Drew and I sit in a tiny booth at the Miracle diner. Though it's not nearly as romantic as an Edward Hopper painting, the place sprawls out empty if not quiet as the dishwasher runs in the background. We're attempting to catch up, to have all the sentiments expressed that we need to in order for us to move onto the next critical stage of friendship, communication in the moment, the fixtation with the present. It's more or less the past that we share, however, and it sits between us a silent affliction.

He starts in about his film project FreeLance, a dark comedy about a highly delusional twentysomething whose main preoccupation throughout the film is knicking a place in the cut-throat world of television journalism and thereby earning the respect of idol Rod Reel. It's a mesh of character-driven humor, situational absurdity and to-the-rescue montages which string the sketch bits together. He's been working on it for more than a year; I've been hearing about it for more than a year.

"I need to get all this out of the way. I love it, and I’m tired of working on it. I want to do something else, not like I need something new; it’s just that I have other ideas, and more importantly, it’s time for me to start working on the other ideas," he says.

I pull out my recorder and watch as the red light blinks on, an action which perhaps grows the silence, his minor complaint of "Oh, shit," brews into the space between us.

"I was thinking about it. This is so weird," I say. "I have a group of close friends, and out of those friends, I was thinking, I know this much about Drew.'" I pull my thumb and pointer finger into one another, that typical sign of 'just a little, Fred. You know, just a little.'

"I know the important stuff, but normal details--details friends are supposed to know about friends--I don't know those," I continue. "I feel like with so many of my friends I know the big stuff, the important stuff, the driving stuff, and that's why I love them. But, I don't know what their toothbrush preference is; I don't know their work schedules. It's so odd for me."

Drew concentrates on his Gyro and fries, mumbling phrases about his best friend in the quick points between chewing. We fall silent again, this time for a longer run. I look out the window; no one passes by on the road.

"You're so intently eating those fries."

"I'm hungry," he says. "I haven't eaten all day."

My strategy runs two-fold in situations like this, situations where everything could go really well or really poorly. I either start talking without seeming purpose or ask a question. I opt for the latter.

"Where do you think your motivation to make film comes from; what does it derive out of?"

"Quest for fame."

"Really? So, is that the purpose of making art for you?"

"I’m joking."

"Really, I’m serious."

"No, no…"

"Because some people are..."

"Hm."

"When they say that," I finish. I'm ignoring the fact that our discomfort springs from two sources, the first that I'm ansty that he still hasn't told me about his astrophysicist girlfriend or the names of his immediate family members and the second that he's still eating the damn Gyro. I don't have much more in my reservoir of escape liners unless he offers a tidbit, and preferably one that tells me more about him than the fact that he's just met a post-production crew member from the Sundance thriller The Signal.

"My entire personality changed when I entered high school," he starts. "When I went to ninth grade—no, eighth grade before it, I was still fat, still eighth grade unattractive fat. So it wasn’t that all the sudden people started to notice me, but all the sudden I started to enjoy being myself. I just started to grow inside my head. The only other time that I actually recognized that I enjoyed being with and living with myself apart from anybody else was when I was at the clam farm. I was alone with myself so I actually enjoyed knowing myself—which was crazy. So, eighth grade and a half was when I—for no apparent reason. I don’t even know why—I followed one of my friends to a play that he was trying out for. I decided that I would try out too because—oh, that’s right—I told him I could do it better than he could which is the exact same reason I started doing the video stuff in school.

"I read this newspaper article about these kids in Atlanta who had their own television show. I called my friend, and I was reading it out loud to him, and I said—I’m sorry I gotta eat fries—“We can totally do this. It will be funny, and it will be better than these kids.” My friends and I always had this inner competition to be better than somebody else. Those are the only two things I can think of that fundamentally changed my entire life, and they were whims. They were straight up, “I can act better than my friend so I’m going to go to this play and try out. It might be fun. Or, if these dumb ass high school kids can have their own television show then so can I.” Oh, no, I was wrong, it wasn’t the television show. It was a Salso & Naked video off of iMovie I saw when I was in ninth grade. I was just enamoured with it, and the way the the guy was just putting all these pieces from his little video camera together. I remember thinking--that was over Christmas break--, and I came back to school, and (the teachers) said, “You can do these history day projects,” and the last medium was documentary. I thought, “I can do that even though I’d never done it before because I saw this guy do it.” Then I went through, and we made this documentary about Napster, me and all my punk ass friends, listening to the Insane Clown Posse and wearing Jincos, spinning some yo-yos. But, actually, I was pretty straight-laced then. I wore a belt loop. I was cool. So we made this video about Napster, and we won school wide, region, state and went to nationals. I was like, “Hell, I’ll do it again.” We kept doing that, and then I read that thing in the newspaper. That’s when I started putting my writing and my ability to edit and shoot together."

Then I went to FSU, and I never took myself seriously about doing the film thing. And, I still don’t, but I still did it. It came out; I don’t really know how. I don’t really feel comfortable talking in front of the microphone. Now I’m thinking about it too much. Want your water?"

"No, go ahead," I say, and something in me feels that we're all the sudden on the right track, that by the end of this conversation I might actually know when Drew's birthday is, what his first memories were, why he ended up skipping from college to college until he landed at Georgia State, studying now, as he always wanted to, film. It's more than likely I could ask him these questions straight out, but I know the answers wouldn't be nearly as interesting as here in this context.

"Where do you think your vision for FreeLance came from then seeing as during your time at Florida State, you weren’t taking yourself seriously?"

"Actually, I’m starting to see a total whole pattern here. I was homeless. I quit school, and I was wandering for the spring semester. I journeyed back home, or homeward, because my parents’ house isn’t really a home since they moved," he continues, a bit more slowly now."It all starts with the little feeling inside where my dad is just like, “What are you? Are you a pussy?" "No, I’m not a pussy. I can do it better than you can.” It really all goes back to when I started doing that “gay acting shit,” and I really enjoyed it. It was in this time where I could do anything and everything that I wanted; I could be somebody else. I never got into the fact that I was being somebody else. I could never really get into the fact that I was an actor. It was just really fun for me. So, whenever, I heard someone wax poetic about being in the theater school, I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t communicate with them. I didn’t hang out with the theater people. I was a theater person, but I never hung out with the theater people. After school I ran cross-country; I played soccer; I swam; I wrestled...I remember my dad was tremendously proud of me watching me be the star of the stage and then playing sports.

"If you want to go farther back, my parents moved to Cedartown, but we used to live in Rome. I stayed in Rome because I was really good in sports, and I was doing other things. It was all just an effort so I could get myself, my roots into every single thing in Rome before my parents had the chance to pull me out. When they moved, they had no choice but to leave me there because of how successful I was...It wasn’t necessarily that I was driven to do good. I wasn’t the best soccer player. I’m a really good swimmer, but I was one of the worst swimmers on the team. I didn’t belong on the team, but they needed guys.  I came out there—I had a gut in high school— and I swam. It was hilarious. I just enjoyed being in the water, but I lost more matches for Rome High in swimming than I won. One time I remember I actually half-drowned, and they had pull me out of the pool. I had taken in so much water, and I just laid on my side. They didn’t have to provoke me, but I just ended up throwing up gallons of water. That probably had more or less to do with a person who was watching me in the stands. I wasn’t showing off, but I was trying to go fast, really fucking fast. I just didn’t breath even though that’s the easiest thing you can do in swimming, just turn your head to the side and breath. I felt like I was wasting my time. But, I finished it; I just couldn’t get out of the pool.

"I just wanted to stay involved with as many people as possible because I didn’t want to go home, and theater just happened to be one of those activites. It wasn’t my focus. Although, later my cross-country coach who was also my European history teacher would come up to me—in fact, he’d make a speech about it at our cross country race—“Drew. Drew’s a good runner. You can tell—well, that he—actually, we couldn’t tell why he was out here. He just kind of showed up.” Then he talked about this time I ran a 5K in flip-flops. I didn’t really care to be out there. I just wanted to be doing something, and I was running with my friends. He talked about the fact that the only time I was provoked to improve my time was when he would threaten me that I couldn’t stay on the team. So my time would get increasingly better, but it was never to the point that I wanted to win a race. I even tried out for football, but I was way too small. So the coach was saying, “We don’t really understand why Drew’s out here, but the amount of hard work and time that he puts into this—and all the other crazy stuff I’ve seen him do around the school—I understand that he definitely has priorites, and they are not in running. But, they are in these other activities that I’ve seen him perform in well.” Then after that it was no longer funny. “He’s in my European history class, and he’s made European history documentary videos.” It was like the runner’s award speech, you know? He’s going through every single runner, and then he gets to me and talks about history class. It’s like, “Oh, well. It makes sense.” It wasn’t a lie. Everybody knew I wasn’t out there to run."

I'm starting, as well I think, to see a pattern. It's utterly unimportant for me to know what these details about Drew are, much as in fact I would still like to know him in that way. The only sustaining currency is in what he's just said--that he's there. He'll always be there, if not at his best but just there. He's exceptional, even in his admission, at being around, and I'm hoping--and in fact knowing--that it's this willingness to be around that will render him one day soon an incontrovertibly engaging filmmaker. I've missed, I realized, a few sentences in our conversation and pick up here, with Drew explaining why he makes films.

"I really wish I could say it’s for the joy, for the rush of fame. I want to say that’s the goal, that I have something that drives me like that. But, it’s not. It’s not that simple."