"Lola Tung is there. Chris Briney is there. The entire cast of The Summer I Turned Pretty is there, filming on the waterfront as we speak, and you're sitting here, eating cereal."
"It's a complicated cereal, Amy. "The toasted coconut granola requires special attention before adding the milk."
"Genome?"
"Amy?"
"Go!"
She's not exactly wrong. I live close enough to Southport, aka Cousins Beach, to hear the seagulls arguing over the yacht basin. The movie production, hiding behind the working title The Exactuals, began filming there a week ago. Everyone knows the production is really the movie version of TSITP.
"Belly and Conrad," Amy said, ticking them off on imaginary fingers. "Steven and Taylor. Jeremiah with a mystery blonde who is decidedly not Denise. And Belly...pay attention, this is the detail everyone is talking about...Belly was wearing a noticeably larger ring on her finger.”
“I know, Amy,” I said. “The internet lost its mind over that little detail.”
“And you were in Leland, watching the internet lose its mind over a movie that was literally filming just down the street.”
The Exactuals
"They've asked fans to stay away entirely," she continued. "WWAY reported it. The production put out a statement saying, 'We love the excitement, but sharing locations and visiting the set disrupts filming and creates real safety concerns.'
They're calling it a protected bubble," she added. "They're building a bubble specifically to keep set jetters and other civilians out."
After a short pause, a theatrical one, she said, "You are, in case it needs saying, a civilian."
"I'm a documentarian," I said.
"They especially want to keep people like you out. They're concerned about crew safety."
"That feels personal."
"It isn't personal. They don't know you exist. Which, given everything, is probably for the best."
I let that settle for a moment before asking the question that had been nagging at me throughout the entire briefing.
"How do you know all of this, Amy? You're my amygdala. You can only read what I read. You should only know what I know."
She was quiet for a moment. Not the ammunition-gathering quiet. Something more considered.
"I read everything you read," she said finally. "Every fan account. Every StarNews article. Every WWAY report. The question isn't how I know, Genome. The question is why you don't remember any of it."
I had no answer for that.
"We really should work on our communication," she added, in the tone of someone with no intention of working on anything.
The Attempt That Wasn't
I had a plan. Amy had been monitoring the fan accounts on TikTok, where she uncovered a post that Brunswick Street near the Southport marina had been barricaded.
"We go today," she said. "The production window runs through June, but they'll move through Southport's downtown core, the waterfront, and into Wilmington proper as the weeks go on. Every day you wait is a day they might not be where you think they are."
We boarded Wind Horse and headed south.
"Why aren't we taking the exit to Highway 87? It's the closest route to Southport?" Amy asked.
"Did you see that traffic?"
"Is it set-jetters clogging up the highways? You know that article in WWAY News is only going to fan the flames of gawkers."
I heard her snicker at her own attempt at humor. "I doubt it's set jetters. Just the normal tourist deluge."
She was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that, with Amy, is never actually quiet so much as the gathering of ammunition.
"You know," she said finally, "Conrad Fisher would not let a little traffic stop him."
"Conrad Fisher is a fictional character."
"Maybe so," she said, with the serenity of someone who has made this point before and is perfectly prepared to make it again, "but he's currently on a boat in the Southport yacht basin, and you’re not."
The Circular Comfort
Even if the trip to Southport doesn't locate the crew, it's still a trip to Southport. The yacht basin is still beautiful. The seagulls are still arguing. Fishy Fishy Cafe is still there, even if Netflix turned it into The Waterfront for a season.
The production crew will be here through June, but Ms. Wonder and I will be away on our tour of the Georgia and Florida coast for most of that month. If I'm going to get footage of TSITP, it has to happen in the next two weeks.
"You still have time," Amy said, having read my thoughts. Her tone was softening half a degree, which, for Amy, is the emotional equivalent of a standing ovation.
"You have 18 days, minus travel time, minus the time you spend building bespoke granola bowls, minus whatever other emergencies the universe has scheduled for you that you don't know about yet."
"That's not encouraging."
"I'm not finished. There's also the matter of RJ Decker."
"I looked it up,” she said. “ABC has renewed Decker for a second season, and filming is expected to begin in Wilmington soon."
"What that means for you is don't waste time with breakfast cereal. If the day's shoot is scheduled for 6:30 AM, we need to be there at 4:30."
"Noted."
"And Genome?"
"Yes, Amy."
"When you finally get there, and I'm saying 'when' purely to be encouraging, you understand, don't stand behind a dumpster again. That R J Decker fiasco at CineSpace Studios was embarrassing. I've got a reputation to safeguard."
Keep watching this space for updates on The Summer I Turned Pretty, R J Decker, and whatever the universe has scheduled for me that I don't know about yet.
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