All the king's men: the race for lieutenant governor
There are eight candidates running for the office of lieutenant governor this year. That’s a broad field of five Republicans and three Democrats, some career politicians, some political newbies, six men, two women — lots of variables there.
And yet, when The Advocate sent out a Q & A asking what would be the top priority for the next lieutenant gov, all eight gave just about the same answer: crank up the tourism engine. The second question — What is the state’s biggest need right now? — also garnered a unanimous response, fix the budget.
Thank goodness for question number three, “What is the best movie filmed in Louisiana?” We all know the movie question, like the record question and the book question determines if you’re going to even bother going out on a second date.
Our candidates showed a surprising lack of imagination and knowledge of movies filmed in Louisiana. Three of them chose The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, (yawn). Two of them chose sports movies, Glory Road and Everybody’s All American. One chose Steel Magnolias, (oh dear). The other choices are up to movie buff snuff, Blaze, about Earl Long, and one stellar film, Streetcar Named Desire.
There’s a lot of great and notorious films shot in Louisiana over the past century. Take Cadillac Records, Ray, The Apostle, Wild at Heart, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces and Louisiana Story. Or my two favorite awful films, JFK and The Big Easy (you remember that tag line for anything corrupt or sleazy, “It’s the Big Easy, dahlin.” I still use it.)
So, it’s up to you, voters of Louisiana, to decide, based on the silver screen selection, how you’re going to choose the guy or gal who will be one heartbeat away from sitting in state in Huey Long’s capitol.
And just for fun, here’s a list, a bit cobbled together, (where is Shala Carlson when we need her), of the 500 or so films made in Louisiana, counting HBO, since 1908. That would be Faust, and no, I haven’t seen it either.
2010 Imagination Movers Season 3 Colombiana Chasing the Hawk The Fields The Real World Season 24 Killing Karma Billy the Exterminator Revenge of the Bridesmaids Jeff who lives at Home Love, Wedding, Marriage Little Murder If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise Big Red Earthbound Mighty Fine Brawler The Chaperone Red Memphis Beat Season 1 Catch 44 Trespass Shark Night 3D Season of the Witch (Reshoots) Butter The Colony LA Art Show Business of Love Big Ginger The Mortician Brothers Keeper The Gates Treme EarthBound The Hungry Rabbit Jumps Drive Angry Green Lantern 6 Month Rule
2009 Discovery Channel “Mayday, Bering Sea” Mirrors 2 Falling in Love Monster Wolf Clunkers Ticking Clock Knucklehead Secretariat Brothers Keeper The Mechanic The Hungry Rabbit Jumps Discovery Channel Ghost Lab Super Julia X Unearthed Straw Dogs The Exterminators Battle Los Angeles Snatched The Somnambulist Father of Invention Cotton Excalibur Chronicles Punishment Inventing Adam The Wrong Side of Town Part 1 Standoff Kiss the Bride Normal Types Chameleon Punishment Video Girl True Blood Imagination Movers Treme Dead of Night Leonie Jonah Hex The Expendables Cool Dog Youth in Revolt
2008 Drool Cadillac Records Mardi Gras Tribute Midnight Bayou Welcome to the Rileys Night of Demons Bad Lieutenant The Family that Preys Meet the Spartans College The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons My Own Love Song Acceptance Skateland Leaves of Grass Front of Class I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell Disaster Movie W Microwave Park Beyond a Reasonable Doubt I Love You Phillip Morris Righteous Kill Billy the Exterminator Pinks All Out Comeback Soul Men Big Medicine Tekken The Midnight Man Cheerleader Camp Speed Freaks Year One True Blood
2007 Feast 3 Feast 2 Sordid Lives Wonderful World True Blood The Killing Room Major Movie Star Pulse 3 Pulse 2 The Pardon Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins The Great Debaters For Sale by Owner Mad Money Secrets of the Heart The Mist Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay Cleaner The Last Lullaby
2006 Blonde Ambition Homeland Security The Year Without a Santa Claus The Initiation of Sarah Mr. Brooks Not Like Everyone Else Ruffian Premonition
2005 Factory Girl The American Standards Scarlett Thief Road House 2 Dukes of Hazzard All the Kings Men Elvis Just My Luck Pizza Wars Retiremen Campus Confidential Faith of My Fathers Failure to Launch Big Momma’s House 2 Mammoth Stay Alive Bug For One Night The Last Time The Reaping Same As It Never Was Deja Vu The Guardian
2004 Torn Apart Because of Winn-Dixie Growing Pains 2 Waiting Floor of Fear Nikki and Nora Infidelity Stuck in Suburbs Pop Rocks Searching for David’s Heart Now You See It... Skeleton Key Football Prophets Last Holiday Glory Road Miracle RUn Brooke Ellison Frankenstein Dead Will Tell Backwater Dreamer Canal Street Brothel Heatless Five Fingers Odd Girl Out Make it Funky Thief
2003 Ray Mr. 3000 Deacon Jones Jump Blues A Love Song for Bobby Long Home of Phobia
2002 Evil Remains Runaway Jury
2000 The Riff Stalled
1999 FAQ Tony Bravo Dead Dog Dracula2K Under Surveillance Lush
1998 Any Day Now Crazy in Alabama Scarlett’s Children Heiress of the Bayou Child of New Orleans Double Jeopardy A Lesson Before Dying Madame le Consul Vampire Murders Universal Solider II Bad City Blues Black Jaq Going to Mardi Gras Palmer’s Pick-Up America’s Funniest Home Videos The Great Depression Going WIld with Jeff Corwin Miss Universe Pageant Young Doctors Miss Teen USA America’s Greatest Pets Timescape
1997 Primary Colors Out of Sight Fait Accompli Cypress Edge Letters from a Killer Murder of Crows Lucinda’s Spell To Kill Thy Neighbor Lethal Ladies Cockpros and Microwaves Anne Rice’s Rag & Bone
1996 The Apostle Eve’s Bayou The Old Man Solitude Point Orleans (movie) Orleans (series) Big Easy (series) 13 Bourbon Street Dark Angel La Comptess De Baton Rouge First Love, Last Rites Suspicion/ Baton Rouge Favorite Son Buddys Dirty Rice Bump in the Night Day of the Warrior The Man Next Door Grey’s Anatomy Uncle Sidney & the Mexicans
1995 The Glass Cage Waterfront Cat Calls Dead Man Walking Lolita
1993 Pelican Brief Fatal Justice The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Do or Die Crescent City Skip Tracer The Client Interview with the Vampire French Silk Blue Chip House of Secrets Enemy Gold Stormswept Occhio Pinocchio
1992 Undercover Blues Hard Target The Fire Next Time Passion fish Honor Among Thieves The Gun in Betty Lou’s Handbag Night Trap
1991 JFK Storyville Love & Curses, & all that Jazz Nert’nerworld The Gate to Nothing A Woman’s Secret Delta Heat Timescape, USA Guests of the Emperor
1990 Hard Hunted Where the Red Fern Grows, II This Gun for Hire Double Crossed Grand Isle The Man in the Moon Hot Steps Scorchers Jailbirds Black Lake, Dry Ice Zandalee Darkness Dangerous Games Maggie May Steel Magnolias
1989 Blaze Convices Wild at Heart Tune in Tomorrow The Pistol False Witness Miller’s Crossing Traveling Man Blue Bayou Eleven Days and Eleven Nights, Part II The Blob Fletch Saved Heartbreak Hotel Johnny Handsome Margaret Bourke-White Outside Woman Sex, lies and videotape Steel Magnolias Elysian Fields Les Discos D’Or
1987 Three on a Match The Unholy Killer Birds Gator Bait 2 In the Heat of the Night Everybody’s All American
1986 No Mercy Avenging Force Steamboats A’Coming Angel Heart Undercover Shy People Sister, Sister Gathering of Old Men Eleven Days & Eleven Nights
1985 Atchafalaya The Long Hot Summer Belizaire, The Cajun Baton Rouge North and South - Part 1 North and South - Part 2 If Tomorrow Comes Dalton Down By Law Big Easy
1984 The Click Stereopticon Hot Pursuit Huey Long Documentary French Quarter Undercover
1983 Louisiana (mini series ~ feature) Hobson’ s Choice Tightrope Streetcar Named Desire (remake) River Rats Horror at Copasaw Bayou
1982 The Toy Dixie Johnny Blue
1981 Southern Comfort Grambling ‘s White Tiger Cat People Cane River
1980 Netchu Jidai Adventures of Professor Mizutani Mississippi Days & Southern Nights Concrete Cowboys The Beyond
1979 The Dark Side of Love The Baltimore Bullet Hardcase
1978 A Woman Called Moses Murder at the Mardi Gras Big Bob Johnson & His Fantastic Speed Circus Night Riders The Evictors
1977 Five Days from Home Pretty Baby Sparrow Superdome Revenge of the Creature
1976 J. D.’s Revenge French Quarter Casey’s Shadow The Savage Bees The Life & Assassination of the Kingfish This Far by Faith Return to Boggy Creek
1975 Sounder - Part ll Dead Man on the Run Deadly Tower Drum Going Home Let’s Do It Again Creature from Black Lake
1974 Been Down So Long Mandingo Hard Times The Drowning Pool Obsession Marianne Crash
1973 Bob Hope~Mardi Gras My Name is Nobody Gator Bait The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
1972 Moon of the Wolf Sounder Live and Let Die Nightmare Honeymoon Fear is Key
1971 The Player Keep Off the Grass Five Easy Pieces Wife’s Habit Dirty Dan Bayou Boy Longstreet
1970 The Beguiled Quadroon
1969 Easy Rider WUSA Goodbye Uncle Tom Last of the Mobile Hotshots Undefeated The Family
1968 The Slaves Number One Again, A Love Story Night of the Bloody Horror Blood Kin
1967 The Pill
1966 Hotel Hurry Sundown Lassie
1965 Alvarez Kelly Nevada Smith This Property is Condemned The Cincinnati Kid
1964 Bayous of Louisiana The American Wife Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte
1963 Toys in the Attic
1960 Poor White Trash Desire in the Dust
1959 The Sound And the Fury
1958 Buccaneer King Creole Wake of the Drunken Soldier Horse Soldiers Mardi Gras Louisiana Hussy
1957 Bayou Long Hot Summer Big Fat Black Pussycat Sing You Sinners Durango Band of Angels Damn Citizen Swamp Women
1956 Thunder Bay
1950 Panic in the Street Streetcar Named Desire
1948 Louisiana Story
1946 New Orleans
1945 Enchanted Voyage
1941 The Flame of New Orleans
1940 Kidnapper’s Foil
1938 The Buccaneer Jezebel
1929 Evangeline
1924 Youth’s Romance Prohibition 1918 Way Up in Society Revelation
1917 Tarzan of the Apes
1912 The Belle of New Orleans Girl Strikers The Pilgrimage Mardi Gras Mixup Buck Town Romance Darling of the C.S.A.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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