Star Magazine’s 2008 Emerging Artists

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By being evasive, by not looking directly at his subject, Matheny gives weight and plausibility to a proposition that in other hands could quickly descend into camp.

“It’s what you don’t see that’s scary,” the 23-year-old filmmaker says. “It’s what your mind creates.”

Here’s the real kicker: “The Scientist” was made for about $120. Most of the money went into a lab coat for the title character and odds and ends from Home Depot that double as medical equipment.

Long a movie fan, Matheny started making his own films while a student at Gardner-Edgerton High School: “Me and my buddies made movies in the backyard … fight scenes, stuff like that.”

He’s enrolled at Avila but says he’s not sure whether he’s a junior or a senior. It’s about making movies, Matheny says, not counting credits, and he has spent most of his college career holding a camera, often as a crew member on the films of his mentor, Meade.

Now he’s editing his latest, a feature called “My Stepdad’s a Freakin’ Vampire.” Unlike the bargain-basement “Scientist,” “Stepdad” will cost nearly $70,000. Matheny went deep into debt on his credit cards, but his father and namesake, Gardner chiropractor David Matheny, has promised to pay them off.

“He believes in me more than I believe in me,” marvels Matheny the Younger.

“Stepdad” should be ready for home video release by Halloween. Then Matheny will turn to a new project, which may have nothing at all to do with scary stuff.

“Horror is just part of the package,” he says. “Before I’m done I want to do a bit of everything.”

CHANNELING THE COMPOSERS

BY PAUL HORSLEY

The first thing to get past is the pronunciation of his name.

After that, Behzod Abduraimov seems like any other good-natured 17-year-old. He has a quick wit, an infectious laugh and dark eyes that burn with intensity.

But BECH-zod (with a mildly guttural “ch”) Ab-du-ra-EE-moff is no ordinary kid. He’s one of the most remarkable pianists of his generation.

The Uzbekistan native has been performing on the stage since elementary school.

He’s performed the Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1 with orchestra “like 20 times.”

In recent weeks he sailed to easy victories at two competitions in Texas, most notably the Corpus Christi International Piano Competition.

He could have studied with any teacher in the world but instead of Juilliard or Berlin he decided to study at Park University with Van Cliburn gold medalist and Park professor Stanislav Ioudenitch.

“My whole family played piano,” says the Tashkent native and undergraduate, who learned English lickety-split after arriving here a little more than a year ago.

His family is Muslim, like 88 percent of Uzbekistanis. His mother, Gulsun, taught him and his three siblings piano, starting Behzod at age 5.

His father, Abdurazzak, was a physicist who taught at the university in Tashkent and invented a car that ran on oxygen.

When Behzod was 10, his father died suddenly of a heart attack.

His 11th birthday was on Sept. 11, 2001.

His mother had prepared the traditional lamb pilaf for his birthday dinner. His sister came home suddenly, upset: “Turn on the TV.” The fall of the World Trade Center put a pall on dinner.

There were other twists along the way. He suffered severe food allergies from birth, which caused his skin to break out in oozing rashes for years.

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Trussell is The Star’s theater critic. Finn is The Star’s pop music writer. Butler is The Star’s movie editor. Horsley is The Star’s classical music and dance critic. Thorson is The Star’s art critic. Lybarger is a free