Q&A with Academy-Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black

nbc4 and focus features present Academy award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black a 2017 capital pride kickoff event did you know that he spent some formative years here in Manassas Park no gasping I do you came to the NASA part of your family when you were in college yeah when I write the beginning of college and my father's here somewhere right over there right right over there yeah black and you like to go on Lance sure yeah okay before we get started I just want to know what is it like sitting in the Academy Awards and hearing your name calls and walking up there and in front of an audience of 40 billion people around the world that many people yeah there were a thousand dollar watching uh it was a it was it was terrifying the night before why well because I you like lose and as much as I got into a homeschooler they taught you if you want an award you sold out I kind of wanted it I would say you feel like film school which is all at the time about sort of experimental filmmaking beyond the edges all this sort of thing and I found myself in this position where this film that we never imagined would even get made all of a sudden was getting a lot of the critical acclaim and and I remember a moment where Sean Penn who's like the coolest guy in the planet really is looked at me and I think I had some blank expression some dinner in the lead up and he said you want it don't you got Gold Fever and I had to be like I won't have a custom I do and it's a thing you know you gotta do convention I did I but then at the same time you're afraid definitely afraid that you're going to have the opportunity to get up there and that's very frightening event so he I was lucky to have made this with some people Bruce Cohen and Dan Jenks would one for American Beauty as producers and and Sean Joe would one in the cabinet or whatever and they said it's going to feel like a train hit yet and you're not going to remember anything for a little while and I didn't I remember hearing the name and the next thing I really remember is getting in an elevator and Jennifer Aniston was handing me a bottle of water and told me to breathe why milk this was when did you start the film air in 2008 which is the screen of 2008 how what was the lead up for that how long does it take you to get it there it was this I was working on a TV show called Big Love and which afforded me the opportunity on the weekends to start driving up to San Francisco start meeting real people who had known milk because Warner Brothers for a very long time have been trying to get a milk movie made and failing and failing and failing and I'm talking for like I think since 1988 1987 based on a book property and I couldn't use that property they owned it and I tried to get the job making their film and they told me they wanted someone with an Academy Award to write their script so I was rejected I left him tears from that meeting because I had worked at that point for a year trying to build an outline that I thought they would like I met all the real people I tried to make myself valuable in that way they weren't buying it and I was very upset for about an hour before I got angry pulled out my Capital One visa and I just started making the movie um and it was thanks to Focus Features who had great success with Brokeback Mountain and understood how to market on LGBT film in Y attraction so you get more than just gay people washing who stepped up once we have script in the director and said you know what we have faith in this and it was truly one of them and I'm not just saying that because they sponsored this screening part of the reason I'm here and flew across from London on short notice was because it's focus and focus has been lifting up the voices of individuals unique individuals filmmakers for 15 years now and it's those individual voices of diversity whose stories are told with specificity that get us all to feel like we understand that their experience even though they're so different that that is what is going I think I hope help create more understanding help break down walls in the world is talking about to much about building them so I want to huge thanks to folks I probably know if anybody came out and I just saw I think was on HBO or someplace said that I was flipping through or a couple months ago and I saw the ending of it it was like the last 30 minutes of it there is something timeless about it as if you haven't seen it and you're about to see it if you've seen it before and you just want to see it again because it's just so great it is timeless earlier today when I was talking to you about this you said that maybe now more than ever because of the current political climate talked about that and that's what brought you here as well that's true I mean I I did ask Jerry from Focus who's here came to London where I lived and started telling me that they wanted to do this thing and they he'd asked if I would come to a screening of milk in DC and I did question him I was like that's are we getting nostalgic like what are we why why are we doing that and yeah we are but you know the truth of it is this film is about a group of people who are fighting for equality and are starting to make great games and you watch that in the structure of this film they're making gains and then what happens in a backlash in this case its proposition six and someone named Anita Bryant and John Briggs in the case right now it's a certain administration right here in Washington DC and certain state governments that are rolling back protections we are in the middle of a backlash and this film shares Harvey Milk's recipe for being a backlash and I want you to really pay attention to that because you know we all talk about who we are as individuals and who we are as minorities and it is true every single person in here is a majority in one way or another just depends on how you slice that pie everyone on the planet is now we know that thanks to the internet we're all different from one another the way we make progress is together it's not by going to our separate corners and who cries the loudest it's not by just working for ourselves in our own needs as minorities that is a recipe for disaster if we are divided in that way just left Nero from Italy divided your conquered well divided I was walking up the US Supreme Court steps within merit with a marriage equality case and I got scared I knew we were going to win that case but I was worried we might lose the war because we were divided one divine because we didn't like each other we were divided because we were drunk on our own successes we've become myopic self-interested and I fade it to my LGBTQ family stopped paying attention only to our own needs it is a recipe for disaster it is short for our brothers and sisters and other social justice movement [Music] I'm glad we're screening this film of the kickoff the pride here when we need to resist we need to stand up we need to fight back but how do you do it you do it by building coalitions and when you watch how milk did it how he's finding one even at the ballot box he didn't do it by just saying hey gay people come vote from right he put together a coalition of minorities of seniors of racial minorities in San Francisco one getting a fair shake at the ballot box and by union workers who couldn't afford that their counter kids through school and said I'll fight for you and I'll work for you and LGBT people will work for you as hard as we do for ourselves and we'll show off for each other and you started winning and they beat a backlash so I'm hoping this inspires some folks in here to get out there and not just show up to pride have fun and try it louder pride but then take that energy and the friends you go to pride with and maybe think about going to a black lives matter pin or women's smart reach the people who don't understand how do you reach the people that I think is really easy for us to demonize them the people who may have may not have grown up with the tools to understand larger concepts sophisticated ideas maybe they've never known a gay person maybe they've been in a household that did not allow them that kind of critical thinking how do you change their mind how do you start a dialogue with them when they're scared because they don't understand it and and were the world as they know it as small as their world is it is still the only world they know and because of the internet and because of where we are today milk I'd be curious to see what milk would do with this current social media you know storm with the message how do we stop judging them and try to understand their fear well first off I mean I'm in I mean grateful that I was born into a very conservative military Mormon family from the south I'm very aware that most of my family my extended family voted for Donald Trump they are read through interest and I love them they are my family I would defend them tooth and bone and to the grave it also means I don't see that US and then it also means I've learned a lesson in having to come out to them myself and having to get them to come to my wedding I had I had some southern folks at my gay gay gay wedding in London who don't have any money and they spent their last time to fly out to the gay wedding yeah from Texarkana Texas to the UK showed up with gifts from Walmart it was on would I say to you know a part of this we did when we were fighting a marriage case and environment is what we do with films like this it is when we had a marriage case did we just make the progressive case for magical I know we hire Ted Olson to make the conservative case for marriage equality and what do we do in that case I tell my progressive friends and blessum they're probably right about almost all these things they say but they're quoting science according statistics they're talking about the Constitution they're talking about policies and law and I'm like it doesn't matter how damn right you are that's not going to change your mind because you want to change in mind you've got to start here you got to start with the heart and that's a personal soil and so I encourage my friends who are trying to reach out don't reach out and try to be right reach out with curiosity you've got to listen you got to understand who they are and then start to tell a personal story if you're doing this is a personal story in the end and I hope people feel personally about it same with Brokeback Mountain I mean these are movies that cross well beyond just the folks LGBT folks thankfully made enough money that they'll keep making gay films but personally every single one of you in here is armed with a personal story so if you feel like you want to change your mind don't come at people with policy and politics and constitution statistics and science it's not going to work tell them your personal story and why this issue is personal to you and I think that crosses the red-blue divide and what about listening to them listening to their fear what they come back with I say in a conversation between people who see things differently you have to come at it with curiosity ask questions I mean it's what you do for a living and you see how when you ask questions instead of coming out people with ideas they open up you can start a dialogue and it's also when I went kids often writing it say I'm gonna come out to my parents lab I have two pieces and pieces of advice when don't do it at Christmas that's true dramatically but number two is you gotta make sure you do all the work you can to leave that channel of communication open right ask questions be curious about their fears and you might start to get somewhere but it is hard what are you working on right now can you talk about it to you I'm writing a writing a book about em you know I lost my mom two years ago and I'm writing a book about how a conservative military Mormon mom who walked around in braces and crutches because she was paralyzed had a you know her best friend and her closest son I think was this progressive out on the coast and how despite our political leanings which for a long time could have been more different we were sick of these and it's just shining light on twelve moments that say hey here's where bridges are between our divided America right now and your mother had polio yeah the best toilet that's what handicapped her but all of us have mothers how did you do that you know and how did you create this this bond across you these very very different ideology well I tell it I tell a story when I first came out it didn't go great I mean it wasn't terrible but she wouldn't even tell Jeff my father over here he had to find out on his own years later and it was a bit of a struggle but what worked for us was she came out to California for my graduation from UCLA and I had not told my friends that my mom didn't accept me as a gay person yet and I also didn't tell my mama so many of my friends were gay and lesbian and so we had this big like dinner thing in our apartment and and I just realized it because I had said nothing my friends assumed she accepted me and this was like before Will and Grace and this is before Ellen so they were like wow she's like a saint so I can tell her anything and they started to and I watched her throughout the night tell their stories and my mom was a good southern mom so she was just nodding home to dad like and I just remember when everyone left she sat down with me and had a conversation she said I'm not your friend I said yeah and and I just remember her with tears in her eyes and she just held me so tight was the first time I've ever cried it was the first time I ever knew that she loved me for everything about Who I am for all of me and and that happened because she heard personal stories nobody came at her with politics because they already thought she was there so they came they told her about being rejected by their parents or about the experience they had with their families or the issues they were experiencing with being LGBT at the time and those stories in one night in just a few hours broke down a lifetime of myths and lies and distortions she learned from a church and from a government and they were gone it's the power of story it's what we do on the screen at our best tell personal story by the way it's also what we did in the courtroom with the marriage cases we told personal stories to the nation it's why you didn't just see five justices agree you also saw a nation move because we moved their hearts because we introduced them not to our lawyers but to our plaintiffs and to their children and so story that I think dispel fears are you religious you still did you eat the Church of Latter day Saints I am a terrible woman yeah I mean wearing the underwear is sexing the addiction to Starbucks like all bad so no I do still work with the Mormon Church though so yeah I don't leave those avenues communication open I know it's hard but it is also I in this town maybe you guys do a better I don't know or maybe it's way worse but it is you've got to leave those channels open and the way did it with the Mormon Church as I made a documentary called eight the Mormon proposition I worked on that which held them accountable for funding proposition eight they didn't like it so they called me because they knew they could and they said brother black we saw your family I shoot and then you know but you know then they invited me to come down to the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Spectacular which is like their Mormon Oscars and I said well if I'm because they wanted to talk to me and reach out you know like maybe we can heal this he'll stop making documentaries that say anything and and I thought I have some friends I need to bring and and and they said okay he's got an entourage and and I brought some gay and lesbian couples in their kids and again it's this I mean it sound like a broken record but it's it's a good one it works I just remember afterwards you know he saw a lesbian couple who were struggling to keep their kid quiet and crying and that moved him and I just remember him Jeff who was the head of PR normal Church grabbed my hand on her walk out he said brother black do you want kids one day and I said yeah and he started crying so we thought this was about the institutionalization about breaking down this family I said no no this is about us having protections because we also wanted it and it was like holy crap that was the miscommunication the whole time that's what it was and we're able to start to fix it you know when they're not quite there yet but if you are student of Mormon Mormon Church they say the word gay now they say it's not a disease you shouldn't be put through the therapy now they still say you shouldn't act on it which doesn't make any sense we'll get to that but you know at five maybe six but we are getting them to help fund an LGBTQ homeless youth shelter run by the pride Center because they have a homeless youth problem for LGBTQ youth because if the generations now homophobia in their church and so by leaving the channels of communication open by being willing to go there and meet with them you can start to make progress brother black you are a great visionary one of his first and grave works that milk thank you so much thank you [Applause] [Music] Oh [Music]

Channel: TMD Enterprises Photography & Videography

Views: 9,212

Rating: 4.9806762 out of 5

Keywords: Dustin Lance Black, Academy-Award-winning screenwriter, Milk, Landmark E-Street Cinema, Wendy Rieger, NBC4, #UnapologeticallyProud, dcpride, TMD Enterprises, Focus Features, Capital Pride

Id: NOjUQhUuv-E

Length: 19min 41sec (1181 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2017