E-mail a friendRoyce Osborn
airdate March 7, 2006
New Orleans native Royce Osborn and his wife survived the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. They evacuated from New Orleans days after the area was hit. They're now staying with family in Los Angeles. Osborn is a TV and documentary writer and producer. His PBS documentary, All on a Mardi Gras Day, celebrates his hometown in all its riotous, colorful and spiritual glory. His credits also include writer for the 35th and 36th NAACP Image Awards.
Royce Osborn
Tavis: Royce Osborn is a New Orleans-based filmmaker who we met just days after Katrina struck, when he, his wife, and their cat made their way here to Los Angeles following some harrowing days in New Orleans. Royce is currently filming a new documentary called "Walking To New Orleans," which is slated to premiere here on PBS later this year. He joins us tonight from back home in New Orleans. Royce, nice to have you on the program again.
Royce Osborn: Hi Tavis, nice to be here.
Tavis: Nice to see you. When we last saw you, as I mentioned, you were here in L.A. with your wife and your cat, whose name, as I recall, is Babette.
Osborn: (laugh) Babette, that's right.
Tavis: How is Babette doing?
Osborn: Babette's fine, she's gained her weight back. I think we all lost a little weight being in Los Angeles, but being back in New Orleans automatically adds 10 pounds.
Tavis: About to say, if you can't gain it in New Orleans, you can't gain it nowhere.
Osborn: That's right.
Tavis: That said, tell me what it's been like being back there. You've been back since when, November?
Osborn: November. We got back November first, and it's wonderful to be back. It's difficult. It's frustrating. Most of our neighbors have not come back yet. We've been robbed. Our house was robbed. But there's no place like home. (laugh)
Tavis: Yeah. What was it like when you returned? What was the condition of your house, for starters?
Osborn: Well, the house got about five feet of water. But our house is raised. It's a raised cottage, so the bottom floor was flooded out and everything we had in the basement was lost. We had just moved in a few months ago, so a lot of our personal possessions were stored in the basement and we lost a lot. But we've been living in, we had generators and lanterns for the first month or so, and finally got our electricity restored.
And it was as if we invented electricity, we felt so great about it. And now have water and gas and it's one small step at a time. We just got a new refrigerator. One thing at a time. But the neighborhood is really decimated. There's one guy back on my block. We had a neighborhood meeting this weekend and about two or 300 people showed up who still want to come back. But most of them just aren't in a position to return yet.
Tavis: What's keeping most of them from coming back?
Osborn: Well, different problems. If you can't afford to get your house gutted, get your electricity rewired, get all the essential stuff done yourself, the money is just not forthcoming. People are applying for S.B.A. loans, for FEMA grants. People are finally starting to get some trailers that FEMA is providing while they work on their homes. There's a lot of money going toward what they call temporary permanent housing, (laugh) which is not really their permanent housing.
Tavis: Yeah.
Osborn: They would rather see them put more of this money into the actual rebuilding of people's houses than in temporary housing. Nobody wants to live in a trailer forever. They would rather spend the money on getting their own homes fixed up.
Tavis: I mentioned you're working on a documentary. I wanna play a clip here in a second, and have you set up what we're going to see in the clip from what you've already started to shoot for this PBS documentary that we will see later this year. Before I do that though, let me ask you your take on what everybody else seemed to have been debating for the last two weeks or so, and that is whether or not, now that it's done, y'all should have been partying in the streets around Mardi Gras this year at a moment like this.
Osborn: Yeah, I thought it was, there was no doubt about it to me. I thought it was important to have Mardi Gras. For us, Mardi Gras is not just partying in the streets. There is a very spiritual component to it as well. And I think you'll see it in some of the clips. It was important for people to keep their traditions. For the Zulus, they lost 10 of their members in the storm.
A lot of their members haven't come back, and they haven't been able to return to the city. They're homeless, but they felt that it was important to keep that tradition alive and to show some spirit and bring some color back to the city and enliven their neighborhoods.
Tavis: You just started to do it just now, but give me a little bit more about what we're going to see in the clip that we're about to play.
Osborn: Well, we went out shooting on Mardi Gras day, of course, and we had been shooting some Indians leading up to Mardi Gras and their preparation for the day. And this is Mardi Gras morning, and going out and seeing the Zulu parade, and coming out with some Mardi Gras Indians later on.
Tavis: From the forthcoming "Walking To New Orleans' documentary you'll see here on PBS later, some early footage from Royce Osborn. Take it away.
[A film clip is shown]
Tavis: Royce Osborn, I'm looking at this clip here. Are you sure this is Mardi Gras? I don't see the drunkenness in the Quarter, with beads being thrown everywhere. Are you sure you were shooting Mardi Gras?
Osborn: That's our Mardi Gras, Tavis. That's what I see on Mardi Gras day, and that's what I want America to know about. That Mardi Gras is not just this drunken celebration in the French Quarter. Families get together on Mardi Gras. They want to dress up, they want to show their spirit. They want to come out.
And most of those people who were out reveling, drinking, partying, dancing on Mardi Gras day are in church the next day getting the ashes on their forehead. We know Mardi Gras is a celebration going into Lent. This is a Catholic city, and Mardi Gras is part of the spiritual complexity of this city.
Tavis: You started that clip out, Royce, talking about dressing up as a skeleton.
Osborn: Right.
Tavis: What's the significance of that?
Osborn: Well, skeleton tradition goes back a couple of hundred years. I think it's related to the Haitian influence in New Orleans culture. And they come out with the Indians, and I was, I have been dressing as a skeleton for the last four or five years when I started making the last program "All On A Mardi Gras Day."
I came out with the skeletons, and my skeleton chief, Al Morris, right now is in the hospital. He had a stroke just before Mardi Gras. And I had to come out as a skeleton for Al, and to honor that tradition and to keep it going.
Tavis: I got just a minute to go here. With the progress being made, slow, yet steady, you still hopeful about your city now that you're back?
Osborn: I'm more hopeful about it now. I think seeing the way these traditions were carried on by people who lost a lot, seeing these Mardi Gras Indians, I went to Chief Walter Cook's house from Creole Wild West. His house was down in the lower Ninth Ward, and he lost it all. He lost Indian suits. He lost some beautiful photographs.
His whole life as an Indian was in that house, and he lost a lot. But he was still determined to come out as an Indian, because it's to show the neighborhood. It's to show the city that their culture can't be kept down. It's a beautiful thing. And coming out with the Indians, I was just privileged to come out with the Creole Wild West, which is the oldest Mardi Gras Indian tribe in the city.
Tavis: Well, there is, I hate to cut you off, I'm about to lose you here on this feed. There is so much tradition in that city of New Orleans, we and we look forward to you all getting that city back online sooner than later. His name is Royce Osborn. A new PBS documentary coming later this year called "Walking To New Orleans." Roy, it's nice to have you on.
Osborn: I got you a coconut.
Tavis: Yeah.
Osborn: I got you a coconut, come down and get it, Tavis.
Tavis: Yeah, I will come get it personally. Hold on to that for me.
Osborn: I will do that. (laugh)
Tavis: Take care, Royce.
Osborn: Thanks.
Tavis: We'll be right back with more in a moment. Stay with us.
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