offBeat

The King of Oak Street may be the most famous documentary you’ve never seen. But neither has anyone else, really. The film’s story begins with Randy Frechette (the painter Frenchy to you) and George Hamilton and Andrew Scott, the latter a couple of those Yankee New Orleanians who’ve made it to just about every Jazz Fest to date. They just don’t live here.

Hamilton was a long-time fan and collector of Frenchy’s work. “He took the Bob Ross idea to another level, painting music and sports,” Hamilton says. “Bob Ross will paint an entire painting during the course of a show, and Frenchy does that with bands and sporting events.” Hamilton had seen the crowds Frenchy drew at Jazz Fest and Saints games, and musicians including Allen Toussaint, Henry Butler and George Porter, Jr. would play his gallery on Royal Street. As filmmakers, Hamilton and Scott knew a story when they saw one. After six months of “calling and cajoling” Frenchy, he agreed to a documentary; he’d been named King of Oak Street in the Mid- Summer Mardi Gras Parade.

“We scrambled,” Scott says. “The movie was just going to be the parade, with Frenchy as the centerpiece as king of the neighborhood.” Filming started August 24, 2005. The threat of what would be Hurricane Katrina kept the floats from running, but “the locals soldiered on. It was the last parade before the flood.”

Hamilton and Scott crisscrossed the country with Frenchy afterward, visiting Katrina benefits. “The film became a labor of love,” Scott says. “We ran out of money several times during the course of filming.” And for the next two years, “the story began to tell itself. More than Frenchy’s story, it was the story of Oak Street and New Orleans’ story post- Katrina,” Scott says. “It became the story of New Orleans’ rebirth.”

The film has yet to be shown to the public, but its trailer has had thousands of hits online. A cast and crew screening at the Maple Leaf last year was nearly derailed by Hurricane Gustav, but, Scott says, “there’s still a demand for the film to screen, and it spurred us on. As a film maker, what you really want is an audience.”

The King of Oak Street will be screened Saturday, November 14 at Canal Place Theater, 333 Canal St. at 10 p.m. as part of the Big Easy Film Festival.