If he lived around here, then the kid who once saw dead people would catch his buzz at The Hub.
“If I lived in Tampa, then that would be my bar,” Haley Joel Osment told TBO.com in a recent story, adding that he also loves the BOTB-winning jukebox. “It’s my type of place,” he said. Osment, 26, is in the midst of publicity runs for his brand new movie, Sex Ed, where he plays a virgin Tampa middle school teacher who lives above the iconic downtown Tampa dive.
The R-rated comedy is set for release in select cities on Friday and was filmed primarily at Sacred Heart Academy, which is dubbed “Ybor Middle” in the movie. The Isaac Feder-directed film also features shots of Tampa’s Riverwalk, Davis Islands and Ybor City. The Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg wasn't too pleased to find out that the coming-of-age film was shot at the school, with Bishop Robert Lynch taking to his blog to apologize for allowing “an apparently raunchy sleazy movie” to be filmed at the campus (which was actually closed down in 2012).
A Tampa Bay Times story downplays the controversy, quoting “Sex Ed” producer Dori Sperko who points out that the script, if anything, earned the movie’s rating. “You get the R rating is you use the f-word more than twice nowadays,” she said adding that the choice word gets dropped 30-40 times throughout the film’s 90 minutes.
That’s a whole lot of fucks, but what’s most cool about the whole thing is the way Tampa gets some shine throughout it all. Feder — who stopped in for a drink while scouting locations — even loves the famous Hub pour, admitting the had to leave his car downtown and call a cab back to his hotel after just one drink.
“The mixed drinks there are not very mixed,” he told TBO. “It’s more like 90/10 liquor to mixer.” Atta boy.
Sex Ed opens in select cities on Friday. Locals can catch it at University Mall’s Studio Movie Grill. You can see more shots of filming here, and check out the trailer below.
