Of the countless interviews I’ve conducted with directors, none tickled me more than talking with Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds helmer Phil Bartell.

Yes, that Phil Bartell who attended Columbia College in Chicago where I taught many moons ago. While he was never blessed to take one of my classes, he did come to a lot of screenings I held and was both a welcome and familiar face.

Most of the former film students I keep in touch with are either selling aluminum siding or cleaning the blood out of the back seats of their taxi cabs. For what it’s worth, I am really proud of you, Phil!

Those wanting to break into the business take heed as we chart how a student from a Midwestern assembly line film school ultimately found fame and happiness directing gaysploitation in Hollywood.

Phil broke his bones as an editorial assistant on such big-scale productions as Robert Altman’s The Gingerbread Man, Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich and Andrew Niccol’s must-rent Gattaca.

On the downside, he apprenticed on one of the prime mistakes of cinema, Gus Van Sant’s appalling tracing-with-a-camera refilming of Hitchcock’s Psycho. “You mean you didn’t like Psycho?” Phil vamped.

What follows is a common malady heard among below-the-line Hollywood crew members itching to make the big leap into the director’s chair. A faint awareness of this tinged Phil’s voice as he said, “After a few years, I was feeling creatively stifled and decided to make a short film.”

Crush received a theatrical release in a gay shorts collection. Phil thought, “I liked doing it so much why not make another short?” He did, it was called L.T.R. and it also got a theatrical release, this time in Part 4 of the popular Boy’s Life series.

After his first solo editing job on Cabin Fever, he cut Q. Allan Brocka’s indie hit Eating Out, which led to his directorial debut. “Brocka liked my shorts,” Phil said. “Since I edited the first [Eating Out] and was familiar with all the characters, he asked me to direct the sequel.”

The film reunites three cast members from the original: Jim Verarros as Kyle, Emily Brooke Hands as Gwen and Rebekah Kochan as Tiffani, in addition to insanely hot (and hung) newcomer Marco Dapper.

In Part 1, Kyle talks his roommate into pretending he’s gay so he can get the girl. This time around, Kyle pretends to be straight so he can snag the chiseled new bi boy in town.

The film will go down in the record books as the first sequel to a gay American movie. (I guess Lethal Weapon 2 through 4 don’t count.) Phil was quick to cover his ass by adding, “I mean After Stonewall is not really a sequel to Before Stonewall, is it?”

With all due respect to Q. Allan Brocka, Eating Out was an ordeal to get through. It’s an attempt at a nonstop laugh machine, and with one joke after another you have a higher chance of more jokes not connecting. Brocka continually struck out. Phil handled my assault on his mentor with great aplomb. “I wanted less jokes,” he noted, “but to make it funnier.

“Writing this screenplay, as unartistic as it sounds, was a great training ground for me,” he continued. “I knew my limitations before I wrote the script. We had to shoot it in 10 days with very little money and, on top of that, they wanted a larger cast.”

Even though the responsibilities were tenfold, the financial reward was anything but. “I’ve been hard hit this year,” he shuddered, “especially when you jump from studio films to small independent features.”

What was the casting call like? Did he don a fake wig and shades like George C. Scott in Hardcore?

“I know it sounds like a fantasy,” he laughed. “A hundred hot guys coming in, taking their shirts off and read for the camera. It’s actually pretty stressful until you find the best people for the parts.”

Are their shirts the only things the boys take off? “The full-frontal aspect of it,” Phil sighed, “you just kind of hold your breath and hope.”

How much nudity was too much? Phil was assigned a precise number of penises to film. “The requirement, set by the executive producer Michael Shoel, was for two full-frontal shots,” Phil said. “Michael wants to be the Roger Corman of gaysploitation. In sexploitation you have T&A. We have dicks.”

Here’s a question I could never ask Scorsese: In a scene worthy of Kaufman and Hart, a closet case accidentally ejaculates all over his mother. What did they use to simulate spooge? Elmer’s Glue? Nexxus Therappe? My Aunt Fay’s mashed potatoes? “The production designer did hours of research on the Internet,” Phil said in all seriousness. “The best recipe was flour and water mixed together and heated for a certain length of time.”

I’m guessing that the chances of a Part 3 are highly likely, particularly if this does half as well as its predecessor. Until he gets the call, Phil is hard at work editing Save Me, a film Imdb.com describes as the story of “a sex- and drug-addicted young man who is forced into a Christian-run ministry in an attempt to cure him of his ‘gay affliction.’”

While it’s a far cry from Lubitsch, Phil recognized that he was trying to make a contemporary sex comedy in the Roger Corman vein. “You know,” Phil said, “a lot of sex, a lot of laughs and a little social significance thrown in for good measure.”

Roger would be proud!

When the Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA) axed its film series and shuttered the doors to its beautiful Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theater in 2004, it did more than force its displaced curator to scramble for a new venue. It left a gaping void in the exhibition of classic cinema in San Diego.

MoPA wasn’t the only casualty. Earlier in 2004, the Madstone chain, which attempted to turn the Hazard Center into an art/revival venue, also pulled up stakes. To make matters worse, fewer revivals appeared on Landmark’s Ken calendar. It has been a miserable two and a half years for local film enthusiasts who crave movies released prior to last week.

In 2001, I paid my first visit to the North Park Theatre. The place looked like Berlin after the war, but San Diego Lyric Opera director Leon Natker assured me that he would figure out a way to restore the place back to its original glory.

In addition to staging lyric operas and live theater events, it was always Natker’s desire to use the house in the manner for which it was originally intended: showing movies.

A little more than a year ago, I got the call to team with fellow cineholic Andy Friedenberg of the Cinema Society and put on a show in the house that Natker built. Here is your chance to see some of Hollywood’s greatest movies on a giant screen, in a gorgeous 720-seat picture palace that could have conceivably played them first-run.

After what seems like an eternity, light from the projector finally hit the screen last week with a series entitled “The Fabulous Faces of the Fifties.” This time around there was even popcorn!

The list of times, dates and titles is as follows:

All About Eve starring Bette Davis: Thursday, Dec. 28, at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 31, at 2:00 p.m.

Roman Holiday starring Audrey Hepburn: Thursday, Jan. 11, at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, Jan 14, at 2:00 p.m.

Giant starring Elizabeth Taylor: Thursday, Jan. 18, at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 21, at 2:00 p.m.

Some Like it Hot starring Marilyn Monroe: Thursday, Jan. 25, at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, Jan 28, at 2:00 p.m.

In addition, join B-B-B-Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney for a White Christmas sing-along on Thursday, Dec. 21, at 7:00 p.m. and Saturday, Dec. 23, at 2:00 p.m.

Each screening will open with an introduction from Andy and/or me as well as a vintage cartoon, short and trailers. We will also stick around to answer questions when the movie wraps. General admission is $9, and $7 for students, seniors and military. Here at last is a luxury you actually can afford.