Chicago resident Rusty Nails is a powerful force in the Chicago Indy film circuit. The Columbia graduate makes films, coordinates festivals, and sometimes teaches film at Chicago Filmmakers (www.chicagofilmmakers.org).

He founded the Movieside Film Festival, which has been showcasing some of the finest independent shorts for the last two years (see www.movieside.com).

Rusty's filmmaking resume is equally impressive. He made several interesting short films, including a tribute to New York punk rock band, The Ramones.

His first feature film, Acne, has been described as a black-and-white, '50s, horror sci-fi, B movie, about teenagers whose heads turn into giant zits. It will soon screen at the Biograph or Music Box Theaters. The film will be released to video and DVD shortly.

I caught up with Rusty at Kenneth Morrison's legendary bi-annual pig roast event, which is a convergence place for almost every artist, weirdo and freak in the universe (I mean that in a complimentary sense).

Rusty and I did an impromptu guerrilla interview in my car, in which I asked him some questions about his background and career. I later sent him a few supplementary questions about his new film on-line, which he diligently responded to.

Vito: I'm here with the world famous Rusty Nails, at the Pig Roast. I'm going to ask you some basic questions, but feel free to go off in any direction you want. What can you tell us about your early life or childhood?

Rusty: I was born in Oregon, in a trailer on a farm. My dad was in the army and my mom was a go-go dancer. It all went downhill from there. Basically, my mom left my dad because he was in the army too long. So they split up and we moved to Washington, then Massachusetts, then Florida, back to Washington, Massachusetts, and finally Illinois. We ended up moving around a lot, and my stepfather was a police officer and he had jobs in different states. It was both exciting and frustrating. I would meet a lot of people but as soon and I'd get a new group of friends we would move.

I've been to every state except for Alaska. I got interested in other cultures and exploring. Exploring is what film is all about. While I kept moving, films were a constant. . I later moved to Chicago to attend film school at Columbia College.

RN: I went to lots of films as a kid. I snuck into a lot of films. I had a million influences. John Carpenter, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Stanley Kubrick, Mad Magazine, George Roy Hill, George Romero, Roger Corman, Joe Dante, etc.…

I loved punk rock. I was into the Ramones, the Dead Kennedys, and Minor Threat. Later, I read JD Salinger James Joyce, and Kurt Vonnegutt Jr. I loved the "Batman" show, "Twin Peaks," and "The Twilight Zone." As far as filmmakers are concerned, I loved Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.

RN: I do love the energy and vitality of the French New Wave. It's my favorite type of film, along with classic screwball comedy and film noir. I'm not trying to copy anyone's style. I tend to work a lot with surrealism, in narrative structures with experimental aspects. I recently did a video for the group, Arab on Radar from Providence, Rhode Island. I wanted that to be a tribute to Maya Deren and surrealism in general. With the feature, Acne, I wanted to capture the energy and spirit of French New Wave films. At the same time I wanted it to be homage to film noir and B movies. So there are many styles in it.

RN: I came up with an idea when I was 16, and I was riding a bus from New York to Boston. I was writing lots of skits on the way. I always wanted to act in movies and I figured the best way to be in them was to write them and make them myself. I came up with the idea of doing a fake pimple commercial. A huge helicopter lands on it and pops it. That's a ridiculous concept but for some reason it stayed with me. I always wanted to film that and to do a 50's B movie style horror film.

I later came up with the idea that the kids are like zombies that infect people. If you see the film, you'll see that there are various story lines that connect into each other. I had a million things to say…that's why there's a lot of layering to the story in the film. It's like when you're in a band; you have 20 years to make a first record then you have to knock off the second one in six months. With Acne there is a lot of stuff in it that I have saved for years to put into my first feature film.

RN: I did. I feel like that's a very "Mad" magazine inspired element of the movie. I loved "Mad" when I was a kid. They always had all those great ads making fun of real products - that concept worked well with the parody aspects of Acne.

VC: Where did the idea for the existentialist banter come from in Acne? Was existentialism a big influence on your life?

RN: I've been interested in existentialism since I found out about it in high school. Read a bunch of Sartre and Camus. That was about the same time period that I was finding out about the French New Wave filmmakers, who were quite obviously influenced by the existentialists, so it was an exciting period of questioning and discovery for me.

I wanted the leads (of Acne) to go into these political dialogues and question what was going on with them in the horror setting because I was sick of seeing teenagers act like fools in horror movies. Teenagers are quite intelligent, and I wanted to make the characters more dynamic. Real people would question why these horrible things were happening to them, they wouldn't sit around screaming and having sex.

VC: There is quite a bit of social commentary and criticism of corporate America in Acne. Do you think film is a good way to raise social consciousness?

RN: I don't know about raising social consciousness. But I think it's good to offer something that maybe makes people question common concepts - shake things up and get the gears going.

RN: I'm also making a documentary called Highway Robbery, about a 60-year-old blind veteran/cowboy in Rockford Illinois. His land is being taken away from him in a quick-take action, which is a sped up version of eminent domain. They take his 17 acres of farmland and make an unnecessary highway over his land, which contains a Native American burial ground. That's a complete 180 from Acne.

Highway Robbery will almost be done by the time Acne will come out on DVD. Since Acne was finished I've made numerous short films, including The Ramones and I. It's about how I discovered the Ramones and how I became a punk kid.

RN: I didn't have any friends because I was a freaky kid. When I was 15, I started to go to punk shows in Boston, and suddenly I had friends - a sense of community - I had music, which challenged the basic construct of society values and capitalism.

RN: My mother gave me a camera to film with, but I didn't have any kind of a venue where I could meet other filmmakers. I wasn't interested or ready to be in a community to meet other filmmakers. I was just getting into seeing films. The film community I first got into (were) people going to revival theatres like the Music Box. Mainly I was going to see films and that's how my film education started.

RN: The Movieside Festival happens once a month and it shows independent, underground, intelligent or funny narrative films, and avante garde films. We try to make it inexpensive and we try to avoid some of the regular racist, sexist and homophobic stuff that you see in lots of independent films. We want to make it accessible to someone off the street. Many film fests have an exclusive air about them - we try to be the festival that everyday people off the street feel comfortable coming to, in that we are welcoming to people who might want to try something different.

RN: I was teaching some directing classes at Chicago Filmmakers. I may be teaching a class about guerrilla filmmaking techniques or low budget filmmaking, some kind of independent film basics class.

RN: Sure, it's fun. Yes, it's like getting together with friends. Talking about movies. I don't value all critics equally. I like Jonathan Rosenbaum, There used to be a critic at "The Chicago Reader," Lisa Alspector, that I really liked. I sometimes check out film web sites and read reviews.

RN: I've been going to Sundance for the last three years to meet filmmakers. I've been going to meet people and see films. We went to see By Hook or by Crook, which is a great film. One of my friends told me John Waters is over there in the lobby. When we came down he was gone. We ran into him later and talked to him. Then, I called him and told him I had a script I'd like him to read. He asked him to tell him about it and he said it sounded interesting and he invited me to go with him to the Sundance Awards. I ended up going with him, Patricia Arquette, and a French

critic. Stockard Channing sat in front of us. He spoke at the awards. He offered me a lifesaver. I kept it and I may frame it someday. He's a great guy. He's really funny and has a lot of great stories.

Rejano, and Christie Taddeo, who is often the assistant cinematographer. Stewart Slack and Andrew Dryer - basically everyone I ever worked with. I have a repertory company, like the early Francis Ford Coppola had with American Zoetrope.

RN: I met him a few years ago in Texas at a film festival and said I would like to bring him to Chicago. He seemed interested and gave me his office number and I stayed in contact, and as Movieside started to grow, and we were able to bring in sponsors, I felt getting Jim could be a reality. I stayed in contact with his assistant, Rachel, for the last year, and finally found a spot in his schedule that worked and we built the current anniversary around his schedule. It's just ironic that his schedule fit into the same time period of our last anniversary.

RN: Down by Law. The black and white photography is beautiful. The comedy is great. The story is simple enough for anyone to film but classic enough that only one person could.

RN: The Movieside 2-Year Anniversary is Dec 12-14, with Special Guest Host Jim Jarmusch, at the Biograph Theater (www.movieside.com). We also have a best of Movieside DVD coming out and ACNE is about to come out on VHS and DVD, so we'll have a big screening release party for that, with some classic movies like "Rock & Roll High School" playing with it. Check out my film web site at www.neweyefilms.com for more about my films.