When Moritsugu was working on his lowbudget feature film "My Degeneration" in 1990 in San Francisco, he hired Davis. In her acting contract, she wrote that she could call Moritsugu at any hour and he would have to get her a sandwich.

"She would call me up at 4 a.m. ‘Chicken Sandwich!' " he said. "I'd have to clean out my car and pick her up and get her a chicken sandwich.

Those late-night and early-morning chicken runs brought the two together, and they're still making movies together almost 20 years later and are now New Mexicans.

Moritsugu is famous - or infamous, depending on whom you talk to - for his films that are all about the seedier side of life, from mods and rockers dueling it out to the dangers of fame and the underbelly of rock music. He got deep into filmmaking in pre-tech-boom San Francisco. The early 1990s were fertile ground for learning about life and the hardscrabble existence of street punks, rumblers and rock 'n' rollers.

"Rent was cheap. Everyone had a rock band. I was working at a record store," he said.

Then, he said, he started making movies on scratched-up 16 mm film, which gave his films a look as gritty as his scripts. His first major film, which has a title that's inappropriate for a family newspaper, ended up getting sold after it took him around the world, including the Cannes Film Festival. It also won the Best Feature Award at the 1995 New York Underground Film Festival.

"It was a (expletive)-up version of ‘West Side Story' and ‘Rebel Without a Cause,' " he said. "We're still making money. It screened at most major film festivals and at Cannes."

Since then, he's gone on to break as many rules as he could.

When Moritsugu was in his early 20s, he got a big break by winning a PBS scriptwriting competition to produce a film. The film, "Terminal U.S.A." caused quite a stir.

"For ‘Terminal,' I wrote it in one night and sent it in. It was like a big joke," he said.

He scribbled what he could on the application form and turned it in just under deadline. On the section of the application that asked where films were shown, "I took a Sharpie and wrote one big word: Worldwide." He wasn't lying.

"It was the only application that made the committee laugh," he said.

He made the semifinals and was paid $12,000 to finish the script, which the committee thought was already done.

"I quit my day job and wrote 60 pages in three days. I stayed up 60 hours straight," he said.

Though the committee accepted it, "Apparently, some didn't read the script," Moritsugu said.

"I'm Asian. Well, they think I do Asian movies. I did the craziest one-hour sitcom about the craziest family," he said.

"Terminal U.S.A." follows an Asian-American family that's struggling with modern issues, in a distinctly 1990s punk-rock way: The mom is drug addicted; the dad is a survivalist who threatens people; the son is in the closet; the daughter is the high school slut.

"I looked at blaxploitation. I looked at yellow wave. It worked, and it didn't," Moritsugu said. "A lot of traditional Asians were upset by it."

He thought of "Terminal" as a takeoff on films like "Shaft" or "Dolemite," with some "All In The Family," but not everyone got it, he said.

"It was one of seven in a series for PBS. Mine was the weirdest, and it was funny. I was pushing the envelope trying to get crazy (expletive) on TV," he said. "For a while we thought we were going to get a lawsuit. The producer said, ‘Let's work it. This is our publicity.' "

The film came at a time when National Endowment for the Arts funding was coming into question for funding controversial work, and "Terminal" was held up as an example of arts money being used to fund controversial projects.

Regardless, Moritsugu has finished six feature films, and several shorts, and has more scripts lying around that he's eager to make, now as a New Mexican.

His last film, 2003's "Scumrock," also won Best Feature at the New York Underground Film Festival, as well as Best Feature at the Chicago Underground Film Festival and host of other awards. But the last few years saw the couple move back to Moritsugu's native Hawaii and to Washington state, but nothing clicked. The pair decided New Mexico, which had started to pop up on the film world's radar, was the place.

"I was writing but it wasn't going anywhere. We weren't vibing or clicking" in other places, he said. "Plus, there's all the Hollywood stuff going on in Albuquerque."

Now, Moritsugu is trying to find a producer for his new untitled horror script and for a short film.

It wasn't the state's incen tive programs that brought Moritsugu here. Instead, it was fond memories of a vacation here 15 years ago.

"Hawaii was doing the same thing," with incentives, he said. "It's nice to have the government on your side for once. It's great and I factored that into the move."'

"I feel a kindred vibe with Hawaii. The desert air sometimes smells like saltwater," he said.

And, there's a Burger King on St. Francis Drive.

See Moritsugu's films "Scumrock" and "Fame Whore" for free at www.youtube.com. The films are for mature audiences.