She was little. She held the mic with both hands. “Call Me Maybe” was already playing. And she froze.
A hundred people stood under a purple and gold tent. Her mom and dad were ten feet away. You could see her thinking it. How bad would it be if I just gave this back?
Hold on to her. I’ll come back.
Why I’m hard to fool
I shoot video for a living. A lot of it is company culture. Hiring videos. Team videos. The “here’s what it’s like to work here” stuff.
So I’ve stood in a lot of rooms where a company is trying to prove it’s a family. I know what that looks like. Scripted. Lit just right. Everybody smiling on cue.
People at home can tell too. Takes about four seconds.
Then Isabelle White texted. Did I want to come to the Moore Industries tailgate before the Louisiana Tech game?
Part of me went to work. Company party. Big tent. Kids. I’ve filmed the ad version of this a hundred times.
I got there at two. Half an hour early. Isabelle and Tyler weren’t there yet.
So I walked up alone to a tent full of a hundred people who had no idea who I was.
Nobody let me stand there
This is the part where you find a corner and stare at your phone.
It didn’t happen. People started talking to me before I stopped walking. One guy pointed me at the food. Another told me to go get a drink. Nobody asked who I was. Then Michael Kleinpeter, a vice president at Moore, walked me to the bar and got me my first one himself.
That’s nice. But people are nice at parties. It doesn’t prove much.
It was close to 100 degrees. Their spot has trees over it plus the tent, so you get double shade.
You can spot that tent from way off. Purple and gold stripes, when almost everything around it is white.
Then I saw the trailer. Bayou Bandit, right there on the side.
Who buys a trailer?
That was my first real question.
The Bayou Bandit is black, purple and gold, with a sixty-inch TV on it. The tent hooks right on. Games run all day, so there’s football going hours before LSU kicks off. Nobody near them has anything like it.
The company bought that, I figured. Somebody’s budget.
No.
Fifteen years ago, Michael and two other guys bought it together. Their own money. The three of them have thrown this tailgate every fall since.
Fifteen years. Three guys. One trailer they paid for.
You can’t put that on an expense report. There’s no line for showing up fifteen falls in a row.
Michael gets there early and sets it all up. Then he spends the day checking on people. You’d never guess he’s the one working. He’s laughing harder than anybody.
First crack in my doubt.
The part you can’t fake
Moore had a pile of soft foam footballs out. Small thing. It made the whole day.
Kids ran routes. Dads chased them down and tackled them in the grass. Grown men in 100-degree heat, doing it over and over for hours, because their kids kept asking.
Two Mike the Tiger helmets got passed around. Tyler’s kids grabbed them and spent forever growling and chasing each other.
Three or four kids in the bounce house all day. I did not see one child cry. Not one.
The whole place smelled like jambalaya and barbecue.
Then the Louisiana Tech buses rolled by. Everybody — kids, parents, all of us — walked out to the street, put our thumbs down, and booed. I don’t know if the players heard. They saw us. A few hundred people dropping everything to do that together is a great thing to stand in.
How do I pay?
Fleur de Fizz ran the bar. Jack was on it.
I had a Transfusion. Grape juice, vodka, ginger ale. Somebody talked it up the week before, and it was worth the wait.
Person after person walked up and asked Jack the same thing. How do I pay?
Same answer every time. You don’t. It’s free. If you want, scan the code and give whatever you’d like to Hogs for the Cause. They raise money for kids with brain cancer.
Every single person I watched pulled out their phone and gave.
There was real money sitting on that bar. They gave it away and pointed people at sick kids instead.
Second crack.
Why Tyler does it
Isabelle’s invite was just a text. Not a job. Tyler told her to ask me, so she did.
Every company in America has a page that says we’re a family here. I’ve filmed that line more times than I can count.
Here’s how Tyler said it. His people are going to do all this anyway. Everybody down here goes to tailgates. So if he’s the one who brings them together, they build something outside of work that holds up at work.
He wants the kids to know each other. He wants his kids around their kids. He wants the wives and husbands to be friends.
Same words as the website. Whole different thing. Because behind his sat a trailer three guys paid for and fifteen falls of showing up.
She sang
Back to the girl with the mic.
Her mom and dad didn’t rescue her. They didn’t push her either. They just started singing it with her. Out loud. In front of everybody.
So she sang.
By the end she was grinning ear to ear, and her parents were still right there singing along with her.
I own the cameras. I know the lights. I could not fake that. Not with a script, not with a crew, not in a week of trying.
I never caught them faking
I spent four hours looking. That’s the job.
What I found was three guys who bought a trailer. A bar that gave its money away. A yard full of kids who never cried. A man who says family and can prove it.
I couldn’t stay for the game. I’d already promised my night to somebody else. When people found out, a guy offered me his spare ticket on the spot. Just to be kind. He’d known me two hours.
I left at 5:45. Said my goodbyes. Said Geaux Tigers. Michael asked if I’d be back next time. So did Tyler. So did just about everybody standing there.
LSU won 45-14.
If your company has a day like this one, it’s the best footage you’ll get all year. Almost nobody points a camera at it.
It works on video for the same reason it worked on me.
It’s not an act.
See the whole day. Browse all 50 photos from the Moore Industries tailgate.
Thanks to Isabelle, Tyler, and Michael for having me. See y’all at the next one.
