Chad Allen was outed by the tabloids and then by himself in an Advocate cover. “We need 007s that go home to their gay lovers.” Donald Strachey (Chad Allen, left) gets intimate with boyfriend Timothy (Sebastian Spence) in a scene from Third Man Out, based on Strachey detective novels about a gay gumshoe. Chad Allen rode in the Houston Pride parade on June 25 as a guest of the here! TV network. The all-gay network is available locally through Time Warner Cable Movies on Demand as well as DirecTV and Disk Network pay-per-view.

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Chad Allen, the boy we (or at least I) loved in My Two Dads and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, has come a long way from the child star he once was. He has come through his time as a child actor, the good and the bad, and now he is breaking new ground in film and television and trying to win our hearts all over again.

Being a child actor wasn't all glitz and glamour. There were the definite perks, but also some downfalls.

"It was a completely unique experience, as you might imagine from the kids I grew up with," Allen said in a recent phone interview. "It gave me a tremendous amount of experience, which I'm very grateful for; I got to travel the world, I've met numerous presidents, I've learned how to speak in front of large crowds, but it was also--on the flip of that--a very tedious and difficult way to grow up. Like most experiences it's got its good and bad stuff. I probably wouldn't put my kids in the business. "

The "bad stuff" Allen referred to would be his struggle with depression and substance abuse.   Being a "child living in an adult's world" was a catalyst to his depression and subsequent drug and alcohol abuse, he said. Now five years clean and sober, Allen said that looking back on it was often surreal, especially when comparing then to now.

"My life today is unrecognizable.   If given the opportunity to write a script about the way I wanted my life to be in five years, I couldn't even conceive of the beauty of my existence today. That's not to say that it's without pain, because it's certainly not without sadness, without fear--it has all those things in it. But the person that I was using like that couldn't conceive of the gifts that I consider my greatest assets today. "

Shortly after sobering up, Allen was outed by the tabloids and then by himself in an Advocate cover story. "It was terrifying," he said. However, despite myriad advice to not come out publicly because that would mean career suicide, he said did it because he knew that was what he had to do. "And [now] the fact is we're sitting here in the office of my company solely dedicated to creating content about gay and lesbian people, telling our stories in entirely new ways . . . in an era that I don't even think we dared dream we could be when I came out.

"Our progress is extraordinary.   It's an amazing time to be an all-around-queer storyteller. "

Allen's company is called Mythgarden. Begun with his business partner Christopher Racster and Queer as Folk 's Robert Gant, Mythgarden is breaking ground with several features and television shows in the works. One of these projects, Save Me , a feature film about a summer camp where gay and lesbian people are sent to be made straight, is set to begin filming later this year. Other non-film projects are also in the works for Mythgarden. "We're working on a fairy-tale project. We're taking fairy tales and queering them out, because we need gay fairytales, too. "

Currently, Allen stars in Third Man Out , the first in a projected series of movies based on detective novels by Richard Stevenson and airing on here! TV. The first film, premiering this month, introduces  
us to Donald Strachey, the only gay detective in Albany, New York, and carries us with him--and his lover, Timothy--through a case riddled with twists and turns and clever one-liners. "They're fun," Allen said. "[In] the next one, Ice Blues , the boys go to L. A. I'm anxious to delve a little bit more into their personal lives, and explore what Donald is like at home. If you take [the series] too seriously, you're in trouble, but it's a blast. We need 007s that go home to their gay lovers. " And that's what this film does. It gives us a sort of gay superhero and lets us enjoy watching a regular movie whose main character just happens to be gay.

Allen (who rode in the Houston Pride parade in June as a guest of here! TV) has been through a lot in his 30-something years, all of it working to good in the end. He is helping lead the way to an era where storytelling doesn't cater to dogmas or politics, but exists simply for the joy of the story. When I asked him what he thought the future might hold for him, his only response was, "I'm absolutely certain I'd be wrong, and that's the best news of all. "

Michael Rowell, who interviewed two of the singers for our August music coverage, also previews the Houston Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in this issue.