Contact: Joseph Meissner, Director http://www.facebook.com/floodstreets.movie Cell: 504-382-3557 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1627892/ Email: [email protected]

“Upbeat, amusing film... Well-done and involving.” - Louis Parks, The Houston Chronicle, three out of four stars

Logline: A diverse group of creative malcontents struggle to find love, money and marijuana in the surreal streets of post-flood . A nuanced view of the city and its people, Flood Streets shows the changing landscape of New Orleans as it has never been seen before, dispelling stereotypes to reveal the tragic, defiant, joyful city many call “the Soul of America.”

Short Synopsis: Flood Streets explores life in New Orleans a year after wiped out most of the city, interweaving characters as diverse and eccentric as the city itself.

Madeline is a pot-addled real estate agent who stumbles upon a crisis of conscience in an abandoned home. Matt is a reformed bohemian trying to go straight - but he can't stop fantasizing about his dentist. Nine-year-old Abby wants to buy her family a boat by selling home insurance to her , and single mom Georgia cooks up a scheme that could put her daughter in danger.

Together these creative malcontents struggle to find love, money, and marijuana on the surreal streets of post-flood New Orleans. Contact: Joseph Meissner FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Cell Phone: 504-382-3557 Email: [email protected]

NEW ORLEANS FILMMAKERS TAKE UNIQUE PATH TO MAKE THEIR FIRST FILM Flood Streets Spins an Unexpected Story of New Orleans’ Recovery

Helen Krieger and Joseph Meissner owned a home and two businesses in New Orleans when Katrina hit. During the six-week mandatory evacuation that followed, while the National Guard kept their Ninth Ward neighborhood under quarantine, the husband/wife team had time to contemplate how they might rebuild their lives from scratch if there was nothing left to come home to. Despite the fear and uncertainty, here was an opportunity to start from scratch and realize dreams both had deferred.

For Krieger it was writing and for Joseph Meissner, it was acting and directing, so they decided to join forces to tell the story unfolding around them of New Orleans’ strange recovery. They sold their house after making the necessary repairs, moved into the back of Meissner’s martial arts school and used the proceeds to fund Flood Streets.

Based on a collection of short stories Krieger wrote, Flood Streets follows a group of creative malcontents as they struggle to find love, money, and marijuana in the surreal streets of post-storm New Orleans.

Inspired by ensemble movies like Altman’s Short Cuts, this was a complicated first film to pull off, with five story lines, 42 characters, 48 locations, 147 extras, and a parade… all on a budget that wouldn't pay for lunch on a Hollywood film.

Friends from the neighborhood came to their aid, offering shooting locations, artwork and labor. They wanted to be part of a project that captured the complexity of the city’s culture, a truly unexpected film filled with fresh performances and energetic music.

Actor and comedian Harry Shearer (, ), and songwriter (, ) signed onto the project because they fell in love with the script. Shearer said it was a project that “finally got it right about New Orleans.”

It took roughly three years to write the script, 25 days to shoot it, and 15 months to edit and post- produce, guided in part by the film’s co-producers – filmmakers Glen Pitre and Michelle Benoit (Belizaire the Cajun, The Scoundrel’s Wife).

Flood Streets is playing at independent film festivals across the country, and the book of short stories, In the Land of What Now, that inspired the screenplay is available through Amazon. Production Notes:

New Soundtrack to New Orleans New Orleans has always been a hotbed of musical inspiration, so much so that we've become a victim of our own success. It's easy for people to think of New Orleans as a kind of museum to jazz or funk, but in fact, the music scene in New Orleans is constantly evolving with each young musician who makes the existing musical forms his own.

It happened when young musicians, too inexperienced to gain entry to the mainline brass bands, formed their own groups and injected their love of hip-hop into the music, keeping the tradition alive and relevant for new generations of second-liners.

It happened when indie rocker Clint Maedgen joined the Preservation Hall Jazz Band as the lead vocalist, bringing, quite literally, a new voice to the most traditional band in New Orleans.

While shows like HBO’s Treme do a great job of sharing with the world those stalwarts of traditional, well-defined New Orleans musical forms, Flood Streets aims to shed light on the contradictions and collaborations at the edge of the ever-evolving culture of New Orleans, especially its youth culture.

In addition to Clint Maedgen and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Flood Streets features many other bands, some just breaking into the national spotlight, that are leading this musical cross-pollination in New Orleans, bands like the Zydepunks, Panorama Jazz Band, Loren Murrell, Debauche, and others.

The cast is also filled with musicians including lead actress Becky Stark (Living Sisters, The Decemberists, and Magazine’s #3 artist to watch), Rachel Dupard, a 15-year-old singer from Dallas who overcame years of speech therapy to become a stunning vocalist, Marygoround, a fire dancer and accordion and piano player, and Jacques Duffourc of the band the Bally Who.

Husband/Wife Team Tell a Tale of Infidelity When husband and wife team Joseph Meissner and Helen Krieger collaborated on their first feature, they created a film with a deeply conflicted couple at its core, but the filmmakers promise this isn't a portrait of their own marriage.

Flood Streets follows a group of creative malcontents, none of whom have much luck in love, but the central, strained relationship is between reformed bohemian Matt (played by Meissner) and his rock 'n roll girlfriend, Liz (played by Melissa Hall).

As the couple drifts apart, Matt battles with his desire to stray. Meissner's performance captures the nuance of this character's struggle perfectly.

“He really did an amazing job of bringing this guy to life,” Krieger says, “and on one hand that might be a little scary, but then again, I'm the one who created the character in the first place, so I guess I shouldn't talk.”

Meissner and his co-star Hall also do a great job of making the relationship itself believable, of capturing both the intimacy and the distance that can happen after living together for awhile. With Krieger always on set as the producer, filming those intimate moments was sometimes awkward. “It was pretty funny, I have to admit,” Krieger says. “It's hard enough to play a love scene with someone you barely know, but when you have to do it with the guy's wife sitting behind the monitor giving you notes, it takes it to a whole new level of awkwardness. I got a lot of ideas for future stories.”

Barring the occasional awkwardness, the two are an effective team. Krieger brings the storytelling skills and Meissner his years of experience as an actor. Working together on their first feature, their relationship was also an asset.

“There's a short hand you get when you're together that's really useful,” Meissner says. “We already knew each others' tastes and communication styles, so we could just get straight to work.”

And making their first feature on a micro budget, there was a lot of work.

“I can't imagine doing this alone,” Krieger says. “It's grueling and it's challenging and it's really fulfilling, so it's great to have someone to share that with.”

Low Budget in Hollywood South Thanks to Louisiana film industry tax incentives, New Orleans has become a major movie-making hub, and locals are thrilled whenever a new production comes to town. But while these films bring great economic benefits to local crew and service industries, they have yet to trickle down to local filmmakers.

With very few exceptions, most movies taking advantage of tax incentives are written, produced, funded and often primarily cast outside Louisiana, leaving local directors, writers and producers out of the action.

So when New Orleans director Joseph Meissner and his wife, writer Helen Krieger, started pre- production on Flood Streets, they were determined to use as many other New Orelanians as possible. All the crew lived here, and all but two of the 42 actors were local.

Having a writer, producers, director, crew and talent from New Orleans gave them the experience base they needed to tell the story right. It also energized the production as people signed on to help because they wanted to support a completely local project.

In one case, an elderly neighbor invited one of their bands to play on his front porch, let the crew mic his screen door, then danced in his living room while they filmed.

DIY Counterculture New Orleans has always been a creative cauldron, attracting people at all stages of their life who are interested in art and culture. After the storm, even more people moved down, interacting with our culture to create an amazing artistic incubator.

As was the case in New York City after 9/11 many of these post-Katrina transplants are young. Some of them volunteered, then decided to stay. Others are young professionals looking to live in a place with cultural significance. Many new residents are members of the new counterculture movement. Although it was always strong in New Orleans, this movement only strengthened after the storm bringing more DIY artists, punk squatters, bicycling anarchists, and activists.

The story behind the character Dischordia in Flood Streets - the colony warehouse where she lives and the kids she interacts with, is a story that hasn't yet broken through into the popular culture. New Orleans is a magnet for these young, smart and passionate idealists, and Flood Streets is the as-yet untold story of the rebuilding of New Orleans as the model for a new America.

Early Praise for Flood Streets:

“For a drama about daily life in devastated New Orleans just 15 months after Katrina, this is a surprisingly upbeat, amusing film... Well-done and involving. There's a big, raucous New Orleans soundtrack. The 'city' comes across as tough and determined to survive, party attitude intact.” - Louis Parks, The Houston Chronicle, three out of four stars

“That unsinkable spirit comes through in the movie’s soundtrack, which runs all the way from klezmer (Panorama Jazz Band) and eclectic Russian (Debauche) to modern gospel (Dupard), alternative Irish- Cajun-punk (the Zydepunks), airy indie folk (Stark) and — finally, inevitably — the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.” - Amy Biancolli, The Houston Chronicle

“A heartfelt slice-of-life celluloid treasure." -Martin Duran, The Village News

“Wonderful. I think everybody should know about this film, and the filmmakers behind it.” - Emilie Staat, NolaFemmes

“A unique story of hope and despair, of determination and crazy-ass creativity, told bravely and told well.” - Harry Shearer Biographies:

Joseph Meissner, Actor/Director A native Texan, Joseph Meissner has been acting since childhood. He graduated with honors from Brown University in 1993 with a degree in Theater.

When his college friends Jason Neulander and David Bucci founded the now nationally recognized Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin in 1994, they brought Meissner in to play the lead role of Scrub in their first production, Bucci’s Kid Carnivore. Meissner would continue to work closely with Salvage Vanguard over the years, particularly in productions of playwright Ruth Margraff’s cutting-edge theater and operetta pieces.

In 1995, Meissner joined a small group of actors led by Andre Gregory (My Dinner with Andre) to explore Grotowskian performance training and Chekhov monologues. With Andre’s recommendation, Meissner was able to travel to Pontedera, Italy to train at Grotowsky’s secluded and highly selective performance studio.

Returning to the U.S. in 1996, Meissner worked with New York-based Mabou Mines Theater on The Red Horse Animation, directed by prominent writer/director Lee Breuer. The Red Horse toured to an international experimental theater festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As part of that rehearsal process, Meissner received intensive training in contact improv dance and Ashtanga yoga, which added extra dimensions to the development of his physically-based approach to acting.

Meissner threw himself into the study of Shaolin kung fu in August 1996. While he continued to work on theater projects, over the next ten years he devoted himself primarily to martial arts training (including the Chinese internal arts of tai chi, pa kua, and hsing-ie).

Meanwhile, critical praise for his performances continued to roll in. About Meissner's 2001 role as Christus in The Cry Pitch Carrolls, theater critic Robert Faires of the Austin Chronicle wrote, “The performers bring great heart to the tale: There [are] raw wails of pain in Joseph Meissner's fully grown Small Christus. The [actresses] reveal moving depths . . . and Meissner provides the ideal counterpoint to each.” Michael Barnes of the Austin-American Statesman called Joseph’s performance “uncanny.” He wrote, “only once in a very long while have we seen anything this mesmerizingly original.”

In 2001, Joseph moved to New Orleans and founded Shaolin-Do Kung Fu & Tai Chi. He has acted in many film and theater projects in New Orleans and has directed three shorts in addition to his first feature film, Flood Streets.

Helen Krieger, Writer/Producer Originally from Hartford, Wisconsin, Helen Krieger got her BA in psychology from the University of Dallas, then moved to Boston, where she worked as a journalist before once again being tempted by the South. She moved to New Orleans in 2001 and co-founded a local paper, The Bywater Marigny Current, which she ran for several years before turning it over to her partner so she could get her real estate license. Krieger was working as a real estate agent when Hurricane Katrina hit, and her experiences trying to rebuild the ravaged housing market after the storm inspired her to start writing again. In the early morning, she wrote notes on the surreal experiences she'd had the day before, then she donned a face mask and gloves to meet with clients and inspectors at flooded homes. These notes later became award-winning stories and the inspiration for her first feature, Flood Streets. Krieger's stories have won a Eureka! Short Stories Fellowship Award, a Moondancer Fellowship and placed as a finalist for the William Faulkner Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. She’s received several grants to pursue writing including a Cultural Economy Grant to study novel construction at the Algonkian Writer’s Conference in San Francisco. Becky Stark, Lead Actor Becky Stark is a rising star as an actress, musician and songwriter. Her acting credits include the lead role in the PBS made-for-TV movie Willa: An American Snow White (1998) and the Song Master opposite Bill Murray in City of Ember (2008), for which she also wrote the Songs of the Believers. She has collaborated extensively with filmmaker (Me, You and Everyone We Know) on short film, video, music and performance projects.

She appeared in High School Record - an underground favorite at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, and she has created numerous folk story operettas, including an adaptation of The Little Match Girl.

Stark's folk-pop band , for which she writes songs and performs lead vocals in her stunning soprano, was named Rolling Stone Magazine's "#3 Artist to Watch" in 2007. Stark and her music have been profiled in Vanity Fair, USA Today, , NPR, and The New Yorker.

Stark was featured as the lead female vocalist on The Decemberists' 2009 album which debuted last March as the #1 album on iTunes, #1 on Billboard's Top Digital chart, #5 in Billboard's rock charts and #14 on The Billboard 200. She occasionally sings with Zooey Deschanel's band, She & Him, and leads a choir of many well-known women in Hollywood.

Harry Shearer, Supporting Actor Harry Shearer is a comic personality who takes "hyphenate" to new levels. First and foremost an actor, he is also an author, director, satirist, musician, radio host, playwright, multi-media artist and record label owner.

For nineteen years the native has enjoyed enormous success and planted the fruits of his talents in the heads of millions worldwide thanks to his voice work for The Simpsons. Shearer plays a stable of characters: most notably Mr. Burns, Smithers, , Rev. Lovejoy and Scratchy.

Movie audiences mainly know Shearer through his many collaborations with Christopher Guest and friends, beginning with 's This Is Spinal Tap (1984) and continuing through the folk comedy (2003) and For Your Consideration (2006).

On the radio, Shearer's one-hour satirical sandbox is heard weekly on stations worldwide, and his recent documentary, The Big Uneasy, detailing the of the New Orleans levee system, is racking up awards at festivals throughout the world and was called by The New York Times, “An indispensable part of any history of New Orleans before, during or after Katrina.”

Rachel Dupard, Supporting Actor When Rachel Dupard was three, she could speak words properly. Her parents took her to the doctor, where they discovered an inner ear dysfunction. Back at home after the surgery, Dupard began to hemorrhage and would have died had they not gotten her back to the hospital in time. Throughout the process of healing and speech therapy, Rachel joined the City Temple Seventh-day Adventist Children's Choir. One day, she started singing with a "big" voice and her Choir director gave her solo parts. She has not stopped singing since. Dupard has been a guest vocalist at the 2009 ESSENCE Music Festival, she's shared the stage with Irma Hall ("Soul Food"), and she's sung in Bermuda. She's appeared on Dallas Fox 4 Insights, representing The Black Academy of Arts & Letters where she's performed Broadway roles for two years. She was young Billie Holiday in Rhapsody in Rhythm and she performed the Stephanie Mills version of "Home" in The Wiz. At the age of 13, Dupard completed her first demo album, “Child of the King,” where she delivers positive messages and shows off her formidable vocal skills. The album was produced by Grammy Award winning producer, Madukwu Chinwah who has worked with Eryka Badu, Kirk Franklin, N'Dambi, Raven Symone, and many others. Dupard lives in Dallas where she attends Booker T. Washington High School Performing and Visual Arts, the same school that graduated Erica Badu and Nora Jones.

Michelle Benoit and Glen Pitre, Co-producers Born at Cut Off, Louisiana, Glen Pitre worked his way through Harvard by fishing shrimp each summer. By age 25, American Film magazine dubbed him “father of the Cajun cinema” as his low- budget, French dialect “gumbo westerns” broke house records in bayou country theaters. With the help of the Sundance Institute, his internationally-lauded 1986 Belizaire the Cajun became his first English- language production.

He teamed up with wife Michelle Benoit, and together they have written, produced and directed dozens of films and documentaries including The Man Who Came Back staring Billy Zane, Sean Young, George Kennedy, Armand Assante and the best-known face of daytime television Eric Braeden (Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless). They wrote and directed The Scoundrel’s Wife (released on DVD as Homefront in 2002) starring Tatum O’Neal, Tim Curry, and Julian Sands. Their award- winning documentaries include Willie Frances Must Die Again, Haunted Waters Fragile Lands, the IMAX documentary Hurricane on the Bayou and Good for What Ails You.