Life

Lights, camera ... love

'Road to Love' contestants pose on Main Street.

By Bill Moss, Published: October 22, 2012

The road to love led to downtown Hendersonville Sunday as a television production crew filmed a pilot for a bachelor-like show starring an East Henderson High School graduate from Flat Rock who went on to Clemson and pharmacy school.

Or maybe our little Main Street is where the road started.
A big crowd gathered in the 400 block before noon Sunday and lined the street as the crew filmed Bret Mathis —East Henderson baseball star, Clemson graduate and very eligible pharmacist in Hendersonville — talk about pursuit of the perfect mate.
"Road to Love," a pilot that the producers hope to place in the Fox lineup next year, features eligible bachelors, Mathis in this case, choosing the girl of their dreams. On Sunday, the women stepped out of a luxury RV to the cheers of the crowd lined on the street. The television crew encouraged the crowd to clap for each prospective bride as cameras recorded the scene.
Sunday was the first public sighting of the film crew, although producers had been here in advance arranging the shoots.
The production crew scouted the area last week and made plans to film segments at Mike's on Main and other spots in Henderson County. They also scouted Jump Off Rock, DuPont State Forest and the Carl Sandburg National Historic Site, said Lew Holloway, the director of the Main Street program for the city of Hendersonville.
Bret Mathis said he could not comment in detail about his "Road to Love" role. His friends congratulated him downtown on Sunday and on Facebook. A Facebook friend joked, "Be sure to give the ladies you cut my number." (If Bret does not have a girlfriend currently he has no shortage of friends; his Facebook page says he has 2,008 friends.)
Bret is the son of the Rev. Greg Mathis, the minister of Mud Creek Baptist Church. Mathis watched with pride from the sidewalk on Sunday as his son read lines tossed to him by a director of the pilot.
"We're really not allowed to comment," Greg Mathis said as family and friends surrounded him. "It's real exciting."
The Hollywood production crew moved quickly last week to secure agreements for filming. Representatives met with the city's Special Events Committee to gain permission to close the 400 block of Main Street for the filming. The production company contacted Mad Signtist owner Wayne Bodley to see if he could make a large "Welcome to Hendersonville" banner by Sunday morning.
Bret Mathis went from washing his Corvette shirtless in his parents' driveway in Flat Rock on Saturday afternoon to star of the filming Sunday afternoon — wearing a long-sleeved shirt, loosened tie, vest and cowboy boots — to a black-tie formal Sunday night at Kenmure.
Producers staged Mathis stand in the middle of the street repeating lines about his time at Clemson and pharmacy school at Campbell University and his efforts to find the right girl to date. The production was a big event for the usually sedate Hendersonville Main Street on a Sunday morning and afternoon. About a half dozen cameras were trained on Mathis and later the women who stepped out of the RV and walked to the middle of the street. Other crew members invited local people to give interviews about what they thought of "Road to Love" coming to town.
"They asked us what we thought of the program, is it good for Hendersonville, if the ladies that are represented could be good for this area," said David Boegemann, who the crew picked, along with his wife, Tina, to be interviewed. His answer? "I think it's a great thing. Because Hendersonville's a great place to live."