A Smile at the Door

William H. Macy describes his latest project, “Door to Door,” which premieres Sunday on TNT, as a “gentle tale of a gentle man.”

That man is Bill Porter, a door-to-door salesman for the Watkins Co. in Portland, Ore. Born with cerebral palsy, he was unemployable for many years. But thanks to his mother’s determination and love and his own unflagging spirit, Porter found work as a salesman and has been at it for more than 40 years.

Despite the pain he endured because of his affliction, he managed to walk eight to 10 miles a day selling products--everything from laundry soap to dog biscuits. Now 69, he sells Watkins products at his Web site, www.billporter.com.

Besides starring as Porter, Macy wrote the film with director Steven Schachter. They had written several movies together, including the TNT thriller “A Slight Case of Murder.” With that history, Macy thought the cable outlet would welcome them back with “Door to Door.”

He got a surprise. “They didn’t want to do it,” Macy says. “So we went to HBO, and HBO bought the pitch. Then when we wrote it, they said, ‘No, it is far too soft for us.’ We went back to TNT and the second time they said yes.”

Macy calls Porter “one of the most extraordinary men” he’s ever met. “What I noticed immediately when I met him was that he was just smiling all the time. Usually, the first thing out of his mouth was a laugh. He has a great humor toward the world. He has a twinkle in his eye. It’s so disarming.”

Despite the fact that “Door to Door” is gentle, it is not a cloying, overly sentimental, disease-of-the-week movie. “We tried to bring humor to it,” Schachter says. “This guy is such a quietly heroic character and a positive spirit, there wasn’t really anything to weep about.”

Finding a hook into his story was a challenge for the writers. “It is sort of like telling a story about a milkman or a mailman,” Schachter says. “They go from door to door and then they go home.”

“We had this great character and we had some high points,” Macy adds. “His life was not without interest or drama, but there is no punch line to the story--there was no third act. So it became clear that a good way to tell the story would be to ‘Forrest Gump’ it a bit.”

Porter, they surmised, must have had a long-lasting effect on the lives of his clients. “So that broke the story for us--let’s tell the dramas of the people on the route, the people he sold to,” says Macy. Though the high points of Porter’s life in the film are true, says Macy, all of the clients depicted are fictional.

British actress Helen Mirren plays Porter’s strong-willed mother, who impressed upon her son that nothing was impossible, and Kyra Sedgwick is Shelly Brady, a spunky housewife and mother who has worked as Porter’s assistant for nearly 30 years.

Schachter says that they sent the script to plenty of American actresses to play Porter’s mother. “When we said, ‘Would you like to play Bill Macy’s mother?,’ you could hear the phones hanging up around L.A. What was great about Helen is that a lot of English actors--the tradition they come from is perhaps a little less from the vanity school and a little bit more from the ‘muck in there and be an actor school.’ ”

Sedgwick sees “Door to Door” as a great metaphor for the “things that are lost in our culture, that kind of intimacy you got when you were working with someone and buying a product you would be using in your home. You’ve got to know the person, and the person has got to know you. I think that kind of relationship has gone the way of all flesh in our fast world. Our world is all about the big stores and getting things as fast as possible. It’s really sad.”

If there is such a thing as karma, says Macy, Porter exudes it. “He certainly puts out great things--he puts out trust and humor and stoicism and kindness and acceptance. As a result, good stuff has come back to him.”

“Door to Door” can be seen Sunday at 8, 10 and midnight on TNT. It repeats Wednesday at 9 p.m. and Saturday at 12:30 p.m. The network has rated it TV-PG-L (may be unsuitable for young children, with an advisory for coarse language).