Girl on Film

On a monitor, she shows the guys what they've filmed. Uncomfortable seeing themselves on the screen, the boys crack up and clown around. "It's hard to be up there on camera, but you just got to expect that a little bit," Evans tells them.

A day later, they shoot the film's opening scene at a group home in midtown. Crammed into an upstairs bedroom, Joe acts out getting dressed for the day while Evans crouches down with her camera.

On the porch, Brad and Tyrell film a scene in which Brad, the little brother, tries to convince his older brother that he can pull off a robbery. But Brad speeds through his lines.

"You got to put some periods in those sentences," Eric tells him.

When it comes time for his line, Brad nails the pause: "Aw, yeah ... I know just who you talkin' about."

Eric watches the two run through the scene, nodding as Brad hits the lines.

"Nice," Evans says.

"He got it," Eric says.

They move to another scene, one in which Damon and Brad agree to pull a lick together.

"Pretend like the camera ain't here," Eric directs. "Talk like you talk on the street."

Later, Winston tells the Pitch that Eric came into the class with a lot of anger. "He's just a kid who's been through a lot."

"When I first came in there, I was just wild," Eric says. "Couldn't nobody tell me nothing. But that's stupid."

Of the other teens, Eric says, "I did the same things they doing. So I feel like if they hear it from me, I'm only 16 years old, maybe they'll take to it more."

Now he's taking GED classes at Penn Valley Community College. He's also busing tables at a restaurant on the Plaza. And he's applying to colleges — he wants to go to Bethune-Cookman in Daytona Beach, Florida. He hopes to study architecture or construction and carpentry.

From Evans, he is learning how to make scripts and storyboards.

"She let us make the movie how we wanted it," Eric says. "The story that we wrote, that could be the story of somebody's life. Those things happen every day."

Evans had planned to quit her gig with Sentenced to the Arts, which she has been involved with for four years. "I just have so much shit going on," she says. There's also her job at Mario Tricoci and a couple of other film projects. She makes a little money from Sentenced to the Arts, but her time is spread too thin.

Still, after Pullin' Licks is finished, she signs on for another session. It seems Evans has more than a love of film in common with these kids. Evans has Googled Larry Tebben's name, searching for clues about her father.

The idea to film her search for him came to Evans during lunch with filmmaker Barbara Hammer, who was in town for the Kansas International Film Festival in September 2005.

Evans told Hammer that she'd never met her father, and Hammer (an internationally known pioneer in independent and lesbian filmmaking) talked about the importance of recording family histories. Evans tossed out the name Stalking Daddy. It was a joke, but the idea stuck.

For research, Evans rented Be Good, Smile Pretty, a documentary about 32-year-old Tracy Droz Tragos' quest to learn more about her father, who was killed in an ambush on the Mekong Delta when Tragos was three months old. The film takes Tragos from Berkeley, California, to her father's hometown in Rich Hill, Missouri, near Butler in the southwestern part of the state.

Evans watched the film but fell asleep before it ended. She returned the DVD. Then a Video Mania clerk called. "Hey, Lisa, we got the case but no movie," he said.

Evans figured she might as well finish watching the film.

Afterward, she checked her e-mail. Up popped a message from a name she recognized, with the subject line "Hello."

Evans read the note in disbelief. "Lisa, my name is Larry. I live near Austin, Texas. Do you know who I am? Do you wish to communicate?"

Evans thought a friend was messing with her. "Did you think this would be funny?" she wrote in an angry reply.

After she thought about it, Evans sent another e-mail asking Tebben for more information.

He wrote back, telling her how he'd met her mother and explaining that he'd found her through her Web site (www.indyoutties.com). They exchanged e-mails and finally talked on the phone a couple of times.

Evans felt torn. She hadn't heard many positive things about Tebben, but when she talked to him, he seemed like a nice guy.

Evans told Tebben that she was making a movie about meeting her biological father for the first time. He agreed to let her record their conversations.

"I was nervous because I was on camera, too," Evans says. "But we pretty much didn't delve too far into things with those conversations. We've taken things slow."

The two agreed to meet in late October, with Evans' camera rolling.

By mid-November, Evans had returned from Texas. The leap from auteur to subject had been a struggle.