WTTR director Jake Scott tries to stay true to New Orleans

He's brought his latest movie to Sundance. He's brought it to the Berlin Film Festival. Last month, he was screening it for a swooning festival crowd in Deauville, France.

Director Jake Scott, right, sets up a shot on the Mandeville set of 'Welcome to the Rileys' in late 2008.

But when director Jake Scott kicks off the 21st New Orleans Film Festival tonight (Oct. 15) with his drama "Welcome to the Rileys" -- starring Kristen Stewart, James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo -- Scott admits he'll be feeling a special kind of jittery.

That's because, as many times as he's screened it, and as overwhelmingly positive as the responses have been, tonight will be the first time his New Orleans-shot, New Orleans-set film will be shown to a New Orleans audience.

"I'm quite nervous about showing it in New Orleans," he said, "especially to the crew, because ... I really looked to them as a sort of gauge of what they thought was cool, accurate, what they found was the same thing they always have to do when outsiders come in and make movies of New Orleans. You know, they always do corny things, and I wanted to make it authentic. I wanted it to be true to modern-day New Orleans life, and I hope that the film has done that."

"Welcome to the Rileys" tells the story of an Indiana businessman (Gandolfini) who, grieving the loss of his daughter, takes a young prostitute (Stewart) under his wing while he's in New Orleans for a plumbing convention.
The film features a handful of the postcard cliches that few directors can seem to resist -- after all, Scott pointed out, it's those cliches that Gandolfini's conventioneer character is looking for. But when it's time to get on with the story, he said, the real New Orleans gets a chance to shine -- and he's proud of that.
"All conventioneers, as you know, you see them all up and down Bourbon Street and the French Quarter, so there's a very brief scene that takes place in the French Quarter," he said. "But as much as possible, I tried to make the film geographically credible. So the girl, Kristen's character, lives in the Bywater. She lives in a house that she could potentially live in or rent. Two streets over is Vaughan's -- you know, the bar -- which we turned into more of a restaurant than it really is, but it was where she could go eat."

James Gandolfini and Kristen Stewart, in a scene from the locally shot 'Welcome to the Rileys.'

The list goes on: Gandolfini's character and his convention buddies dine at Arnaud's in the film's very first scene -- exactly as real conventioneers would do. Later, when he sits down for a casual meal, he reads a copy of The Times-Picayune.
Those are the kinds of touches the English director -- son of Ridley Scott and nephew of Tony Scott -- said his mostly local crew was invaluable in helping with. In addition, though, Scott did his best to go native, moving temporarily into a house just off Magazine Street -- as opposed to staying in a hotel, as many visiting filmmakers do -- for the months he spent in town.
"We went to the supermarket, went to the Farmers Market, I would cycle my bike every Saturday morning along the levee, along the Mississippi there," he said.
As a result, in "Welcome to the Rileys" one of the few geographical fudges actually goes the opposite direction it usually does. Rather than playing with local geography or having someplace else stand in for New Orleans, Scott had a Mandeville neighborhood stand in for Gandolfini's character's Indianapolis home turf.
At screenings outside of New Orleans, the film has been warmly received, particularly for its performances. After its screening at Sundance, film critic Roger Ebert blogged of Stewart: "Who knew she had these notes? I'm discovering an important new actress."
And in Deauville, Scott said, everybody seemed to appreciate it. "(It got) a very, very, very strong response from the French -- like, really, really overwhelming, I found," he said. "Figaro and Le Monde, those two newspapers, those critics were very flattering, really loved the film. The French really loved the film, which is a nice thing to be able to tell you for a New Orleans paper."

Melissa Leo stars in a scene from the locally shot drama 'Welcome to the Rileys.'

So far, Scott said, he knows of only two New Orleanians who have seen the finished film. Local casting agent Liz Coulon caught it at Sundance and, Scott said, approved of his depiction of the city. Also, after one of the Sundance screenings, he was approached by a man he had never met. "He said, 'You know, I'm from there,' and he thanked me for showing the city as it should be shown."
So after receiving thumbs-up from at least two locals, what is he so nervous about?
"There are a couple of things that could be dodgy. But not corny so much as inaccurate. .... Maybe some accents and stuff, because it is such a hard accent to get right," he said. "I cast mostly local actors, but there were some that may not be quite right."
You can call him out on it during the post-screening Q&A after tonight's 6:30 p.m. screening at the Prytania. Not only does Scott have a pretty convincing answer involving the hybrid accents of the transient sex-industry workers he interviewed in preparing for the film, but he's also "happy to stand up there on trial" in New Orleans.
"I'm really excited, actually," he said. "I can't wait to come, and it's the same time of year that we were filming, so it's really fantastic. The only other time I came to film (an EA Sports) commercial, it was August -- it was dreadful. So I'm really, really happy to be coming down now.
"I mean, I love it. I really do love your city. It's a fantastic place."
nola
~Robstenfan