On the Road Again

We left Bossier on Saturday morning, headed up Benton Road towards Hope, Arkansas, birthplace of Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee (who's a Republican running for president). As a sidebar, I took the test to find out which presidential candidate is closest to me on the issues and it turned out to be Dennis Kucinich. Marsha, too. Mike Huckabee was the furthest away from me.
At Hope we turned east onto I-30 and went to Benton where we sampled the luncheon buffet at Brown's. They told us there were no ribs on the menu because they had become too expensive and they didn't want to raise their prices, so they simply edited them off the buffet. Since they were the main reason we stopped for the buffet, apart from the fact that they're called Brown's, that may be the last time we stop there.
Back on the road and heading towards Memphis and just before we get there, veer north onto I-55 towards St. Louis. We stop at every Flying J within reasonable range because they usually have the cheapest diesel and we get an additional one cent per gallon off when we proffer the FJ card. Plus you can sleep there overnight in your camping van.
It's getting dark and we pass through St. Louis quite late, which is good, because traffic is minimal. About 40 miles north of the city we find a Rest Area on I-55 and pull in for the night.
Sunday and we hit the highway through Illinois. Our first destination is Madison Wisconsin, which turns out to be one thousand miles (give or take) from home. We do a little hunting around and finally settle on the old familiar Motel 6, where we stay three nights. It's within walking distance of a Big Lots, an Aldi, and a Dollar Tree. There's an Indian restaurant - the Maharaji - across the street where we do the Tuesday lunch buffet for $7.99.
Ralph Russo is the show co-ordinator, nice guy, liberal, easy to talk to. Heather runs the technical side of the show — "La Belle France" — and first night the voice is a bit fuzzy and I felt like I was pushing my voice, but it went okay. The second night we clear up the voice and it sounds much better and we get one "that was the best show ever!" from a little old lady.
Wednesday morning we check out at noon and head down through Platteville, Dubuque and Davenport and end up at Burlington, Iowa, at a real nice local motel called the Arrowhead. Tomorrow's show is "It's Great! Britain."

Unforseen Benefits

In January, Marsha and I will be in Florida. We were there two years ago and were able to look up our old friend Chris Sherman, the food and wine critic of the St. Petersburg Times. We had not seen Chris for at least 20 years. He had been a city editor at the now-defunct Shreveport Journal, an unlikely liberal newspaper in a distinctly conservative region.

We lauded him for landing such a cushy and, I must add, suitable, position. Chris was born to be a wine and food critic and looks the part: he is well-rounded and simultaneously jolly and cynical, with a great drooping mustache. He grumbled lightheadrtedly about his job — apparently Tampa-St.Pete is not restaurant heaven — but had to admit that in the big picture he’d landed on his feet.

Then we turned to our job. What a great thing, Chris opined, to be able to make feature-length films, with complete creative control, and actually have an audience for them. How many struggling filmmakers and film school graduates would not love to be in our shoes? He cited the case of an acquaintance who’d been trying to get a film together for years, battling for funding with arts councils and corporate entities.

Which got me thinking about the many perks of this job, not the least of which is meeting with friends and relations that we haven’t seen for yonks and would have perhaps never seen again. Two years ago we went to Maine and Marsha met her cousin Gary that she hadn’t seen for a couple of decades. We stayed at his house, met his family and we’ll be returning in April because we have film showings in Portland and Greene, Maine, again.

On the West Coast, we have visited with sons, daughters and grandchildren on a much more regular basis than before our travelogue days. In New York we have spent weeks where Marsha was raised, playing cards, drinking wine, and rekindling old friendships. So, too, in Michigan where we are blessed with old friends north of Detroit and new friends, the Veaches, in Jackson.

For these reasons alone it has been worth it to become travel film makers. But on top of that we get to make our own films and show them to a receptive audience. Each new film presents new challenges and a new approach to a well-trodden tradition. In our first film, “La Belle France,” we were happy to actually get it done. In our second film, “It’s Great!Britain,” we started to play with the form a little and to add a little more music.
In our third film, “Hello Louisiana,” we used music as the springboard for traveling around the state and we’re now contemplating another Louisiana music film which will incorporate our own live music. This is not a new idea for us, but it is taking a while to work out all the bugs and to find a suitable subject and form for the film part. It may happen yet.

I realize that there are various approaches to creating travelogues, from the pure filmic to the performance art, and Marsha and I tend to come down a bit closer to the latter.

For me, the travel film has been a real liberator. I started with BBC TV in the days of black and white video; moved on to musical performance and songwriting as a folk and country singer; and seized the opportunity to cut tape in the last days of analogue radio production. Combined with jobs as a waiter, barman, bicycle messenger, sewer cleaner, garbage collector, driver, bookshop manager, schoolteacher, carpenter’s assistant, and traveling minstrel, I have had all the necessary experience to make travel films.

And like Chris Sherman, I feel I’ve finally landed on my feet. And I’m lucky to have a partner to work with.

Hello Louisiana Article

“Hello Louisiana”
by Monty Brown

To purchase a copy of "Hello Louisiana," go to Floyd's Record Shop.

Marsha and I began shooting “Hello Louisiana” in more halcyon days, in the times before the tempests assaulted our already eroding coastline, in the summer of ‘05. In fact, the seeds of this film were sown decades ago when we first became enthralled with the rich culture of our home state. It’s been a long lasting labor of love.
Some of our filming predates our acquisition of a 3-chip digital camera. Back in the late ‘90’s we were doing projects for ourselves and the Louisiana Folklife Center with our old High-8 camera; we took footage of Cajun Mardi Gras and Egg Pocking in Avoyelles Parish, transferred it to digital, and inserted it in our new film.
Our first project after we bought the digital camera, before we started filming either France or Britain, was in South Louisiana documenting some of the disc jockeys who produce the uniquely Louisiana Cajun French music programs.
More seeds were planted in the classrooms of Louisiana. Marsha and I have been performing a program for middle school Louisiana History students, making them aware of the rich musical heritage of their state. In that program, we take the students from north to south, to the places where jazz, cajun and zydeco music originated, and where blues, country and gospel music flowered. The film roughly follows this format.
We began assembling our “musical romp” around Louisiana a couple of years ago. Filming in your own back yard has its advantages: you can film in all seasons over a considerable length of time, if you wish. But then again, it’s sometimes hard to know when to stop. For a while, after we’d “finished,” we still kept looking at the end result as a work in progress, but after getting lots of positive feedback from many people within the state — people whose opinions we value — we’ve decided that it is, indeed, finished.
We are finding that there is a great deal of interest in Louisiana wherever we go. People want to know about our hurricane experiences, but we have little firsthand knowledge. Hurricane Katrina hit in the southeast corner of the state and then proceeded to sweep around to the east, to Mississippi and Alabama. Our weather in the northwest corner was sunny and calm throughout.
Rita was a different story. It made landfall along the coast shared by Texas and Louisiana and proceeded due north up the state line, which brought the eye right over us. However, we are a considerable distance inland, and, as everybody knows, hurricanes tend to lose their ferocity over land. We had power outages and downed trees, more like a violent late summer storm.
Holly Beach, one of our film locations on the Gulf Coast, was apparently wiped out. The Beach is known ironically as the “Cajun Riviera;” the good news is that the Beach has been flattened by hurricanes before and it always rebuilds its wooden beach houses elevated on piles. No fancy hotels, condos or casinos here.
During the last couple of seasons, presenting our travel films coast to coast, we have discovered that audiences like to see — people. Inasmuch as digital video has made the filming of people much easier, we try to insert people in amongst the scenery, the flowers, the children, the sheep, the Volkswagen, and the pictures of Marsha in ethnic garb. And audiences seem to like a little humor, too.
In “Hello Louisiana” we feature accordion makers, Boudin (Cajun sausage) eating, a chef’s bread pudding recipe, hunting alligators (with a camera), and local historians, along with a large dose of Louisiana music and cultural history. And it seems to be attracting statewide attention. It makes us realize it was a good choice of subject.
Who knows? Maybe here in Louisiana, we’ll once again hear those famous encouraging words, “You’re doing a good job, Brownie!”

This article first appeared in the Travel Adventure Magazine.

Family message

Very good video. The Bushes deserve all the vitriol we can heap on them. Generations of arms dealers and warmongers. Thank you.

OK this is the third time (that I'm sending this to Peter and Joan) and I hope it's the lucky one. I thought it was lacahoots, but it's montyandmarsha same as our website, but no "blogspot" in the website address. We're trying to link everything and everyone together, so let's all put links on our blogs, webs, youtubes or whatever we're up to. I put the Tin House on our blog. Need to put Doug's.

I notice you (Peter & Joan) haven't been keeping up with your blog. We have started a blog at and we can put a link to your blog, which is ?

We're heading out on our annual tour of the USA and southern Ontario at the end of this month and we'll try to keep a diary of where we are, what's happening and what it looks like, so check our blog or website from time to time and if you can convince your friends and acquaintances to buy our travel films, we will give you a special place in our thoughts.

We are currently working on two new films: one is "Etched in Stone: Scotland to Provence," castles and churches and ruins and stories from history, and "Junipero Serra: the Man Who Invented California," from Mallorca to Mexico to California. The latter has been inspired by Fiona and Gerald's interest in Serra International and we have already previewed a chunk of the film at the Serra Convention in Atlanta (August, '07).

Anyway. The blogging is a good way to keep in touch, I think, in case we forget to email, or worse.

I've had my 67th birthday and we put on a French dinner on the 16th to celebrate me and Sam's (friend's) birthday. Marsha made some pate from a recipe we got from cousin Moira. It was delicious. Thank you, Moira, it's taken several years, but it was worth the wait. Also had ratatouille, porc w Louisiana sweet potatoes, onion soup, cheeses, an excellent pound cake, green salad and champagne.

monty.

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Running of the Sheep

Each spring the sheep festival (Transhumance) takes place in St. Remy de Provence and after watching the sheep run through town we all repair to David and Nito's place for roast mutton and ratatouille followed by a game of boule.