FM:      To start off, I just want to ask you a few questions about…

RN:      Yes, I am naked.

FM:      Oh are you?

RN:      Oh wait, sorry that’s the wrong number.  I do this hotline thing during the day too.  I can’t really talk about it.

FM:      I’ll call back later then.

RN:      1-800-Fat Man

FM:      I’ll keep that in mind.

RN:      F-A-T-T Man

FM:      I’m going to name a few Chicago film institutions and I just want you to briefly tell me what you think of them.  First one, the Music Box.

RN:      Love it.

FM:      Facets.

RN:      Nice.  Are you looking for one word?

FM:      Anything you want to say.

RN:      Music Box is my favorite theater in the city.  Love it.  It’s beautiful.  I love retrospective theaters in the first place, revival theaters.  The Music Box has a great mixture of old film, new film, foreign film, art films, underground films, independent films.  The theater itself is beautiful.  The ceiling that has the clouds and the stars is great.

FM:      There is one problem with the theater.

RN:      What’s that?

FM:      The seats.  They numb your ass.

RN:      I don’t know.  I go to ghetto-plexes too.  Generally I don’t have a complaint with seats anywhere.  I can handle a lot as far as seats go.

FM:      Maybe it’s just me then.

RN:      Yes. No I’m sure lots of other people feel that way, but Facets, I like it, it has a charm to it.  The theater itself is pretty small.  They play a lot of interesting stuff.  A while ago I saw a new print of Mad Max.

FM:      What about Chicago Filmmakers?

RN:      I’ve taught there, so obviously I like it.

FM:      Here’s one of my favorites, The Brew and View.

RN:      Brew and View, I like the Brew and View.  I think that if you are going to go to the movies there, you should go see something that you are not looking to pay a huge amount of attention to.  I mean if you’re going to go see Escape From New York, it’s great.  Everyone’s rowdy.  I saw Blue Velvet there a while ago.  People were doing hand puppets on the character’s crotches.  Maybe I shouldn’t have seen Blue Velvet there, but I like it there.  It’s fun.  That’s the only thing I don’t like about that.

FM:      What about all of the million of film festivals in Chicago?

RN:      I think it’s good.  It gives me more to choose from.  Who doesn’t want that.

FM:      What about Columbia College?

RN:      I like Columbia College.  I went there.  I was a little bit of a trouble maker there.  I was one of the only people to make a feature from there.  I definitely had a couple of strong supporters and I had a couple of people who were not wanting me to finish my project.  In the end I met a lot of really great people there and some great teachers.  I’d say over-all I had a decent experience there outside of a couple of people who were trying to stop me from doing the project.

FM:      Ok, what about John Hughes?

RN:      John Hughes…I think National Lampoon’s Family Vacation is well written and Ferris Bueller’s Day off is good.

FM:      Are you a big fan of Molly Ringwald?

RN:      Um, yeah.  I think she’s cool.  I thought she was good in the TV version of The Stand.  Which I think could’ve been a much better movie if George Romero made it.  George Romero was initially supposed to do it.  I think she’s good.  She was good in the short version of Sling Blade.

FM:      Alright, the last one.  What about Rusty Nails?

RN:      Rusty Nails.  I’m not much of a drinker, so I haven’t really had one of those.

FM:      So what do you think are the strengths of the Chicago film scene?

RN:      The strengths to me are my friends who make films.  I’ve been pretty lucky doing festival stuff here.  There are so many environments that are really attractive to shoot in.  You have urban, suburban, country, lakefront.  Because the city is not incredibly heavy policed, you can pretty much shoot where ever you want.

FM:      What about weaknesses?

RN:      I’m from Boston and I like Boston a lot.  And I like how much community there is there and how people hang out in a few central areas and I think because Chicago is so big and spread apart, sometimes it doesn’t feel like it has much of a community.  Pretty much the only place in Chicago you know people are always going to be hanging out is Wicker Park and I’m not a huge fan of Wicker Park.  That’s something I wish would differ.

FM:      Last week you held one of the coolest Chicago film events, the Movieside Festival, how did that turn out?

RN:      Well very well.  As far as attendance, there were quite a lot of people there.  And as far as having Jack Hill, Mark Borchardt and George Romero, it was really great to see and meet all of them.  As far as the films, it took us awhile to find the film prints.  A lot of them, as far as Romero goes, were really hard to find.  For me it was a great experience all together.  For the people working in the festival, they seemed to have a good time and a lot of audience members were appreciative.  I think all in all, it was a pretty great event.

FM:      When is the next Movieside Fest and who do you have coming into town this time around?

RN:      We have Lloyd Kaufman coming June 18 and 19 for the Tromathon.  We’re also going to have Mark Borchardt and actually show Coven.  After that we’re working on another big show, but before that I’ll probably do another two smaller Moviesides.  So I sort of have to hold off because I’m finishing a new feature documentary.  Then I’m working on my next narrative feature which is going to be a horror film.

FM:      What do you think about bringing Christopher Lee to Movieside?

RN:      I actually drove him for the Chicago International Film Festival.  He’s a really, really, really sweet guy.  What was funny was when we were driving around.

            (Rusty excuses himself for about a minute)

            That’s a nice idea.  I guess I do have three other people in mind, but I do love Christopher Lee.  What was funny about driving him is that when we were driving down the street, now here’s a guy from England and I’ve been here for a little while and obviously I’m not a historian, but every single street that we were on, he’d be like (British accent) “There’s the Mercantile Place.  In 1918, the Mercantile Place consisted of two hundred structural damage pieces”.  For a second, just to be funny, I said two words in French and then he started speaking French and after that I said two words in Italian, and he started speaking Italian.  The man is just amazingly intelligent and the biggest sweetheart.  It was funny, because I was working on Acne at the time and I was like I would love to ask Christopher Lee to do some kind of introduction to the film, but I didn’t ask, but I do love him.

FM:      How did Acne come about?

RN:      Basically I was driving this bus from Boston to New York and I just thought about this weird idea about a giant zit and a helicopter landing on it and popping it.  I always had a huge fondness for film-noir, French new-wave, B-movies and drive-in films, so what happened was that I wanted to make this really low budget independent film and I wanted it to be sort of a black comedy horror film so hence Acne was born.  So I decided for me that it would be best to mainly self-finance it so no one would have any control on the film whatsoever besides myself.

FM:      What was the budget on it?

RN:      The budget was basically between $16,000 and $20,000.

FM:      And it’s going to be released on DVD June 1st.  Where will it be available?

RN:      We’re hoping to get it at as many places as possible, so hopefully everywhere.  We have distribution with Facets.org and people can also get it through the website NewEyeFilms.com which is my website.

FM:      Which is very cool and may I add you have some very nice headshots there.

RN:      Yeah, you have to put that stuff in, but thanks.  The guy who designed it is named Chuck and he’s really great with graphics.  But basically I just wanted to make a film that had a lot to do with my personality and the kind of film I wanted to make without any kind of investor derailing what it was I wanted to do.  My second film, which is a documentary feature, is a hundred and eighty degrees away from Acne.

FM:      What’s that one about?

RN:      It’s called Highway Robbery.  It’s basically the story of a 60 year-old blind veteran whose land is being taken away from him in Rockford, IL., by the government, in order to make an unnecessary $17,000,000 highway which goes through his land, native American burials and wetlands.  The thing about it is that there’s a road down the street which they could’ve done the same exact project on, which would’ve only cost $2,000,000 and wouldn’t have gone through anyone’s land and would not create flooding.  So basically the whole thing is a scam and the person who put this whole process into lace was the town council person who happened to get a lot of her financing for her campaign from the construction company that ended up getting the job.  The curious thing is that the road goes from one of their offices two miles away directly to their other office.  So it’s a $17,000,000 linking road between their offices.

FM:      So when are you going to sell out Rusty?

RN:      Today.  Right now.

FM:      What’s the project going to be?

RN:      Porky’s 75.

FM:      Dude, I’ve been waiting for that one.

RN:      It’s going to be good.  Dude, Where’s my Porkys?.

FM:      I have one last question for you.  Do you cry?

RN:      Sure, of course.  Who doesn’t cry.  If you’ve seen Porky’s 3, who doesn’t.  The drama, the beauty, the montages, the whole thing.  Incredible.

Incredible indeed, Rusty Nails, incredible indeed.

Movieside is bringing Lloyd Kaufman, The Toxic Avenger and others from the Troma world to Chicago on June 18 and 19 at the Biograph Theater.  For event schedule and to purchase ACNE on DVD go to Movieside.com.

Alexander Rojas is a writer and filmmaker who will talk to anyone.

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