Looking For Trouble: City Pitches “Hollywood South”
As Ready-Made Disaster Movie Backdrop

Mayor Nagin and members of the Louisiana and New Orleans Film and Television Commissions are making the rounds in Hollywood this week.

Their pitch to the studio honchos? If you want to make the greatest disaster movie in American history, you need to film it at the site of the greatest natural disaster in American history.

Big movies with big budgets mean big business. Business that the Crescent City desperately needs. And Mayor Nagin is determined to reel it in.

“This city is a lensman’s dream,” Nagin gushed in a cellphone interview while waiting for the valet at Spago to fetch his Bentley.

“So I’m hitting some serious confabs, telling every Hollywood mogul, prexy, and impresario who’ll do lunch that if you’re looking for boffo B.O. biz, baby, C. Ray is your man.”

“I’m talking zombies and Mad Max,” Nagin continued. “I want Tommy Lee Jones running away from a volcano!

“Blaine Kern’s probably got a volcano just sitting around somewhere in Algiers.”

He further elaborated that he was willing to negotiate for tax breaks to offer as incentive for movies in a ‘disaster’ or ‘post-apocalpytic’ genre.

According to Nagin, major stunts and explosions could be performed in places such as the 9th Ward with little concern for zoning, since so few citizens had yet to move back home.

“Some people may see destruction,” said Nagin. “I see opportunity! Nowhere in America can you find such authentic locales of desolation.

“I mean, come on, this whole damn city is a movie set just waiting for a crew.”

The Mayor suggested if the city were to host the next ‘Die Hard’ sequel, many of the beloved 9th Ward’s concerns about demolition could be solved.

Bruce Willis was unable to be contacted by the C-T. His publicist, however, issued this statement: “Mr. Willis has no plans yet to begin filming the next Die Hard; however, as always he sends his deepest regards to the city.”

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