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Allen says he was stunned—but pleasantly so—at Sundance to find an audience that included so many seminary students.

"It was extraordinary," he says, "because we went into this thinking, Can we even have this conversation? Can we get people 'on the other side of the aisle' to even come see the film? But Craig and his students were there, and we had an amazing time getting to know them. I realized at that point that we were on to something. If this movie can in some small way encourage that conversation, then I've done my job."

Allen's job with Save Me has been much more than filling the lead role. He's one of the film's five producers—it was made through the now defunct production company Mythgarden—and says it's been his "passion project" since discovering the original script about five years ago. Much of the delay has been finding the money for the $1.2 million project; Allen says they found it in James Garbus, listed in the credits as executive producer.

Still, money wasn't the only obstacle to making this film. Allen says the original script was "an over the top comedy about life in an ex-gay ministry. We had no interest in making an over-the-top comedy, but we wanted to tell the truth of the story [of ex-gay ministries] and figure out a way to advance the conversation.

"We were determined not to patronize—that is, to play to the choir by making a film that said it was going to treat the subject fairly, and then not do that. We've watched films that do that, but they've come out so lopsided, and that isn't what we wanted to do. We could have made Save Me for gay people, and we could've laughed at the Christians and had a grand old time—and we would have achieved nothing."

He says they had trouble finding a distributor: "A lot of people in New York and LA thought the ex-gay thing was a joke. They laughed at us when we said we wanted to make a film about ex-gay ministries and have a conversation about God and gay. That was a shock for us, because you don't have to go far in the gay community to find people who have been touched by the phenomenon of ex-gay ministries."

Judith Light and Stephen Lang as co-directors of Genesis House

Allen says they went through three or four different gay writers in search of the right tone for the script, but finally found it in veteran TV actor Robert Desiderio, a married straight man whose wife, Judith Light, also stars in the film as Gayle, one of the directors of Genesis House. Gayle is a devout Christian who clearly wants the best for the men in the home, but carries some personal baggage into her role that affects her interactions with Mark. (To say much more would be a spoiler.)

Allen says his own personal journey mirrors Mark's. While Allen experienced a degree of fame as a teen idol (on shows like St. Elsewhere and, later, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman), with his face on the covers of teen zines, he also wrestled with his sexuality: "I was this teenage kid who just wanted to scream, 'I'm not OK! I don't know who that kid is in the magazines, but I'm just a scared, confused teenager!'"

Having grown up in a conservative Catholic home with older brothers "who were very sure about what it meant to be a man," Allen ended up hating himself—and convinced that God hated him too. "It's horrible," he says, "to be a young person alone in your room at night, firmly believing that God hates you and you will go to hell because of the feelings going on your heart."

When Allen came out about his homosexuality at the age of 25, his father initially rejected him. "It was a long time before my dad could look me square in the eyes again," Allen says. "I wanted his acceptance so desperately, and I was afraid I was never going to get it. Now, looking back, I realize that same relationship [father-son] is often how we define our relationship with God. I used my relationship with Dad to identify God. I believed God was this big, mean, scary guy who could never love me and I could never earn his acceptance, so why even try?"

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