Huckabay in right place at right time
As with all great movies that begin with a man following his girlfriend to New York City so went the real-life story of Gary Huckabay.
She was after a modeling career and he was “going to New York to do whatever.” Huckabay found work as a trainee for assistant room service manager with the Ritz Carlton on 59th Street and also worked at United Colors of Benetton on 5th Avenue.
Like a scene straight out of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Huckabay didn’t get the girl. But he did land a cool job as an extra on the television soap opera, Ryan’s Hope, which started him on an adventurous, often charmed life in the film industry and, ultimately, what brought him back to Louisiana to work and, particularly, to St. Rose to live.Step back to the 1980s for how life scripted Huckabay’s career.
He heard casting was underway for a then little known movie called “Steel Magnolias” in Natchitoches. With his parents living in Monroe, he would have a perfect summer place for auditions so he hustled to the movie set and made himself available.
Persistence paid off.
In the opening scene of the movie, the guy putting the flowers in the swimming pool is Gary Huckabay. He was also stand-in for actor Dylan McDermott and stayed on the set the entire summer as a location assistant, although he’s listed as “uncredited” in the movie credits.
While there, a friend’s husband who ran police details for the sets, told him filming was underway for another movie, “Johnny Handsome” starring actor Mickey Rourke, being filmed in Avondale. He went there, too, and was hired as a production assistant.
This is when Huckabay said his career in movie making launched.
“I went all over the place,” he said. “I kind of BS’d my way in. Me and a buddy decided to go to California and BS’d our way on the set of Terminator II. We worked free as interns and ended up getting paid later in the job.”
He also made connections in the business that helped him get a job in Boston, Mass., with the “Against the Law” television series.
Some 14 months later, he returned to New Orleans, where he was hired as the assistant location manager for another little flick. The film was Oliver Stone’s “JFK” in 1991 which became what he describes as his “first true stepping stone that launched my career as a location manager from then on.”
At the time, Louisiana averaged only three or four movies a year so whatever came to town came to Huckabay, too. His name was established and it earned him work although he couldn’t have known then that much more was coming.
In the mid-1990s, he gained more credentials that lead to working as an assistant director and making music videos from some of the biggest names in the business. This work eventually stepped up to production manager and that got him into more significant televisions shows filmed in Louisiana.From then on, his credits began sprawling down a growing list of projects that included, “Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles,” “The Pelican Brief” and “Mr. Brooks.”
As an assistant director, they included, “Michael Jackson: You Rock My World” and “Dark Blood.”
By 2002, his Louisiana projects boomed with the passage of the state’s unique tax incentives aimed at recruiting film and television productions.
Throughout this time, Huckabay said one of his best jobs was reconning locations for Paramount Pictures for movie director William Friedkin, whose stellar credits include “The Exorcist,” “The French Connection,” “Rules of Engagement” and “Bug” in 2006.
“It was an unbelievable relationship with him,” Huckabay said of work that took him throughout the U.S. and Europe to budget these movies, as well as financed or green lit. Huckabay produced Friedkin’s movie, “Bug” with actress Ashlee Judd.
Throughout this time, Huckabay and his wife and children had been living all over New Orleans, but wanted a quieter place to live. They chose Riverwood Estates in St. Rose, which had only four houses there at the time, bought a lot and built their own house. He’s been offered studio positions, but he passed on them because it meant moving.
With Louisiana’s movie tax credits drawing so much business to the state, Huckabay found himself in the right place at the right time.
“It’s awesome,” he said of living in St. Rose, a place where he could enjoy the more laid-back atmosphere of St. Charles Parish while still working in Louisiana’s movie making hot spots of New Orleans, Baton Rouge and just about anywhere in the state’s growing film industry.
“I can get anywhere with multiple ways to get there. I’m not in the craziness of the city. In St. Charles Parish, you get that country feel a little bit and still getting away.”
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