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HOW LOUISIANA BECAME

THE CAPITAL OF BATTLING BRIDES,

BOUNTY HUNTERS, SWAMP PEOPLE,

DUCK DYNASTIES, BAD GIRLS,

BAYOU BILLIONAIRES,

CAJUN PAWN STARS AND BILLY

THE EXTERMINATOR.

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I’m DARVIN MOON and

I may spend most of the year with sawdust in my beard, but I can still come out of nowhere to get the fi nal table.

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I’m OWEN BLY and

I don’t wear sunglasses indoors, but I can still demolish the table with a fl ush on the river.I’m OWEN BLY and

I’M A PLAYER

I’m BERNICE YEE and

I’M A PLAYER

I’m DARVIN MOON and

I’M A PLAYER

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A t a store specializing in duck

calls and similar sundries,

spring and summer are

usually slow — duck-hunting season

is winter. But things are different

when you’re a duck-call retailer

with a reality show on a major

cable network.

“I wasn’t sure that a guy would buy

a duck call just because he liked the

show,” says Willie Robertson, CEO

of The Duck Commander, the West

Monroe sporting goods empire

featured on the A&E series Duck

Dynasty. Since the show premiered

March 21, Robertson says, orders

have been pouring in from all over

the U.S. and Canada. “Don’t know if

they’re using them or not, but they’re

certainly buying them.”

Promoted as a rags-to-riches

story, the show depicts Robertson

and his thickly bearded and heavily

accented brother, father and uncle

— along with the men’s wives and

children — as they run the family

business started by patriarch Phil,

who went from humble beginnings to

small-town fame with his handmade

duck calls. The family is wealthy

but still has the kind of backwoods

sensibility that makes for good

television. In one episode, Willie —

who has no experience as a vintner

— decides to buy an out-of-use

vineyard, and the men earnestly

attempt to make a batch of wine

using crates of store-bought grapes

and sacks of granulated sugar.

Duck Dynasty is one of the

latest in a crop of reality series set

in Louisiana that make up a large

percentage of cable television’s

nonscripted offerings. Vulture, New

York magazine’s pop culture blog,

recently created a Venn diagram

illustrating current reality shows, and

shows set in Louisiana constituted

one of the larger circles, right behind

shows about “weddings” and “wars”

— “wars” of the shipping, storage

and cupcake variety, not actual

combat.

The series Swamp People,

which follows alligator hunters in

the Atchafalaya River Basin swamp

and was the first in the current

shows-about-Cajuns trend, set

a ratings record for History (the

former History Channel). The 2010

season premiere of Swamp People

garnered 4.2 million viewers, making

the network No. 1

in its time slot

and History’s

most

successful

launch of

an original

series. The

show, now

in its third

season, is

cover story

accented brother, father and uncle

— along with the men’s wives and

children — as they run the family

business started by patriarch Phil,

who went from humble beginnings to

small-town fame with his handmade

duck calls. The family is wealthy

but still has the kind of backwoods

sensibility that makes for good

television. In one episode, Willie —

who has no experience as a vintner

— decides to buy an out-of-use

vineyard, and the men earnestly

attempt to make a batch of wine

using crates of store-bought grapes

garnered 4.2 million viewers, making

the network No. 1

in its time slot

and History’s

most

successful

launch of

an original

series. The

show, now

in its third

season, is

TROY LANDRY: SWAMP PERSON

At first, alligator hunter Troy Landry wasn’t too excited about the prospect of

appearing on a reality TV show. “We have so much work to do in that month’s

time of the season that I didn’t think I’d have time to be bringing camera people

with me and all that in the boat,” he says. “But I decided to try it, and I’m glad

I did.”

The Pierre Part, La. native, his son Jacob and other alligator hunters living in

the Atchafalaya Basin Swamp are the stars of History’s Swamp People, which

has been the most successful series for the network and progenitor of a trend

of reality shows set in Louisiana’s backwoods. Just as the show has been a

boon for History, it’s been a great jolt for the Landry’s family and business.

“The year (the show approached them) the price of alligators had dropped

to nothing, and I don’t think I would have paid my expenses that year if it wasn’t

for the History Channel,” Landry says. “Alligators that went for $48 a foot the

year before went from $12 a foot that year. So if it wasn’t for them paying my

expenses, I’d don’t think I’d have made a dollar that whole month.”

Landry says his family is enjoying its newfound celebrity. They’re often paid

to appear at private parties, crawfish boils and large public events. “We’re

traveling a lot,” he says. “We’re getting to see a lot of the country that we

wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise. So it’s been very, very, very good for

my family.”

Despite their fame, the Landrys still have a job to do, and being a reality TV

star can be time-consuming.

“There’s always visitors looking, tourists coming through the town looking for

us from all over the country, and now all over the world,” Landry says. “We got

people from other countries now showing up looking for us. It’s hard to get work

done now.” — LAUREN LABORDE

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT ON FACING PAGE:

Cast members from Tough Love New Orleans,

Bayou Billionaires, Bad Girls Club New Orleans,

Big Easy Justice, The Real World: New Orleans

and Duck Dynasty.

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Moonshiners, Long Island Medium and other nonscripted

series, believes reality shows have helped improve their

scripted counterparts.

“With scripted television, every year there’d be 150

pilots, and maybe two of them would turn into series and

most of them would die, or go a season and they would

die, and it was a lot of bad scripted TV,” he says. “And all of

the sudden networks realized they could spend a lot less

money on nonscripted and get a lot more product for it,

and these things are becoming successful, and scripted

actually got better because of it. And here we now find

only a handful of scripted shows coming out a year that are

all really, really great and we all really love to watch. I like it

because I like the immediacy of it,” Flanagan added. “You

can have an idea, go meet somebody if you find the right

character, get them into a TV show within a few months and

can get it on the air, and you can have a hit on your hands.”

Besides being an economical choice for networks, the

voyeuristic nature of reality TV also speaks to the ultra-

documented ethos of our times.

“There are a lot of technological changes that happened

in the last decade,” says Lily Neumeyer, A&E’s vice

president of nonfiction and alternative programming

and executive producer of Duck Dynasty. “Everyone

has a camera, everyone has YouTube. So it’s like we, as

individuals, are all in our own reality TV show all the time.

It’s something that we as individuals in 2012 see as normal.

“We are all wired, so that’s part of why it’s not a trend, it’s

about a genre that’s not going anywhere.”

Part of Louisiana’s reality TV boom can be attributed to the

Louisiana Motion Picture Tax Incentive Act, which offers tax

breaks to filmmakers who shoot movies in Louisiana.

In 2002, when he was a state senator, Lt. Gov. Jay

Dardenne authored the legislation in hopes of creating a

sustainable moviemaking workforce.

When it comes to reality TV, Dardenne says he worries

about some of the tawdrier programming (though he admits

to being a fan of Swamp People), but sees the shows

as a whole to be positive advertisement for the state and

spotlights cultures and habitats that are a draw for tourists.

“These shows are going to happen because of tax

credits, because of the public’s apparent thirst for these

kind of shows,” he says. “They’re commercially successful.

... What we’re trying to take advantage of in this heyday of

reality TV is to convince people ... looking for authenticity

and adventure that Louisiana has that to offer.”

Filmmaker Melissa Caudle, who has written a number of

books on reality TV and whose film and television company

On the Lot Productions is working on three unscripted

projects set in Louisiana — River Kings, The Baker Girls:

Sealed with a Kiss and Reel Um In — says the tax credits

have been an incentive for production companies.

“There’s an interest in our diversity of culture that

Louisiana has to offer,” Caudle says, adding that the

recovery after Hurricane Katrina “has become a story in

itself of people surviving and overcoming all of the adversity

and hardships, and people are naturally attracted to those

types of people. When the Louisiana tax structure started,

that opened up the floodgates for reality shows.”

But Chris Stelly, who oversees the tax credit program in

his job as executive director of Louisiana Entertainment in

the department of Louisiana Economic Development, says

reality TV shows constitute a relatively small percentage of

projects taking advantage of the tax credits — less than 10

percent since the program’s inception.

“The reality TV phenomenon is more driven by the story

than anything else,” Stelly says. “Typically when (shows)

first come into the state, they fall below the minimum

threshold, $300,000. We have seen some reality shows —

Billy the Exterminator, Swamp People — as they progress

and start realizing they’re spending money over the

minimums required, then they will apply and ultimately take

advantage of the tax credits.

“This is purely a genre of television that’s being driven by

popularity and subject matter.”

A&E’s Neumeyer says it’s a combination of both factors:

the tax credits are an incentive and viewers react positively

to Louisiana personalities. “They feel that it’s very relatable,

even though they don’t live in Louisiana,” she says.

“There’s a culture, there’s a food, there’s a flavor, there’s

a music, there’s all those things that are Louisiana-centric

that don’t necessarily exist when you go to the other states,”

says Flanagan of Magilla Entertainment. “It opens itself up

into a really vibrant culture to tap into with regards to reality

TV and documentaries.”

Bad Girls Club, Oxygen’s reality show that’s sort of like

The Real World but with eight of the same person (the two

shows share a production company, Bunim/Murray), filmed

still popular. The premieres of CMT’s Bayou Billionaires,

a Beverly Hillbillies-esque story of a Shreveport family that

became instantly wealthy after discovering their home

sits on a natural gas well, along with My Big Redneck

Vacation, which followed Louisiana swamp folks on a jaunt

to the Hamptons, brought strong ratings for the network.

Like sister networks VH1 and MTV, CMT originally started

as a music-focused channel (it stands for Country Music

Television) but has drifted into reality programming,

with its two Louisiana shows being its biggest hits so

far in that category. Over on A&E, the 2009 premiere of

Steven Seagal: Lawman, set in Jefferson Parish, was the

most-watched series launch in that network’s history at

that time. In the same vein of shows geared toward men,

Spike TV now has Big Easy Justice, produced by Al Roker

and starring local bounty hunter Tat-2 (Eugene Thacker).

Others include the Discovery Channel’s Ragin’ Cajuns,

History’s Cajun Pawn Stars and the Travel Channel’s

Girls, Guns and Gators.

While shows set in Louisiana’s bayous and swamps

became popular, others depicting New Orleans through

the lens of Carnival beads and artificially colored Bourbon

Street cocktails began to crop up. In 2010, MTV brought

its flagship The Real World back to the city for its 24th

season (the ninth season of the series also was set in

New Orleans). Much to the chagrin of Kenner residents,

Oxygen filmed the 2011 season of its popular series Bad

Girls Club in a mansion in Kenner’s Chateau Estates

(but, of course, called the season Bad Girls Club: New

Orleans). The AMC-owned network WeTV debuted

Big Easy Brides in August 2011, depicting the colorful

marriage ceremonies at a French Quarter wedding

chapel, like a Hand Grenade-soaked version of Say

Yes to the Dress. VH1 currently is airing Tough Love, a

dating show that was filmed in a house on the edge of the

French Quarter.

At this point, reality shows set in Louisiana represent

all the major reality show categories, aside from shows

about cakes — although Haydel’s Bakery, purveyor of king

cakes, produced its own reality show, Piece of Cake, that

aired locally on WVUE.

Bayou Billionaires executive producer Brian Flanagan,

who was instrumental in the creation of Swamp People

and whose Magilla Entertainment is responsible for

cover story

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its seventh season at ex-New Orleans

Hornets coach Byron Scott’s former

Chateau Estates mansion. Production

of the show encountered resistance

from residents of the upscale

neighborhood, who initially were upset

by the production company painting

the house’s columns a girly purple.

Kenner Mayor Mike Yenni pulled the

plug on taping, citing a neighborhood

zoning law. The show eventually

went on, however, premiering in

August 2011. Kenner adopted new

filming regulations as a result of Bad

Girls Club.

“Basically the city could not prove

that the production company was

violating any city codes, mainly

the code provision that prohibits

how many people may reside in a

residence who are not related by

blood or marriage,” Kenner city

attorney Keith Conley wrote in an

email to Gambit. “We had an open line

of communication with the production

company, who assured us that only the

legal amount of people were staying

at the residence, while the rest were

staying at a hotel and transported in

daily to shoot the segments.”

Mike Quigley, Yenni’s chief

administrative officer, thinks Bad Girls

Club didn’t make much of a splash

in Kenner, despite fears about the

debauchery the show would depict.

“The series was on the Oxygen

Channel, and it is a channel I do

not have,” Quigley wrote in an email

response. “I was curious to see it,

but I never did view it. Furthermore,

I don’t know of anyone that watched

it. It seems like Swamp People is

more interesting.”

Around this time, some speculative

projects began to emerge. After his

release from prison, former Gov.

Edwin Edwards was in talks with

local production company SSS

Entertainment to create a reality show

focusing on his post-incarceration

life with his new (and much younger)

wife Trina Grimes Scott. That project

seems to have fizzled out.

The SSS Entertainment website,

however, lists a number of projects in

development — most notably a series

called Wanks, which is described

as a reality program “that follows the

party-fueled lives of young guys and

girls living on the West Bank of New

Orleans, where every weekend is

Mardi Gras.” The description also says

the show was sold to Oxygen in 2011.

(Company founder and executive

producer Shaun Sanghani could not

be reached for an interview.)

It’s difficult to tell what shows are

coming up, since reality shows seem

to be conceived and shelved all the

time. But in April, A&E announced

a new show, Cajun Justice, which

follows the Terrebonne Parish

Sheriff’s Office (“a world where

the sheriff is like a king, voodoo is a

common practice and no police call

is routine”). Cajun Justice premieres

June 7. Animal Planet currently is

filming its fourth season of the series

Pitbulls and Parolees at the 9th Ward

branch of the Villalobos Rescue

Center; it is set to air sometime this

fall. In a strange nexus of Louisiana

reality TV, Pitbulls cast member Heidi

Ziegler was carjacked and the case

was featured on WGNO-TV’s “Wheel

of Justice,” a news segment on which

Tat-2 of Big Easy Justice used to be a

frequent guest.

Local boxing promoter Mike Tata

says his Friday Night Fights boxing

event/variety show will be featured

on TruTV; the event’s Facebook page

has a rough trailer for the show.

And there’s always hope that SSS

Productions’ Wanks will make it on the

air. Whatever happens, it’s safe to say

there’s plenty more Louisiana reality

TV to come.

“I think now everyone knows about

(Louisiana), and it’s not a secret

anymore,” Neumeyer says. “But I think

it’s definitely a place where we haven’t

run out of stories.”

cover story

GET REAL, LOUISIANA

Where and when to catch the current crop of locally-set reality TV shows.

New season premieres this

summer; date to be announced

Wednesdays, 9 p.m.,

through May 23

Currently on hiatus; should come

back in June. Tuesdays at 9 p.m.

Thursdays, 8 p.m., through July

Premieres Thursday, June 7

at 9 p.m.

Sundays, 8 p.m.

Big Easy Justice

(Spike TV)

Bayou Billionaires (CMT)

Cajun Justice (A&E)

Duck Dynasty (A&E)

Swamp People (History)

Tough Love

New Orleans (VH1)

PAGE 16