Down in New Orleans
I came across a DVD that intrigued me since L, man of mystery, was a riverboat pilot and this occupation is rich with mythology in these parts of the world. I don’t think the movie is worth watching because even the plot description sounds one dimensional. But it made me think of another river boat pilot – Samuel Clemens – in his early writings he satirized a pilot who wrote for the Picayune called Mark Twain (which means two fathoms, a depth safe for a river boat) and later took the name as his own nom de plume. Once Twain earned his pilot’s license, he enjoyed the fine life and with his new disposable income, he began to drink in a town he described in Life on the Mississippi (his autobiographical account of his years as a riverboat pilot) as having “plenty of drinking, carousing, fisticuffing.”
Here is the PLOT DESCRIPTION for Down in New Orleans
A riverboat pilot whose outwardly charmed life masks a tortured past finds that not even the most luxurious of material possessions can help him elude his demons in writer/director Richard Elias’ rapid-water tale of redemption. From the time he was a young child, all Jack (Nathan Grubbs) ever wanted in life was to become a river pilot. Though as an adult Jack does manage to achieve his youthful dream, all the money, creature comforts, and love in New Orleans isn’t enough to make him shake the addiction that threatens to send him spiraling into treacherous waters of the New Orleans underworld. As his loving wife Gabrielle (Gabrielle Sfardini) attempts to help Jack conquer his dark past, influential shipping magnate Lars (Ed Zajac) and New Orleans drug kingpin Dickie (Charles Allen) do their best to hasten the troubled pilot’s fall by encouraging Jack to go back to his old ways. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide