Look around the art house scene, and you’ll see them.

Young, pretentious, high-minded directors; dressing in expensive blazers and dating gorgeous actresses, winning praise from critics while confusing audiences with talky, angsty, and usually boring films that go nowhere for two hours.

Those who have seen writer-director Tod Williams’ 1998 debut “The Adventures of Sebastian Cole” might put the 35-year-old Williams in that same talented, though often detestable, camp. Williams even has the dress code down; when we meet high above the Chicago skyline in early June, the messy-haired Williams is wearing a ratty sweater with a hole near the collarbone, revealing a red undershirt which, conveniently, matches his red socks.

This is, of course, the hipster’s paradox: is this hole the result of years of wear and tear, or rather an opportune “accident?” As soon as I saw Williams, I doubted his appearance. This guy was married to Famke Janssen for five years. There’s no excuse for him to have a hole in his sweater.

I’d seen a thousand Tod Williams’ at record stores. But I never figured someone who looked like this could make as compelling and mature a film as Williams has with his second feature, “The Door in the Floor.”

Based on part of John Irving’s bestseller “A Widow for One Year,” Williams draws his film from the novel’s opening section, which concerns successful children’s author Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges) and his troubled relationship with his wife Marion (Kim Basinger) as they both struggle over the death of their two sons years before.

As Williams himself describes the film, “It’s a loss of innocence, but it’s not so much the sickly sweet loss of innocence, it’s also the fact that maybe as we get older we become basically assholes to one another, if we’re not careful.”

When Williams approached Irving in 2000 about the film, the novelist, somewhat infamous for his indifference to the cinema (who can blame him, after the uneven adaptations of “The World According to Garp” and “Hotel New Hampshire,” as well as the disaster that was “Simon Birch,”) gave Williams the rights to the novel for free.

This unique relationship with Irving is part of what makes Williams one of the most “literary” filmmakers around. “Sebastian Cole” may have seemed like a typical teen-oriented indie dramedy, but through the lens of “The Door in the Floor,” it is a logical precursor to the uneasy restraint and natural drama Williams elicits in his latest film.

“I think that my primary interest in film is still content. … Considerations of style are totally secondary,” Williams calmly says.

“The movie is very classical in style,” Williams stresses, showing a level of enthusiasm he has otherwise held back in our interview. “Everything is lush and composed, and I tried to make it feel as much like a classic, elegant movie, and within that is a nasty, unresolved, complicated human mess.”

I’m willing to forgo Williams’ claim that his film is “lush” and “composed” — mainly because he’s right. When discussing another formal element of his film — the terrific score, by Marcelo Zarvos — Williams again articulates his filmmaking philosophy.

“I wanted (the music) to be emotional without being manipulative. … So many movies are overly manipulative, and I believe in what Ted Cole is telling Eddie when he says you need to prepare an audience for something.”

Towards the end of our interview, Williams and I talk about the Ted Cole character, terrifically portrayed by Bridges. Williams defends Cole’s lack of creativity by noting, “He has the permascruff.” Williams rubs his own unshaven face. “That’s always the sign of a true fraud. It conveys casual, like if I had this exact level of scruff always,” again, brushing his cheeks, “it conveys casual, but it requires maintenance.”

Suddenly, I admired that hole in Williams’ sweater. It may convey casualness, but this is no phony hipster. This is a storyteller, and just as I’ve decided his own permascruff is earned, so is that convenient hole. Now I just want to know the story behind it.

Scene Reporter Kyle Smith is a Communication junior. He can be reach at [email protected].