Dustin Lance Black

Dustin Lance Black (born in 1979) is an American screenwriter, director, and film and television producer best known for his work on the television series Big Love and the 2008 film Milk.

Biography

Career

During high school, Black began to work in theatre at The Western Stage in Salinas-Monterey, California, and later worked on productions including Bare at Hollywood's Hudson Main Stage Theatre. In 2000, he wrote and directed The Journey of Jared Price, a gay romance film, and Something Close to Heaven, a gay coming-of-age short film. In 2001, he directed and was a subject in the documentary On the Bus about a Nevada road trip taken by six gay men. Raised as Mormon, he was hired as the only Mormon writer on the HBO drama series Big Love about a polygamistic Mormon family.

Black had first visited San Francisco in the early 1990s and was inspired by city supervisor Harvey Milk's representation of the gay community while diagnoses of AIDS amongst gays were increasing. He had first viewed Rob Epstein's Harvey Milk documentary The Times of Harvey Milk when he was in college, and thought, "I just want to do something with this, why hasn't someone done something with this?" He met with Milk's former aides Cleve Jones and Anne Kronenberg, as well as former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos, and began to write a feature film screenplay encompassing the events of Milk's life. The screenplay was written on spec, but Black showed the script to Jones, who passed it on to his friend Gus Van Sant, who signed on to direct the feature.

Personal life

Black grew up in a Mormon household, "a very Christian conservative family", in San Antonio, Texas and later moving to Salinas, California. His father was a Mormon missionary who had converted Black's mother, but his mother later remarried. He says that growing up surrounded by Mormon culture and military bases made him worry about his sexuality, telling himself "I'm going to hell. And if I ever admit it, I'll be hurt, and I'll be brought down" when he found himself attracted to a boy in his neighbourhood at the age of six or seven. He says that his "acute awareness" of his sexuality made him dark, shy and at times suicidal, and he only came out after leaving high school.

Black is an "old friend" of Milk producer Dan Jinks, who signed on to the biopic after he called Black to congratulate him to discover the project did not have a confirmed producer.

References

External links