Excitement in Shreve-wood

As I may have mentioned at some point, Mrs. Bartender comes from Shreveport, Louisiana. When I tell people this, I am frequently asked either (a) so you must get to New Orleans a lot or (b) was her family affected by Katrina. This is based upon the mistaken impression that everything in Louisiana is fairly close to the Big Easy. In fact, Shreveport is in the NW Corner of the state, about a five hour drive from New Orleans. (It is closer to Dallas.) Thus, in my annual trips to Shreveport over the past decade, I have been to New Orleans exactly once. And when Katrina devastated NO, it didn't even get cloudy up in Shreveport.

Katrina did, however, have one major effect on Shreveport--the relocation of the movie industry. A number of years ago, Louisiana enacted an number of financial incentives to get Hollywood to the Pelican State. Originally, movies came to NO, but after Katrina, a new location was needed. Hello, Shreveport. While I have yet to see any of the stars when I'm down there, I do hear stories from all the locals about Kevin Costner or Oliver Stone or some other major figure who is in town and where they ate or what they did.

This weekend, we had our first public "incident." No, nothing as good as a drunken Lohan or Britney, but not bad either. Oliver Stone is filming W, his Bush biopic, in Shreveport, and Josh Brolin (Bush) and Jeffrey Wright (Powell) managed to get arrested following a bar fight. This was, my in-laws reported, huge, huge news down in Shreveport including a banner headline in the Shreveport Times. Just makes me even more excited for my next visit.