Choosing his calling card out of his handful of short films is a puzzling task for young director Mike Miley. There's his 20-minute story of a self-mutilating housewife, Surface Calm, shown on Encore, Starz! and on networks in Latin America and Israel. The Bug Man, a performance-driven heart-warmer of a story, also comes to mind. For a more gritty and edgy representation of his talent, he could choose the quick cuts of the Esquire magazine project The Red Bow. Perhaps his greatest selling point could be the words "A Film By Mike Miley."

The Lafayette native and American Film Institute graduate isn't some hotshot director about to burst onto the marquee with a film about a natural disaster or a remake of a 1970s TV show or loaded with catchy, cool one-liners. He's not signed to the latest blockbuster release with a budget rivaling that of some cities. What sets Miley apart and makes his films worth noticing is the honest stories they contain. The choices, he says, and the consequences we face every day. There are no earthquakes, tidal waves or people with super powers, unless you count the ability to kill wood roaches with a single squirt of bug spray. And that is the way he likes it.

"In the current business climate, the things I am interested in doing and the stories I want to tell are not necessarily going to be those kind of blockbuster movies," says Miley on the phone from Hollywood. "To me the point of making movies is not the budget, the glitz, the glamour and the stars; to me it's about the story and what you are trying to say. I don't understand how people can go into the business with any other goal in mind. If you want to make money, there's a hell of a lot easier ways to get rich than making a movie."

His story-telling skills have paid off, as his movies have brought him accolades in both film competitions and in the pages of Esquire, where in September he was named one of its 20 filmmakers to watch. This Saturday, Oct. 2, he holds the Louisiana premiere of The Bug Man, and brings Surface Calm - shot in Lafayette - home at the Bayou Bijou.

"It's a Lafayette story ... It just seemed like the right thing to do," Miley says of The Bug Man. His homecoming and screening trip also doubles for business, as he needs to research New Orleans for a project he is tight-lipped about.

The director first discovered his craft while in high school at St. Thomas More. Miley, obsessed with movies and figuring himself for an actor, joined the drama club but found himself more drawn to coaching the younger actors.

"Around the same time, I got a video camera," he says. "I just started playing around and learning how to use it and how to edit stuff. I latched on to it from there." In senior year, he started an Acadiana Open Channel skit and film review show named Space Critics. After graduating in 1997, he headed down to the Crescent City's Loyola. Before finishing their English program summa cum laude, Miley canned two short films, Ghost Writers and Surface Calm. Still, he was looking past Loyola, as he had his eye set on another program - Los Angeles' American Film Institute.

AFI's two-year program is designed to give students hands-on movie-making experience, no matter if their choice is editing, producing or directing. The program stresses collaboration between students who have chosen separate disciplines. For directors, the first year is spent making movies strictly for the class to view and critique, and later they develop a script for the second year. In the second year, students create their thesis movie.

"The model is just about the closest thing to what making a movie in the real world is like. A lot of other schools, you go there and do everything yourself, and I didn't think it was really worthwhile ... To me, you can do that without going to school, so you might as well go somewhere where at least you are getting experience working with other people, because that is the only way you are going to get anything done."

When it came time to pick his script for year two, Miley reached back to his days at Loyola. While there, Miley caught two readings given by Louisiana writer Tim Gautreaux. At the time, he was scouting for ideas for a film that would become Surface Calm. Although he liked Gautreaux's work, one piece in particular stuck with him as something he could use when he had a larger cast. It was The Bug Man, a tale of an exterminator trying to reach out to the people in the houses he sprays. Month by month, he inches his way into the life of a widowed beauty queen and eventually sets her up with another client. He also finds himself disgusted by a trashy family's constant fighting. Before long, he finds himself having overstepped his boundaries.

"I thought it would be best as an AFI thesis film, because from the impression I have from them, it is the kind of project they like," says Miley. After wrapping the project, Miley screened it at more than 30 film festivals. The Bug Man took top honors at the DIY Film Festival in Los Angeles, the Tambay Film & Video Festival, WorldFest in Houston and the George Lindsey University of North Alabama Film Festival.

Miley doesn't do it on purpose, but in Surface Calm and The Bug Man there are ways for the quick-eyed and quick-witted viewer to see Lafayette connections in his work. Not only are there DeBaillon, Bergeron, Chauvin and Broussard surnames in the credits for Surface Calm, but in one scene the lead actress flips through a phone book. Because it was shot at his grandmother's house, on the cover is a blue-tinged picture of the heads in front of Lafayette's federal courthouse. In The Bug Man, the protagonist's last name is Robichaux. Behind the scenes, the ties to home are much tighter, as its funding came from Hub City patrons.

"It's extremely humbling. You can't really figure out why. ... It's like why do these people believe in me so much - some people who I haven't even met," says Miley.

Since AFI owns the project, funding for it comes from donations to the institute. That means, unlike Hollywood investments, all the money people poured into The Bug Man yield absolutely no results.

"I found it before hard enough to find people to put up money when they have a stake in it," Miley says. "But they are just giving you the money and don't expect anything back, so it's even more amazing that people gave money in that instance. I think it's just, people, especially at home, are really generous and just want to see people go off and do well and want to support that in any way they can. At that point it is just up to the person on the receiving end to go and do well."