Courtesy of Al Bohl
Partly filmed in Morgan City, the 1917 feature Tarzan of the Apes was among the first movies ever to gross more than a million dollars at the box office.
The first narrative feature film shot and produced in Louisiana had nothing whatsoever to do with Louisiana. It was 1908 and William Selig, a Chicago magician-turned-movie mogul, was moving around the country and shooting in far-flung locales in an effort to outrun Thomas Edison. And Selig wasn’t the only one—Edison, true to form, was completely paranoid of anyone else using celluloid film to create moving pictures since he partly invented the process and his lawyers were filing suit again anyone infringing on his patent.
New Orleans surfaced as a safe haven, like it often has for everyone from pirates to gangsters, and Selig set up a fly-by-night production company in the Big Easy to shoot a single-reel version of the Faust legend entitled “Mephisto and the Maiden.” It’s a classic German tale where the protagonist makes a pact with the devil in exchange for knowledge, but in the 1908 version, the trade off was for two hours with a particular female character.
At the time, south Louisiana was viewed as being among the major American regions that could potentially become a hub for the burgeoning motion picture industry. But a number of factors ranging from weather to politics pushed that dream out of the frame. Instead, the Bayou State had to settle for brief glimpses of starlets and only samplings of life on the set—until recent years, that is, which have given birth to a number of aggressive film tax credits to revitalize interest in Louisiana.
Unbeknownst to Selig and his team, they created a foundation for movies that are actually shot in Louisiana, but appear on the screen as somewhere else. Some folks in the industry call it “doubling,” although you could as easily dub it cheating. For instance, some location scouts swear by a small stretch along Baronne Street in New Orleans that can stand in for a New York City from just the right angle, or a nearby alley that can travel back in time after a few clotheslines are thrown up to mask air conditioners.
In short, it’s that proverbial movie magic we hear so much about; it’s the ability to visually transform a place you’ve seen countless times in the flesh, but recognize it as something and somewhere else as you sit in the darkness of a theater or your living room.
Nowhere else is this better exemplified than in the 1917 version of Tarzan of the Apes, which was partly filmed in Morgan City. It was a watershed moment not only for Louisiana film history, but also national cinema, as this Tarzan feature was among the first movies ever to gross more than a million dollars at the box office. The Atchafalaya swamp served as Tarzan’s jungle and more than three hundred locals were hired on as extras—read: cannibals—for a daily rate of $1.75 each.
The original Tarzan flick left such a footprint, in fact, that Bossier City producer Al Bohl is working on a documentary set for release in 2011. He says the silent motion picture is a fascinating story “with more layers than an onion.” Live apes were used for the shoot and many were left behind when the film wrapped—that nugget alone got Bohl hooked. He says his documentary, entitled Tarzan: Lord of the Louisiana Jungle, hopes to not only find out if there were really monkeys running around the bayous, but also if a real lion was killed on screen (a popular myth).
More recently, funny man Jim Carey portrayed a con man in I Love You Phillip Morris, which was shot in Angola, even though the script calls for a Texas prison. In an interview with SpoutBlog, an industry Web site, Carey said he had no idea what kind of “extras” he was working with inside Angola: “At one point I asked the warden, ‘So, who are we talking about here? We’ve got like a hundred people in this room that we’re in the center of. What are these guys, drug infractions or something?’ He goes, ‘Rapists, murderers.’”
The vibe was considerably less heavy on My Own Love Song, which wrapped up shooting earlier this year. Starring Renée Zellweger and Forest Whitaker, it’s a buddy flick about a wheelchair-bound singer and her best friend’s road trip to Memphis. It could have easily been about a road trip through Louisiana, though. Scenes were shot in Lecompte, Pineville, Cheneyville and Bunkie, all used as backdrops for a story that’s supposed to be told in Kansas—the rolling prairielands were a perfect fit for wheat fields. The crew also filmed for two days in downtown Thibodaux on the corner of Third and Green Street. The so-called paparazzi even caught images, which were well-circulated, of one scene where Whitaker carries Zellweger into and out of Buhlow Lake in Pineville.
Then there are those times where producers and directors are shooting in Louisiana, but it’s the wrong part of the state. Alicia Allain, originally of Brusly, has been there and done that. As a co-producer on The Badge with Billy Bob Thornton in 2001, she had the crew shoot in downtown Baton Rouge with the Mississippi River Bridge in the background when a scene called for downtown New Orleans. Likewise, as a line producer on Lush with Campbell Scott, she pointed her team to the Baton Rouge Garden District when a scene called for NOLA’s Garden District, specifically in the St. Charles Avenue area. “It’s amazing what you can get away with when you put your mind to it,” says Allain.
Louisiana certainly has a rich history of doubling. In Ray with Jamie Foxx, the Louisiana House of Representatives doubled as the Georgia House of Representatives. In The Brooke Ellison Story, Tulane passed for Harvard. In Crazy in Alabama, Houma served as Alabama. A few years ago, there was even an indie film called Anytown that was shot in Baton Rouge—thematically, Red Stick was supposed to be a generic anytown. The picturesque courthouse square in Clinton will soon become for millions of viewers vampire stomping grounds as the ficticious town of Bon Temps in North Louisiana. There was also the forgettable Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, which was shot in Shreveport and made to look like Los Angeles and Cuba at times.
On the horizon, downtown Alexandria becomes Chicago in the thirties for an upcoming production of The Story of Bonnie and Clyde, and additional shooting for the picture is slated for the Felicianas. There’s no doubt that more pictures will be made in Louisiana that aren’t always dependent upon sleepy bayou towns and alligators crossing the road. And that’s a good thing; it shows that Louisiana is a versatile locale to shoot any kind of film, whether it’s a period piece or sci-fi fantastic.
Movie magic can take you anywhere—without ever leaving home.
Jeremy Alford is a freelance journalist based in Baton Rouge. You can reach him at www.jeremyalford.com.
