CSI's sharpshooter: Gerald McCullouch juggled his schedule on the megahit series to make a highly revealing gay film with gorgeous Gabriel Romero. (film).

He may play ballistics expert Bobby Dawson on the hit TV drama CSI, but the gun that out actor-filmmaker Gerald McCullouch encountered last summer on a dark Atlanta street was not a prop. It was the real thing. "I had gone to a Madonna concert with my sister," he recalls, "and afterward I went to [the gay club] Backstreet. I was heading outside with a really attractive young man, kind of making out on the way to his car, when suddenly two guys put a gun between my eyes, forced me to the ground, took my money and keys, then stuck the gun in my butt." The 35-year-old actor thought his life was over. "Then something almost spiritual happened." he continues. "I thought I was going to die, so I just kind of thanked the universe. I said to myself, I've had a really great time here, thank you, and when I did that, they just left."

Ironically, McCullouch had gone to Atlanta to gel away from drama and confrontation. He'd spent the preceding months pouring his heart, soul, and wallet into a digital short film he'd written called The Moment After, but he wasn't pleased with how things were turning out.

"I had some producers who loved the script but wouldn't let me direct, and I kind of let them run with it," he recalls. "I watched the dailies after we finished shooting, and I was so unhappy. My whole world kind of fell apart, so I put the project on hold, and I took a vacation. Then the event in Atlanta happened, and that was kind of the catalyst for me to go, I've still got my life, so I'm going to do it the way I want to do it."

McCullouch returned home to Los Angeles, hired new collaborators, burrowed back into his savings, and remade The Moment After from scratch, This time on 35-millimeter film and with himself in the director's chair. The result, which premiered to a rousing reception at Frameline's San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in June, is a dramatically audacious and technically assured film about the high cost of living in the closet. "I think it's a real shame that people go through life saying no to who they are and to the unique voice they have in the world," says McCullouch, who also composed and recorded two songs for the film. "I think you should say yes to who you are in life. The film's not first-person at all, but it's a powerful story that can, hopefully, affect a lot of people." After the festival McCullouch received $20.000 from Dale Golden of the San Francisco art collective Belcher Studios Gallery to polish the film.

The film's story concerns a repressed litigation clerk named Tracey (McCullouch), who is opened up to the possibilities of life and love by his mysterious Latin lover (played by Gabriel Romero of Los Beltran). The film opens with a tender, candlelit love scene that features both actors in all their naked glory. "I wasn't thinking, We've got to show dick," says the filmmaker, "but I didn't want to shy away from it either and, like, put a candle in its place, because that just takes you away from the story."

But then, McCullouch isn't shy about much of anything, and that includes his sexuality. "You've got only one life, and I'm not going to let other people dictate how I live mine," asserts the actor, who is dating but not in a long-term relationship. "The saddest thing I noticed is that I get more support being an out actor from the straight members of the industry. Gay casting directors only call me in for gay roles. Other casting directors who know I'm gay call me in for a variety of roles."

Like Bobby Dawson, for example, his good ol' Okie gun-geek character on CSI. McCullouch, who relocated every two years of his childhood as a result of his father's job with IBM, gets Bobby's character with ease. After all, McCullouch's first paid performing gig as a teenager was at Six Flags Over Georgia.

Though for now McCullouch's happy to turn up in a hall dozen or so episodes a season, he'd love to become a series regular. "This is the first show I've worked on that I feel is a real family," says McCullouch, whose pre-CSI gigs included recurring roles on Melrose Place and Beverly Hills, 90210 and a rote in the film Beyond Suspicion with Anne Heche. "Everyone is so supportive. I was shooting an episode of CSI the same week I was in production on The Moment After, and everyone was like, `We should have a screening [for CSI].'"

Writing, directing, and starring in his own film and shooting a TV series at the same time? "It was a very stressful week." says McCullouch with a laugh, "but that's always been my dream--to shoot and direct my own movie and be on the number 1 show in America. It was the kind of week that I've lived my whole life to have."

Hensley is the author of Screening Party, due this fall from Alyson Books.