Hollywood schmolly-wood

I like the fact that some creative New Orleans residents get work from the films that shoot here. Lots of local folks get some work out of the deal, and that is a good thing, especially now.

I don’t like it when they shoot on the street in front of my gig, without telling us that they will be sporadically closing the street and sidewalks throughout most of the first set. It is hard enough to get people to come out on a foggy Tuesday night to hear non-mainstream music, but the dude with the headset at the corner telling people that they can’t walk down the street makes it damn near impossible. This isn’t hard to fix. If they had just let us know ahead of time, we could have hit our email lists with the fact the the street would be closed for a few minutes at a time, throughout the evening. Knowing that a movie was shooting may have even helped bring people out, if they could have known that it would be possible to get there.

Movie folks can sometimes act like the world revolves around them. These people were fairly cool, but still, there are more people in the world than just the ones that care about their movie.

The doubly maddening thing about all of this is the fact that the presence of the movie shoots in New Orleans is, in itself, a sign of the world’s lack of respect for us as professionals. (I say “us” meaning the city in general.) The only reason that these films are being shot here is that they can pay New Orleanians less than they pay people in LA (or wherever else) to do the same work.

Sometimes we allow ourselves to get what we deserve.