Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans The Lure of the Local Film Economy [Paperback]

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Early in the twenty-first century, Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the United States, redirected millions in tax dollars from the public coffers in an effort to become the top location site globally for the production of Hollywood films and television series. Why would lawmakers support such a policy? Why would citizens accept the policy’s uncomfortable effects on their economy and culture? Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans addresses these questions through a study of the local and everyday experiences of the film economy in New Orleans, Louisiana—a city that has twice pursued the goal of becoming a movie production capital. From the silent era to today’s Hollywood South, Vicki Mayer explains that the aura of a film economy is inseparable from a prevailing sense of home, even as it changes that place irrevocably.

Vicki Mayeris Professor of Communication at Tulane University. She is coeditor of the journalTelevision & New Mediaand author or editor of several books and journal articles about media production, creative industries, and cultural work.

"The book is a major work by a leading scholar bringing together history, ethnography, cultural geography, and labor studies—topics often marginalized or ignored in work on the creative economy."—Kate Oakley, Professor of Cultural Policy, University of Leeds

"What happens to the local communities taken in by the fantasy of Hollywood-led creative transformation? Mayer gives us a scathing critique of the economic realities and broken promises of Hollywood South, told in rich ethnographic detail and passionately argued through her deep connection to New Orleans. Thil£Ã