Chazz Palminteri, who's been wowing audiences as he tours with his "A Bronx Tale" one-man show, will be segueing back into film work come January. "I'm going to do 'Sweetwater,' about the first black player in the NBA, for six weeks," reports the actor. He'll be starring alongside Kevin Pollak and Wood Harris as Sweetwater Clifton.

"Racial issues are very important to me," he explains. "I read the script, and I really liked it."

It took something strong to entice Palminteri into thinking about work besides "Bronx Tale" — in which racial issues also play a crucial role — just now. The play, currently at Los Angeles' Wadsworth Theatre, has him playing 18 characters each night. He's brought to it new dimensions since its first outing in New York back in 1989 — and since the 1993 film in which he starred with Robert DeNiro.

"I think the play is better than it's ever been. Obviously, when I first did it 20 years ago, I had no children. Obviously it made me a star. Now there is just so much more depth to it. My dad just passed away four months ago. He was going to be 90 … There are some emotions that come through that," Palminteri says.

"I've done over 50 movies, and people always talk about 'Bronx Tale," he adds. "They tell me it changed their life. It changed their son's life."

His own son finally saw Palminteri perform the play on Broadway last year at age 13. "It was pretty emotional," recalls the actor, whose offspring was waiting for him off-stage after the performance. "He came up and said, 'Dad, I'm not going to waste my talent, I promise.'"

Palminteri is set to take the play to San Francisco next, after which he has a break, and then will take his "Tale" on to Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston and on — with dates 'til June.

INSIDE INSIGHT: Mary Tyler Moore confesses that she is computer illiterate and blames that on the fact that she rebelled and never learned how to type. "My mother kept telling me to take typing courses in school so I would have something to fall back on when the 'silly little things' I was trying to do in show business failed me." That was all she needed to make sure she didn't have a secretarial escape hatch.

Is she sorry about that now? Not necessarily, but she does regret her lack of savvy about such things is such that "I have to ask my husband to turn the heat on and off. He puts in a very sophisticated unit, and I've never figured out how to use it."

GLITTERING: With Denzel and Pauletta Washington as honorees, already the excitement is building for Barbara Davis' 30th Carousel of Hope gala, Oct. 25. Music men Quincy Jones and Clive Davis are presenting the award, with Josh Groban and Babyface among the performers and Jay Leno returning as emcee. The event raises money for the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes.

JUST DO IT: Filmmaker Jon Dunham is hoping the current running boom will mean good news for his "Spirit of the Marathon" — a movie as remarkable for its history as its rich and varied subject matter.

"I ran my first marathon, The Los Angeles Marathon, in 1993. I had no clue what I was getting myself into. I had run about a mile and a half at a time up until then," recalls Dunham. But he finished — in five hours and six minutes. "It was a life-changing event," says Dunham, who's set for his 25th marathon in November.

His movie-making follows a similarly jaw-dropping path. "I had no funding whatsoever from the start and for a good long way into it," recalls the USC School of Cinema-Television grad and maker of films including "No Distance Too Far" about the California AIDS bike ride. He spent two years trying to round up financing for his marathon movie to no avail. He decided to go ahead and start shooting anyway. He bought one of the first wave of HD digital cameras with his own credit cards, and started interviewing and following Olympic Bronze medalist Deena Kastor, whom he'd met a few times, as she trained for the Chicago Marathon. From there, he made a presentation featurette and started to show it to potential investors. Dunham zeroed in on Chicago and arrived there with "no place to live, no financing, no nothing" — besides his camera, his car and his presentation. Things began falling into place when his sample piece captivated Chicago Marathon organizers, who moved to help him get financing and opened the way for his complete access.

Dunham's finished film, which had special screenings across the country earlier this year, is due on DVD Oct. 7. It covers a group of diverse runners on their journeys to the electrifying excitement of the marathon — from the elite level of Kastor and Kenyan Daniel Njenga, who lives and trains in Japan, to everyday folks like a first-timer coming back from a crumbled marriage. Superstars of running, including Frank Shorter, add inspiration and insights.

With reports by Emily Feimster.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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