Say Peter: Peter Paige courted controversy as unapologetically queeny Emmett on Queer as Folk. His directorial debut, Say Uncle, doesn't play it safe either.

How do you top Queer as Folk? With something even queerer, that's how. In Say Uncle, Peter Paige-known to millions as the wildly out Emmett Honeycutt--debuts as a feature film writer-director while playing a decidedly different sort of gay man. Grief-stricken when his best friend's family--including the son he's obsessively close to--moves to another city, Paul finds himself hanging around playgrounds interacting with children whose parents he doesn't know. Soon a lynch mob, thinking he's a molester, is after him, in a chase scene right out of Buster Keaton's Seven Chances.

Paul's very childlike and sweet, but when you look more closely you find yourself saying, "This obsession with children is getting out of hand." What is Paul's problem?

If I were his psychiatrist and diagnosing him, I would say Paul has cognitive dissonance. That's separating yourself from reality when you're confronted with information you don't want. It's represented in the film by the splotches of paint that suddenly appear, blacking out people's faces, like when he's being told that his friends are leaving town. He can't handle it, so he just checks out--painting their faces away in his mind.

Obviously he's been putting his emotional life on hold for some reason.

Paul has huge abandonment issues. Emotionally he's a 6-year-old because of the loss of his parents when he was very young. It's something he's never recovered from, and consequently he's never been able to face any kind of loss. His only method of survival is shutting everything out and doing the one thing that gives him joy--playing with kids. So he goes to the park, and he tries getting a job at a toy store, partially because he hates his telemarketing job but, more important, because he can be with kids that way.

Kathy Najimy's character, the nosey Maggie, who rallies the neighborhood against Paul, is out of control too. She wants to dominate everyone.

The culture we live in makes us all hysterical. We've been trained by the news, by our president, to be afraid of one another, and that's why Say Uncle is about this much larger than life--2% maybe. It's very real.

Paul doesn't realize his friend Russell [Yes, Dears Anthony Clark] is in love with him. It was such a touching moment when Russell finally tells Paul.

Paul doesn't have room for a real adult relationship, but he gives Russell just enough of himself to stay interested.

Who's your ideal viewer for the film?

To me, the ideal audience is the people who saw Election. It's a political comedy of a piece with the work of Alexander Payne. They're flawed people in that film, and Payne doesn't judge them. With my movie people root for Paul, and some people root for Maggie. I wanted you to doubt him. I wanted you to have a full range of experiences. I don't go to the movies to be fed the same thing over and over again.

But this is very unusual in that you're encouraging doubt of a character you're initially inclined to like.

Exactly. I love that. Some people think I've failed because that happens, but I think that's where I succeed. I wanted you to meet this character and say, "This guy's great. He's funny and a little wacky. He's sweet." And then, once you get to know him, think, Oh, wait a minute. There may be something wrong here.

Say Uncle doesn't look like you were struggling with a $1.25 budget.

Thank you, but we were in some ways. We made it for less than a million dollars. We worked our asses off. I called in every favor I could. We made it in 18 days. The most indie and edgy thing about the film is how gray it is tonally. My hero is fucked up, and my antagonist is right to suspect him. That's real life to me. I don't know any perfect people. I don't know of any extraordinary heroes the way we think of them cinematically. I know a lot of everyday heroes. But I also know a lot of people who step on tees and don't hear what they don't want to hear and are struggling to get through. And that's the world I'm interested in.

Where are you going as an actor now? I know you guested on several episodes of the WB's Related.

I tested for a half-hour comedy this year that I didn't get, which I think was for the best because the character was starting to look more and more like Emmett. Been there, done that for five years. I have no aversion to playing another gay role. But I need to confound people a bit more.

What about theater?

Waiting to hear about a play right now. I was trained to do Shakespeare on Friday, Shaw on Saturday, Sunday afternoon a little Shepard, and then some Ibsen. But that kind of repertory doesn't really exist anymore in this country for the most part. Somebody's going to figure out how to do theater in L.A.

In the post-Brokeback era we keep hearing about these brave straight actors. But where is all this going for well-known openly gay actors?

Well, there are only about 15 or 20 of us. And the definition of "working" is loose. Like, Mitchell Anderson's running a restaurant now. But what Brokeback proved was that if you put muscle behind it, a film with gay subject matter at its core can succeed. It's sort of been proven before, but people forget that Maurice did well.

And do you have a viable project in the mind for the future?

My next movie that I'm going to be taking around to producers is a period epic--gay, 18th century, and it's big and sweeping and lush and heartbreaking.

Barry Lyndon time.

Very much so. And it's going to cost money. But because of Brokeback, I'm going to be able to say, "We can make this work." I don't have to be the first person to do that. Ang Lee did it.

Ehrenstein is the author of Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-2000.