05/09/2026
A few weeks ago this bright light of a customer, Jet, paid a visit to Booklegger with her partner. They wandered into the store and as I happened to pass them, Jet asked me where the film section was. As luck would have it, it was about 6 inches away from where they happened to be standing. Jet and her partner laughed.
“It seems that you had an innate sense of where to find it, even if you hadn’t quite discovered it yet,” I said.
“We’re filmmakers,” she replied, “I guess we subconsciously knew they’ll be here!“
After they browsed for a while, and Jet had chosen a couple of titles for her library of books about film, we chatted at the counter. I asked them about their filmmaking. The two of them live in Ashland. A few years ago they made a horror movie in Dunsmuir at a historic hotel that they described as being “subterranean.” This means that it appears to only have a single floor, but there are many more floors underground. It does sound like the good setting for a horror movie, doesn’t it? They also told me that they hope to make a film about Olive Oatley, a pioneer girl in the 1800s.
“Jet would play Olive,” said her partner, smiling.
“You act, too?” I asked.
“Oh, only out of necessity,” she laughed.
Later, I got curious and figured I might be able to hunt down some more information about her. I didn’t have her last name, but since she has an unusual first name, and I knew she was from Ashland, I thought I might turn something up online. It turns out she’d been awfully modest about her background! She has played Catherine in a television adaptation of Wuthering Heights, and has been in a number of other movies in addition to the horror film.
She and her partner, who declined to join her in the photo, saying “I’m a behind-the-camera guy, but I don’t like to be in front of it,” were enjoying visiting Humboldt and wanted to visit some places they had seen in movies.
As they said goodbye, they asked, “You don’t happen to know where the Love Witch house is, do you?”
Because The Love Witch is a favorite movie of several of my friends, I did happen to know where they could find it, and wrote down the address (near Wildberries in Arcata) for them. The were excited to go see it, and I was delighted to get to talk them. I love learning about people’s interesting lives, and these two were up to such creative pursuits. We never know who we are going to meet on any given bookstore day, but that’s half the fun!
