Chad Allen talks to Newsweek about "Save Me"

Out In Hollywood's 2006 "Man of the Year" Chad Allen was intervierwed by Newsweek's Samantha Henig for the magazine's Web site about his new movie "Save Me" and about being in last year's "End of the Spear."
Here are some excerpts:
When the openly gay Allen was cast as a Christian missionary in “End of the Spear,� a 2005 movie produced by an evangelical film company, members of the religious right fumed about the choice. But he has received a warmer response from evangelical Christians to his new film, “Save Me,� in which he plays Mark, a drug-addicted, promiscuous gay man who is sent by his disapproving brother to “Genesis House,� a live-in therapy program that aims to “cure� gay men of their “brokenness,� through Christianity. Mark does find God at Genesis House, but he also finds love. The film, which was recently shown at the Sundance Film Festival but does not yet have a distributor, tackles the controversial practice of “ex-gay� ministries. It chronicles Mark’s struggle to reconcile his newfound belief that living in the Lord’s image means being heterosexual, with his romantic feelings for Scott, a fellow Genesis House resident, played by Robert Gant of “Queer as Folk.�
Allen speaks about what he learned from the uproar over “End of the Spear,� the reaction to his latest film, and his own quest to reconcile his religious faith with his sexual orientation.
NEWSWEEK: When “End of the Spear� came out, you got a lot of heat from evangelical Christians for being a gay actor playing a Christian missionary. Was your decision to do “Save Me� at all a reaction to that?
ALLEN:: No, we were already working on “Save Me� then. But honestly, without the reactions to “End of the Spear� and how that changed the way I look at this entire issue and who I am, I couldn’t have participated in “Save Me� the way that I did. When I went to make “End of the Spear,� I expected to meet a group of hateful, bigoted, at-best ignorant individuals, and I didn’t. I met a group of smart, God-loving, God-following individuals, who were doing what they thought was the most loving thing to do, when they suggested to me that God wanted me to be different. That really affected me. I went back to work on “Save Me,� and I remember sitting around with the rest of the producers and saying definitively, “We have to make a movie that shows evangelical Christians as smart and loving. We just need to have a conversation about love.�
NEWSWEEK: It didn’t offend you to be told that God wants you to be someone you’re not?
ALLEN: t didn’t offend me. But I knew that it was incorrect, in so far as I knew that wasn’t what God was revealing in my own heart. I firmly believe in the importance of having this conversation about God and gay. I think that “End of the Spear� opened up that conversation, and “Save Me� is the perfect follow-up to it.

NEWSWEEK: How did “End of the Spear� open the conversation?
ALLEN: There was a firestorm about my being involved, and what we got a lot of at first was the hateful, judging, scared reaction. But what followed for me was more truthful: I got hundreds, if not thousands, of e-mails and letters and messages from Christians who were saying things like, “This has opened my eyes.� In fact, the filmmakers said to me, “We didn’t know what was going on, we just didn’t know what was happening to people like you in the name of Jesus Christ, and we’re so sorry.�

NEWSWEEK: How would you describe the reaction so far from the evangelical Christian community to “Save Me,� which recently premiered at Sundance?
ALLEN: While I’m sure that reactions were mixed, a vast majority of those that I spoke to came up to me not only loving the film but so excited about how they can use this film to further this conversation within their own communities.

NEWSWEEK: Are you surprised that they seem to have embraced you this time around?
ALLEN: I’m shocked. I wish I had a little more faith—part of me is still slightly hesitant since the movie hasn’t gone out to a very wide audience, but I have been blown away by the reaction. I expected to have to work much harder to get people, especially conservative Christians, to see this film and understand what it is that I wanted to say with it and what all of the producers wanted to say.

NEWSWEEK: Your character in “Save Me� struggles to reconcile his Christian beliefs with his homosexual desires. Which parts of that struggle ring true to you?
ALLEN: Pretty much all of it. It wasn’t like I set out to tell my story, but where the script ended up is a struggle that I relate to almost in its entirety. My character starts out finding himself loveless and godless. I went through that. There was a time in life when I was absolutely desperate and addicted and void of love. My character’s entire process of finding God and finding love, while truncated, is truthful for me. That’s what it looked like, except mine was over the course of six and a half years, not two hours.

NEWSWEEK: What do you say to believers, like those portrayed in the movie, who use the Bible to condemn homosexuality?
ALLEN: My understanding of those seven Biblical passages that supposedly speak about homosexuality is that none of them speak about homosexuality as we understand it today, in a loving, committed relationship. They speak about pedophilia, they speak about rape, they speak about violence, but they don’t speak about this.