Past Featuresd Films

The Goody Goody (DOCUMENTARY, 11 minutes, 42 seconds)
Terry Linehan

The first thing you notice upon entering The Goody Goody Omelet House on Market Street in Wilmington, NC, is the place is alive with laughter and lively conversation. Like the bar in “Cheers, “ The Goody Goody is a place where everybody knows your name. It has been a landmark diner since the early 1970's when R.B. Mayhew opened it's doors and flipped the first of his world's greatest omelets. After her husband's death, Jean Mayhew carries on making the “world's greatest omelet” with son Ernie, extended family, friends, and loyal customers of The Goody Goody. The Goody Goody documentary looks below the surface, past the sizzling bacon, mouth-watering egg dishes, burgers, and salads, to show there is much more here than nourishment for the body. In the end it's the love that you notice. It stays with you long after you leave. It's a family thing. Like the refrain of “The Goody Goody” song …“Mrs. Mayhew, she knows just what to do … and Goody Goody's got what's good for you.”

Filmmaker Profile:  TERRY LINEHAN

Terry Linehan idea for The Goody Goody documentary came when he first visited the landmark Wilmington eatery in 2004. As a narrative writer and filmmaker, Linehan also shot a short narrative in the diner location, ( Love and Omelets ). For both The Goody Goody and Love and Omelets , Linehan enlisted two Wilmington, NC, film professionals and fellow part-time faculty members in the Film Studies Department at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington: cinematographer and editor Adam Alphin, and sound engineer Alexander Markowski. Using a crew of UNC-Wilmington students, Linehan, Alphin and Markowski set out to capture a day-in-the-life of the legendary diner over the course of three days. In the end, Linehan says, “ The Goody Goody documentary developed because of the compelling nature of the people who populated the place—the loyal customers whose stories we tried to capture, dedicated employees who are extended family, and the Mayhew family themselves, heroes in their own right, facing the day-to-day grind and making a spectacle of it, a symphony of the American work ethic, like the omelets themselves … the best in the world.”