Here's the story: Two boys, passing a dull summer in a small town, become obsessed with a comic book. The comic, titled "The Raftman," has a simple premise: we see a disheveled man, dressed in a shirt and tie, floating alone out at sea on a raft. In every issue, he shaves-ominously scraping a straight-edge razor against his neck-thinks one cryptic, philosophical thought, and then slouches motionless through the rest of the comic. The tension of waiting for the Raftman to do something different, or to end it all with a stroke of the razor, keeps the boys coming back for every issue while we watch them in comic vignettes, blowing their last pre-adolescent summer-until one day, the plot twist they've been waiting for ruins everything.

At the back of the theater, my own geek friends and I couldn't stop laughing. The film was strange but real, and so familiar it was painful and funny at the same time. And we weren't the only ones who loved it: The Raftman's Razor won Best Short Drama when it played the New Hampshire Film Expo (NHFX) last fall, and this week it takes a shot at the big leagues: out of 3,887 submissions, Raftman is one of 88 short films that'll compete in this year's Sundance Festival.

Short films are often made by newcomers and amateurs, and as Raftman's director and co-writer Keith Bearden explains, "We did it just to show off our talents. The whole point was to show at festivals and be taken seriously as a filmmaker of some capacity." Raftman is the first film Bearden's made since college. Based in New York City, he's had several show-business jobs-writing and producing for VH1, the Independent Film Channel and the Children's Television Workshop-and on his own, he's written screenplays with his friend Joel Haskard, who co-wrote Raftman. But he believes that a violent experience finally pushed him to make his own movie.

"I got mugged really severely about three years ago," says Bearden. "They were debating whether to kill me as I was blacking out. And I got out of that, and I got out of the hospital, and I would just lie in bed, and I was telling my girlfriend, 'That could have killed me. What is my life at this point? What have I done with my life?' And that led to me going, 'I've got to make a movie! The next time, this may happen, it may be happening for real, they might kill me!' And a month later I approached Brad and Sharon-my producer Brad Buckwalter and his wife, our effects director, Sharon Eagan-and I was just like, 'You guys always wanted to make movies, let's make movies.' Three months later we started on the project."

Out of several scripts, including an idea about "a homeless guy that develops a device out of junk that makes all cell phones explode," they settled on Raftman.

"Joel's original concept for the Raftman was that he was Picasso," Bearden says. "And I was like, 'Hmm, fuck that.' The Raftman to me was always this sad, middle-aged office worker ... a bitter, middle-aged comic book writer who draws this comic, which is basically like what a lot of people have waiting for them in their middle ages-you're going to be an office worker, you're going to be alone, and your life is going to be an empty ritual. It's just hopeless, it's like you're just going to be this non-entity wage slave. And that's what the Raftman is. And I think the kids get into it because they're like the puppetmaster with the puppet. They can see this future, they're voyeurs on it, and they're not yet part of it."

Like most short films, The Raftman's Razor was completely self-financed. Bearden, who by day works "in research for a large corporate publishing behemoth," scraped together the budget working two jobs. He made the film for "dirt ass cheap," with volunteer labor and an unpaid cast; indie electronica band M?m wrote the music for free, and cartoonist Tim Lane drew the handful of illustrations that make up the comic book. Bearden's crew spent five eventful days shooting in Washington state.

"When you shoot in a major urban area, nobody wants to help you out, because they're very jaded, and they're savvy, and they know that you're making money. They'll want money, too," Bearden says. "So Washington was a different story. We could go into a drug store and say, 'We like your drug store, can we film here?' And they didn't even know who we were, they were like, 'Sure.' And then we're like, 'Can you open up on Sunday, when you're not open?' 'Oh, sure!' Again, it's the movie thing. My advice for anyone who wants to pull a scam is just tell people you're making a movie. It works like a charm."

He was also surprised at the response to his auditions. A 12-year-old girl and her father even drove eight hours from the California border.

"A lot of people who want to be actors are also models, so a lot of those people were totally useless because I don't think models look like reality. And it's funny, the tall kid (in the film, Dylan Cole)-I knew I was going to use him because one of the exercises I had all the boys do was, 'dance around like you're excited.' And a lot of the kids did this football spiking NFL touchdown move, and I was like, 'Fuck that, this kid doesn't like sports, he's a misfit who reads comic books and hangs out with a kid two years younger than him!' But the big tall kid did the Charleston, this weird little '20s dance, and I was like, 'Okay, you're weird. You can be in my movie.'"

The shoot was followed by a more leisurely three months on computer animation. After all that, the finished film comes in at just under eight minutes.

The Raftman's Razor premiered at a private screening in New York City, held primarily for "industry people" (two showed up). Since then, it's played three festivals, starting with New Hampshire's.

According to Nicole Gregg, director of development for NHFX, Raftman beat out "hundreds" of other shorts to appear in the festival, where it went on to win Best Short Drama. "It stood out to all of us, the quality, the insight," recalls Gregg. "It definitely was just one of those shorts that just seemed so intriguing and unique."

"The short film is basically an example of the work or the potential that you have," says Gregg, "and by doing a short film and getting it into the festival circuit, you get your name out there, you get your work recognized, and you get to meet as many people as possible. (Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Cultural Resources) Van McLeod always says they call it show business for a reason ... and the business side is really what the festival circuit is about. And so you've got to get your festival circuit in order to really get your name out there and get your work recognized, because there really aren't any other outlets other than festivals to meet industry people."

But after that, the avenues for a short start to run out: while feature films can play in theaters, you'll rarely see a short film on the big screen. Raftman could end up on cable, on IFC or the Sundance Channel, and possibly in European theaters, which still show short films before the features.

Even a good short film may not be seen by more than a few hundred people, but all the downsides-the small market, the burden of self-financing-are also freedoms: Bearden and his associates had the chance to make exactly the film they wanted, to create something that would slip by the average corporate dreck to find viewers who would love it. In fact, Bearden is actually surprised that more filmmakers don't take advantage of that. "I'm shocked how fucking lame and half-baked a lot of [short films] are. People think that short films are just one joke. ... Like, I saw one a few years ago that actually did really well, which was women together in a public bathroom who are able to synchronize their pee, to make it like a rhythm. And it was nine minutes long. I mean it's kind of like something you joke about with your girlfriends when you've had a few drinks, but it's not a story.

"The amount of eccentrics and weirdos in popular culture, that used to really give it a lot of flavor, are gone. And people react really strongly to The Raftman's Razor because it's original."

Life remains lean after investing in Raftman-this past Christmas, he gave everyone soup-and if he hopes to get snatched up by Hollywood and live off the film industry, Bearden doesn't mention it. But he expects to make another film next year. "A friend of mine has this saying, which is, 'You are what you do repeatedly.' And making a movie every 10 years is not really repeatedly... . In 2006 I'll be shooting something new, even if it's just another thing I scrape money together myself for. You just have to do it." After all, what's the alternative-to keep drifting along, and hope that something'll happen?