Lou Pucci: so who is this show-stopping former song-and-dance kid who is about to become cultdom's latest rave?

For someone who's currently starring in two of the year's most offbeat and oddly titled indie flicks--The Chumscrubber and Thumbsucker--20-year-old Lou Pucci's acting career got off to a normal enough start. His parents asked him to give it a shot, and, like the good Catholic boy they raised him to be, he minded them. At the age of 15 Pucci landed a part in the Broadway production of The Sound of Music, but instead of pursuing a career in the floodlights, the young actor took on a memorable role as an abused teen in Rebecca Miller's Personal Velocity (2002). And though he plays the titular character in Thumbsucker--directed by Mike Mills and co-starring Tilda Swinton, Vince Vaughn, and Keanu Reeves as a New-Age orthodontist--Pucci manages to maintain a fairly normal existence in New Jersey, shunning the indie-kid-on-the-rise lifestyle. Here, he talks to fellow traveler on the edge, Selma Blair.

SELMA BLAIR: Hey, Lou!

LOU PUCCI: HI, Selma. What's up?

SB: Well, we're doing a lot of work at my house right now, and everything's all in boxes, but I found the IV and took an extension cord and put it in the back yard, and I set up a blanket and watched your movie last night. And I loved it. It was like a private drive-in movie for me and my dog, Wink.

LP: I've always wanted to build a drive-in movie theater. I swear to God, I always wanted to make a bowling alley and a drive-in movie theater because they don't have them anywhere anymore.

SB: I know! They're incredible. They're the most romantic, huge, scary-looking things. You drive by them in the daytime, and they're always abandoned and weird. I've actually never been to a drive-in movie. Ever.

LP: Man, you missed something. Don't worry, I'm gonna build one someday.

SB: You're gonna have to do really big-budget films and make tons of cash, because that's a major plot of land you'll have to buy.

LP: It'll take a long time, but I don't have to do huge-budget films to do it.

SB: Well, if you build it ...

LP: They will come. [both laugh]

SB: I will come at least.

LP: They don't make as much money because they don't have as many theaters. That's their whole problem.

SB: Yeah, I'm sure they're not cost-efficient at all, which is how everything is made and built these days, it seems. So, everyone would just have to go to one theater.

LP: You don't have to have just one screen. That's my point.

SB: But think how much land you're going to have to buy! You're going to have to do it in Siberia to make it affordable.

LP: That's not true.

SB: Lou, thank God you're an actor and a magician instead of a businessman, because I don't think that things are going to go your way.

LP: Look, you have to find the space. Then you make an octagon of screens, right?

SB: Okay.

LP: And then you have all the people on every piece of the octagon looking at their side of the screen. Radio transmissions are going into each side of the eight screens.

SB: Okay.

LP: You have an eight-screen drive-in movie theater right there. Just off the top of my head.

SB: Okay, but think about the huge plot of land. It's going to have to be bigger than a crop circle. This is what everyone says about me: I'm always the fly in the ointment. [both laugh] I'm just playing devil's advocate because I want you to be the angel that rises above. So, Lou, please make the octagon drive-in. I'll be there. Unfortunately, by the time you can afford that plot of land, no one is going to be able to afford a car to come watch the movies.

LP: That's what you think.

SB: [laughs] Please prove me wrong.

LP: I'm gonna win this one. I'm going to give you a drive-in movie theater.

SB: [laughs] Look how close we've become already.

LP: I know.

SB: Well, the first thing that struck me watching your movie last night was when your character's mom, played by the lovely Tilda Swinton, was writing about her most distinctive feature. It was a thread that stayed with me through the whole film: What are our most distinctive features? So, I was wondering what you think your most distinctive feature is.

LP: Man, I got no idea. Maybe it's like at the end of the film, when my character learns that there is no such thing as a "most distinctive feature"--that you shouldn't care about how or why people are judging you. Because if you're doing that, you're just going to lie to people by trying to make them feel happy or feel better about looking at you. You should really just tell them the truth, no matter what the hell your distinctive feature is.

SB: Right. Well, you do such a wonderful job capturing the awkwardness of that stage of growing up. You captured a certain sensitivity. It was really poetic and clear.

LP: That's just so Mike Mills. He has the power to make it so coherent.

SB: Was it easy acting out his words?

LP: It was so easy it was ridiculous. Because all he did was let you trust him, and he trusted you. The only thing you have to do is let the director keep you on a path, and if you have that you almost can't go wrong.