` It's been a weird couple of years for Kampmeier, whose movie has been, well, dogged with scandal since the day it wrapped in Wilmington, NC, in July 2006. A local conservative radio talk show got its hands on the script that contained a scene in which Fanning's 12-year-old character is assaulted and raped by an older boy.Cue the knee-jerk outcry.
Various "family values" groups, without having seen the movie, petitioned for legal action against the director and Fanning's family and agent for coercing the young actress into what they imagined to be a disgraceful performance. One child-actor advocate, reported Premiere magazine, wrote an essay in which he argued that "pretending leads to reality. Kids feel it, live it, express it. Children can't shrug it off."

Where was Fanning in all this? Defending the film alongside the director.

"She's been incredibly supportive," Kampmeier says. "Her team was like, 'Nobody touches this script. You do not take this scene out.' "

Furthermore, says the director, anyone who knows anything about filmmaking knows the scene didn't happen the way it plays in the film (which, incidentally, is extremely brief and nongraphic).

"The rape scene was shot so technically," says Kampmeier. "I mean, I think Dakota put it best. She said, 'It's just a movie.' "

Plus, as the director points out, nobody ever levels the same charges at the incredible violence one can find in any number of major movies out right now. "When someone's head gets blown off, why are people not saying, 'Oh my God, did their head really get blown off?' " she says. "It's so uninformed."

The paradox for Kampmeier is that the controversy has brought her film into a much brighter spotlight than she'd imagined - for better or worse. "In my mind it's just a small, personal film," she says. "I wrote it from my heart, with the hope that it would one day touch someone else's heart."

"Hounddog" - the rest of it, aside from that scene - centers on Fanning's character, a young girl trapped in abject poverty with an abusive, alcoholic father (David Morse) and a disciplinarian, Bible-thumping grandmother (Piper Laurie). Her only solace is impersonating Elvis Presley, which she does with uncanny talent.

"For me, the film is about many things," says Kampmeier. "Motherlessness, art, finding your true voice.

"But the thing that I think it's most about," she says, "is articulated by a character in the film - he talks about taking that which can poison you and turning it into something powerful and good. Which is what we, as artists, if we're lucky, get the opportunity to do."