Soapy fans guard tsunami secret ... oops

I thought screamers had disappeared. Until we got too cool a generation ago, fans used to scream all the time for the Beatles, Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Fatty Arbuckle, though in Fatty’s case for entirely different reasons.

The whole idea of being overwhelmed by the convergence of fame and reality, in this age of omni-celebrity, is quaint. But “Passions” fans, who showed up on Tuesday night at Universal CityWalk to see an hourlong show previewing scenes from the upcoming tsunami tragedy on the NBC soap opera, were way into the screaming.

This was strange because most of the superfans were so used to being around the actors that the cast knew them by name and let the fans boss them around to sign autographs and bring them free promo stuff. I suspected the fans were more into the screaming than what they were screaming about. I needed to meet more women like this.

The screamed-at actors were escorted by publicists carrying placards with their real names, which utterly failed to stop fans from yelling for them by their character names. The red carpet was also jammed with Red Cross volunteers distributing information about tsunami preparedness, which I’m pretty sure consists solely of not living near the ocean. The gift bag, nevertheless, included emergency advice and a “Passions” Band-Aid dispenser. I’m not sure the “Passions” gift-bag people watched a lot of tsunami coverage.

Even more exciting to the fans than meeting hunky Galen Gering, who plays the hunky, and I assume racially confused, Luis Lopez-Fitzgerald, was the prospect of being the only fans to know what happens on the show three weeks in advance. This seemed like a bad plan on NBC’s part. Fans who scream this easily, I figured, would give up secret information faster than Time magazine.

But almost all of them said they wouldn’t exploit their sudden power. Raesean Wallace, 19, who showed up at CityWalk early that morning after flying in from New Jersey, and who tapes the show every day so she can watch it multiple times, was adamant about not ruining the upcoming episodes for anyone. She had no respect for the people who run “Passions” spoiler websites. That went for two of us.

Besides, Wallace said, “I already know what’s going to happen. If you’re watching you always know what’s going to happen the next day.”

While Wallace seemed bright, I seriously doubted that she knew that the New England town where “Passions” takes place was going to be struck by a tsunami created when two witches got in a fight and accidentally crossed their magic streams and knocked a globe over.

Unlike the fans I met, I feel no guilt about divulging all the plot twists in the preview. Unfortunately, I did not understand most of them, so much of what follows is totally wrong.

The fans confused me further by laughing throughout the movie. They cracked up when Alistair accidentally shoots Theresa at close range, and she gets up, brushes herself off and functions throughout the show with a small blood stain on her dress. When Chad says, to himself, “We’re going to be just fine unless there’s some kind of aftershock or something,” everyone laughed at the obvious foreshadowing. I loved this audience. I wanted to bring them with me to Michael Bay movies.

The writers were poking fun at soap opera conventions, and the fans were able to enjoy that while still being invested in the characters. It was more meta than a late Philip Roth novel, and with almost as much gratuitous sex.

As we left, full of free popcorn and the valuable knowledge that you can tell a tsunami is coming by the night birds overhead and the mist in the air, I ran into Wallace, who, as impressed as she was by all the developments, still vowed to keep quiet. Because, just like they did for “The Sixth Sense” and “The Crying Game,” people, who can’t keep secrets about their own lives nevertheless have an enormous respect for storytelling. No matter how dumb the story is.