WHEN WALTER MET WAGNER

My daughters car is on the fritz. So we drove down to Charlottesville to drop it off with Buck. Courtney has taken her car to Buck's Auto for a while now. He's fair, does good work, and his price is right. We promised our daughter before she left for Guyana that her car would be fixed when she got back. So the race was on, since she returns on Sunday. Buck has promised he can get the job done in two hours.

So what do you do with those two hours? Just sit there and wait? Read a book? I have a plan. How about lunch with an Academy Award winner? I give Paul Wagner a call and he agrees to meet up with us for lunch. So Kate drives Courtney's car, and I drive mine, just in case the car breaks down on the way down there.

Paul doesn't look like Dustin Hoffman or Robert Deniro or any of the other folks that might come to mind when you think of Academy Award winners. He's thin, about my height with a shock of gray hair, a gray beard, and a dynamic smile. We arrive first and wait. After a few minutes he enters the restaurant. I jump up, and wave, he smiles that smile and heads in our direction.

Paul is a fascinating guy. He used to live and work here in the district, but he and his wife and film making partner Ellen Casey Wagner made a conscious decision to leave the city and move to Charlottesville. It was a quality of life issue. He has young kids and the move just seemed to make sense to them.

Paul is unique in that he's an independent filmmaker working in of all places Charlottesville. That's about as far from Hollywood as you can get. Paul can do it all. He's a writer, producer, director. He'll make dramatic films and documentaries. He won his Oscar back in 1984 for his documentary "The Stone Carvers."

We catch up on his most recent projects. He seems to be most enthusiastic about a documentary featuring some of the finest Irish performers in the country. He's been in the edit room trying to get this thing done. It will obviously air right around St. Patrick's Day.

You can learn so much from Paul. One of the things I like is his work ethic. He won't let his computer anywhere near his editing suite. He'll check the emails before he starts editing then checks them again when he's done. As he points out, "I wouldn't be able to get anything done if I had access to e-mail while I was working, I'd be checking it all the time." I know this is true because before we began our journey down to Charlottesville I wrote with a suggestion of where we could meet for lunch. When I called he made no mention of my suggestion and threw out his own idea of a place to get together. When I got home I was greeted by this note from Paul responding to my suggestion. It came a couple of hours after lunch.

" Hi Mike, I'm just now seeing this. Thanks for lunch, and best of luck. Best, Paul "

Needless to say he chose the restaurant, and in my mind it was just like Paul, an Academy Award winner. To learn more about Paul check out these websites.

http://www.windhorsemovie.com/

http://www.paulwagnerfilms.com/