It’s been 12 years since Griffin’s last film. The reasons for the gap are complex: depression, writer’s block, working on others’ projects for money, teaching and adjusting to digital technology.

The idea for It Pains Me To Say This emerged in late 2003. “I immediately drew a thumbnail,” says Griffin, “of two simple characters dwarfed by a huge speech balloon with the word ‘cunt.’ I then wrote a short circular narrative of remorse, confession, guilt and aggression, which folded in the distracting idea of an unreliable narrator.”

Griffin then created an animatic of the work and showed it to his students at the Pratt Institute to illustrate how to develop a storyboard into an animatic with a scratch track. Griffin then showed the film to his wife Karen. “She was aghast,” remembers Griffin, “and thought I needed to rethink the misogynistic tone. She thought I was making a statement about our marriage.”

Regardless, Griffin was happy with his 1 1/2- minute film. “I liked the story's simple symmetrical structure, play with words, dramatic reversal and was keenly aware of its regressive, transgressive impact.”

Among the weapons in Griffin’s arsenal of linguistic violence is the word, “cunt.” “The Anglo-Saxon ‘c-word,’” says Griffin, “still retains a taboo aura in polite discourse, particularly in classrooms with speech codes, if not in literary novels and theatre. So, because I pretend to be a gentleman I was probably attracted to the linguistic gutter as a diversion, but, let's face it, words DO matter, no matter if I take delight in pillorying that opinion. It was a return to the genitalian point of view, a theme I last used in The Club.”

Feeling that his “little film was emotionally incomplete,” Griffin decided to add his panel of “nattering nabobs,” who would attempt to explain the short film-within-a-film. The completed film runs about 10 minutes.

Don’t assume Griffin uses his characters to discover himself. The author is not totally free or truthful, he cautions. He is like an actor and the stage gives him license to lie, cheat, kill or die.

Linguistic exploration aside, Pains Me also examines the notion of identity. In many of his films, Griffin has inserted himself directly into the film as a main character (usually as the so-called ‘squareman’). Naturally, there is a tendency for the viewer to assume that the character is really just a surrogate for Griffin. However, like the work of, for example, writer Philip Roth – who often writes in first person through his alter ego, Nathan Zukerman or, as in Operation Shylock, actually has a character named Philip Roth – Griffin often blurs the lines between character and creator. Identity, as Griffin shows through Ken, is a constantly shifting and contradictory motion. It is fluid, not fixed.

“Every character animator,” says Griffin, “is a frustrated actor and uses his own body as a model for facial and figural gestures. ‘Acting out’ with a pencil, comes naturally. It wasn't until I saw Frank Film in 1972 that I could imagine speaking directly through film in a stylized, confessional mode. In a sense animation protects me because we know it's a synthetic construction, not a truthful document.”

Griffin also cautions me when I ask him if he uses his characters as a way of discovering himself. “It would be a mistake to assume that the author is either free, totally truthful or that he just wants to ‘find’ himself. When I draw the ‘squareman,’ no matter what I call him, I’m acting; the stage gives me complete, irresponsible license to lie, cheat, kill, die, perform all manner of depravity or even discuss the deeper issues of my own psyche.”