Movies in NOLA

While we were in New Orleans there was some filming going on around Bourbon Street on night and on the Rue Royal another afternoon...I would put money on the fact that it was the horror movie mentioned in here "Stay Alive", but who knows! It coulda been "Big Momma's House II" lol ... Even tho we didn't end up in the backgrounds, it's still kinda exciting.

Article about the Movies

N'Awlywood back in business
After a silent spring, the movie trucks have returned
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Chris Rose
If you wondered what that strange stillness was this spring -- a period in which you could park almost anywhere and there were no famous faces in front of you in the men's room line at Le Bons Temps Roule -- here's what happened:

The movies stopped filming. For a brief period, there were no major motion pictures in production here.

Following that epochal golden era this winter that brought the harmonic convergence of Jude Law, Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Simpson to town for three different films, there was a brief, dark period in which all we had to talk about was . . . our own lives.

It was horrible.

But that's over. Because, they're baaaack. The Big Easy is N'Awlywood once more. Just follow the big white trucks.

Currently filming are a teen horror flick and a comedy sequel. Down the road we've got Big Budget films with Big Stars, a veritable cavalcade of people richer and more beautiful than you and me.

But are they happy? We'll leave that for another column.

First up, "Stay Alive." This one is about a group of New Orleans teens who come together at the funeral of a friend who died while playing a video game called . . . Stay Alive. Turns out the game is or is not inhabited by a spirit that may or may not have murderous intentions.

I don't want to give too much away.

But I do need to share with you the first lines from a screenplay I obtained by illicit means: "Through dark, ominous clouds we descend upon a sprawling Southern estate -- a plantation with a tragic history . . . The wind moans. Trees rustle. Children's laughter dances on sinister whispers through the air."

Cue creepy music. Or Morgus.

Notwithstanding that I'll probably get sued for copyright infringement, I just wanted you to know that this is not Just Another Horror Movie. No indeed, this one has a scary mansion. And moaning wind. And rustling trees.

And Frankie Muniz.

You probably know him from his many years on "Malcolm in the Middle" or maybe as Agent Cody Banks or, more importantly, as Grand Marshal of Endymion in 2001. Muniz plays a computer nerd named Swink Sylvania.

He is joined by co-stars Jon Foster, who plays Hutch, a studly video gamer, and Samaire Armstrong who, at 24, is playing her second teenage role in New Orleans this year.

This winter, Armstrong was the supporting actress and sidekick -- on the set and after hours -- to the formerly-buxom-redhead-now-one-step-away-from-rehab-kind-of-anorexic-thin-bottle blonde Lindsay Lohan on a still-untitled movie shot here.

Which means that Muniz and Foster will be in experienced hands when it's Miller Time after a tough day on the set and the cast goes crawling for Jell-O shots at some of our classier nightspots.

But I don't want to get all catty here. Let's move on.

"Stay Alive" also co-stars Sophia Bush, the "One Tree Hill" actress who married "House of Wax" star and former "Hill" co-star Chad Michael Murray last month and who was also the Queen of the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif., in 2000. That's no Endymion, but it counts for something.

Also currently filming on our streets is the universally anticipated "Big Momma's House II," in which Martin Lawrence reprises his role as a detective who goes undercover in drag as a corpulent Southern granny named Hattie Mae -- though such a banal description hardly hints at the magnitude of the art involved.

Co-star Nia Long -- a perennial member of any list that begins with "America's Hottest . . ." -- reprises her original role of Sherry Pierce, a vixen/nemesis who may or may not be a criminal and it's not that I don't want to give away too much here it's just that, well . . . I never saw the original, so I'm not really sure.

One face you won't be seeing around town is that of Paul Giamatti, who played Martin Lawrence's partner in the original movie but who now has been vaulted onto the Hollywood A-list by virtue of his star turn in "Sideways" last year; the kind of status that releases you from the tyranny of having to make movies with talking animals, stand-up comics in corpulent drag and anything starring David Duchovny.

"Stay Alive" and "Big Momma's House" are both filming as we speak. On the near horizon is "Failure to Launch," starring the hot properties named Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew McConaughey.

"Failure to Launch" is about a layabout 30-something slacker (McConaughey) who content- edly lives with his parents. You know this person as your older brother.

One day, he falls for the Girl of His Dreams (Parker), but the slacker gets a hunch that she has actually been hired by his parents to get him out of the house.

Thus, the plot thickens.

"Failure" is being produced by megawatt hitmaker Scott Rudin, the former 20th Century Fox president who has been behind, basically, every movie you've ever seen in the past 15 years and some you haven't.

It also stars Justin Bartha and Zooey Deschanel, who was also in town this past winter in the starring role of an indie comedy called "Flakes," about an uncivil war between restaurants that serve only cereal -- a concept that would probably go over pretty well in New Orleans if they also served beer.

Also starring Christopher Lloyd and Aaron Stanford, "Flakes" was co-written by New Orleanian Chris Poche.

Props.

Also down the road, there is talk of a Kevin Costner-Ashton Kutcher film this fall, an Ashley Judd vehicle on the near horizon and an incredibly expensive period piece starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.

That one, an adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons," is said to be in the $100 million range and you can bet it's on hold while our Legislature currently bandies about new bills and amendments relative to the state's lucrative tax break for motion picture companies -- the tax breaks that have lured the movie industry here and made us Hollywood on the Bayou.

At stake for Paramount in this movie in the current climate is a $30 million swing, one way or the other. That's certainly enough to attract attention.

When the current legislative session concludes, that could be left alone, cut by degree or terminated completely.

Hard to say which way it will go. But the cavalcade of stars on our magnificent boulevards, in our boutiques and bellied up to our bars is dependent upon it.

Without the tax break and the movies, there's just . . . us.