by SARAH ROWLAND

Growing up a gay punk rocker in the Oil State comes with some inherent challenges. Add to that a mother whose brain is fried from excessive electroshock therapy treatments, courtesy of the Texas mental health system; a homophobic deadbeat father; abusive foster parents and inbred, yet loving, grandparents and you have Jonathan Caouette's childhood. In other words, Gus Van Sant couldn't have penned a darker piece of teen queer Americana, and the casting director for Harmony Korine's Gummo couldn't have found a freakier band of outsiders to play these supporting roles.

So it's a good thing Caouette is such a pack rat. His phenomenal debut documentary, Tarnation, which he made for an unbelievable $218, is a highly stylistic collage of phone messages, photos, home movies and a few Super-8 reenactments. But there's nothing ironic about some of the latter home video footage.

"Around the time I was 16 or 17, it became more like this sense of urgency to start turning the camera on my family because I realized I was being subjected to a pretty unusual set of circumstances," says Caouette, calling from his Chicago hotel room. "I just started filming to try to make sense of it all, to have some sort of control over what was happening to me at the time."

Fourteen years later, Caouette was urged by a colleague to enter a mixed media showcase in his new hometown of New York. He booked vacation time off work, booted up his iMovie software and began a three-week editing odyssey. Since it never occurred to him to tell his family during production, when it came time to premiering the deeply personal film in front of his mother, he thought he might as well drop two bombs.

"I came out to her as her gay son and simultaneously showed her story at the festival," he says. "I think we both must have had small coronaries. I remember thinking, ‘What have I done here? Am I exploiting her? Am I exploiting myself?' The whole experience was really quite insane."

Blood thicker than fame

While most critics recognize Tarnation's ingenuity and Caouette's extraordinary raw talent as an actor, editor and director, some pundits have accused him of utilizing his family's tragedy as an audition reel. But considering Van Sant was so impressed with the aspiring filmmaker's piece that he gave his seal of approval as executive director on the project, the naysayers are in the minority. Either way, Caouette doesn't seem to care as he is too preoccupied with his mom's mental welfare.

"With the little bit of money I have made, I'm going back to Texas to secure and stabilize my grandfather and mother's living situation in a way that's never been done before," says Caouette, who is also in the process of tracking down medical records from the various psych wards that his mom was subjected to throughout her life. "Financially, I think [the film] has paid off, but I could give two shits about the fame aspects of this. Seriously, this is like my 400th interview and I'm exhausted. I can't wait for the life of this film to be over so I can disappear for a while and get back to my family."

Well, most of his family anyway. While those on his maternal side couldn't be prouder of his award-winning doc, his biological father gave the uncut version two thumbs down.

"For him to sign off, we had to go back and whitewash the circumstances that led up to him leaving us," says Caouette about getting the rights to use his dad in the movie. "He said that he had a reputation to protect, so I had to change a few things. I was kind of angry about that. I felt like I had to whore myself."

It's hard to imagine how his dad could have looked any worse in the original, since he comes across as such a repugnant person in the finished product. When a hopeful 19-year-old Caouette tracks him down and calls him up, the first thing his father says to his long lost son is, "Are you gay? You sound gay." Then he proceeds to warn Caouette to stay away from him if he has AIDS.

Although it seems like Caouette exposes every part of his life in his video diary, there is one glaring omission: his nine-year-old son. "I'm saving that for another story," says the amiable director, sounding a little burnt out as he prepares for interview number 401. "It's not like he's a subplot in my life or anything. But Tarnation just needed to be about my mother. If Reintarnation ever comes out, his story will be saved for that."

Tarnation screens at Cinéma du Parc, Thursday, Oct. 21 at 7:30 p.m. and Friday, Oct 22 at 9:40 p.m.

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