A First for Fred Durst

The best movie I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival this year was The Education of Charlie Banks, a tense but thoughtful coming-of-age movie about a nervous preppie (The Squid and the Whale's Jesse Eisenberg) locked in a friendly but dangerous tug-of-war with a New York City tough (Jason Ritter) at a college in upstate New York in the early '80s. And there's nothing in that sentence that prepares you for this one: The movie is the directorial debut of Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst.

To repeat: the guy who sang ''I did it all for the nookie,'' and bragged about bedding Britney Spears has just made an excellent first movie. Last week, during the festival, Durst spent an afternoon getting a tattoo involving a plasma laser and a demonic alien at the Manhattan studio of the ''King of Rock Tattoos'' artist Paul Booth. On a break from the tat table, and shirtless, Durst quietly answered a few questions about wanting to be a director, not wanting to be a rock star anymore, and getting older and reading the newspaper.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When people at the festival talked to you about Charlie Banks, did everybody mention how surprised they were that you — the frontman for Limp Bizkit — made this coming-of-age movie?
FRED DURST: Yeah, everybody's really surprised. It's a ''complisult'' — an insult and a compliment at the same time.

What's been your experience at the festival?
I love it! I've always wanted to make movies. And it's obvious to talk about the negativity that I've had in my life, but I'm really hoping this festival experience can help some of that disappear. I'm evolving.

So you consider this a fresh start?
Yeah, that's how I've had to see it for years now. How can you stay at the same place in your life? When you're a kid, you see your parents reading the newspaper and you're like, ''God, why are they reading the newspaper?'' When you're young, you're not reading the newspaper. But there comes a time in your life when the newspaper's cool.

What changed for you? What made you want to start reading the newspaper?
You know, in my music career there was a moment where the irony was just so heavy. There were people in my audience that were the reason I developed neuroses. These people that tortured my life were using my art, my poetry, as fuel for them, to torture other people.

What do you mean?
I was a kid who got picked on in school and got beat up by popular, athletic soccer-type people. Then I was looking in the crowds [at shows], and some real people were getting pounced on, pounded by those guys.

And you were feeling like you were helping facilitate that?
Yeah. It felt like this was wrong, and those people were misinterpreting [the music]. They weren't listening.

Was there one event at one show that did it for you?
No, no. It's like relationships. When people divorce after 25 years, sometimes it's just been developing [for a while].

And you wanted to make movies before you were ever in a band, right?
Yeah, yeah. I've always wanted to make movies.

And the whole time you were doing music you were thinking about making a film? You directed videos?
Yeah, but for labels picking singles that should have never been seen...I'm proud of the videos and stuff, but it wasn't the same as being able to make a movie.

Were you trying to make movies the whole time? Did you come close?
I got a few offers — some horror films, a couple of cheesy bad-teen exploitation marketing failures. That's the part where people can't understand my logic, but I just don't wanna direct movies that aren't timeless.

NEXT PAGE: Durst on the best advice he got from David Fincher