I got so caught up in the excitement that I may have neglected to mention the exact day the crew would be arriving. The morning the shoot began, my husband came to ask me what the hell was going on. There would be more people, and they would be building a set as well as a staging ground. This time, they had to get a film permit from the town. Reacher wanted to use my corner building for a fight scene. Malcolm Goodwin, one of the show’s leads, stands in front of the camera The café doubling as JJ’s Ale House during an exterior shot.
But at the time, it didn’t strike me as an especially large production. Both visits were fun and exciting for our town, and they brought much-needed money in. The following spring, I got another call-they hadn’t gotten the shot they needed, so they came back for a reshoot. They came through in a hurricane of equipment, personnel and organized chaos. They used the restaurant to feed crew members while shooting brief footage of Alan Ritchson, the show’s star, running through the streets. “The Reacher crew arrived in October of 2020. I was proud that my restaurant could bring in people from all over the world-but I hadn’t known at the time just how important our connections to the production world might become.
Over the years, several more celebrities came through: Gene Hackman, Ray Romano, Marcia Gay Harden and Christine Baranski were here to shoot the 2004 film Welcome to Mooseport. Hayden Christensen, Fred Savage and some of the Game of Thrones cast also passed through for shoots. In 2005, the producers of The West Wing asked us to cater a shoot for one episode of Season 6. “It wasn’t the first time we’d had productions come through. I was a little freaked out by Covid , but I needed the money, so I said yes. They wanted to rent out the building that housed our café and inn to use as a home base in the town for two days. This was the latest adaption of the blockbuster Jack Reacher series, which had previously been made into films starring Tom Cruise. As location scouts searched for quaint venues that could double as small-town Georgia for the show’s first season, they found their way to Port Perry. It was a producer for a new Amazon show called Reacher, based on the novels by Lee Child. “Then, in October 2020, I got a phone call that changed everything. But I was scared-no one really knew what was going to happen next, and my business and my family’s livelihood hung in the balance. When we were allowed to open at half capacity, we tried to maximize the profit per seat, moving to a fixed menu. That allowed me to keep a few key members of my staff of 15 at least occasionally employed. I’d sell things that were hard for most people to find at the grocery store at the time, like flour, yeast or bacon, in big, industrial packages. I came up with creative ways to make money, like offering little pop-up grocery days and a farmer’s market stand. “During that first year or so, we were occasionally allowed to open for indoor dining, and then ordered to close, over and over again. But with the inn and restaurant shut down, we had no revenue coming in, except from the H&R Block that rented out some commercial space from us. My family owns the building-my grandfather purchased three adjoining Victorian structures back in 1972, and they’ve remained in the family ever since-so we took some comfort in that. We decided to close the inn, even though we weren’t required to. Also, I live upstairs with my husband and eight-year-old son. We didn’t know much about Covid back then, so we were all pretty scared. “Early on, people called us asking if they could use our inn to quarantine family members who were sick. It was March 12, 2020, and Doug Ford was on the news talking about closing schools and restaurants. “I remember the day I realized how serious this pandemic was going to be.
Here, she tells us how her little café became the home of a new Amazon TV series-and how it got her and her family through the worst of the pandemic. Then Stone-Curry got a call that changed everything. When the pandemic hit, they tried to find creative ways to keep the lights on through the never-ending flurry of changing regulations. Christy Stone-Curry and her husband, Rob Curry, are the owners of the Piano Inn and Café in downtown Port Perry.