Getting familiar with Bill Paxton

I'm looking forward to Friday night, when I have the pleasure of moderating a public conversation with Bill Paxton, recipient of this year's career achievement award from the Sarasota Film Festival. We'll be onstage at Asolo Theater for the 7 p.m. show that includes a clip reel from his movies (Titanic, A Simple Plan, Twister, True Lies and Apollo 13 among them) and his HBO hit, Big Love.

Tickets are $20, available online. Just click this link, scroll down to "A conversation with ..." and you're on your way to buying them.

Spent 35 minutes on the phone with Paxton, who proved to be an ordinary guy: sweating the possibility of being pulled over by a cop for using his cell phone while driving, pulling into a carwash (no smelly spray inside, please) and pulling off his shirt to catch rays while waiting and chatting about what we'll cover Friday night.

"We'll have a lively conversation," he said, after learning I'd be his interviewer onstage. "I've got a few stories from the naked city. I've put in some time out here in Locust Land."

Any topics we should skip? "Not really," he said. "I'm pretty cool. At this point in my career I can pretty much let it all hang out."

References to classic TV and Nathanael West during introductions? Nothing off-limits? This is my kind of guy.

We spent a lot of time talking about Paxton's father, John, a former traveling salesman who would take his sons to drive-in theaters, inspiring a career.

"We’d see movies like Dr. No, Midnight Cowboy, John Cassavetes films," Paxton said. "He’s a very urbane guy, taking us to plays, art show openings. Never any football games, and maybe a couple of minor league baseball games.

"When we came out of a movie, he’d talk about the lighting, or Sean Connery’s tailor, or the music. Stuff you don’t really think about as a child, he started separating. I guess I fell in love with the illusion, the artifice of the show."

John Paxton also gave his son material used later in his films, including a memorable line from a classic '80s flick:

"He had these expressions that he picked up on the road," Paxton said. "Over the years, I’ve used many of these old expressions in just about every movie I’ve done. Stuff like: ‘How about a nice, greasy pork sandwich, served in a dirty ashtray?’ which I used in Weird Science. I told John Hughes that, and he said I had to put that in (the movie).

"That’s something Dad would say to me and my brother in high school, if he thought we had been out drinking on a Friday night. The next morning, we’re all hung over at the breakfast table and he’d pretend like he was all compassionate. We always had a gothic, kind of deranged sense of humor."

Like I said, my kind of guy.

I missed a Vin Diesel movie for this

... and don't mind a bit.

Yeah, I should be at Westshore right now, finishing up the fourth The Fast and the Furious flick (cleverly titled Fast & Furious after the first three exhausted all definite and indefinite articles, and learned what an ampersand looks like).

Instead, I spent time on the phone with Jerry Lewis, who's playing Saturday night at Ruth Eckerd Hall. Yeah, that Jerry Lewis, and I didn't have time to mention I still haven't forgiven my parents for taking me to a concert when I was a kid, which was exciting until I realized we were seeing Jerry LEE Lewis, not the guy I loved laughing at.

I'll drop a few lines after transcribing the audio tomorrow a.m. Right now, all I remember is Lewis saying: "Okay, Steve, I'm through with you" after exactly 15 minutes. I'd be offended except it was the same tone I get from Don Rickles, which means it comes with old-school affection and a timetable.

Also spent time on the phone today with Bill Paxton, in advance of his appearance at the Sarasota Film Festival this weekend to pick up a career achievement award. Unlike Lewis, Paxton isn't quick to get off the phone. He was at a carwash in L.A., waiting for his clean ride, "taking my shirt off to enjoy some of this sun." Nice guy; more from him later, too.

But I'm pleased to report that the Sarasota festival rep called today, inviting me to moderate Paxton's "In conversation with ..." appearance Friday night at Asolo Theater. Judging by our chat today, it should be fun. Tickets are $20, available online at the festival Web site. Hope to see you there.

What was your worst summer job?

That's a nice question to begin the workweek, for those of us lucky enough to still have jobs. But it's appropriate since it's also the tagline for the stuck-in-the-80's-so-far-it-burps-Falco teen comedy Adventureland, opening Friday.

Adventureland stars Kristen Stewart (Twilight) and Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale) as employees of an amusement park, dealing with a summer of rude patrons, slacking pastimes and romance. Greg Mottola's movie was filmed at Pennsylvania's famed Kennywood park that Princess Di often visited while growing up near Pittsburgh, and she always insisted we should visit. After Adventureland, I feel like I have eaten too many elephant ears before riding the Jumbler too many times.

Check out the trailer while I get the review done and a few other things, while preparing for an interview scheduled later with the king of comedy, Jerry Lewis, advancing his Saturday night gig at Ruth Eckerd Hall. Then I'm off to see Vin Diesel's return to the Fast & Furious automobile-erotic franchise, after his forays into serious thespianism didn't work out.

Here comes the judge, on his day off

No, that isn't Mr. Moneybags from Monopoly, but yours truly, serving as a judge for the annual Chasco Fiesta Boat Parade in my hometown of New Port Richey. The debonair pose was struck at the local Hooters before another lovely sail down the Pithlachascotee River to the judging dock by Sims Park. Wind gusts took a slight toll on some of the decorated vessels, but after a few, ahem, refreshments it doesn't matter. This year's musical theme drew a couple dozen industrious entrants, including this Yellow Submarine and a pontoon boat with a live band and Elton John impersonator. And I had to include a photo of the eye candy on the Winghouse entry; it's possible that YMCA is the only song title they could spell, but who cares?

Sarasota gets a Woody (and a Joe, a Ben and a Jena)

Friday night's screening of The Messenger at the Sarasota Film Festival's opening night drew the usual crowd of this tony town's fashionistas - I would love to hear the Deal Divas dish on the weak-green designer jeans and matching, shredded blouse that left one poser with a TV camera breathless. I don't know what he/she got for designing that garb but he/she should've gotten life without parole.

Started to take a picture but it felt too much like peeping at a car wreck.

But I got a few shots of the celebs who showed up, almost all from The Messenger, including Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster and Jena Malone. Their co-star Steve Buscemi will be in town next weekend. He could use a little sun.

Joe Pantoliano was first to hit the carpet and almost the last to leave. Foster appeared less excited about running the gab gantlet. He may need to get used to it. His performance in The Messenger, if handled properly with release and campaigning strategies, could be at least a Spirit award contender.

Opening night at the Sarasota Film Festival

It's the side of war that only the duty-bound know, between lives ending and the beginning of grief.

Soldiers die, and someone must inform the survivors.

Lt. Col. Paul Sinor has knocked on those doors, and ordered hundreds of soldiers to do the same, leading the Pentagon office for informing loved ones that soldiers were killed in action. Later, Sinor became a military liaison for film and television projects, lending authenticity to such projects as both Transformers movies, I Am Legend and Delta Farce.

Friday night at the Sarasota Film Festival, Sinor's dissimilar assignments converged, on his final night in the U.S. Army.

Sinor's last detail was introducing Oren Moverman's movie The Messengerto a near-capacity crowd at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. The officer served as technical adviser for the film, from first rewrite of the screenplay to the opening night festival showcase. He also contacted active and reserve troops across Florida, inviting them to view a film about something likely to happen.

"In the grand scheme of things, soldiers sitting there either have or will at some time in their career be a messenger," Sinor said before the show. "They will have to do that duty. To see a feature film like this, that honors that service, is great for the military."

Even when it depicts an aspect of military duty that's seldom addressed, after years of even flag-draped coffins being banned from publication.

"We don’t censor," Sinor said. "The requirements for military support are: portray the military in a realistic manner, show soldiers doing what soldiers do, and it has to have some value as far as public awareness, public relations or recruiting. This (movie) certainly has the public awareness factor, letting the public know what happens in these situations.

The Messenger stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster as Iraq War veterans assigned stateside to deliver tragic news. One soldier doesn't cope easily with the strain, the other develops a close relationship with a new widow, played by Samantha Morton.

Sinor doesn't believe such a story has been told onscreen before.

"In every movie you’ve seen that has a death notification, the door closes and you follow the father, mother, wife, whoever, to see how it affects them. This one shows what happens on both sides of the door, how it impacts the soldiers as well."

On the red carpet entering Van Wezel, Harrelson expressed his pleasure with having dozens of active and retired veterans in the audience.

"I can't understate the importance of having these guys here," the actor said. "This movie was done as much for them as anyone. I know when Oren and Alessandro (Camon) were writing it, (the troops) were very much in their thoughts. To me, seeing their reaction is big."

Judging from the audience's response, The Messenger's Florida debut was a mission accomplished. Blending foxhole humor with sobering scenes of wartime remembrances, the movie impressed Lt. Col. Mike Worth of Fort Dix, N.J.

Worth made the trip to Sarasota after the unit he commands assisted with filming during five days last May. Before that, he spent three years in that Pentagon agency where Sinor served.

"I've never done a notification," Worth said. "But they captured it accurately. I'm personally familiar with examples of everything I saw in the movie."

Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Jena Malone arrive in Sarasota by 'Messenger'

It should be an emotional opening night for the 11th annual Sarasota Film Festival, with nearly 400 members of the U.S. armed forces invited for the 7 p.m. screening of Oren Moverman's The Messenger.

The film stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster - who stole 3:10 to Yuma from Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, playing a psychotic gunslinger - as Iraq War veterans assigned stateside duty as Casualty Notifcation Office representatives, informing survivors that loved ones died in service to their country. Harrelson, Foster and Moverman will attend the screening and post-show party, along with co-star and new guest list addition Jena Malone (Into the Wild, Donnie Darko).

Check back tonight for impressions of the movie from audience members to whom it matters most, those soldiers hoping they never require the CNO to show up on their families' doorsteps. I'll also post photos and info from the event and any celebrity brushes.

You can bet that one will be Joe Pantoliano, who never met a Sarasota party he didn't like. "Joey Pants" is a regular here, and hasn't been asked to host the closing night program since the last time he enjoyed the pre-party a bit too much, shall we say.

Check out the festival Web site for movie schedules and special events this weekend. Celebrity spotters who don't make it to Sarasota tonight are better off waiting for next weekend, according to a photo alert schedule sent by festival publicists.

That's when you'll see Jon Voight, David Carradine, Bill Paxton, Stanley Tucci, Steve Buscemi, Burt Young (yo, Paulie!), Richard Schiff and Jeremy Renner, among others. I'll give you the lowdown on times and places later in the week.

For a decidedly lesser "celebrity" sighting, join me and a few thousand hometown friends Saturday in New Port Richey for the annual Chasco Fiesta Boat Parade. I've graduated from boat-float decoration to a judge's position, which still gets me (and my spotter, Princess Di) a pleasant ride up and down the Pithlachascotee River but also an ivory tower perch in Sims Park and a cooler with my choice of refreshments.

Do you really need to ask?

The parade starts at 1 p.m. and lasts a couple of hours. Then we'll head down to the landmark dive Jilly's Lounge on Main Street with Mr. and Mrs. T-Bone (her parents own the place). Look us up. I'll be wearing a red rose behind my ear.

The woman making Andy Griffith feel tingly down there

Brace yourselves. Andy Griffith has enough spunk left in his 82-year-old body to play his first sex scene in Marc Fienberg's indie comedy Play the Game. You can witness some of his foreplay in the preview trailer above. Aunt Bee wouldn't approve, I'm sure.

Play the Game is a small movie - a sitcom episode stretched to 100 minutes, really - about a young man (Paul Campbell) tutoring his widowed grandfather (Griffith) in the rules of seduction, since his assisted living center is filled with willing old ladies.Grandpa earns his degree with a Viagra-fueled tryst with another resident, played by familiar TV face Liz Sheridan (Alf, Seinfeld, The A-Team).

The scene ends with Sheridan, 79, feigning performing oral sex on Griffith, whose facial contortions and shocked protests - it's his first time for that kind of fun - are priceless. Certainly not what anyone expects from Matlock but Sheridan was game when she read the script.

"From my perspective I thought: ''What fun'," Sheridan said from her Los Angeles home. "From Andy's perspective, he was very nervous. He called me the night before to tell me we would just direct ourselves, and keep it very simple. I told him not to worry about it, we'll do fine.

"The room we were in had a huge bed, and all kind of technicians and crew. His wife was watching through the camera. I was under the covers so nobody could see what I was doing.

"You don't want me to describe everything, do you?"

Oh, yes. Please.

"I just disappeared under the covers then dropped off onto the floor, out of the camera range. Nobody could see anything. And I wasn't really doing anything, anyway."

Griffith isn't Sheridan's first canoodling with a legend. Back in the 1950s she lived with James Dean for three years, ending the relationship when he left to pursue Hollywood dreams and she took a job dancing and playing piano in the Virgin Islands. She wrote a book about the love affair titled Dizzy and Jimmy (Dizzy is her nickname since childhood), and is finishing a screenplay adaptation to shop around to producers.

Sheridan was living in an actors' dormitory in New York when a friend brought Dean over for a visit. They immediately clicked.

"We wanted to see each other again, and it just happened so fast," she said. "We fell in love so quickly. We decided we wanted to be together, so we did what you weren't supposed to do in those days: found a place and moved in together.

"He started through that door of fame and wanted me to come out (to California) with him. Instead, I went to the Virgin Islands. I never saw him again but I understand he wrote me letters that I never received. He lived for a while with a lady and her husband. She told me he talked about me the day before he died."

Play the Game gets a limited Tampa Bay engagement beginning April 3.

'Sunshine Cleaning' producer Glenn Williamson

One of Tampa Bay's most successful exports to Hollywood is producer Glenn Williamson, a 1981 graduate of Plant High School, whose latest movie, Sunshine Cleaning, is brightening up a few screens locally. Williamson moved from Tampa to Los Angeles a few years after graduating from the University of Virginia and working in advertising.

He still gets a kick out of recalling his first break in Tinsel Town - which temporarily brought him back home. Williamson started as a mail room clerk for Rob Reiner's Castle Rock production company, making friends with someone who knew director Tim Burton. The connection led to a production assistant position on Edward Scissorhands, chiefly filmed in Pasco County. "Just a great confluence of things," he said during a telephone chat.

From there, Williamson went on to produce such films as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Ice Harvest, Hollywoodland and the recent sci-fi flop Push. (Hey, they can't all be gems.) As a production executive at Focus and DreamWorks, Williamson had a hand in developing American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Almost Famous, Far from Heaven and Men in Black.

Williamson saw my review of Sunshine Cleaning online, appreciating that I didn't fall for the easy comparisons to Little Miss Sunshine that other critics leaned upon -- the similar titles and dark comedy, Albuquerque settings and Alan Arkin playing a cantankerous grandpa, for starters.

"The funny thing is that the title is a complete coincidence," Williamson said. "The screenplay was called Sunshine Cleaning when I read it five years ago, before Little Miss Sunshine had even come out. Alan Arkin loved the script, and if Alan Arkin wants to be in your movie, that’s hard to turn down."

Choosing the New Mexico setting as a place where two sisters (Amy Adams, Emily Blunt) set up a service cleaning crime scenes and death beds was pure serendipity.

"While the script was originally set in Baltimore, people do this (postmortem cleaning) in every community," Williamson said. "People die every day under all sorts of circumstances, so there was nothing inherently in the idea of cleaning up after dead people that had to take place in Baltimore.

"During our first scouting trip to New Mexico, the plane hadn’t even landed and (director) Christine Jeffs was saying: ‘I love this place. I totally want to do the movie there.’ We embraced the light, the look, the horizontals."

Getting Adams and Blunt onboard - before their breakthrough turns in Enchanted and The Devil Wears Prada, respectively - was another stroke of "luck and timing."

"Amy's agent was a longtime fan of the project," Williamson said. "In a previous incarnation it was going to be Ashley Judd and Zooey Deschanel (playing the sisters), and Ashley's agent was also Amy's. There was a director we had, who dropped out when a movie she wrote got financed, and that cast fell out. Amy's agent had Amy read it and she wanted to do it.

"We had been aware of Emily for a while. Since I used to work at studios, every once in a while I'll do a studio movie. So, I was producing a remake of The Omen, and our post-production supervisor had the same position on The Devil Wears Prada. He just kept raving about Emily: 'This girl's going to pop. You should see her, really look at her.' I listened to him and my partners agreed. We signed her before Prada opened.She really shows some range here. Emily's always funny but there's emotional depth in this performance, too."

Sarasota Film Festival: Ain't it tweet?

I'm not a Twitter kind of guy. I don't want anyone knowing everything I'm doing with my days, and I damn sure don't want to know about theirs. Big timesuck, if you ask me.

But I'm happy to pass along that the Sarasota Film Festival, running Friday through April 5, will be making tweet music with three guest microbloggers. You can read their experiences in 140-character-or-less episodes at http://twitter.com/MySFF.

Here are the bloggers' bios, compliments of the festival:

Janis Krums: The jet-setting entrepreneur and co-founder of Elementz Nutrition gained international attention earlier this year when he posted the first photo from the US Airways Flight 1549 that landed in the Hudson River to his Twitter account. Krums is a prolific blogger and Twitterer. His live feeds from Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration earned him a spot on blogger Christine Lu’s list of “50 to Follow for Live Tweets from the Inauguration.” Krums will tweet from the heart of the festival reporting on the stories behind the filmmakers and their films.

Jennifer Huber: Huber is recognized for her constant quest for bragging rights. An avid traveler, she has been named a “Top 50 Travel Twitterer You Should Follow” by MSNBC.com travel journalist Chris Elliott, and her live feeds from Washington, D.C., during the inauguration also landed her a spot on Lu’s top 50 list of Twitterers to follow for live tweets. Huber’s tweets will reflect a quirky traveler exploring Sarasota as well as a star-struck, tongue-tied groupie during her mission to meet scheduled attendees such as Woody Harrelson, Bill Paxton and Jon Voight.

Matt Orr: Founder of ThisWeekInc.com, Orr splits his time between Sarasota and Los Angeles and is widely known as "the guy everyone knows." Affectionately recognized as having a knack for sweet-talking his way into dressing rooms and swanky V.I.P. parties, Orr’s tweets will offer glimpses into the film festival’s behind the scenes action. His mission is to discover what really makes it shine and exploit any hiccups along the way. At the same time, he’ll be making every celebrity gossip blogger jealous with envy.