and chairs for feeding hundreds of hungry extras on the Film Department romantic comedy Earthbound, starring Kate Hudson and Kathy Bates, and even building major sets for the Warner Brosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; comic book Summer 2011 tentpole Green Lantern, now filming in New Orleans.

Left: Sheryl Crow performs at Jazz Fest. Right: Jazz Festâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gospel Tent, tents provided by Gulf Coast Tent Rentals

42 | April 2010

STATE OF THE ARTIST

Composing a

Career

by Dave Weber

C

hances are good that you’ve heard Jep Epstein’s music. And if you live in Louisiana, it’s as certain as rain. Born and raised in New Orleans, he left his hometown at eighteen to attend the University of Virginia. At the time, there wasn’t much of a music program there and he went on to earn a degree in art history. Jep’s family hoped he would study law or medicine at UVA. “But I was sort of pulled to music because that was my inclination,” he says. “It’s where I felt like I belonged.” While there, he scored student films and commercials and regularly played with a group of friends at a bar in Charlottesville.

“The woman who ran the bar was originally from the west coast,” he explains. “She told me, ‘You shouldn’t be here. You should be in California.’ She wanted to introduce me to some people in Los Angeles.” So after graduation, armed with only a few contact names, Jep moved out to L.A. to pursue a career in music. “They weren’t job interviews per se,” he says, “but they were people somehow connected to the entertainment business there.”

Soon after arriving, Jep got a gig singing and playing piano in the bar at the Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles. “It has actually become quite the posh place, but back then it was sort of an industry hotel where rock stars and ad folks would come in a fair amount, so I was able to meet some people that way.” Jep also played in a weekly basketball game with some comedy writers, which led to opportunities to write music for various video productions, short films, interview segments and documentaries. Jep would go on to write music for ABC, NBC, Fox and Hearst Entertainment. But the most notable project he worked on came shortly before he left Los Angeles to return home. Its original title? The Seinfeld Chronicles.

“One of the guys I played basketball with was a producer on this TV sitcom being created around Jerry Seinfeld,” he says. Jep and two others competed in a “demo derby” to submit a theme for the show’s pilot episode. His won.

“If you remember, in the early shows Jerry did some standup at the beginning and at the very end of each episode. So it was kind of complicated because they wanted a theme, but at the same time, the music couldn’t get in the way of the stand-up routine.”

Seinfeld’s star was on the rise at the time, having performed on programs like The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and many others.

“Jerry had come to my apartment and he brought over a tape of Herb Alpert’s song Diamonds which was a dance tune from the 80s,” Jep recalls. “So I wrote something kind of like that. The pilot aired and I was really stunned because Jerry called me afterwards to thank me and say what a wonderful job I had done. I thought that was really nice that the star of a sitcom would call the composer and say, ‘Thank You.’” Though network executives weren’t sure the show would succeed,

44 | April 2010

Jep Epstein

they asked for a few more episodes of The Seinfeld Chronicles. But during that interim, the producer who had gotten Jep involved was canned. “The new producer had a music guy whose previous credits included scoring the theme to Who’s the Boss? So he brought in his guy and that’s how I lost the job, unfortunately,” he says.

Jep’s self-described, “big, near-brush” offered a hard lesson about the industry. “The way I found out about the job was through a connection.

The way I lost the job was through a connection. And it really sort of made me feel like, you know, this is a tough way to try and live your life.”

He returned home to New Orleans in the spring of 1993. Jep’s friend, director Oley Sassone, introduced him to Terri Landry who was producing cooking shows at WYES-TV. “I got a job writing music for her cooking series called, Breakfast from New Orleans,” he remembers.

“I hadn’t found a place to live yet, so I set up in my parents’ dining room temporarily. I did the music for the show and kind of got busy from there.”

Jep opened Score Music, Inc. (www.scoremusic.com) and began to make connections at the local ad agencies and production companies, which led to work scoring TV commercials and promotional spots. He did a lot of work for companies like Robert Berning Productions, Peter Mayer Advertising and the local powerhouse, CBS-affiliated WWL-TV. Another prominent client was Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, which came calling again soon after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region in 2005.

Jep and his family had evacuated to northeast Louisiana where his grandmother had a house in Tensas Parish. Two weeks after the storm, Blue Cross vice-president John Maginnis called. He explained that he wanted a song to be used in conjunction with a special ad campaign.

STATE OF THE ARTIST “It would recognize the storm,” says Jep, “but the focus was to rekindle hope and celebrate coming back home to Louisiana.” Maginnis offered Jep a line he had come up with: This is Our Home, Louisiana.

That night, September 15, 2005, Jep composed what is widely considered to be the recovery anthem for a broken state.

“I had a guitar with me, and I wrote the chorus first,” he recalls.

This is our love, this is our life, This is our home, Louisiana, This is our day, come what may, This is our home.

The commercials featured no voice over, only Jep’s song and the poignant, Louisiana images beautifully-captured by director Ken Morrison. The spots aired a lot. And any resident who heard Jep’s voice, singing about memories, hopes and survival, cannot claim to have kept both eyes dry. Jep performed Our Home, Louisiana at the first Tulane University graduation after the storm, where former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were in attendance. He also played the song during an ecumenical service at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans that marked the one-year anniversary of the storm.

To appreciate the musician’s talent and versatility, one need only listen to his more recent song about the New Orleans Saints. The raucous and upbeat “Heaven’s ‘Bout to Make the News” has gotten over 37,000 hits on YouTube, due in large

part to the team’s magical 2009 Super Bowl-winning season.

Jep has written music for national brands ranging from Disney to Church’s Chicken. He has scored Emmy awardwinning documentaries and composed commercial music for regional clients like Ochsner and the Audubon Nature Institute.

His greatest strength as a composer may be his vast range. “I’m pretty comfortable writing most styles of music,” he says. “The big problem is really getting people to give you a chance to do that, because you get known for doing a certain type of thing,” he explains, citing the familiar Blue for You jingles he is best known for in the regional ad community.

“Just as I’m sure that there is sentiment in Los Angeles that says, ‘Oh in New Orleans, you’re only going to be able to get this kind of actor,’ when in fact, there is much more talent available here than people realize.”

As the state’s entertainment infrastructure grows and more producers choose to keep their projects in Louisiana through post-production, the opportunity for them to take advantage of a proven talent like Jep Epstein increases dramatically.

“There is a wealth of talent here unlike anywhere else. You find it in things that require soul, be it music or cooking,” he says. “And I think to have the ability to tap into that and to hire some of those people to play on things I’ve written. It’s wonderful when I have the opportunity.” S

Dave Weber is an Emmy and Telly Award-winning writer and producer. He and Duane Prefume own Digital Bayou HD Productions, Inc. in the New Orleans area.

www.scenelouisiana.com | 45

MUSIC |

Diable’d Eggs

by Nathan Olney

S

inger/songwriters are a passionate lot. Various muses can trigger their artistic impulses: family, loves, cities, social causes, eggs. One blustery Saturday last February found New Orleanian chanteuse Kristin Diable at Café Rose Nicaud on Frenchman Street waxing rhapsodic about all of the aforementioned inspirations.

The fuel for her “roots” music? A soulful combination of blues, folk and gospel, among others. And yes, her inspiration includes eggs.

Born in Baton Rouge, Ms. Diable spent her formative years there, including a stint studying business at Louisiana State University, before journeying to New York for a semester. There, she soon found herself cutting her musical teeth to sold-out shows. She returned to New Orleans to write for “just a couple of months” and (as many visitors to the city do) found herself a full-time resident here. The move resulted in performances at this year’s Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Sundance Film Festival and a tour of the East Coast.

True to her description, Diable’s music is not just rooted in Americana music but tied spiritually to the places she settles. “No place is like New Orleans,” she says, “not in Louisiana, America, or even the rest of the world. There’re so many great things going on all the time here. It’s full of sounds and people, music and conversation and freaks. There’s dirt. Grist.” Grist that she has milled to great effect in her songwriting.

Drawing from musical touchstones that range from Nina Simone to Son House to Neil Young to Louis Armstrong, Diable’s music features a songwriting maturity that reveals her influences but belies her scant age. It is a maturity that perhaps bleeds through from her university years. “There’s a lot of discipline to make it work. If I wasn’t successful with the business side of things I wouldn’t be able to do what I want with the creative. There’s a balance. I make better music because I can actually enjoy myself and not drive myself crazy if I’m out on Frenchman Street on a Friday night soaking it all up.”

Her “roots” philosophy informs the bluesy groove of “Poor Baby” as well as the lusty live vocals in “Be My Husband,” both from her 2009 album Extended Play. Also present are hints of Patsy Cline and Norah Jones. “Living as vibrantly as you can is the most productive thing I think you can do to be able to create anything,” she confers. This philosophy has also recently extended to her appearances at live shows.

“As an artist, everything you do is part of what you’re creating,” said Diable, who has recently become a spokesperson for the female fashion store Hemline (located in the French Quarter, Magazine Street and around the Southeast). “I really see [fashion] 46 | April 2010

Kristen Diable

Photo by Matthew Paul Spriggs

more as an art form now. At the core of what I do it’s about the songs, the truth of the songs and the music, but if you go to a show you want it to look good and feel good. I don’t want an entertainer to look just like every guy walking down the street. I want them to be special and different, fun and creative. It adds to the whole experience.”

It is an experience that will be on full display at this year’s Jazz Fest on April 30th. “I haven’t started putting together the band, but I really want to have a pretty super all-star band for Jazz Fest [with] a horn section and some back up singers. I want a production for Jazz Fest, and we’ll have the stage to do it on. God-willing, it should be quite a show, if all goes as I’m envisioning it. A full production. Really great sonically as well as aesthetically,” she says about the opportunity. “It’s

| MUSIC still kind of surreal. I just moved back here little less than a year ago.

I went to Jazz Fest as a kid. I’m honored to be able to play it so soon after coming back down here.” She also hopes that her performance there will offer some eclecticism to the already varied line-up.

“It’s amazing that you can go out any night of the week and see a really amazing brass band, the spirit in it, the joy in it is so special, it’s so inspiring. But it’s important for New Orleans to also have some versatility with programming, you don’t want to go see a brass band every night.” And she looks forward to being such an unlikely alternative on the “Lagniappe” stage. “I can’t wait,” she effused, “I hope I get passes for more than one day...I don’t think I have special privileges just yet. I feel kind of like I snuck in through the back door or something, just lucky to be there, so I won’t cause too much trouble,” before adding, “yet.”

One place Diable’s already caused a ruckus was this year’s Sundance Film Festival, though maybe not always in the way she intended, given the thin, high-altitude climate. “We did a benefit for Haiti at Harry O’s loft series and played at the Gibson Lounge, that was my favorite local spot.

It was just before I lost my voice, I had just a little bit left and I played one song, because it was all I could squeak out,” she lamented. “I heard about [jazz pianist] Henry Butler, whenever he would play shows anywhere in high altitude, would require an oxygen tank to meet him at the airport, and I thought, ‘How diva-ish. That’s ridiculous.’ Of course I ended up eating my words. I was going to do a Universal Pictures showcase but I didn’t even leave the house that Monday, I couldn’t even talk, I had to whisper.”

And,thoughhervoiceis back, thanks in part to a return to swampy,humid air, Diable says she is looking forward to a return Park City engagement.

“I hope to go back next year. They’re kind of Hollywood, but mountain

Hollywood. People with resources and the machine in place to fuel art, but it’s not the big city. Everybody’s out of their element, their defenses are down a little bit, and you feel more like you can connect with people because you don’t know where you are or what you’re doing anyway.”

This last statement may not completely jive for a woman who is so in control of her own future that she actively works to change others’.

“After something as tremendous as Katrina, New Orleans could have either turned into Disneyland or Detroit, and neither one of those options is acceptable. It would have killed me to see it go either way.

It does my heart good to be here. If that’s just spending my money here, buying coffee on Frenchman Street, or making music here and keeping as much of a public eye on the city of New Orleans as possible.”

Unfortunately, New Orleans is not the only city that needs watching, a fact that has the musician spreading her wings once again. “A friend of mine’s family is in horse-racing and they have to fly a horse to the Dominican Republic in the next couple of weeks. Haiti is right there,” she begins, while finishing her hard-boiled breakfast (see: eggs). “So we’re talking about getting together supplies and we’re even talking about going because the big problem is that supplies aren’t getting distributed, they’re all sitting at the airport because of the bureaucracy with a lot of the charitable organizations. Which is an issue that strikes close to home because that was what was so messed up about [Katrina].

We’re capable of doing things, there’s an organization called CAN-DO. ORG we’re working with and they have everything on the ground level set up to assist the needs of people, to distribute everything. So if we can fly a plane there…it can go immediately to the people. It goes exactly where it needs to go.” Straight to our ears, Kristin, just like a song. S

www.scenelouisiana.com | 47

MUSIC |

Living Room Legends Buddy Flett and David Egan perform at Fairfield Studios in Shreveport

O

ne of the hidden gems of the music world is the tradition of house concerts. Intimate affairs occurring in the homes of music lovers, these showcases feature nationally known, talented musicians sharing the stories behind their music and playing for a select audience. These house concerts are a showcase for the very best in folk, Americana, bluegrass and blues.

Numerous folk music festivals celebrate this family of musical genres, such as the Folk Alliance Festival and the Natchitoches-NSU Folk Festival. But no experience is quite like the up close and personal performance of a house concert.

While some house concerts are singular events, several have developed into ongoing series. A global circuit of over 500 house concert series now occurs across the globe, spanning eight countries. Many of the talented artists who travel the circuit are not well known to mainstream American audiences, but they are the songwriters behind Grammy-award winning songs heard daily on the radio, in movies and on television.

Fairfield Studios in Shreveport, Louisiana has become a unique part of the house concert tradition by hosting the Shreveport House Concert Series. The studio has gone to great lengths to recreate the close, intimate feel of the concert while facilitating the participation of a larger audience. The studio hosts the concert monthly for 48 | April 2010

musicians from all over the country such as Tom Kimmel, Darryll Scott and Louisiana artists David Egan and Buddy Flett. The artists rave about the atmosphere of the studio and the large rotation of popular artists and musical styles keeps the audience coming back.

The Shreveport House Concert Series is just one facet of North Louisianaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s incredible underground music Scene.

On any given night, locals are treated to blues jam sessions, the grumble-boogie of Dirtfoot or a spontaneous multiband show off of Texas Street in downtown Shreveport.

One of the advantages of hosting the Shreveport House Concert Series in a studio is that Fairfield Studios has captured the concerts in high definition video over the past couple of years and now stands ready to produce a televised House Concert Series. To kick it off, Fairfield will help in the creation of a documentary celebrating the house concert tradition and the musicians that make it special. The documentary will highlight the history of the tradition as well as follow artists to some of the more intriguing house concerts locations and festivals around the country.

The Shreveport House Concert Series is a continuation of the tradition and is an endearing highlight of the Shreveport-Bossier music Scene.

Through Fairfield Studiosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; project, more people will be able to enjoy these special events, perhaps encouraging the tradition of house concerts throughout the country. S

MUSIC |

Prima Time

by Lisa M. Daliet

Louis Prima onstage with Gia Maione Prima and Sam Butera & The Witnesses

H

e was the King of Swing. The title may grace another, but the crown belongs to Louis Prima. Just ask Kermit Ruffins, who regularly plays tribute down in the Bywater. Or swing revival bands Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Brian Setzer Orchestra, who netted a Grammy covering Prima’s “Jump, Jive, ‘An Wail”. Or New Orleans’ Italian-American community. Or the multitude of film and television projects that have chosen his music. Says Ron Cannatella of Prima Music LLC, “There are so many great entertainers that came out of New Orleans and Louis is in that entertainment royalty.”

In the 1930s, Prima’s New Orleans Gang played up and down Bourbon Street and at the 500 Club, a hot nightspot owned by brother Leon and Joe Segreto, where saxophonist Sam Butera led the house band. In 1934, Prima headed for New York, got a gig opening the Famous Door on 52nd Street and was such a sensation 52nd was renamed “Swing Street.”

“It was Guy Lombardo who heard Louis playing on Bourbon and wanted to take him back to New York,” says Gia Maione, Prima’s widow, singing partner and manager of Prima Music. “But Mama Prima would not let Louis go even though he was nineteen years old. So, Louis ran away to find Lombardo and Mama chased after him and brought him right back.”

Prima was unstoppable. In the 40s, he led a big band orchestra with singer and popular pinup girl Lily Ann Carol. The 50s saw Vegas magic when Prima got Butera to help gather a band, dubbed The Witnesses, and join him and singer Keely Smith for a residency at the Sarah Hotel. The 60s ushered in the young, exuberant Maione, new manager and New Orleans boy Joe Segreto, Jr. and more sold out attendances at clubs and theaters nationwide.

Prima recorded hit after hit for Capitol, RCA, Majestic and his own label Prima Magnagroove Records. Classics like “Just a Gigolo,” the swing anthem “Sing, Sing, Sing,” (inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1982) “Pennies From Heaven” and “Angelina” 50 | April 2010

Photos Courtesy of The Louis Prima Archives: www.louisprima.com

that got everybody speaking Italian. He appeared in a string of Hollywood films and on all the popular television shows of the day.

In 1966, he was the voice of King Louie in Disney’s The Jungle Book. And in 1975, Prima was working on four original songs and a starring role as the voice of Louie the Bear in Disney’s The Rescuers when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, slipped into a coma on the operating table and never regained consciousness. His family returned him to New Orleans where he died in August 1978 and was laid to rest in Metairie Cemetery.

Sicilian immigrants Anthony and Angelina Prima settled in the close-knit Treme neighborhood, a hop away from the working class French Quarter. Anthony was a soda pop distributor, while Mama Prima sold snowballs out her kitchen window to earn money for their children’s music education: a cornet for Leon, piano lessons for Marianne and a violin for Louis.

“Louis thought he was too much of a big bruiser kind of guy to be playing a delicate instrument like the violin so when his brother got a job in a different town and left one of his cornets home, Louis picked it up and never put it down,” says Maione.

Infatuated, young Prima chased horse-drawn carts carrying musicians through the streets, organized a boy band at the age of ten, attended Jesuit High School and after graduation, landed his first steady gig at the Saenger Theatre. But when audiences began chanting Prima’s name before performances, Maestro didn’t much care for that and fired him.

“Louis told him ‘someday you’re going to be sorry,’” says Maione.

“At a very young age he knew he was headed for bigger things.”

“His whole life was molded around the aura of New Orleans and wherever he performed he spoke about New Orleans and performed “Basin Street Blues,” “Sleepy Time Down South,” and “That’s My Home.” He brought New Orleans wherever he appeared.”

MUSIC | “I’ve Got the World on a String” Prima and his ace-in-the-hole Butera had that zing, an electrifying chemistry they shared with everyone who came to their show. They lit up Vegas, delivering a raucous act of comic bantering, tongue-in-cheek lyrics and hardhitting swing. Even Elvis, when asked where he got his wiggle, said, “Louis Prima.”

“The two of them together were awesome,” says Maione. “Show girls would be there front-row-center ooing and aahing over Louis and Sam. Every show someone of fame would be in the audience whether it was Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, Frank, Dean and Sammy, Danny Thomas, Debbie Reynolds, Ann Margaret ... they all came.”

Prima loved golf and famously invited all the hotshots to Fairway to the Stars, his golf course in Vegas. He maintained a second home and Pretty Acres golf course in Covington, Louisiana and made regular trips to New Orleans for gigs at the Royal Sonesta, Fairmont and Monteleone hotels.

“My grandfather would show me the spot in Central Grocery where Louis would sit and have a muffuletta [in between] rehearsals,” recalls Cannatella, who met Prima signing records in 1974 at Maison Blanche in Clearview Mall. Cannatella has advocated for all things Prima since the 90s when he hosted a Louisiana radio show that spotlighted Prima and guests like Perry Como, Jerry Vale, Andy Williams and Ray Charles shared personal stories about the legendary performer.

As a twenty-year-old Italian songbird, Maione auditioned for Prima in New Jersey in 1961. “Music was my life and I collected everything that Louis ever made. I knew every arrangement note for note,” says Maione.

Four days later she opened a show with Prima at the Basin Street East in New York. Maione says of the fifteen years that followed, “Every performance was like the first time. It was so elating to see the faces of the audience, see their smiles, see them tapping their feet.”

Maione’s career ended when Prima fell ill and she took over operation of his estate, record label and publishing company Louis Prima Enterprises. “Plus I had two young children,” she says.

Prima had a total of five wives and six children. He and Maione married in 1963 and had Lena and Louis, Jr. “The Music Goes Round And Round” Louis, Jr., who looks, moves, sings and plays trumpet like Prima, performs his father’s music with the same passion and intent to “play pretty for the people,” as Prima would say.

“I came to realize at a young age that my father was important to a lot of people. Everybody’s got a story of how he touched their lives,” says Louis, Jr., who recalls visiting a New Orleans barbershop with his father and seeing a photo of his dad’s high school football team taped to a mirror.

“One of my best memories is from ‘74 [when he was] recording his last album, The Wildest ’75. I spent the entire session with him in the studio, I got to see him work, see him arrange everything and put it all together.”

52 | April 2010

Louis, Jr. discovered music early. His mother taught him to play drums and his father’s sister, who had become Sister Marianne at St. Joseph’s Academy, taught him piano, but it wasn’t until high school that he picked up the trumpet and got serious. “I used to sit in with my dad’s old band The Witnesses at the Four Queens in Las Vegas. Every once-inawhile, I’d go out and see them and they’d pull me on stage and I’d do a song or two.”

After a stint playing original rock in the 90s, Louis, Jr. started performing his dad’s music and today is working on his own residency at a Vegas Hotel.

“I do all my fathers arrangements [and] stick primarily to what my father recorded,” says Louis, Jr., who regularly performs at Kenner’s Festa Italiana, Gretna Heritage Festival and the Monteleone Hotel. Jimmy Prima (son of Leon) who learned to play from Prima’s drummer is the drummer in his band. “It’s a little bit keeping it in the family and a lot nobody . plays that shuffle beat like Jimmy Louis Prima Jr Vincent and the only person I found that even comes close--and he is right on it--is my cousin Jimmy Prima.”

“When You’re Smiling” Maione keeps a spotlight on Prima’s legacy. She and Cannatella do occasional guest appearances and collaborated on 1999 documentary Louis Prima: The Wildest, the 2006 BBC radio feature “King of the Swingers” and on an episode of British television series Legends in 2007.

But for an artist whose career spans fifty years, Prima has at times been curiously overlooked. Maione and Cannatella have lobbied unsuccessfully for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and for public tributes in Las Vegas and New Orleans. Both Prima and Butera are absent from the musician’s mural at Louis Armstrong International Airport. But like the other Louis--who Prima greatly admired--Prima contributed tremendously to entertainment history and did it with a big smile on his face.

This year Jazz Fest will pay tribute to the great Prima. Louis, Jr. is slated to perform on April 30 and Lena will appear the weekend before.

Keely Smith (Prima’s fourth wife) will also perform and musician and visual artist Tony Bennett created the annual poster honoring Prima.

“Louis Prima was an absolute original and I was thrilled to be asked by the Jazz Festival to paint his portrait for this year’s poster art,” says Bennett. “He was an exceptional performer and a dear friend and he embodied the buoyant spirit of New Orleans.”

“Tony would eat supper with us quite often,” says Maione.

“Louis gave Tony one of his first jobs when he was starting out so they go back a long time. I think Louis would be proud as a peacock for this honor and that his hometown and all the people that knew him and loved him are celebrating his birthday with him.”

Italian American bandleader, trumpeter, singer, songwriter and actor Louis Prima, born 100 years ago on December 7, 1910, was one hip cat. A charismatic fun-loving entertainer and live wire onstage, he gave the world feel-good music that, thirty-two years after his death, is still magnetic. S

www.scenelouisiana.com | 53

MUSIC |

B.B. King, right: The Neville Brothers

JAZZ FEST 2010

something FESTIVE this way comes

T

he New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is not original. In 1970, it was patterned after two other Rhode Island concert events, the Newport Jazz Festival and the Newport Folk Festival. Jazz Fest is in fact the third such festival created by legendary jazz impresario George Wein. Of course, it should be noted that at the first Jazz Fest, Wein himself predicted “New Orleans, in the long run, should become bigger than Newport in jazz festivals. Newport was manufactured, but New Orleans is the real thing.” Forty years later, Jazz Fest 2010 will be, without question, the real thing.

The musical muddle emerging from the Fair Grounds Race Course from April 23 to May 2 will be an impressive contrast of sounds. Illustrating that point are festival headliners that include prolific folk rockers Simon & Garfunkel and legendary Seattle rock band Pearl Jam, who promise to draw some of the largest crowds in Jazz Fest’s four-decade history.

The festivities kick off on Friday, April 23 with Lionel Richie and New Orleans legend Dr. John, who was recently nominated for an Oscar 54 | April 2010

for his work on The Princess and the Frog. Simon & Garfunkel take the stage the following Saturday, a day which also features acts such as My Morning Jacket, Drake, Terence Blanchard and local favorite Better than Ezra. The first weekend will be rounded out on Sunday, April 25 by the Allman Brothers, Anita Baker, Darius Rucker, Jonny Lang and with a special live performance from Imagination Movers, the cast of the locally-shot Disney children’s television show of the same name.

After allowing festival-goers three days to recuperate, weekend two kicks off with performances from Elvis Costello & The Sugarcanes, Gov’t Mule, Blues Traveler and marathon jam band Widespread Panic. Friday, April 30 brings swing and soul with Louis Prima, Jr., Kirk Franklin, Allen Toussaint and the Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin. Pearl Jam will rule the second Saturday, also featuring Shreveport’s Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Jeff Beck. And on Sunday, May 2, Van Morrison, The Neville Brothers, BB Kind and Irma Thomas will bring Jazz Fest 2010 to a close. For more info visit www.nojazzfest.com. S

| MUSIC

also at JAZZ FEST 2010

VAN MORRISON The Dead Weather THE IMAGINATION MOVERS Pearl Jam IRMA THOMAS Lionel Richie SIMON & GARFUNKEL www.scenelouisiana.com | 55

DRESS CODE

BY CLARKE

FASHION |

by Lana Hunt

N

Harold Clarke in his St. Charles St. studio

othing speaks fluent New Orleanian like a beautifully crafted ball gown and no one has mastered the language quite like Harold Clarke. Designing couture gowns for the women of New Orleans for over twenty-five years, Clarke is a nationally sought after artisan, designing for the likes of Vanna White and Patti LaBelle.

Clarke moved to New York from Jamaica in 1969. At the age of nineteen, he was seeking a better life for himself and his family.

He graduated from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology and hit the ground running with his designs. After working for a few other designers, Clarke decided it was time to take the biggest risk in fashion and launch his own line. “To launch a line today is crazy. Forget about it,” he said. “[But] I had the support of my family and friends and I had to make it work.” He opened a small shop in the famous New York SoHo area. “I was designing for the village of SoHo. I was using suede, leather, lace. They were artsy, so that’s the way I designed.”

Clarke settled on high fashion and couture gowns for financial reasons. “As a young designer at that time, I had to go the specialty store route. The specialty stores paid you on time.” When a designer sells a collection to a large corporation or chain, it can take months to get

payment from them. “I had to survive!” he said. Some of Clarke’s first high profile clients were for the Arsenio Hall show and Vivica A. Fox. “Some shows started calling, wanting clothes. I sold my gowns to stores from Trump Towers to Rodeo Drive.

With high fashion couture, there is a lot of press, a lot of editorials.”

And people started to notice.

Clarke got his first taste of New Orleans in 1994 when he traveled to the city to design a wedding gown for a client. “I fell in love with New Orleans. My wife and I moved here right away.” Clarke loved designing the Carnival and party gowns for New Orleans women. “In New York, you have to go with the trend.

The women don’t dress individually.

If short dresses are in, you have to design a short dress. Here in New Orleans they are very creative with dressing. I can be creative.”

His clients and the events they are attending inspire Clarke. “If I’m designing a gown for the Cannes film festival, I know the dress will have to be fabulous. I have to think out of the box. Sometimes I’ll spend $500 on sample fabrics for one gown to get it right.” Clarke’s clients fly in from all over to receive this special attention. “They want their dress to stand out,” he said. Clarke has designed several gowns for Vanna White. “They were doing a show in New Orleans and the producers

“In New York, you have to go with the trend. The women don’t dress individually. If short dresses are in, you have to design a short dress. Here in New Orleans they are very creative with dressing.

I can be creative.”

56 | April 2010

| FASHION called me to dress her.” He’s maintained the relationship over the years and several of his gowns have appeared on Wheel of Fortune.

Clarke has also designed gowns for Patti LaBelle, Delta Burke and Brittany Murphy, to name a few. “The movies are calling too,” he said. The producers of the Jim Carrey film I Love You Phillip Morris recently solicited his talents to design a gown for a scene in the film.

“It was set in a ‘Big Money’ town. They wanted something fabulous.”

Patricia Clarkson, who stars in the upcoming HBO series, Treme, set and shot in New Orleans, will be wearing a Clarke creation at her next red carpet event. Clarke pointed out that “stars are starting to seek out their own designs” as opposed to depending on a stylist.

“The industry is saturated with stylists, and there’s always a chance two ladies will show up in the same gown.” By commissioning a couture piece, the client avoids that possibility altogether. From weddings to carnival balls to Washington, D.C. social events, Clarke is the one to call for that “wow” factor every woman looks for in a gown. Clarke thrives on making a woman stand out.

“I’ve received so much support from the local community and my family. In tough economic times, you have to think out of the box to make a business work. You can’t wait for things to happen, you have to make them happen in this industry.” Clarke has certainly mastered the art of “making things work” and the calls keep coming in. S The Harold Clarke studio is situated on the 2nd Floor of Rubenstein’s, centrally located at 102 St. Charles. For more information you can visit www.haroldclarke.com.

www.scenelouisiana.com | 57

Sex Appeal

FASHION |

Soccer Mom

by Saree Schaefer

I

t’s a typical Thursday late afternoon and a feisty thirty-something is squeezing her massive SUV into a tight parking spot. It might be a little too tight, but hey, it’s close to the mall entrance and her shopping time is limited. Patting herself on the back for the rockstar parking job, she jumps out of the car in yoga pants, running shoes and statement bag, looking like the fabulous mom that she is. She’ll get a little extra exercise in as she books it to the oh-sotrendy forever-young store. Pushing up her designer shades that double as a headband, she steels herself in preparation to sludge through endless racks of clothing in search of something sexy for a girl’s night out.

This is a mother of two who cooks, cleans and works hard to take care of her family, commitments that usually mean putting herself on the back burner. She’s done everything she can, utilizing the help of cardio, Kashi bars, green tea and a strict “no carbs after 3pm” rule to get her “baby weight” off. Now that she’s back to her fighting weight, she’s looking forward to a night out with the girls in this top she just found… or is it this dress? In a store like this you never can be sure, but she adds it to her pile for the fitting room. She knows she can make anything work. After all, she’s the one all her friends used to solicit fashion advice and constantly borrow dresses from and so what if that was ten years ago before her Elle subscription slowly morphed into a monthly installment of Parent & Child! She loves her life! And time is running out to find the perfect outfit.

Having amassed a huge pile of random spandex/cotton blend super trends, she just prays something will work out. But, at a store like this, who really knows what size they wear? Silently hoping she doesn’t see any one she knows, she heads out to view the first outfit in front of the enormous three-way mirror.

Option number one isn’t too bad. The spandex holds everything in.

But the question at hand is, are you’re aloud to wear a trend the second 58 | April 2010

time it comes around if you wore it the first go round? For women of a certain age, the answer’s a mystery! Leg warmers would be out of the question but this is a body suit that’s actually comfortable, unlike the torture-suit-turned-chastity-belt she wore in high school with the snaps at the bottom. This one could work, but she wonders if it’s practical. Does it look like Lady Gaga gone horribly wrong? What about going to the restroom? She decides to go for something less complicated. Next please!

A few ensembles later and wow! She’s found it. This outfit is sexy, but not too tight or too short. She totally feels like one of those MTV reality stars her babysitter is constantly gabbing about, sans the bling’d out cell phone cover and obsession with vampires. The perfect outfit at hand, there’s no need to obsess and try on anything else.

Though she may not be able to identify with any of the characters from Gossip Girl, this woman has the “pick one” rule down to a science: a woman should always pick one thing to show, legs or cleavage. Never both! With the winning outfit, hair and makeup, no one would ever guess she has Dora the Explorer downloads on her iPhone, she’s one hot mama!

On the way to pay for her haul, she grabs a cocktail ring, a handful of bangles and a scarf. With a dress costing only $17.50 she feels like a teenager at the mall, only with better skin, hair and a bigger budget now that she’s moved on from her babysitting days. She’d be lying if she said it didn’t feel damn good to be fitting in a dress intended for a twenty-one year old. This woman has something a girl is too young to have…experience!

After patiently hearing the return policy, far too complex and not worth the drama for the cost of the dress, she pulls her dark shades back down and heads out, loot in hand. She overhears a group of girls walking in to the store and with less than thirty seconds of eavesdropping, she knows she wouldn’t want to be twenty-one again for all the tea in China.

She loves her age because smarts are sexier than youth any day. S

FASHION |

CUT OFF

by Lana Hunt

3

5 4

2

6

1

1 Oh how do I love this Elizabeth & James romper, let me count the ways! Everything about it from the color to the fabric to the long sleeves makes it the perfect piece for spring. You can accessorize it a million different ways and wear it over and over. Available at Angelique Boutique, Baton Rouge.

2 Think Frye only made fabulous boots? Think again! I LOVE this wedge and how the navy color brings out the truly rich undertones in our beige romper. Available at www.frye.com.

3 This quilting bag by Marc Jacobs is a gorgeous spring and summer statement bag. The eye-popping color is sure to make you stand out in the crowd. Available at Kiki stores, Baton Rouge and Lafayette.

4 This head wrap screams convertible! Throw it on for a Sunday drive, trip to the beach or to top off any spring outfit. Available at Anthropologie.

5 I love all of the Kabbalah inspired wrap bracelets available these days. This one by Vita Fede is casual and edgy at once. Pair it with just about anything from t-shirt and jeans to a fun party dress. Available at www.shopbop.com.

6 This DANNIJO necklace made me stop in my tracks. While being a huge standout piece, it somehow manages not to be overwhelming. It’s a beautifully crafted, playful piece you can easily take from day to night.

Available at www.shopbop.com.

Please send questions, comments or something you’ve overScene to fashion@scenelouisiana.com.

60 | April 2010

A

fter venturing into a place I rarely go, a place I avoid at all costs and try to convince others to do likewise, I discovered an unlikely muse. The mall. Any mall will do. With exception to a few specialty stores, nothing in your average shopping mall has any appeal to me, save limitless amusement from kiosks selling everything from flavored oxygen to five-minute massages to the “best flat iron in the world!”

There’s a classic scene in Never Been Kissed when Drew Barrymore’s character begins to be friends with the popular girls and they go to the mall together, all wearing matching cardigans of different colors. The smart, beautiful and classic coming-of-age film ‘nerd’ character (Leelee Sobieski) curtly comments to them, “Oh, look, another lemming.”

Here lies my problem with trend shopping and shopping in huge retail outlets in general. There’s extremely limited opportunity for individuality. Fashion is not about doing whatever you can to look exactly like everybody else.

It’s about taking a dress, adding a belt, scarf, sweater, tights, or any other accessory to make it your own. It is the most easily accessible form of self-expression. After recently making a comment about my mom’s polyester zebra print top, she looked at me and said, “Well you wear a lot of stuff that people look at strangely.” A huge grin spread across my face and I could only reply, “Good! Isn’t that what fashion is all about?!” She agreed.

Back to the mall, what I saw there, and what you should purge your closets of immediately. Denim cut off skirts. Unless you are under the age of eighteen, continue reading.

These skirts are not for you. They aren’t even for this decade.

The most prolific time for the yearly resurgence of this cut off faux pas is at our doorstep. Spring. Girls love their denim skirts in spring. This is my favorite season for fashion. With all the beautiful dresses, skirts and shorts out there I cannot fathom why anyone would chose to wear something so normal, boring, unflattering and out of date.

The last few years have been all about the jumper. While they have taken a few years to catch on here, I’m glad they’ve stuck around and designers are still reinventing them for the latest runway shows. Available in every color, print and fabric, a jumper is the perfect thing to trade for that denim disaster. Unfortunately the jumper won’t work for everyone.

I’ve found it extremely difficult to find a flattering jumper for a small frame. So, my spring must have is a short, slightly exaggerated a-line skirt that sits higher on the waist. You can tuck anything into it from a sweater to a silk, barely-there tank. Pair either of these with a flirty, medium height heel, a chunky necklace, an oversized bag and even a floppy straw hat and you’ve got a perfectly fresh look for spring. As you minimize your skin coverage for spring and summer, think oversized accessories to balance it out.

While it is possible to find these items at a large retail outlet, they will be available in massive quantities. For something fresh and unique, try some of the many beautiful local boutiques in your city. Typically operated by the owners themselves, you will receive hands on, personal help from someone who cares about your style and will help you find something that works for you, and just you! S

Alegria

FASHION |

by Jennifer Sherdon

O

n February 28, W Hotels New Orleans and John Delgadillo presented the second annual Alegria fashion show and competition. Dubbed “a fierce, but friendly competition to benefit the Louisiana SPCA,” local designers flocked to audition for the competition, which boasted lucrative prizes for the winner including a round trip ticket to audition for the wildly popular Project Runway.

Five designers were selected and given the rare opportunity to show full, twelve piece collections to a packed, standing room only event. Hosted by Catherine Shreves of ABC 26 and NOLA 38 and Jocelyn Lockwood of ABC 26, Alegria’s second installment proved to be a riveting showing of local talent and stiff competition.

Showing first, Corrie Pellerin, a graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA, presented a collection inspired by vintage fabrics and movies. Called her “Dream Collection,” the show was a convincing mix of vintage and modern, evoking a genuine Roaring 20s vibe.

Second to showcase her collection was Leigh Reveley, a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.) in New York. Reveley fell in love with fashion at a young age when her mother was the curator for a Dior exhibit. Reveley’s whimsical collection was inspired by her self-restored vintage kimonos and featured silhouettes of coy fish and fabrics reminiscent of beautifully iridescent scales.

Showing next was Danielle Arthur, another a graduate of F.I.T. Arthur is inspired by the city of New Orleans and experiments with recycled garments and dyeing fabrics. Arthur’s playful collection featured fun fabrics, appliqués, ruffles and unique silhouettes.

Bernadette Klotz, a former New York costumer and stylist was next to show. Winning the competition, Klotz’s collection reflected her costuming background with over the top volume and surprising design choices. At first glance some of Klotz’s pieces looked like a dress, then, with the turn of a corner, it was revealed to be a jumper. Klotz’s fearless use of bold fabric parings, unique cuts and sheer drama won the judges over.

Klotz is known around town for her local shops, Fred and Ethel’s and the Decatur Street Clothing Exchange. Confident, sophisticated women who have a knack for discovering the unexpected serve as her main inspiration.

Fashion novice Gerald “Keno” Watson was last to show. An entirely self-taught designer, Watson surprised the audience with his “Chocolate Collection,” inspired by the month of February. His impeccably sewn garments featured rich hues of reds, whites and browns and played with strong shoulders, corsets, bubble skirts and huge volume. Watson’s first-ever full collection was indeed something worthy of pride.

Patrons to the event were treated with a moving performance by “Neo Soulstress” Tawain G and a special showing of Cutting Edge Diva 62 | April 2010

Design by Leigh Reveley

Photo by Christine Cox

Designs by John Delgadillo’s full, forty piece collection. The collection was a fascinating show of designs garnering inspiration from all things bohemian, gypsy and carny. The breathtaking collection brought the audience to its feet. The second annual Alegria show and competition further solidified that the budding fashion Scene in New Orleans is very near full bloom. S

| FASHION

Large image: Design by competition winner Bernadette Klotz. 1) Design by Bernadette Klotz, 2) Design by Corrie Pellerin, 3) Design by Danielle Arthur, 4) Design by Gerald â&#x20AC;&#x153;Kenoâ&#x20AC;? Watson. Photos by Christine Cox. www.scenelouisiana.com | 63

COAST TO COAST

Cobblestone

by Emily Paige

W

intertime in L.A. is the season when Hollywood grows pink in the cheeks, rolls out the red carpet and graciously takes a bow.

It’s the time of year when stylists style, designers design and makeup artists paint the beautiful and send them down flashbulb-studded carpets and show them off to the world. Wintertime in L.A. is awards season.

For those of us who are awards show fans (guilty), who host viewing parties in their homes (guilty) and are likely to shush a crowd when the winner for Best Original Screenplay takes the stage (guilty), this season is an absolute joy.

Of course, not everyone sets their Tivo to record pre-shows, ceremonies and after-party coverage during awards season (oh shush). Most, in fact, skip the ceremoniesalltogether.ButI’dliketomeetthepersonwhohasn’t,atleastatsome point, indulged in a viewing of the delectable eye-candy that is the red carpet.

Like the Rex parade during Mardi Gras, the Academy Awards are the pinnacle of the awards season. Tickets are exclusive invitations given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and only to industry members and people closely associated with nominated films. In other words, the granddaddy king of all red carpets is closed to film-obsessed fans like me.

This past awards season however, I got creative. And with the help of my friend, Megan, I experienced one of Hollywood’s best kept secrets: if you can’t get a ticket to the red carpet at the Oscars, find a wrought iron bench bolted to the cobblestone, slate, or cement of any hotel driveway in Beverly Hills.

“We lost Mariah Carey’s dress today,” Megan announces as the two of us head out of a Coffee Bean in Beverly Hills and back up the street towards the hotel where she works. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, one hour before the 82nd Annual Oscar red carpet is set to air, and already a line of dark-windowed limousines extends from the hotel driveway down a street block to the corner where we walk.

“Did you find it?” I ask. Megan nods. “But not before her stylist went into a couture panic that involved breathing into a paper bag.” She rolls her eyes. I laugh and stash this story among the other crazy events that typically compose Megan’s workweek. When we get to the hotel driveway, a group of paparazzi clutter the sidewalk by the entrance. They wear t-shirts and jeans and black camera telescopes around their necks. Megan leads me to the front of the pack. Still in her concierge uniform, she is our backstage pass through the line of security keeping the paparazzi at bay. “They’re not allowed on hotel property,” she whispers to me as we pass through a set of black iron gates.

We head up a cobblestone drive that splits the hotel into two buildings and hop onto a sidewalk to our left. The setting before us is ablaze with action. Under massive floodlights, guests draped in Gucci, Armani, and Vera Wang clump and mingle and chat, waiting for their cars. Hotel employees shuffle through the crowd, attending to last-minute needs as an authorized camera crew shoots video of the Scene. In the center of the driveway, a hotel employee, whom Megan affectionately calls Minnow, uses his 6’4” frame to direct limos, Bentleys and Escalades like an orchestral conductor, while various valets scurry like rats to open and close car doors.

Megan points to an empty bench on the fringe of the action and we immediately head for it, careful to dodge a makeup artist toting a silver box behind her on wheels. Coffee in hand, we settle into our seats and Megan points out who is who of various hotel guests and staff.

64 | April 2010

Carpet

“That’s Mr. Levy, he lives at the hotel,” Megan says and gestures towards a balding man in a velour tracksuit. On his shoulder a small brown Chihuahua balances itself. “Is that a dog?!” I ask, and Megan nods. “He wears it like a parrot sometimes. It’s the strangest thing.” I’m still studying the dog when Megan elbows me. “Mariah Carey,” she whispers. I glance up and sure enough Glitter herself is heading out from the building across the drive in a black strapless dress. The neckline plunges in a “V” down her chest and a long slit rides up the side of her leg. So perfectly Mariah. “Thank God you found the dress,” I say to Megan as we watch Nick Cannon bounce through the door and join his wife in the limo. Minnow guides the black stretch towards the exit and the paparazzi go wild. “Here we go,” Megan says. Sure enough, a string of celebrities start emerging onto the drive.

Faith Hill and Tim McGraw come through the doors next with a small entourage and a limousine pulls up. Always the Southern gentleman, Tim beats the valet to the car door for his wife.

Just before she slips inside, one of her entourage whips out a Q-tip and begins dabbing at Faith’s eyelid. I’m glued to this spontaneous touchup until Megan taps me and points to Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner of Twilight fame. Dressed in a black strapless dress and a classic black tuxedo, they enter the driveway together but step into separate limousines. “Scandalous!” Megan whispers as their cars pull towards the ever building crowd of Paparazzi.

I see Anna Kendrick, Best Supporting Actress nominee for Up in the Air, emerge in a rose colored number. She leans over and hugs a man I don’t recognize as her limo approaches. The energy on the driveway builds as word gets out that celebrities are leaving and pretty soon Megan and I have to yell to communicate.

I spot Law & Order: SVU’s Mariska Hargitay emerging onto the driveway in what looks like navy blue drapes and then a glimpse of Sigourney Weaver as she sinks into her ride. When Rachel McAdams arrives in a multi-colored strapless, I have to elbow Megan. It’s the best dress I’ve seen. By the time Bradley Cooper and Rene Zellweger show face, I notice myself bouncing on the bench next to Megan. This celebrity parade is invigorating! I’m about to ask Megan how there could possibly be anyone left when Ryan Reynolds steps out onto the curb. I just about fall off the bench. Sans Scarlett Johansson, he is standing with a guy I don’t recognize. I have to suppress the urge to dash over there and offer myself as a date. “You didn’t tell me Ryan Reynolds was here!” I turn to Megan. “Yeah,” she says. “He flew in from New Orleans last night.” The very fact that my celebrity crush is living in New Orleans, if only while filming Green Lantern is reason enough to consider moving home. I watch his limo pull out of the driveway and deem this day the best to date. Not soon after I see Ryan, the driveway starts to empty as by this point most guests have found their cars. I’m close to thinking the parade is over when all of a sudden Oprah Winfrey walks through the door in a navy blue dress. Leading an entourage of men and women, she’s on the driveway and into her limo so fast I have to ask Megan, “Was that really Oprah?” Megan’s wide eyes say it all.

Twenty minutes and a sprinkling of designer gowns later, the hotel driveway is back to normal and Megan and I are headed back to our cars.

We sent award season this year out with a bang and discovered a whole new carpet to covet. It’s glitzy and glamorous and made of cobblestone. S

BUZZED

THE INNOVATION OF

ANIMATION

by Adam Tustin

O

n the corner of Prytania and Leontine Streets in Uptown New Orleans, the Prytania Theatre is a special place to watch movies. The oldest operating movie theater in New Orleans, it was immortalized in John Kennedy Toole’s novel A Confederacy of Dunces as the venue for the main character’s audible and contemptuous outbursts, ridiculing the characters portrayed on the theater’s single screen and shouting plot-spoilers to the rest of the audience. Having recently undergone major renovations, the nearly one hundred year old property provides a moviegoing experience as charming and storied as it is state of the art.

Teaming up with the New Orleans film commission, the Prytania screened all ten of the Academy Award-nominated short films. One week of screening was devoted to the five nominated animated shorts, with another week of screening for the five nominated liveaction shorts. After viewing these brief and entertaining works, an overall vista of the state of cinema became visible and one conclusion readily apparent: cartoons are becoming the best movies.

Live action cinema has become so formulaic that moviegoers can see what passes for plot development coming before they turn the corner. They confuse the stories and actors of similar movies, as if in hindsight the films blur and boil into the same predictable slurry.

“Was that Ed Norton or Christian Bale in The Illusionist?”

“Don’t you mean The Prestige?”

“Wasn’t one good and one terrible?”

“Which one had Thomas Edison in it?”

The more the formulas profit at the box office, the more prevalent they become. Here’s one: comic book superhero + hot leading man + impressive special effects + PG-13 rating + massive marketing campaign that targets children = Box Office Hit. Here’s another: James Cameron + obscene amounts of money + sci-fi nerd story = Box Office Hit. How about: Jennifer Aniston + Vince Vaughn + the same romantic comedy story that’s ever been told + one small twist (one’s a cop and one’s a criminal, or for some reason they can only communicate with each other over text message) + female-oriented marketing campaign = Box Office Hit. Without beating a dead horse, the formulas are few, boring and generally insulting to those who consider themselves fans of film.

In comparison, animation creates far more elaborate worlds without the “it” actor’s inflated price tag. Instead, the money is truly put on screen, both in terms of the film’s visual spectacle and the story. Animation films tend to be in active gestation 66 | April 2010

longer than their live action counterparts. The stories are written and rewritten and rewritten down to the very last cut of the film. Dialogue tweaks are made to the last second. Simply put, don’t be ashamed that you liked Up more than The Proposal.

Instead of Abracadabra, the live action short favored by some to win the Oscar, was an amusing, wonderfully shot Swedish film. But it was the love child Napoleon Dynamite and Hot Rod. A few amusing “wow” moments aside (which one would expect in a movie about a magician) there was a defined, unwavering railroad track that took the audience from introduction to conclusion. Kavi was a touching story about a young slave in India who dreams of shaking of the shackles of his oppressors. A cynic might say it was nominated as some kind of misguided shout out to Slumdog Millionaire, this film hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the nod for Best Live Action Short. The statue ultimately went to The New Tenants, the one live action short that cannot be described as the bastard love child of two already existing movies.

Has every cinematic idea that can possible be portrayed in live action already been done? Or is the financial risk too great to explore producing options outside of our precious, income-generating formulas?

In contrast, the animated short The Lady and the Reaper forces one to confront the ironic morbidity of keeping someone alive past his or her natural end. And it does it in a way that is kid-friendly and tasteful. It was as funny as it was profound and it accomplished this without any dialogue.

If there’s any doubt about the unique possibilities being offered by animation, read on. In one scene, the Argentinian animated short Logorama shows a deranged, hostage-taking Ronald McDonald blast a hole through the forehead of the Michelin Man with a revolver. Thank you, Argentina. This movie is so brilliantly entertaining and economically subversive, it hands down deserved, and received, the Oscar for Best Animated Short. In brief, it’s what’s lacking in today’s cinema.

It seems as if live action cinema has fallen into the hands of the accountants. The freaks, the creatives and the nerds have fled into an animated realm where their imaginations truly are the limit. If current trends continue, the future of groundbreaking, meaningful filmmaking is animated. There will always, and should always, be those filmmakers with limitless budgets who push the scope of film beyond what was thought possible. But movies are made great by their characters, storytelling and originality. The best thing about the animated medium is the ability to create or combine any style, genre, story or period. All of what we know, all that we have experienced rests on the massive palette beneath the animators brush and now more than ever, the possibilities seem limitless. S

In Style

ON THE SCENE

Fashion and Hair Show held at Republic New Orleans photos by Vaughn D. Taylor

68 | April 2010

ON THE SCENE

Saints Premiere Warner Brothers releases the Saints Championship DVD Rita Benson LeBlanc

Saintsations

Drew Brees

Mitch Landrieu

Will Smith Duece McAllister

70 | April 2010

Tracy Porter

Jim Henderson

photos by Ashley Merlin

FRAMES PER SECOND FRAMES PER SECOND

BY JAMES SHEPPARD | fpscomics@gmail.com

www.scenelouisiana.com | 71

THE UNSCENE The Subtle Transition Tucked in the high-backed booth of a local restaurant. Water and wine with a center-cut filet, charbroiled. The sun peaks through the streetside windows, diffused by the branches of two-story high trees. The usual din of political banter and friendly chatter gives way. Amongst talk of mayor-elect Landrieu and newly minted Mardi Gras memories, the name “Halle Berry” emerges. Likely a reference to the popular single from Shreveport rapper Hurricane Chris.

A few seconds go by, with mentions of blighted housing and outgoing Saints linebacker Scott Fujita, who donated half of his Super Bowl paycheck to charity. The name “Joe Roth” emerges and then, “CAA.” Talk of Monster’s Ball, shot in Louisiana nearly a decade ago. Outside the window, white trucks line the streets.

A subtle transition is happening. While most won’t catch the faint mentions of entertainment power players, those of us that do are multiplying. References to producer Joe Roth, whose extensive list of credits include Alice in Wonderland, Hellboy 2 and The Great Debaters, to talent tenpercentery Creative Artists Agency, to the performance that earned Halle Berry an Academy Award are increasingly commonplace. As other states awkwardly struggle to implement incentive programs, entertainment in Louisiana is becoming a way of life.

The waitress returns, her hips swaying as she passes. The check is dropped. The conversationalists pay and get up to leave. On the way out, pausing only to offer the jazz trio a tip, the producers leave as quietly as they came.

- The UnScene Writer

Submit tips to unscene@scenelouisiana.com. Anonymity guaranteed.

72 | April 2010