In the shadows of his Pontalba apartment in the French Quarter, the late photographer Louis Sahuc and lifelong New Orleanian mused that anything of value is worth defending. “I live in a museum and I like it,” he says of the building in which he resided during the filming of Laura Cayouette ‘s documentary, Wasted: Overtourism & The French Quarter.
Cayouette—best-known for her performances in such Hollywood hits as Django Unchained, Queen Sugar and Enemy of the State—has cast her camera lens upon the 78 square blocks along the Mississippi River from Canal Street to Esplanade. Many documentaries about the Crescent City lean into twee narratives about the quirky charm of the French Quarter and its disparate residents. But there are some that attempt to explicate the love for a beloved neighborhood that has so many good, great and less-than-positive factors that are not usually explored. Cayouette’s Wasted attempts to take the powers-that-be in New Orleans to task for dragging the city into the low world of what the filmmaker calls “overtourism.”
Wasted, the documentary made in partnership with the Vieux Carre Property Owners and Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents, & Associates (VCPORA), explains the impact of tourism on a destination, or parts thereof, that excessively influences perceived quality of life for citizens and/or quality of visitor experiences in a negative way. (For those who don’t know, VCPORA is a nonprofit organization that advocates for the preservation and protection of the Vieux Carré as an international historic treasure, a major cultural and economic asset, and a living residential neighborhood.) Through intimate interviews with French Quarter residents, business owners and culture bearers, the documentary explores the benefits and harms imposed by unbridled visitor numbers on the 300-year-old neighborhood.
“Overtourism isn’t just a buzzword,” explains Cayouette. “It’s a reality that communities across the world are grappling with, and nowhere is this more evident than in the French Quarter. We need to find a way forward that doesn’t sacrifice our culture for short-term gain.”
The documentary is full of legendary talking heads who just so happen to be residents of the world’s most famous mixed-use neighborhood. Simpsons and Spinal Tap star Harry Shearer and his wife Judith Owen, who reside in the Quarter, trade barbs frequently on camera, jesting at the wounds caused by the overtourism strain. Despite the couple’s success in the wider world, they are residents, and are still just as angry about the excessive t-shirt shop presence and open invitations for tourists to literally vomit and defecate upon the French Quarter streets.
Historic preservationist Ann Masson laments how the Vieux Carré’s historic architecture is exploited without a second thought about restoration and upkeep. She mentions a conference held in New Orleans where the subject du jour was: Selling, Without Selling Out. “[Someone] mentioned even if you never say the words ‘alcohol’ or ‘party’ again [when encouraging visitors to come to New Orleans], in 100 years people will still come just for that.”
The statement sounds so much more powerful as she says it than when you read it.
Numbers don’t lie and the film notes quickly that in 2019, the year they began production, 19.75 million people visited the French Quarter neighborhood. The numer of permanent residents in that same year was approximately 3,000. So there were over 6,000 visitors for each French Quarter resident that year.
Shearer notes the way in which Louisiana has a tendency to do everything in excess, whether it’s oil drilling and destroying resources, partying or just “giving into every economic impulse,” like overtourism.
Although most of the interviewees, including Derrick Tabb of Rebirth Brass Band and Roots of Music fame and urbanist Amy Stelly, express dismay and disappointment with how the French Quarter is abused, no one names the all-seeing supervisory eye that casts fate upon the shadows and stone of the Vieux Carré. Is it current Mayor LaToya Cantrell? Past Mayor Ray Nagin? Jeff Landry? The closest we get to naming a culprit here is Airbnb which is based in San Francisco.
Perhaps the best-articulated ruminations on the City That Care Forgot come from the team behind Palm&Pine Restaurant on Rampart Street, which stumbled in the dark shadow cast by the Hard Rock Hotel collapse a block away. Although the scenes of the Quarter during Covid are harrowing, the pain in the eyes of Palm&Pine owners Amarys Koenig Herndon, Jordan Herndon and Andy Principe is undeniable. They discuss how residents and business owners vehemently argued against the building of the ill-fated hotel and how their worst fears came to pass.
And they don’t seem too confident about Super Bowl LIX. Recalling the last time the city hosted the Super Bowl in 2013, Principe says it was as though New Orleans was “cramming for a test” in the months leading up to the event, scrambling to bandage gaping wounds in the city’s infrastructure and commitment to its residents.
Wasted was recently accepted by the Big Syn International Film Festival, a sustainability film festival in London that aims to inspire people to act on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This film would make a tremendous amount of sense to residents of Salem, Massachusetts, Iceland, Venice and Barcelona—places that have been at war with tourist-centric economies for quite some time. But at least cities in Spain and Italy are taking a fighting stance against the ruling class and establishment who renders their homes a spectacle.
Wasted: Overtourism & The French Quarter is a must-see for anyone invested in the future of New Orleans, regardless of whether or not they reside in the French Quarter. It will screen Tuesday, Oct. 22 at Le Petite Théâtre, 616 St. Peter Street at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 and are available here.
