For screenwriter and producer Jonas Pate, Wilmington, North Carolina, embodies “pogue” life—his term for kids set loose on the marshes, hopping on boats, wakeboarding, and camping on Masonboro Island. Life in coastal Carolina, he says, is centered around a love of the outdoors.
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Best known as showrunner, director, and executive producer of the hit Netflix series Outer Banks, the North Carolina native grew up traveling to nearby Wrightsville Beach for annual family reunions. “It was as good as Christmas when I was a kid,” Pate says. “You would get to hang out with all your cousins, go crabbing, jump off the dock, and just play in the waves.” Pate left the state for college and then cut his teeth in the film industry in Los Angeles. After twenty years away, he felt the tug back to southeastern North Carolina, wanting his children to enjoy the same kind of adventurous adolescence he’d loved.
A lesser-known side of Wilmington made his move back exceedingly logical; the city has long been one of the country’s biggest film hubs outside of L.A. The mixed terrain provides versatile backdrops for shooting—beaches, a historic downtown, the University of North Carolina Wilmington campus, and swamps—alongside the studios at Cinespace, formerly EUE Screen Gems.
Working in this community has provided Pate with abundant inspiration. He serves on the governor’s film commission, and his newest teen series, The Runarounds, is scheduled for release this fall on Amazon Prime. Shot in Wilmington, the show costars Brooklyn Decker and tells the story of a group of teenagers who form a band during the summer after graduating from high school. The series taps that exuberant, youthful summertime feeling that stitches through Pate’s oeuvre.
The Wilmington scene certainly keeps Pate busy—he also recently worked on a small movie, Driver’s Ed, directed by Bobby Farrelly and produced by his wife, Jen Pate. “The crews are really connected,” Pate says. “If anybody’s doing a short film, we’ll all jump in and help out. It feels a lot more communal than any other film community that I’ve ever been in.”…