On a recent weekend afternoon, Mr. Bearb’s offices were filled with children ages 4 to 14 interested in appearing on an unspecified “network reality” TV program. There were veteran stage children with professional head shots and children whose mothers had taken their pictures, children from up the street and over the state line, a 7-year-old who already had an agent and the 4-year-old twins who were spotted by one of Mr. Bearb’s colleagues while they were having their matching red mohawks waxed.
“It’s right in our backyard,” said Sharon Massa, who had brought her 8-year-old son, Evan. “How could you resist?”
Such is life in the Louisiana reality TV boom, which began in earnest in 2010 with the record-setting premiere of “Swamp People” on the History Channel and has apparently not diminished. In April, “Duck Dynasty,” about a close-knit family and their duck-call business in north Louisiana, set a ratings record for A E with 10 million viewers. “The Governor’s Wife,” about the 85-year-old former Louisiana governor (and onetime federal prisoner) Edwin Edwards and his 34-year-old wife, Trina, is scheduled to begin airing this summer.
In the past few years, there have been shows about Louisiana alligator trappers, exterminators, sheriffs, prisoners, brides, shrimpers, nutria hunters, mixed martial arts fighters, garbage collectors, “bad girls,” overnight millionaires, run-of-the-mill rednecks and pawnshop owners (about whom there are multiple shows). There are more shows on the way, prompting the question of whether there actually are any interesting people left in Louisiana.
“There’s more material to be found in Louisiana; it’s just going to be harder to find,” said David McKillop, the executive vice president for programming at A E, who has been involved in both “Swamp People” and “Duck Dynasty.”
The Louisiana film and television industry has grown enormously since a generous tax credit program was set up in 2002, hence the nickname Hollywood South. Reality TV makes up a tiny fraction of that business — less than 1 percent, said Chris Stelly, the executive director of the Louisiana Office of Entertainment Industry Development — but has a big cultural footprint. Few would know that the sci-fi blockbuster “Oblivion” was shot here; “Cajun Pawn Stars” could have been shot nowhere else.
The tax credits are certainly a big part of why the state seems to attract so many shows, people in the industry said, and there is quite a bit of simply following what has already worked. But there is also general agreement that Louisiana is just more interesting than other places, with an ideal mix of Deep South exotica and regular folk accessibility. And Louisianans like to talk.
“It’s like a two-dog race between Louisiana and Alaska,” said Brent Montgomery, the owner of Leftfield Pictures, which produces “Cajun Pawn Stars,” “Swamp’d!” and many other shows. “When you’re in Louisiana,” he said, “it’s like every single person there is employed by the state to tell you how great the state is.”
Despite the risks of overexposure and a growing skepticism on the part of some Louisianans about their portrayal, Mr. Montgomery and others say there is more here waiting to be found.
“I always remind my team: Michelangelo claimed he didn’t carve those statues,” Mr. McKillop said. “It was naturally there and he just released David from the block of marble or granite or whatever he carved it out of.”
To find the next David, casting agents scour the landscape, cold calls are made to people with promisingly colorful occupations, producers host pig roasts to get to know potential subjects and local contacts are pressed to recall particularly engaging characters they might have come across or who were rejected from other reality shows. In some cases, colorful characters and the colorful situations or jobs are discreetly matched up by the producer themselves, several people in the industry said, though nobody wanted to say so publicly.
The prerequisite, in any case, is colorful.
“ ‘Bigger than life’ — that expression kept coming back,” said Charles Larroque, a filmmaker in Lafayette who has done some work in the reality business.
“Me, bigger than life?” asked his friend Gerard Dupuy, who is known for playing the fiddle while dancing on a stump and prefers to speak in French. “That is un gros compliment.” Mr. Dupuy showed up on “Cajun Pawn Stars.”
Mr. Larroque has included Mr. Dupuy in his own show, which he is trying to sell: “Dinner and a Ghost,” which follows the shrewd approach of combining genres, in this case the paranormal and the culinary. For Mr. Larroque, the show is about portraying deeper aspects of culture than the superficial gloss on much reality TV.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/us/louisiana-inspires-reality-tv-shows.html?partner=rss&emc=rss