Days 13 and 14 for We Still Live Here

DAY 13: Tybee Island

After a wild five days of driving through Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and back to North Carolina again, it was a huge relief to board the plane to Savannah, especially since I planned to stay at the beach on nearby Tybee Island with a whole day and night off.  

After a long nap at my sweet B+B, I wandered along the beach to the mouth of the Savannah River where it pours out through tidal marshlands into the sea.  The temperature was balmy, the beach not yet crowded with kids on spring break, as it would be soon.  

For dinner, I had delicious crab soup at AJ's Dockside Restaurant and watched the sun set over the marshes and the river tides.  Then back to the Beachside B+B to rest up before the next day's screening in Savannah.

DAY 14: SAVANNAH

College kids were converging on Tybee Island for their annual rite of spring as I drove past tidal flats and sparkling rivers into Savannah for my sound check at the beautifully restored Lucas Theater. After meeting my hosts Erin Muller and Meaghan Walsh Gerard and checking the projection and sound, I had a few hours to explore Savannah on my own.

 

Everyone had warned me that hordes of people were heading into town for St. Patrick's Day weekend.  Apparently St. Patrick's is bigger in Savannah than in New York City.  I puzzled over this, thinking about Scarlett O'Hara and wondering if Georgia was seriously Irish. Everything in town was green, even the fountains!  Cops were swarming everywhere too, in preparation, one of them told me, for the drunken revels soon to come.  

 Every screening has its surprises, and there were two great ones in Savannah.  One was a handsome 13 or 14 year old boy (I can never tell ages any more!) who asked the most probing questions during the Q+A, and later in the lobby told me that he absolutely loves the Latin language, is studying it in depth at a special school, and is seriously annoyed that Italians are not reviving Latin as a living language.  The other was a tall African American guy who turned out to be Jeremy Foreman, Executive Director of HandsOn Southeast Georgia who works with ITVS on their Community Cinema program.  He and I will be Skyping on Tuesday after a screening of We Still Live Here that he has organized at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro.  The film goes on and on!    

 

I would have liked to have stayed in Savannah longer, but no rest for the weary - next stop, Alexandria, Louisiana, for the tenth and last screening of the tour.