A small-town loner's fascination with the new kid in town leads him into something much more sinister than he could ever have imagined.

"The moment I read the short story the very first time, it was like being hit by a bus," Carter Smith said, waiting in a Dallas airport for a changeover flight to Salt Lake City. "I was like, 'This is the film that I can make better than anybody else. This is the film I have to make.' It just sort of clobbered me over the head."

Indeed, Smith made Bugcrush, an adaptation of Scott Treleaven's story about the "sinister" fallout from a relationship between two high-school boys. An in-demand fashion photographer by day, Smith had directed only a few commercials and small TV projects before diving into his 35-minute film debut last May.

Sundance, however, was not among Smith's immediate goals for the short. "Really, I wasn't thinking about anything other than getting it made," he told me. "As we were sort of going along in the finishing process--editing through the summer--it sort of presented itself and it became prtety obvious that the Sundance deadline would be tight--a complete stretch to get it done by then, but it almost fit with our timetable."

Smith cut post-production so close that he was still burning Bugcrush's rough cut to DVD 30 mintues before Federal Express's last New York pick-up to make the festival's submission deadline. He had, however, color timed and sound mixed what he sent--a work-in-progress impressive enough for Sundance shorts programmer Roberta Munroe to eventually send an e-mail asking Smith how it was coming along.

"I was sort of ecstatic that someone had even watched it," Smith said of Munroe's note. He called her back to assure her that Bugcrush was still on track and would not be too much shorter or longer than the relatively epic short she and fellow programmer Mike Plante had just watched. "You know," Smith continued, "The rough cut might be great, but all the doubt and indecision that can happen in the finishing stages can get the better of you, and you can completely fuck it up in the time between the rough cut and the final cut."

In the end, Smith not only did not fuck it up, but he was invited to participate in the Screenwriters Lab leading up to Sundance. The ebullient filmmaker said the 2006 event is his first "full-on festival experience anywhere ever."

"I'm a total newbie," he said. "I've been here or there to a screening, but I've never actually gone to a destination for a film festival to be there the whole time. This is definitely a first, and I guess don't really know what to expect. I've been picking the brains of everyone I can."

I'm not homophobic....

this movie is not for gender warriors only