A year ago Jonathan Caouette was an aspiring actor working as a doorman. Then he sent a rough tape of his confessional autobiography Tarnation to John Cameron Mitchell and everything changed.

He didn’t get the part he was auditioning for, but the writer and director of Hedwig and the Angry Inch loved it so much he signed up as joint executive producer, along with Gus van Sant, and they opened the door to the film festival circuit for Caouette.

Made on Caouette’s home computer with a miniscule budget, Tarnation is an original and audacious film charting Caouette’s life growing up in Texas, his relationship with his mentally disturbed mother, his physical and sexual abuse and his eventual growth into a remarkably compassionate and sane gay adult.

A year later Caouette received a 10-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival and Tarnation is considered a masterpiece by both critics and moviegoers alike.

Rachael Scott met up with the toast of independent film-making and discovered his meteoric rise has sent the 31-year-old film-maker into a bit of a spin.

Tarnation’s success must have come as a great a surprise. How are you coping with it all?
It’s been daunting. The hardest part is not having the ability to create. I’ve done maybe 800 interviews and I want to start on my next project. I wasn’t aware of the responsibility that you have as a director. I thought it was just as easy as making a film, putting it out there and that would be it. I had no idea I would have to break it down and justify it all over and over again.

It’s a fascinating story and I think everyone wants to know more about you.
Well, there will be a book. I’m going to start on that as soon as this is over. There’ll probably be two books: a pop culture coffee table book with pictures - a sort of non-linear amalgam of what you see in the film - and a memoir of some kind.

So how’s David (Jonathan’s long-term partner) coping with it all? Has he been able to travel with you?
He’s fine. He’s been able to come with me sometimes, but he leads a much more normal life. He has the life I had just before this happened, which was kind of just getting by in New York. He’s waiting tables, he’s a student and he’s also freelancing as a gardener on the weekend. I actually envy his life. To tell you the truth I sometimes wish I could turn this off and be a little more normal for a while.

It must be hard adjusting to suddenly being famous.
It’s been a major culture shock, especially with this kind of subject matter because it inevitably becomes like constant therapy. I didn’t realise that would happen until the first Q&A at the Sundance Film Festival - I wasn’t prepared for the questions at all. I don’t know what I was thinking, but people were asking me questions like, “Why did you cast this person?” or “How are you doing?” or “How’s your mother doing?”

After watching the film I was desperate to know what was happening now and how Renee was.
She’s in London for the first time. I had to get her out of Texas for a little while.

How difficult was it going through the old photos and video clips?
From a technical standpoint it was very challenging. I digitised everything and I had to basically edit my life. There was a big disassociative factor to that and I had to justify myself as a film-maker and look at my life and my family from a film-maker’s point of view - while remaining true to my heart and my personal sensibility.

Although you’re laying your whole life bare, you still used distancing devices such as text captions instead of a voiceover, for instance. (Jonathan has depersonalisation disorder, which leaves the sufferer with a feeling of panic and disassociation to everyday events).
It’s safer to refer to myself as a third person and have no voiceover. I thought a voiceover might be a little cheesy and be the icing on the cake if anyone was going to accuse me of narcissism, which they have done before. I wanted to allow the text to serve as its own distant character in a way.

The first cut of the film had a very different and ambiguous ending. My grandfather pulls out a gun and shoots me in the head.

Why did you change it?
After he killed me the film went into impressionistic hybrid mode. I end up in an esoteric place with David and we’re in heaven, we’re both naked and he’s an angel. That was my first idea for the pay-off that my grandfather’s talking about in the interview at the end. But I decided I wanted to preserve this idea as a metaphor for healing by keeping it more on this plain of existence. Two days before I went to the Sundance Film Festival I changed the ending.

Wow. I’m might need to analyse this new information and come back and ask more questions!
(Laughing) God. I hope I’m making sense. I’m absolutely manic right now.

Did straight men chat you up when you were dressed as a Goth girl?
No. I just went to the gay new wave places, which were a haven for me. The dressing up got me into the clubs.

Do you feel that you’ve found a sense of peace and normality in your life now?
I do feel normal now. I still have lots of responsibilities towards my family and I’m looking after my mum and my grandfather now who has Alzheimer’s. Because of the notoriety of the film the state of Texas has put a magnifying glass on my family and they wanted to take my grandfather’s property and put him in a nursing home. So I had to go down and stop that, so I’m based in Texas again. I’m only in London for a short while, but I love London. The people are really wonderful here.

I’ll be in Texas until maybe July. I’m trying to get my grandfather’s life up to speed and then my mother and I will probably go back to New York and then I’ll start my next project…

Which is?
(Laughing) Oh. I can’t really say what it is.

You’re such a tease.
I know, I know. I can sort of generalise it though. I’m taking three major motion pictures that were all made in succession between 1973 and 1977 and that all star one actress,  who I can’t name yet - but she’s one of my favourite actresses. I want to re-augment and re-mix the films into a new two-hour film that will tell a different story. David Lynch is going to produce it and I’m really excited about that.

Does the actress in question know?
I think she does, but I think she’s cool. It’s the studios that will be problematic. It would be the same principle as rap artists sampling songs in a broader, more grandiose way.

What about your project called Fat Girls?
Oh, I did it already. I was only acting in it and I wanted to help out a friend of mine. It was an antidote to Tarnation. I wanted to do something else to clear my head. It was fun. I played a lascivious musical theatre teacher who ends up seducing a frumpy 18-year-old guy. It’s very strange and it reminded me of an early John Waters film.

John Cameron Mitchell said he thought that being gay was probably your saviour and that not fitting in pushed you into finding other people who were like you. Do you agree with that?
I think so too. I don’t know if this is a judgmental statement, but I couldn’t imagine dealing with what I grew up with as a straight male in Texas. I don’t really know if it was me being gay that was my saving grace, but I think if I’d been pushed a little more to the left or a little more to the right it would have been a very different situation for me.

Read our review of Tarnation.

Tarnation opens at the Curzon Soho, UGC Shaftesbury Avenue, Ritzy, Barbican, The Gate and other key cities on 22 April 2005.

Tarnation MultiMedia: Featurette

Buy the DVD of gay summer of love flick Presque Rien online and save yourself some money to put towards Beau Travail, Drole De Felix and  Ma Vie.