Dustin Lance Black | Cambridge Union

[Music] in everyone and welcome to this our fourteenth speakers event of McComas term I've been counting I don't think that's roughly correct just a few things before we start so just information for the week ahead obviously in McKellen's coming on Wednesday which should hopefully be a really exciting event the ballot has gone out and also if any of you are interested in doing a meet the speakers with Sir Ian a link will be going out to that probably later on this evening and we'll try and get you a chance to have a word and chat with Ian himself on to tonight's event so Dustin Lance Black is an award-winning screenwriter and a prominent lgbtq+ activist he won an Academy Award in 2008 for his for his movie milk and since then he's been engaged in numerous projects both in film and in terms of activism including a docu-series when we rise which went on a earlier on this year so without further ado can we have a massive Cambridge welcome for Dustin Lance Black I always sit down thank you stop thank you for having me no problem at all is this your first time in Cambridge yeah I have never been here before yeah yeah we were delighted to have you coming here so I thought I'd start off by I saw your tweet today and it said we're gonna be here to share some share some stories and I thought it would be quite nice to start by having a chat about your own story and I'm working it through there and then going out to focus on some broader things and broader issues in terms of activism within the LGBT bus community as well as film so in terms of your story I was wondering whether you could sort of set it set us up with just chatting through a heart your upbringing and your own experiences and how they've shaped who you are the whole thing well John I did version or the edited Hollis yeah I mean I could I could start by telling a little story yeah that might illuminate a few things should I try it yeah yeah I've never told this story I mean that's cuz I've told like a little bit of this like a little piece of this story but never this whole version I think I was I think I was eight years old which is like a terrifying age isn't it right like you're you're aware enough of what's going on in the world puberty is so far away and for me it would probably be another decade or so away and I was I was living out in San Antonio Texas so for those who don't know San Antonio Texas is very southern conservative red state on top of that my my family was a military family and I was a Mormon so I was a Mormon growing up in an area where it was mostly Southern Baptists so I was already like well aware that I was really different and and I knew that difference was something that wasn't so great mainly because the Mormon prophet on one Sunday had been beamed into our church saying homosexuality was a sin akin to murder and I already had a crush on the boy down the street so I was like that's that's not gonna work well for me so I was pretty well invested in just hiding difference like if you're different just push that down and and and I also was incredibly shy so I didn't have many friends and this story was this one day I was out at I was in a swimming pool and I remember like putting my mask on you know you spit into the little glass mask and you rub it around so there's no steam on it and I pressed it onto my face and I went down under the water and I just remember the comfort of feeling incredibly alone under the water like under the water no one could see me no one could hear me that sort of isolation felt very comforting and I remember in that day looking over and there was like these very pale legs in the water that met these these like forest green trunks that were way too big in this incredibly slinky body and then it was cut off you know the water was hitting this person right about here and so you couldn't see anything from there on up and I remember looking at him and his body and going gosh I hope I'm not that skinny like this guy's really really boney chested and realizing I was just as bad and we were really pretty screwed and then he dove under the water and I turned away so I wasn't looking anymore and we very quickly went to work doing what you did is eight-year-old kids in Texas in a swimming pool which is collecting the action figures we had discarded on the bottom of the pool he started collecting the good guys like Princess Leia and the army soldier little guys I knew I would be defeated because in Texas the bad guys can never win the bad guys and so I was Darth Vader and all of that and we started to play our little battle like we did every single day after school and his like above-ground pool which is really for like working class plus I guess you know what I mean you could afford that but not a real pool still for me I was really broke so like it was really fancy I dug it but he really wasn't fighting back like I remember very clearly at one point there's these GI Joe figures and I had Snake Eyes and I shot an imaginary laser beam from Snake Eyes all the way over to Princess Leia and said claimed that I had melted her breasts off now normally that would elicit a really bad response right he would protest and Han Solo would fight back and there would be this raging battle in the pool this day he didn't fight back he just got quiet and we stopped fighting I was like something is terribly wrong and he got very very quiet and I just sort of ignored him for a bit I could tell something was weighing on him but we had a deal we did not discuss our some things those things that really got to us right that was the basis of our friendship was not to discuss those sorts of things and then he said to me I remember at one point he said my mother thinks I should share something with you and I was like holy I mean I didn't say that because the Mormon child was not allowed to say that but in my mind I said that to myself and I thought you know you shouldn't do that you absolutely shouldn't do that but I was also very shy so all that came out of my mouth was oh yeah and that didn't stop him so he started he proceeded to tell me a something which you're not supposed to tell and this was this first moment that anyone ever came out to me but he came out to me he said I'm uh my mom wants me to tell you that I'm I'm Jewish and I was like I remember just racking my brain right like I was already the writer brain so I was racking my brain for vocabulary like what is a Jewish I'd never heard of a Jewish before I didn't know what a Jewish was like was it some sort of a disease could I catch a Jewish could I bring it home was it terminal or would it kill my mom would it kill my brother like we had enough problems as it was I couldn't bring a Jewish home right so I got out of the pool and I started drawing myself off and and I thought well we shouldn't discuss this any further I looked inside I saw his mom inside I wonder if she had a Jewish she was staring out of this with too much curiosity and and I started asking questions because sometimes curiosity gets the best of me I'm amongst friends I think in that in that department and so I start asking about what this was and I just quickly figured out it wasn't a disease it was something akin to a tribe and I knew I had a tribe of the homosexuals I had heard about in church and I knew you were supposed to keep that secret and I was curious why he didn't keep his damn tribe a secret and I wanted to know what it was and then he told me they didn't believe they thought that the Old Testament was fine but the New Testament was you know cute but probably baloney and I thought oh that's interesting because in my church we have the Old Testament the New Testament and everyone at school thinks my Book of Mormon is baloney so I can sort of get that some people think other people's Testaments are baloney but I thought at least he must be a Christian right because that's what I was able to tell my friends at school and they usually would leave me alone after that so I said to him I said well you know at least you're a Christian and he was like no not that either and I was like well what about Christmas he's like yeah we don't have Christmas we don't have Jesus we don't have Christianity I'm a Jewish and I was like what are you what are you even talking about what did you feel your year with if you're not celebrating Christmas that's all I think about that's all we do as presents I got very very upset and I decided what I was gonna do was try to become a missionary you know do you know Mormon missionaries like I'm eight I had 10 years to go before I'd be any good at it and so I thought I thought I got to try it on he's my one and only friend I cannot lose him today and so I proceeded to tell him that a young man named Joseph Smith in New York walked into the woods and God and Jesus visited him and told him that all of these native people good native people with white skin and bad native people with dark skin got in these wars in the Americas and Jesus had come over to visit them after his crucifixion to say hey I'm not leaving you guys out of this salvation thing because I thought Troy must have become a Jewish because he thought well it's not fair how could you only you know go to heaven if you believe in Jesus but Jesus only visited one part of the world and I said no no he visited the whole part you they just hadn't read Joseph Smith the kid who found these books in a forest in New York if they just read that they would know he came in every one and now it's completely fair so you should become a Mormon Christian and he wasn't he wasn't buying it and he said well you know what what what are we and I and so I added this extra benefit I said no no you don't understand like there's also this thing like if you if you decide to be a good Mormon Christian and leave behind you're Jewish you also get a perfect body in heaven you get to bring this body you have here on earth up to heaven with you and when I remember we just both looked at our terrible skinny bony little bodies and we were like if the purpose was to come down here to get a body we've gotten royally screwed like does that mean that Heaven's gonna be as bad as Earth has been he didn't want this business that Mormons say that we come down here just to get a body because we both had boney bodies they were far from puberty and he wasn't buying it and and I just remember he finally after me begging him to let go of this thing that was just far too different me explaining I was already catching hell for being Mormon in a Baptist area that he was going to become an absolute pariah this was dangerous for him and his family and he just got up and he shuffled inside and he said see you later and I remember that look his mom threw me through that glass sliding glass door and and I didn't quite get it yet I got I got on my bike that was in the front yard crappy old bike and rode home in tears because I started that day with one friend I ended that day with no friends and it's because I had been taught that difference was bad that it's something we should hide and it wouldn't be for I would say five or six years when we finally moved to Central Coast in California my mom had remarried and I was in Salinas California which is just south of San Francisco and we had a textbook in a history class and it was a week dedicated to World War two and in that book by Friday we got to the page that had these symbols in it and then it was a yellow star David and an upside-down pink triangle and for the first time in my life I had a teacher explain to me what Jewish was and also what had happened to the Jewish people in World War two and what that star David meant when it was sewed onto their clothing and the torture that had taken place and the murders that had taken place and I started to think in that moment is a big moment for me I realized that that shuffle my friend Troy had done into the house wasn't shame it was that he knew he was losing a friend too but there was something about his difference that was worthy of struggle that there was some value in it and that that look that his mother gave me was protective of that difference because it was valuable and there was value there and I started to think of difference in a different way what I wish had happened in this examination of differences that teacher had told us with that pink triangle meant and that teacher never told us with that pink triangle meant the textbook didn't tell us with that pink triangle meant I probably wouldn't find out what that pink triangle meant for years but eventually as I became a teenager and started going into San Francisco I learned that of course my tribe and my people had suffered alongside Troy's tribe and Troy's people if I had known if I had been taught that difference was okay and difference was valuable taught that examining difference was okay and valuable that difference is actually where we can derive our power it's what might make us unique enough that we can be a unique voice as an artist that our perspective might bring value to law and to science as an outsider if I had known that I would have ended that day stronger with Troy and particularly and I think this is most important to pay attention - right now in the world if I had understood that there was a Brotherhood of differences that people who were Outsiders and people who were different have something in common have many things in common that I had a brotherhood of with Troy I would not have ended that day riding my bicycle home in two years feeling isolated and alone and weaker I would have that ended that day far stronger and I would say that's one of the stories that was formative for me one of the stories that set me on a path to understanding the power of knowing who our outsiders are what the value of being an outsider is and and in the end of the day what is the power of story what is the power of story to give strength to create coalition's so that we can push that arc of history closer and closer to justice and and so you know from there we get into maybe some of your questions which is within the next few months I would discover the story of a man named Harvey Milk yeah exactly Ryan that was what I was going to move on to after that obvious that the longest answer you've ever had to a question yeah weird Caitlyn Jenner talking about her but I don't have a dad it doesn't that's an in-joke which we had before this point but no I was gonna I was going to reflect a little bit on on on milk and also this remarkable career you've had of bringing together these theatrical pieces with with with activism and and with politics and how they intersect and I suppose the core the question I I have there is do you feel that good theater and what more what is it which gives theater and drama and and film this this power this power to play a role within activism and with in the political space I think that at their best boasts both worlds succeed when we tell stories that are targeted not at the mind but at the heart and and some of that is is having been able to put projects on the stage on the screen but also being able to tell stories in a court of law I mean we took a case to the United States Supreme Court for marriage equality in all of those places if you want to move the needle if you want to change laws I don't think the best arguments to be made include anything like statistics science the Constitution or law even if you know they're on your side and they likely are on your side but that's not how you're going to move the needle if you want to change a mind you need to tell an emotional story and I think the most valuable form of that story frankly has nothing to do with what I do the most valuable form of that story is the one an individual tells from their own experience across the dinner table or at a bar or at a coffee shop that's the best most potent form of storytelling there is second to that is being able to tell a compelling emotional story on the stage or on the screen that shares a real experience or she'll shares an experience that's authentic enough that it feels very real that it can move people because I think I think the heart is the way to change of mind and then once you're having that dialogue and you've gotten out of your heads and you're starting to connect as human beings sure open up the dialogue about the Constitution about you know law about science about statistics whatever that might be fine but it's not a great place to start and I did it we've looked back at that that first story you encountered that story of Troy when you were eight years old which I suppose which others get which other sort of storytellers within the theatrical space have sort of changed how you think which other filmmakers have have been influences on you and it made you think in a different way well gosh that changes weekly I mean as I watch you know as I watched new projects I would say early on one of the filmmakers I saw who was formative for me because I grew up like listen has anyone seen stranger things okay like I'm gonna date myself but I'm like I'm those kids age right they were all born you know mid 70s so was I everything they're experiencing I was experiencing the kinds of movies the things you see them watching it's all really pop isn't it it's all like really we were talking about Ninja Turtles and jaws and Karate Kid and blockbuster films and that's about all you saw and and then I one day went into the video store dressed a lot like those kids on those bikes the little headlamp and I wrote it my bike over there and I got up the guts to finally rent a movie that I was certain was gay porn because he was called 400 blows and I had a cute boy on the cover and I like snuck my mom's the VCR into the bedroom got the TV in there so no one could see I mean no one was home anyway like I wasn't gonna risk it but I was doubly safe by putting everything out of view if anyone walked in I popped the the cassette tape in and and watched it and it was Francois Truffaut's masterpiece 400 blows there was no there were no I was slightly disappointed I was very disappointed but the but I you know it's this movie that's about regular people in this family that's like this you know middle-class working-class whatever you call it family trying to survive and and and they have their troubles with fidelity and they have their troubles the fights within the home and it's this young guy the kid at the center of it all and his struggles with it and I was like who knew you could make movies about like real people about people like me I was in a house there was suffering with a lot of you know internal turmoil at the time and I felt way less alone in the world and at the end of the movie I was in tears and I thought gosh I want to do that for people I'd love to make help people feel less alone in the world like that was a lot more satisfying than you know teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and so that set me on a course where I started investigating other kinds of storytelling and you can probably trace that from there to like all the President's Men to to today what I'm doing today and although I'd still like to do like Tom made me watch Game of Thrones I'd never watched it so he watched it like in three weeks I mean it was three four hours a day and so all of a sudden I'd kind of like to go do you know I'm gonna make my own world that's amazing that show yeah well I mean it's ascending facing so there's a gap in the market some point perfect in terms of settling down milk as that as that project so you you have you have that stage of discovery and then thinking about things which we've just sort of recounted what what attracted you to that particular story I obviously it does have a resonance we but it clearly clearly meant something quite profound I read that you spent years researching yeah his life I did I did I I mean I I discovered so shortly after moving to the Bay Area I got into theater and I started to hear this story of this man who was openly gay which I what the hell was that like that seemed like somebody looking for trouble and and I but I found out that he had been quite successful politically more successful than any other openly gay man in the country and people seem to really be especially the gay men I was meeting in the theater world who were facing an epidemic they were facing a plague called AIDS at the time they were still drawing hope from story and and I found hope in this story I mean I wouldn't come out for a long time but at least I thought I guess my options go beyond just suicide or shame or living in a closet I you know I I maybe I could fall in love one day maybe I could achieve something one day and that was expansive and then later as I did after I did come out I realized that the strategy he had been using then was no longer being utilized by the LGBTQ community not a not effectively and that was a strategy of coalition building you know the guy didn't investigate his difference figure out how different he was and then push everyone away and say I don't want any of you guys cuz I have my difference and I have my people and you know piss off no he went out and he built coalition's he reached out to the lesbian community I mean we think of this as one community now but it wasn't then he then reached out to the senior citizens in San Francisco who were having trouble living in the city that they had built then he reached out to racial minorities in the city who weren't having their votes equally counted they weren't being equally represented and he reached out to the working-class Union truck drivers who weren't being paid a living wage and he said what can we do to help you and he built a coalition and with that coalition that he called the Coalition of the esses he started winning even at the ballot box so you cut back to like 2006 when I'm started working on milk and you know we're losing constantly LGBT people were just we got so good at losing and then the giant loss comes with Proposition 8 which takes away marriage equality in in California where I was living in the state that already had it and I just thought we have to tell the story so that people remember this isn't just about investigating how we're different it's not this isn't the you know discrimination Olympics and you get a prize for being treated the worst that's not where you stop after you investigate your difference and find your people and good for you for doing that you got to reach out you got to build a bridge you gotta create a coalition because if you don't do that you're gonna get your ass whooped at the ballot box and if we continue to do that because we're doing that again today I see my minority friends finding out all the ways they're different seeing who can complain about it the loudest who can isolate themselves the most who can attack the other minority saying you're someone of privilege and it's not that all that stuff isn't true it's that it's not helpful and it's not the end and it's not the point it's not ever been the point of civil rights figure out how you're different and then build a bridge to someone else and yeah they might be differently different and they might have more privilege in some ways but the point is to create the coalition's that are gonna make you stronger because if we don't people you're gonna keep electing Donald Trump's by continuing to fracture you so I thought that it was an important message on the heels of Prop 8 and so we got the movie out thank God for that and I think it's actually an incredibly important message right now are you hopeful at the moment I am a long-term optimist but not short-term and I don't I I'm a short-term pessimist and I I think I hear too many of my friends still saying oh this Trump thing this this brexit thing this nationalism thing is just the last gasp of a dying dinosaur just the tail wagging and I say maybe or maybe it's back it's up to us to make sure it's a last-gasp it's up to us to make sure that we don't let this become the next 10 20 30 years you know that we limit this that we make it clear what the damage is and the people who are hurt by it we tell those stories we share those stories we shine a bright light on the harm being caused and there's a lot of harm being caused right now and with that we make sure that this is a last-gasp and in in terms of your work how are you going to personally go out and then Lee doesn't but I don't know whether the language of leading the line is appropriate one there but how are you going to try and bring that that powerful message in a time of well I mean one engine some of the ways you know I I put I I do what i yeah I'm trying to do what I talked about now which is I'm trying to focus my creative work on intersectionality so if you saw when we rise which by the way this is one of the few countries it hasn't shown in I joke but it's becoming less funny that it hasn't it's it has not shown in Russia Uganda Iran or the UK draw your own conclusions I don't know what's up with that it's but I hope it does because one of the messages in it it's it's based on people who come from the women's movement the black civil rights movement and this thing called the peace movement and yes they all are out it or they come out at a certain point but they never forget their connection to those other movements and they never forget their connection to each other and it's called when we rise because it's about the strength and power of people who are very very different and should be allowed to be very very different working together so that was a project based on that kind of intersectionality the next film I'm doing is about Byard Rustin and Byard Rustin was an african-american man who also happened to be an openly gay Quaker back in the 50s and 60s who was kind of brought up from obscurity because he had been arrested with two men in a truck in Pasadena which was a felony and he and he was brought up from obscurity to teach a young charismatic preacher named Martin Luther King about nonviolent civil disobedience something he had learned from going to India as a young person and his creation of the march on Washington which famously had the speech you know I have a dream and if you if you look over Martin Luther King shoulder as he's saying I have a dream is an older african-american man with white hair and that's Byard Rustin and he created that March and he's been erased from history because of his other difference because he was an openly gay man and so it's about reviving that history and saying to you know our black family in the world hey look how great we did when we worked together with our differences let's keep doing that let's keep doing that and I will add to that that that LGBT people have a responsibility to step up for racial minorities right now who are being treated terribly LGBT people we've done incredibly well in the last decade or two and we owe it to our brothers and sisters of difference in other communities to stop being so damn self-interested and egotistical and myopic and to help spread the lessons of how we battled back and made progress with our brothers and sisters in black lives matter and the women's movement coalition building isn't about saying what can you do for me it's about and it's not even about you asking necessarily what you can do for them it's about being proactive and starting to help other other movement succeed thank you very much for that discussion there I'm aware that they're probably doubtless doubtlessly loads of questions out there and there probably could be a lot better than mine so do any of you have any questions at all about anything which has just been said yes I'm gonna go to that what's the main point of your life the main point of my life well you know I I don't know I saw and I'll probably figure that out well after I'm dead or not but I'll tell you my why I wake up in the morning what I'm trying to do and it's what you know I don't I don't like getting up out of bed I'm I'm I like to sleep I like to sleep in but what motivates me to change that and get to the coffee machine or to the coffee shop is moving the needle in some way and that's what I say to anyone who works with me is and and into the agents who bring me projects or anyone who pitches me I say if I don't feel like in some way we're pushing the world towards better understanding then I'm bored if I don't think if the only effect my work has is that I could buy a nicer you know pair of shoes I'm bored that stuff to me feels very very temporary i I do think that we are at the beginning of we're just at the beginning of investigating what it who man 'ti means and who we are and and i and i think there is potential for an incredibly bright future that is made up of more fair law and more fair treatment of people of difference the understanding of the value of what difference holds I don't think I think we have a long way to go there and if in some way I can illuminate that with my work then I'll get out of bed I'll get the coffee and I'll get to work perfect any other questions I take one thanks well thank you so much for what you shared it's incredibly inspiring I think we're all really quiet but hopefully we're feeling just a little bit of your passion coming through so thank you could you talk a little bit about the creative process and it's so challenging to write a piece as masterful as milk but that has a beautiful story but is also so laden with an important political and human rights agenda and that balance is just so tough could you talk a little bit about your creative process as a writer and then also what it's like for you maybe being on set where you part of that process where you part of the Edit like what did it what was that for you yeah I mean I it goes back to what I was saying about how do you change minds and you know even though milk was about it was political I knew that if it would only if it only stayed on a policy tract or a political tract I would lose everybody and so that's when I really dug into the personal stories it needed to be personal there needed to be this makeshift family there needed to be we needed to investigate what is what does love look like and what were the you know challenges for someone who was trying to do something so new if we kept it personal there was a chance right and and if you can move people if it's emotional there's a chance that it would it would break through and and so you know it's I tried my best on that the and then in terms of what do i do on set you know I also I come from television and in television the writer is king and I grew up in theater and the writers King so when someone told so I was doing Big Love this show for like six years on HBO and there you know we do the casting we're on the set the poor directors I you know they have to listen to us they must hate it and the actors only want to talk to us because we know where the story is going and then I heard in film it didn't work like that and so I said all right so I shouldn't just write I should produce so I always produce I write and produce most of the stuff I do because in that way I do want to be a part of making sure it stays authentic and so yeah yeah I was I'm on the set a lot I mean all the time and now I do now I do all three not usually at the same time I don't always want to write produce and direct because sometimes it's really good to have another set of eyes creative eyes there to let you know when you're going wrong you guys are very well behaved well thank you for you're making me more optimistic about my creative journey so thank you for that I do want to know what you want to do I am an actor writer but now in Business School so you're gonna be a producer probably hopefully but anyways hire hire me how do you handle the I mean Hollywood is known to be a terrible industry yeah and I think people outside of what do you mean it sounds so great the news lately and people are finally starting to realize how really terrible it is how do you maintain your optimism and kind of your your noble goals with all of that around you well I mean listen right now what's happening in Hollywood is great right now let's be honest we're getting rid of some pretty horrible people and and it's about damn time you know it's like the casting couch has been a real thing in Hollywood forever and it's about time that's over and I'll tell you mmm the vast majority and I mean the vast majority of people in Hollywood come to Hollywood with their hearts they're there because they're passionate they're there because they care they want to share something and we are asking these people who come actors writers directors we're asking them to be incredibly vulnerable and I think it's hideous that there are a small group of people who are taking advantage of that vulnerability because of their own illness and they need to go and they should never be allowed back and that helps the process most of Hollywood it makes us uncomfortable and by the way some of the people who have done these horrible things made some great films and we're gonna miss that but it's about time we don't I do not want anyone coming to me saying you have to audition this actor or an actress and me have to worry that something horrific happened behind the scenes we don't want that it is hard enough to make good films and television shows with the best of intentions with the hardest work and the most talented people they still most often go horribly wrong you know so we don't need that element and I and and to anyone who's looking to get into film and television take heart that Hollywood is finally holding the people who have been doing that accountable and for the first time it looks like there's ramifications and that and understand that I won't give it a if I had a guess of percentage although I'm around a lot of smart people who are gonna want data but if I had to guess a percentage 99% of the people there are happy that this is getting out of their way because they're really good people and they do come with their heart and and for the most part most of the people I know and certainly the people I work with lead with their heart and are trying to do good things so you know I'm bringing and especially bring people of diversity to Hollywood if we have more women in power in Hollywood will have less Weinstein's so bring in we need diversity in Hollywood it's the only it'll make the projects better it'll make the depictions more authentic and it'll get rid of some of this horrible stuff that's happening right now I'm gonna take a question from the front key what key wait for a microphone thanks for coming so in Hollywood and in films there's a there's a portrayal of you know LGBT community that's always either stereotypes you know portrayed which is not always positive and what do you think along those lines is the biggest drawback that you know the LGBT community has and what can we do about it well I think it's getting better I mean I I thought moonlight did a pretty good job but what happened in moonlight you know you had people who had lived that experience riding and directing that experience and even if you had a straight director he's surrounded himself by people who would live that experience right as writers directors we don't have to have lived everything we depict that would be we'd have to have massive writers rooms right for that but you should we shouldn't be so arrogant to think we can do it in a vacuum so when people write and direct characters or act characters who are very different than themselves first off I think it's really fun and amazing and expansive work to ask the questions be curious go find people like that do your research and then as a show creator or a producer which I've been in that position now you might want to hire them you might want to bring those people into the writers room you know you're gonna get a better you know black lesbian television show if you fill the room with some black women lesbians and we had that character a character like that in our show and so of course we need to hire folks to come help write the scripts and direct the scripts who are gonna bring authenticity to that experience and I learn a lot I learned a lot I finally learned how lesbians do it but I wouldn't have learned that if I hadn't hired some lesbian directors right it was that was demonstrated in front of a lot of people at a lunch break once during shooting expansive the so you know I always say if you want to if you want to make Hollywood more authentic make the writers rooms more diverse it's a great place to start some of that means you all have to there my Texas came out you guys have to you know people of diversity have to like show up go out there do it and and and and frankly Hollywood is hungry to hire people of diversity right now more so than ever because they see they're following the money and they're seeing that shows that are more reflective of what the real world looks like or have higher viewership and so a more diverse show with a more diverse cast talking about issues that speak to more people is making it more money and and so they want to have more of that content that's more reflective of our real lives and so you know I know when we tried to hire a woman to direct some of our television episodes our television series it was incredibly difficult because all of the women directing in Hollywood were taken we need more we also by the way need executives to take a chance on some young new women filmmakers so that they're more available to stop that catch-22 that goes on where only experience gets you the job because then we will have none another questions I think somebody in the second row there hi Lance thank you so much for coming by the way can I just say I'm really great fun of you in Tom's vlogs you're very funny which which you wish you were in more of his yeah it's not my best work I sort of play the fool in the blog's don't I I mean I didn't if you read the comments but everyone know I just asked do you worry that the sort of the Facebook bubble phenomenon would sort of impact on maybe how sort of how effective storytelling through you know film drama and stuff might be impacted because you know maybe for example we're seeing that a lot of the time sort of very progressive shows or you know films are being shared sort of it may be just liberal circles do you worry all right yeah impacts this sort of the effectiveness of your yeah yeah because the audience has become so niche hasn't it and so it's hard to get outside of that and we have to try and get outside of that I you know I tried to varying success with when we rise so you know when we rise is this LGBT women's rights racial minority rights peace movement big mega miniseries and you know most people said you should put that on HBO or Netflix or something like that and and front I'll be very frank it probably would have been better I would have had more money they would've given me more time better executives but I took it to ABC which is a public network because I wanted to try and get beyond the core audience so I wasn't just turning around and preaching directly to the converted right and and it's tough we got we got good ratings but not great and so you know hopefully it made some difference and I think it'll take executives at networks that are far reaching to pick up content that addresses you know these sorts of issues to really break through and make a difference otherwise I do think you're right we're at risk of only preaching to ourselves and that's really I think that only widens the divide and the fractures between us between communities we have a lot in common I mean it might be an exaggeration I'm just riffing off of this but it's sort of like you know when that teacher didn't tell me that that pink triangle meant I had a brotherhood with this Star of David if we don't share each other's stories with each other with other people of difference we continue to be divided and the people who take advantage of that are the people who have historically been in power and at least in my country that's a man who looks like a Cheeto and it's not helpful yeah and have you taken up whole you're gonna drill me on that one day yeah you know what that is unfair no that was horribly unfair you should hold me to account cheetos are delicious why would we insult them Oh but I was just gonna ask a little bit on on that point of us getting getting more fractured as sort of as in into these groups do you think there has been a change a noticeable change in that regard over the last sort of five six years obviously we've seen Trump we've seen bricks we've seen all these headline things but do you think it stretches out from that do you think it's deeper I I mean I I can you know some of my observations are very United States and Eric so don't you I'd be curious how this applies here there is there has been a divide I you know I'm writing a book right now but you can't buy it so I'm not selling it it's not done the but I'm writing a book right now which is called two Americas because I grew up in one I grew up in the South I grew up in a conservative environment religiously our occupation regionally very different than coastal America which is more progressive but I I in my experience yes there are differences but it's not a chasm you know it's not it's not it's we're not so different than one another and what would help is if we could figure out the common language to use and we did a little bit of that around the marriage equality fight when we started talking not about the lawyers but about the plaintiffs using words like family family is a word that we understand in both America's progressive people want something better for their children than they had for themselves so do conservative red state Americans I think the divide that this feeling that it's a gulf is something that we've learned from the media and I include the Internet in that and the misinformation on the Internet about that and and you know I I think that that's gotten worse both in the divide between progressive people and conservative people but it's also created these divides that I feel like are getting wider and wider within the LGBTQ community there's a there's a there's debates within a community that are very very healthy and should be had if people are being neglected if they're being left out you know for a long time the trans community rightfully protested that they were being left out of legislation that would protect their lives lives that were most at risk that's a legitimate complaint but when I start to see people in a movement talk about the necessity for isolation from the rest I just think they're falling for a lie that's being perpetrated in the media and the internet I really think they do and and I think we may be I'm curious how many people have had when they post anything that has to do with any sort of minority status or the protection of a difference you get assailed by people online right who want to be critical of your of who you've tried to protect or what you wanted to criticize because you felt like he was antagonizing of people of difference and most of the time I'm gonna sound like a conspiracy theorist right now most of the time these people have no faces like what happened to these horrible people they have no faces they have no heads they have no identity they are this sort of bot culture that I would say loud and clear I think it is about time that the people who are profiting off of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and the internet and making millions and billions of dollars who seem to be able to figure out anything they need to figure out when it comes to an algorithm they need to figure out who these non people are and who is disseminating these lies on the internet that are built to create fear and to divide us and I think are incredibly harmful when are they going to take responsibility in the same way we hold the press responsible if the press publishes something that is patently false and causes fear and harm they're in deep why aren't the people who create these platforms that are Semin ating mass misinformation that is causing fear and division and harm not being held accountable and not being held responsible for what it is they're creating they're smart enough to figure out how to rectify this and they're just not there was a time before the media was held to account and we figured out why we had to do it granted that was hundreds and thousands of years ago it's time we do that to the Internet and I mean that's a big scary idea yeah and when I meet people who are running for office they get very scared of that idea because they say it's limiting free speech and I say and listen I'm a civil rights activist I want free speech for days forever but I also know that there are sometimes healthy limits to what it is you can and can't say if you walk into and we know this one a crowded theater and scream fire and people die because you told that lie you ought to be held accountable if you're making a billion dollars a year on Twitter you better figure out who these faceless people are who are changing elections and hurting young people of diversity before III idea of a question but if anyone else has one at all that's probably more interesting and I find you incredibly interesting hello huge fan of you and Tom by the way say thank you for coming you're clearly a very emotive and passionate speaker so I was just wondering if you've ever thought about running for president or going not kind of root side vote for you if I could do you wanna be vice president well Tom be first lady uh you know IIIi there's been times that I flirted with the idea of getting into politics but I I still right now in my life feel like the place that I can help the most and this is from talking to some of my friends who are in politics and our elected officials and their big complaint is listen I want to do that I would love to co-sponsor that legislation I would love to vote for that but I can't I'll lose my election or I can't because it's not going to get any traction and and I'm gonna lose these fundraisers or these funders I mean and I always I'm mad at them because I think it's not courageous and it's not leadership that's another I'm not gonna change them as much as I try what I can do is try and change the culture and make their job easier right what I can do is try and change move the needle a little bit in terms of the acceptance of certain people the understanding of certain people so that they can open up the paper and say oh wow 60% of the United States now approves of marriage equality well that's a lot easier now to get behind then when most people were against it so if I can continue to do what I'm doing by telling these kinds of stories and make our elected officials jobs easier I feel like you know I'm doing something and so for right now I'm gonna keep I'm gonna keep doing that I think there's one down here um I was wondering what's your relationship now with the Mormon Church and just like your sort of religious background generally well they do not like my gay marriage or my addiction to coffee that's that's not good with them but I I'll say I haven't talked to him in a little while like a year so but I did a um I I worked on a documentary called eight the Mormon proposition which talk just followed the money around Proposition 8 who you know who was paying for this proposition that took marriage equality away in the United States and it all went back not all most went back to the Mormon Church and and so we did that documentary I'm sure they liked it about as much as they'd like Big Love which was about fundamentalist Mormon ISM they didn't like it at all but they called me up I mean they're smart listen my people are pretty bright my Mormon brothers and sisters and they said they wanted to have a conversation and and of course you know I think then it's my obligation to put my feet where my mouth is and to walk on over there and so I went to the Joseph Smith Center which is like the headquarters of the Mormon Church and sit down and had a conversation with some of these people who were in leadership positions in the church and and they invited me to the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Spectacular and which is like the which is like the Mormon Oscars right it's like a big deal they do the big Christmas show it's televised across the United States they're big choir it's awesome and they and I went and I brought some guests which were some other gay and lesbian people and who had kids and family and you know and I think they just watched them and afterwards one of the elders was walking with me who I'd really come to care for older guy white haired guy and he he took my hand and he said he said brother black I said yeah and he said do you ever want to have a family and and I said yeah I mean I'm not in the church anymore but I still grew up Mormon like I want 20 kids I hope you're ready for that Tom yeah you know like I I do I was like yeah of course I do and and he got really teary-eyed it was a really remarkable moment in my life and and he just said boy we didn't we thought he thought that this was all about deinstitutionalization sort of breaking down marriage deconstructing marriage in marriage if you understand the Mormon religion marriage is really at the center of the religion and the purpose for being on the planet besides getting this body it's also building a family that you take back up to heaven that's the idea and so marriage is critical to them and and he thought the gay people were just trying to break it down and destroy it and when he realized by watching this lesbian couple that has kids and talking to me about it it started to light something up and that conversation has created change in the church and not just me I continue to have conversations with them so do some other people who were on the ground there who incredibly kind and brave and patient and we've been watching the Mormon Church shift on these issues you know being gay is no longer considered the sin that it was they still don't think you should act on it which I we have to have some more conversations but it's not sending you straight to hell like it used to and they have started many groups that are starting to support young LGBT people and starting to work on some programs to help keep their LGBT homeless population in Salt Lake City safe because there's a massive homeless epidemic in Salt Lake City because as you can imagine these kids come out and they're kicked out of the house and they go to Salt Lake City and they're on the streets and the Mormon Church is stepping up in a way and working with the pride Center to make sure they're taken care of these are big changes they're not there yet but they have gone from arguably the most homophobic Church in in the United States to somewhere in the middle if not becoming one of the more progressive we're not there yet but boy it's hard right you get in fights with people about being different and people's right to do that and they disagree with you and you want to just slam the door and stomp your feet and post something horrible online about them hopefully with like a really embarrassing picture and call it a day but it doesn't get you anywhere you know it does it really doesn't work it's and it's so hard to keep those avenues of communication open it's hard work but you got to resist the temptation to get angry and to act out and to slam the door and at least leave that open and I think that's where we see progress so that's where I'm at with the Mormon Church right now I'm just gonna take one from the very back row there just see the hand thank you for so much for speaking today and and I think you're right that a lot of progress has be made but in certain areas especially say in the u.s. you know people seem to be really willing to vote for the ROI more of the world who you know have done all these things and yet you know cling to because they believe that you know quote biblical morality or character matter so much and yet are still able to feel that you know that that they're going to vote for people with you know the who have done things in their own life that are you know perhaps questionable based on sort of what traditional Christianity believes seemingly because they they care so much that you know gay marriage should be reversed or certain social issues should be it should be a change door there and and how do we how do you get these these people who are willing to hold their nose and vote for people like Trump because they seem to be so against marriage equality or so against these bathroom bills or whatever imagined fears fiercer they have and how do you reconcile that because they seem to be really able to go to the end of the ends of the earth and forget everything else just to vote for you know pretty crazy people in order to fight the and how do you get these hardcore a lot of you know Trump was elected how do you get them to to come on board well where are you from by the way Canada all right good for you the Justin Trudeau don't listen he's so cute sorry yeah quite a little superhero the you know I I'm not a politician but I'm gonna say I I think that the people who truly are voting out of animus you're probably not going to convince a lot of them to change their mind I have some of those in my family but and I have a lot of people who voted for Trump in my family I would say probably of my extended family most but most didn't vote out of animus they just didn't and I think that's a little bit of that is also a media lie and it's it's a little they're being a little tone deaf people often for what they need what they personally are lacking and I think that the opposition party in America whether its independence or Democrats had got to figure out what it is certain people in the Rust Belt down through the Appalachian Mountains across the South Texas where I lived my people what is it they feel they don't have right now and how do you help him fix that and I'll tell you they didn't present and I listened I were I was out there on this but I was trying to beat this guy but there wasn't a vision put out there that solved their problems that address their problems and I'd say the number one problem when you actually go out there and listen and talk to these people is how do I put my talented young kid through school because my job doesn't pay what it used to my unions gone you know this tech advancement has gotten rid of this career that I thought was gonna be able to put my kids through college in school so how are we gonna figure out that how are we gonna figure out a new economy that doesn't leave so many people behind that's what's really going on in the south that's what I think people were really voting for the ones who were voting out of animus fuck'em they're right but I do think that's a minority I think the press likes to spin it as a majority because it's a great story because it's anger it's us against them but really we got to figure out how to not leave people behind and if the only thing anyone gave them in this election in America was make America great again by the way good slogan for people who feel like they're left behind they don't understand the racist sentiments behind that they don't understand what that would mean to dial things back what it would mean to minorities to them it just sounds like a more hopeful time so come up with a very clear way in a plan to make America great in the future not again and maybe they won't vote for dial on the clock backward again I'm not running for public office but I think we've got time for just one more question so I'm gonna take it from down there on that bench you're talking earlier about the responsibility of that LGBT LGBT community to people in sort of ethnic minorities to advance like recognition and rights do you think that anyone who's part of any sort of oppressed community be that LGBT or racial or whatever do you think everybody has responsibility to be an activist or do you think people some people don't have to do that they can just kind of go on live their lives without em well I mean I guess it depends on how you define you know activism um I would I think we have a responsibility to our fellow man and I don't think it means everyone has to get out in the streets in March although that would be really helpful if they did I don't think it means everyone has to you you know go into politics and write legislation I don't think it means necessarily that or form a foundation does not necessarily that but activism as I said a bit earlier the most effective form of it happens in the most intimate settings I I think it happens in those conversations that we have with our own family I think it happens in you know if you're here at school in the ways that you reach out to another group they might help another group it might not feel like activism to show up to the bake sale of some other organization but it is you're building a bridge so I yeah I kind of do think we have a responsibility to cure this sickness I think that our humanity is sick right now and that we it's almost like you know when you're walking down the street a parent is and they have their child next to them and they see someone who's very different and you know sometimes there's someone who's daint legitimately dangerous they have a knife or they're so drunk they're gonna run into but most of times just something of difference and that parent like pulls that kid in a little tighter I think that's almost akin to a mental illness it does us no good it's fear-based it's robbing of opportunities to learn and to become expansive and to understand more I think we have enough we have an obligation to help the world if the world is this child as individuals we have an obligation to say what do you think that why is their skin a different color why is their hair longer why are they wearing that why are they singing that song or saying that prayer should we find out and it's cured that illness is gone imagine how we could tackle our real problems if we all came together with our very very different perspectives and looked at a problem from all those points of view oh my god you know humanity and what we could become would be limitless we have to cure that sickness and if that means that everybody in very little ways in very big ways has to become a bit of an activist to help cure that fear I think we have an obligation and on that characteristically inspirational no I think that calls to end a question-and-answer session there around and the event as a whole so before before ends just just that one reminder about the the ballot which is closing on Monday and after I've given you that can we all give a massive round of applause to Lance for that talk there thanks guys sake Peeta and thank you all

Channel: Cambridge Union

Views: 43,459

Rating: 4.8870587 out of 5

Keywords: The, Cambridge, Union

Id: vUNUkI4-Luc

Length: 69min 49sec (4189 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 15 2017