SAVIOR OF A DAMSEL: Billy seeks his date.

Being an outsider in a small town isn’t easy. That’s what I thought until I watched 15-year-old Billy Price, the subject of Jennifer Venditti’s 2007 documentary, Billy the Kid. Then, the struggle through adolescence seemed impossibly awkward, filled with longing and sweaty palms.

Billy, who lives in Lisbon Falls, is almost an ordinary teenager. He talks about girls and his blue belt in karate. He plays electric guitar and rides his bike. But he’s alienated from his peers, takes special-education classes, and sprouts a velvety, pubescent mustache. He doesn’t fit in — a condition that runs more than skin deep.

Not that Billy seems concerned. The articulate teen talks constantly, sometimes without gauging the reactions of his listeners. In the film’s numerous vignettes, he comments on topics as diverse as Terminator 2, Robert Frost, and AC/DC. The more Billy talks, the more he distances himself from other kids who don’t seem familiar with his dated pop-culture references, or don’t, for that matter, care.

Something is not right. “I’m at war with myself,” he tells Venditti. In other monologues, he’s disconcertingly frank about his past, his abusive biological father, and his desire to protect women. “Unfortunately,” he says, “I’ve never been a savior of a damsel.”

That’s where the film’s action centers — Billy’s attempt to date a waitress, his very own damsel in distress. Sixteen-year-old Heather is a partially-blind girl at a nearby diner and she may possibly be the only person in the film more awkward than Billy. The only thing the two have in common appears to be a tendency to avoid eye contact. Before asking her out, Billy reassures her father, saying, “I’ve got issues too.”

Watching him lose his way through this doomed first love leaves us with the squeamish thought: How does anyone ever make it through high school?

The documentary, though, takes a compassionate look at Billy’s world. In the end, he seems like someone you know. And maybe that’s the problem. Some of the camera work is shaky; the film could almost be a well-edited home video. Here’s your bright, autistic brother who can’t resist performing for the camcorder or the Super-8.

Billy the Kid is Venditti's directorial debut, and she doesn’t really explain how she meet Billy (as the casting director for Carter Smith’s 2006 dramatic short Bugcrush), or what she finds so compelling about him. She rarely announces her presence. Which raises some questions about her lens: Does Billy’s mother discuss Van Gogh and Monet because she’s trying to impress an audience? How much of Billy’s guitar performance in his bedroom was exclusively for the filmmaker? When he goes on a date and a group of men applaud his actions, is what Billy says a prepared line or a frank confession?

Billy has reportedly called Venditti’s work “my film” and his film best captures the compelling dreams and realities in single well-edited shots. When Billy goes to the recreation center and tries talking to boys his age, trying so hard to fit in, the camera never leaves. It’s hard not to wince, not to want him to become the hero he is in his own mind. And Vendetti is not afraid to linger on the heroic Billy, pedaling down the streets of his hometown on a bicycle, rocking out in the back seat of her SUV, or sneaking down the street under the cover of night in his karate uniform.

In the end, he’s a unique kid we can care about and the documentary succeeds by allowing Billy to reveal himself. In that sense, the film is different than most. Maybe it’s a good thing not everything fits in.

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Peter Smith: portland-feedback@thephoenix.com