I met him at an art opening of his in October, 2002. It was far more modest than he had had in years past although I didn't know that at the time. I was really blown away by the art. I thought, "This guy's really good, and he's not some young art student. Did he just come from nowhere? Or has he been around?"

After meeting him there, I went down to his house which was very memorable. He lives in this old Victorian, and it's just crammed with paintings. I mean there's literally hundreds and hundreds of paintings in the basement, in bathrooms, in bedrooms and the attics. And as you go up into the house and the rooms become smaller they're crammed with paintings that are smaller. So he's spent a lot of time obsessively not just painting but placing all the paintings in his house. And then they sit there because they're not really getting sold.

So we had some beers and he was very theatrical and flamboyant, kind of a wild character who got wilder as the night went on. He had this star quality. He was bigger than life and very charming and funny and boastful, and yet he's basically living in obscurity. But it only took watching a few minutes of footage to see that he was a fascinating personality.

Chuck and his wife at the time had a digital camera, so she was able to film a lot of moments where he's out of control and yelling and they're having fights. And believe me there are a lot of more crazy moments that aren't in the film. They would mail me tapes and they wouldn't label any of them, so I would never know what I was about to watch. And some of it was truly crazy stuff.

Well, I think that the art does shine through. And I think the people at HBO recognized that immediately - that the art was as fascinating as the personality. Some people might say, "Well, because he's a great artist his bad behavior is sort of excused," and that seems unfair. One of the things that's fascinating about the film in my mind is if there's ever an example of a person whose psyche and soul are completely indistinguishable, it's Chuck. I think if you really get to know him, you see that the art and what he paints, what the subject matter of his painting is, and how he paints is completely him. He puts himself on the canvas all the time.

So I think the art shines through, but I really don't distinguish between the two. Does the art save his bad personality? Or is his bad personality a part of being an artist as he often claims? They are indistinguishable, and I think therefore you get great works of art that are tragic, that can be grotesque, that can be endearing, romantic, funny, horrifying. And that's basically describing his personality as well, not just describing the art.

Chuck's from the punk generation of the mid- late 70s downtown New York art scene, and so he has an inherent kind of anti-establishment personality. And unlike a lot of people from that generation who have since moved on to having families and actually making a lot of money, he sort of retained his inherent anti- establishment ways. He's remained a sort of rebellious character who lives outside of mainstream society. He's one of the last true American originals. And there aren't many people like that anymore.