Which he cops to, immediately. As the film “;Dirty Hands”; makes clear, Choe is well aware of his own limitations regarding institutionalized behavior. The irony, of course, is that he's a guy for whom jail time is the same as hell, and yet what he does lands him there—to stew, to ferment and eventually to burst.

By phone from New York, Choe's current base camp, the artist turned out to be charming, introspective and really a lot of fun.

“;It is New York, but it's the dark, mysterious part of Chinatown,”; mused Choe. “;But I've only spent two months here in the past six, because I love to travel. It's my only vice!”;—even he chuckles at that—“;Nonstop travel is the way to go. My favorite place right now is Vietnam, which is like New York in that it's chaotic, has its own energy. I love chaos! And I'm notoriously bad at planning a trip.

“;I want to see everything, so I just go, get there any way I can—hop a freight car, bum a ride on an airplane, hitchhike—and worry about surviving after I get there. I'm lucky, now I get to go places and get paid to paint there. But I'm more used to doing it in the middle of the night, by myself, not with a thousand people watching.”;

Choe's referring to his days as a dedicated graffiti artist, tagging public property at night and paying the bills by day by burglary, shoplifting and forgery, which, he admits, he has a talent for.

“;There are more artists out there with mental problems today than they'll ever admit,”; noted Choe. “;More problems than me! They'd feel better if they knew it.”;

Some of Choe's demons were exorcised with his groundbreaking graphic novel “;Slow Jams,”; the creation of which was lonely and all-consuming, the opposite of knocking out a big mural whilst patrons applaud. “;Comics take so much time and thought. They involve a tremendous amount of introversion. You have to have a crazy love of artistic freedom to lock yourself in a room to create an entire universe in a comic. But I eventually made 'Slow Jams' and got a grant to publish it.

“;I took it to the San Diego Comic Con, and this hair stylist, Johnny Granato, thought he could make a film about me. He thought I was a great artist! But real geniuses have bigger canvasses than a comic. He came by and started filming, following me around, shooting everything. He even filmed me checking my e-mail, He got like a hundred hours of ... whatever.

“;But then Harry Kim took it over, editing it all down at film school, paying for it all with gambling and credit cards. I should make a movie about him!”;

Did you learn anything about yourself from watching the movie?

“;I'm wondering if I'll ever learn my lesson.”;