Punk and proud: with his new picture, Punks, writer-director Patrik-Ian Polk awakens gay films to an African-American perspective. (film).

"Hold on one second." That's how Punks writer-director Patrik-Ian Polk, 28, answers most of my questions over brunch at the Griddle Cafe in West Hollywood, Calif. He's not stalling, just multitasking. He takes calls on his cell phone during our interview because he's also overseeing the final sound mix of his fun and frothy gay romantic comedy, which charts the angst and drama of lovelorn Marcus (Seth Gilliam), a young professional black man, and his three romantically challenged friends, including a drag queen with a thing for Sister Sledge ("We Are Family"). Think Sex and the City with a deep tan.

Before malting Punks for less than $1 million, Polk, a Hattiesburg, Miss., native, graduated from Brandeis University, dropped out of the University of Southern California film school, and developed films at MTV Films and for R&B songster Babyface. That multitasking is no joke: Polk also wrote and performs three songs on his film's soundtrack.

I didn't realize that we, as gay black men, were reclaiming the word punk, like queer, as a political statement.

We are with this movie! When I was writing it, I didn't have a title. I was telling my friend about it, and he asked, "What's it about?" I said, "A bunch of punks," and he said, "Then that's what you call it--Punks." It was perfect, because I'm from Mississippi, and my understanding of the term was that it literally meant a gay man. I can remember going to a distant relative's house, and this really small little girl, with not a trace of malice, said, "Is you a punk?" So, hopefully, gay men will start to embrace that term.

Would you say you wrote this movie out of frustration with what passes for gay cinema?

There had been a surge of those gay independent movies, like Lie Down With Dogs. It was all white gay men and no people of color or one--marginalized--person of color, I had seen the latest one of those, and I thought, Someone should tell the other side of this story--I'll write a script. So over Christmas break from MTV in 1996 I wrote the script in, like, eight days. I got really good feedback, but I really didn't do anything with it.

Until Babyface decided to back it. Still, a lot of brand-name distributors, like Miramax and Lions Gate, took a pass. How did that make you feel?

I thought, They're really stupid. They keep making the same gay movie over and over. How often can you see a group of white men go on a vacation on Fire Island or see a white teenage boy coming out of the closet? You would think that they would get it. A fresh take on this could break the bank a little. You would think that they would say, "E. Lynn Harris is a best-selling novelist. Straight black women are eating those books up." Another angle to market [Punks] is to that daring part of the straight black community that's going to be, "A black film? We'll go see it; we don't care if it's gay." No [distributor] is smart enough to say, "This film didn't cost a lot of money; let's put it out there and hope for the best."

And what about your romantic life?

What about it? Luckily, now there's not much of one to talk about. I am single. Completely. L.A.'s tough if you're not a big, black, beautiful buck with bulging muscles, and even then, there are plenty of white guys that are like, "Oh, I don't date black men," and they think that's just as OK as saying "I don't like oranges." I don't know how we got to the place where we think it's OK to say, "I'm not attracted to this race of people." It's just so absurd to me. And if you call out the racism in it, they get so offended, like you accused them of marching in a KKK rally. If you're black and you go to a club in West Hollywood, you may as well be the invisible man.

Your hero, Marcus, has a crush on his hot neighbor, Darby, played by Rockmond Dunbar [see below]. Who can blame him? But Darby does have a girlfriend.

Marcus doesn't pursue Darby at all. He's Darby's friend. Marcus has a theory that if he feels a real emotional connection with a guy, then he can't be straight. That's his theory. So when Marcus says, "I'm attracted to someone," he means something in emotional territory that means a connection, where you talk and start to feel it. I believe those kind of attractions, between straight people, gay people, whatever, are genuine and real. If you relax yourself enough, you can go there.

Do you believe in Marcus's theory? Oh, I do. Hell, yeah! That's my theory too!

Jones writes the Movie Scoop column for E! Online.