I went to New Orleans for a couple of weeks. My best fiend is down there between trips to South America, and we were going to make four short zombie films to be used in a compilation of other films solicited from around the world.
The best laid plans of mice and men aft gang agley.
The first night was pretty good. My friend is living in a house/artists’ commune on Esplanade. They put together a band and he played guitar in a gig at the Hi Ho bar. One of the guys I knew from a film I worked on in the '90s came, and I spent a lot of time chatting with his (rather intoxicated) girlfriend who liked this film and was excited to meet someone who worked on it. There was a weird kid hitting on her who seemed to like boasting about his alcohol consumption and fighting.
I spent four nights at the artists’ house before moving into the Degas House B&B. I had the Artist’s Gerret (Gaston Room). Odd that it was an artist’s garret, in that it had no windows. The hallway was an oven. Fortunately the room had a good air conditioner and a ceiling fan.
But those plans…
There was a little drama at the house. Some relationship difficulties between a couple of people distracted from the film. And then there was the general falling-apart of the project. My friend’s actor was a crack-head who had been living in the house. After some thefts they evicted him. So no actor. Apparently the NOPD SWAT team raided the house looking for him, handcuffing people and pointing guns in people’s faces. Even after being told the guy wasn’t there and no one knew where he was they came back a month later for another raid. Someone got word from someone that they were going to raid the house every month. As if they don’t have anything better to do than to hassle a bunch of artists!
Another guy who was going to do a project has medical problems and had to drop out. A third guy lost his job and his actress moved to New York. So we’re down to my short film. Oh, and a music video – Woken Up By The SWAT Team. In the end we never got the short film(s) together and I thought I’d hauled a 50-pound tripod and my camera 2,500 miles for nothing. On the night before I left we finally got the band together and did a one-take of the song, which I’m told turned out awesomely. Four hours of sleep, eight hours in airports, six hours on airplanes, and a two-hour drive later I was back in the PNW.
Oh, yeah. The night before I left for The Big Easy I spilled water on my PowerBook so I didn’t have a functioning computer for the trip.
So aside from getting almost no work done and not having a computer and catching a nasty cold on the trip home that it still kicking my bum, how was it?
Pretty good, actually. Hot. Hotter than I expected. Mid-80s and humid. Lots of sweating except for the 28th, which was rather pleasant. I walked down to the French Quarter several times (15 minutes from the commune and 25 minutes from Degas House). Ate at The Clover Grill a couple of times. When I was there in the '90s the staff were much more flamboyant, but it’s still a good place to grab a burger. I got my beignet and café au lait fix at Café du Monde, though Kaldi’s is now gone. There’s a new German restaurant on Conti that’s pretty good, and reasonably priced. Of course I went to the Voodoo Museum and Marie Laveau’s House Of Voodoo. We took a little trip to Waveland, MS, and a bunch of us went to Saturn Bar one night. We had a zombie party even though we didn’t shoot any zombie films, where we all put on zombie make-up and drank zombies and then went out to Buffa’s Bar. That girl I mentioned thinks I’m sexy. But hitting on a friend’s girlfriend Just Isn’t Done.
I saw a lot of structures that had been severely damaged in the hurricane, and many more with red X’s on them. I hung out with a really great bunch of ‘kids’. Ate good food, drank more than what’s good for me, and was around people who are a lot more friendly than up here or down in L.A. I love New Orleans. If only it wasn’t so freakin’ hot! (But then, that’s probably part of what makes it what it is.)
As for the filming, I can always shoot my segment up here.
