:00:00. > :00:12.Welcome to HARDtalk, I'm Stephen Sacker.
:00:13. > :00:21.It's 50 years since homosexuality was decriminalised in Britain.
:00:22. > :00:24.In those 50 years, the campaign for LGBT rights has won landmark
:00:25. > :00:26.victories in many parts of the world, perhaps best
:00:27. > :00:28.symbolised by the normalisation of gay marriage
:00:29. > :00:37.My guest today is American filmmaker Dustin Lance Black.
:00:38. > :00:41.He won an Oscar for the film Milk and has just completed a major
:00:42. > :00:43.series on the struggle for gay rights.
:00:44. > :01:12.Has the time come to declare a famous victory?
:01:13. > :01:14.Dustin Lance Black, welcome to HARDtalk.
:01:15. > :01:25.Thank you for having the. To what extent do you think that your
:01:26. > :01:35.experiences from childhood to now has a gay person have come to define
:01:36. > :01:39.your creative output? Oh, boy. It is one of the many things about me that
:01:40. > :01:43.does define me creatively. Certainly when I am teaching my students -
:01:44. > :01:49.because I teach classes in screenwriting sometimes - and I say
:01:50. > :01:56.to them, tell me about you, what is it about you that is unique, where
:01:57. > :02:00.do you come from, what are you interested in, these are the things
:02:01. > :02:03.that make you incredibly unique. And the things that make you unique
:02:04. > :02:08.could make you marketable in the competitive film isthmus. They give
:02:09. > :02:12.you that unique voice -- business. I encourage them to look at your own
:02:13. > :02:17.voice and the core of who you are because it can make you marketable
:02:18. > :02:20.and you can succeed. I think far too often writers and filmmakers try to
:02:21. > :02:25.go for what is profitable, what is hot at the moment. And the truth of
:02:26. > :02:28.that is you are going to get your butt kicked in the end because
:02:29. > :02:32.someone else is going to be very passionate about that subject. So,
:02:33. > :02:37.at the core of you and your sort of self identity, being gay is a really
:02:38. > :02:42.important part of that? Sure, being gay is a big part of that, because
:02:43. > :02:47.that has a connection to love and who I love and who I spend my life
:02:48. > :02:50.with and the family that I am going to build. But also where I grew up
:02:51. > :02:54.in the United States probably formed who I am. So, growing up in the
:02:55. > :02:57.south in a very conservative atmosphere, growing up in the
:02:58. > :03:01.military and understanding what that meant. The two are woven together in
:03:02. > :03:05.a sense, because I think it is right to say that you had an awareness of
:03:06. > :03:10.being different and of being gay whether you put it that way yourself
:03:11. > :03:14.or not, you have an awareness of three early in your childhood and
:03:15. > :03:17.that was something that in the community you came from, the
:03:18. > :03:25.religion you were born into, that was tough. You mean with the
:03:26. > :03:29.Mormons? Yeah. My mum, my father, the entire side of the family was a
:03:30. > :03:37.devout Mormon, I was a devout Mormon growing. I believed what I was.
:03:38. > :03:46.Including when I was seven years old church beamed in the prophet. He
:03:47. > :03:52.came onto the screen. It was as close to God... It was Godlike, very
:03:53. > :03:57.intimidating. I will never forget him saying next to the sin of murder
:03:58. > :04:03.comes the sin of sexual impurity, homosexuality. Now, I might not have
:04:04. > :04:07.known what that meant at that moment, but I soon learnt... At
:04:08. > :04:12.first I thought it was a new Scrabble word, because it had a X in
:04:13. > :04:15.it and all of those syllables. Soon I learnt I would bring great shame
:04:16. > :04:20.to myself and my family if anyone found out that I had a crush on the
:04:21. > :04:24.boy down the street, which I did. That I would also be going to hell.
:04:25. > :04:29.I would not be with my heavenly father. So I... And if I did fall in
:04:30. > :04:36.love it would have to be something hidden, suppressed. Imagine... That
:04:37. > :04:39.is an enormous darkness to take through childhood, adolescents and
:04:40. > :04:43.into adult hood without being able to discuss it. There was no one to
:04:44. > :04:47.discuss it with. You would be in trouble. If I discussed it in the
:04:48. > :04:52.military, you couldn't be openly gay. You would be kicked out. If I
:04:53. > :04:56.discussed it with anyone in our society, which was very conservative
:04:57. > :04:59.at the time, I would be in great trouble - in some places it was
:05:00. > :05:03.still a crime. You would be expelled. I would certainly be
:05:04. > :05:07.expelled from the things that create community where I am from, so my
:05:08. > :05:15.church, from my neighbourhood and from my school I would be a pariah.
:05:16. > :05:23.And that creates isolation, and that isolation makes young, talented LGBT
:05:24. > :05:28.people fade and stop trying to stand out in positive ways. And for me
:05:29. > :05:33.that isolation ultimately lead to thoughts of taking my own life.
:05:34. > :05:36.Because you tell a young person that when they first feel love that
:05:37. > :05:46.that's not going to lead to things like dates and the prom and marriage
:05:47. > :05:49.but that it could lead to prison or electroshock therapy and certainly
:05:50. > :05:52.disown them from church or home, you wonder what is the purpose of
:05:53. > :05:58.living. You took the decision, you came out to your mother, it must
:05:59. > :06:03.have been very difficult, when you were 21. Yeah, I was 21 years old. I
:06:04. > :06:07.didn't mean to come out. We were living in Washington, DC and I was
:06:08. > :06:11.home for Christmas. We would sit up and talk all night long. You have to
:06:12. > :06:18.understand, my mum had been paralysed from a young age. So she
:06:19. > :06:21.was different too but she was very conservative. At a certain point I
:06:22. > :06:25.wasn't giving anything to the conversation. I wasn't speaking. She
:06:26. > :06:32.filled in the blanks. She was mad about "Don't ask, don't tell", which
:06:33. > :06:40.was a law at the time that as long as no one knew that you were found
:06:41. > :06:44.out... Staying in the closet. It not only hurt the people in the
:06:45. > :06:48.military. My mum didn't see it that way. She was angry because it let
:06:49. > :06:51.gay or lesbian people in in any form. These people she had been
:06:52. > :06:55.taught were next to murderers in terms of sin. These people who were
:06:56. > :07:00.wrong and sick and broken. She just kept going on about it. I cant out
:07:01. > :07:05.because at a certain point, even though I was literally praying not
:07:06. > :07:08.to, I could feel the warmth of my tears hit my cheeks. And a good
:07:09. > :07:13.southern mum can read those tears. She said she knew when I started to
:07:14. > :07:17.cry, I will get teary just thinking back to that moment, because I
:07:18. > :07:22.didn't want to come out, I wasn't ready to come out. That coming out
:07:23. > :07:26.experience, her reaction to it I will never forget. She just got very
:07:27. > :07:29.quiet, her heartbreaking, knowing her son would face challenges she
:07:30. > :07:35.didn't want him to. She said why, why would you choose this? That is
:07:36. > :07:39.what thought was. Will never forget pointing to her crutches, she was
:07:40. > :07:46.paralysed from polio, on the debt, and I said, mum, why did you choose
:07:47. > :07:50.those? And she didn't have an answer to that. That was the beginning of
:07:51. > :07:55.our conversation and it was a conversation that would go on for
:07:56. > :07:59.quite sometime. It was not easy. She did not immediately accept me but
:08:00. > :08:03.there was a lot of unlearning to be done. A lot of that happened when
:08:04. > :08:07.she met my gay and lesbian friends when she came to my graduation from
:08:08. > :08:11.UCLA film school and she heard the stories of gay and lesbian young
:08:12. > :08:16.people. And they didn't match up with what she heard from the Mormon
:08:17. > :08:19.prophet, the military, those personal stories, not political
:08:20. > :08:24.stories, not about the Constitution or science, personal stories from
:08:25. > :08:28.these young people and myself eventually and raced the generations
:08:29. > :08:33.of homophobia she had learnt from the church and from the state and it
:08:34. > :08:37.was gone -- erased. I will never forget after a night near my
:08:38. > :08:45.graduation when she spent an entire evening with my gay friends, that
:08:46. > :08:51.she finally held me and Huntony and in those tears I knew that the lies
:08:52. > :08:57.and distortions were gone -- hugged me. That was love. Understood and a
:08:58. > :09:01.standing who I am and that was love. You have said something important.
:09:02. > :09:05.As I have looked at your career, research in meeting you, your faith
:09:06. > :09:09.in storytelling and the degree to which it can make a difference to
:09:10. > :09:13.the way people see and think. Because I want to take you forward
:09:14. > :09:17.now, you said you want to UCLA film school and after that you developed
:09:18. > :09:25.a very successful career writing, screenwriting. And I think by the
:09:26. > :09:29.time you were 30- 31 you had extraordinary success. You became
:09:30. > :09:34.preoccupied with telling the story of one man, Harvey Milk, the first
:09:35. > :09:41.publicly gay elected official in any US city in San Francisco. Right.
:09:42. > :09:45.What was it about the Milk story that you thought would change hearts
:09:46. > :09:50.and minds? I will break that down a bit. First I think only a story can
:09:51. > :09:54.change hearts and I think only hearts can change minds. That is how
:09:55. > :09:58.I see it. If you want to change it, don't start here. That is a mistake
:09:59. > :10:04.we see on TV programmes and news programmes all day and night. Start
:10:05. > :10:11.here, tell a personal story. That is - personal leap over the walls built
:10:12. > :10:15.by politics, region, religion and by race - go right through them. I have
:10:16. > :10:19.always believed in the power of story to do that. And I get that
:10:20. > :10:22.from the south, I learned it from a bunch of conservative southern folks
:10:23. > :10:26.who liked whiskey and telling stories that night. Secondly, there
:10:27. > :10:31.was a story - I was lucky enough at a certain point, my mum remarried at
:10:32. > :10:38.a good Catholic, which meant he went to church twice a year. And he was
:10:39. > :10:42.much more open-minded and he had orders to ship off to the Bay area
:10:43. > :10:47.in California and my mum loaded up the car with three boys, a cat and
:10:48. > :10:51.all of our belongings in the trunk and we took off to California. There
:10:52. > :10:55.I heard the story of Harvey Milk as a teenager. A story of an openly gay
:10:56. > :11:00.men. I didn't know that there was such a thing. I thought, boy, that
:11:01. > :11:04.is a dangerous thing to be. That is how his story progress. Yes, like
:11:05. > :11:08.you said, he won an election, winning at the ballot box. Let me
:11:09. > :11:15.stop you there because Sean Penn makes an amazing appearance. Let's
:11:16. > :11:21.give people a sense of what it was like in the 70s when Harvey Milk was
:11:22. > :11:29.making his name. Let's have a look. My name is Harvey Milk and I am here
:11:30. > :11:35.to recruit you! I want to recruit you for the fight to preserve your
:11:36. > :11:41.democracy, brothers and sisters. You must come out! Come out to your
:11:42. > :11:44.parents, come out to your friends, if indeed they are your friends.
:11:45. > :11:50.Come out to your neighbours, come out to your fellow workers! Once and
:11:51. > :11:59.for all, let's break down the myths and destroy the lies and distortion!
:12:00. > :12:04.So, that is Harvey Milk at the sort of height of his compelling
:12:05. > :12:08.rhetoric. The sad, terrible thing is that no sooner had he sought of won
:12:09. > :12:13.an audience for this powerful message than he was murdered, shot
:12:14. > :12:20.and killed, 1977, because he had a lot of enemies. Right. I wonder
:12:21. > :12:24.whether you from Harvey Milk's life that you were going to have to fight
:12:25. > :12:29.very hard and confront people and difficult things to get your message
:12:30. > :12:35.out there? Well, I take my lesson from Harvey in many ways. It is that
:12:36. > :12:39.you have to reach out to unexpected allies. And by unexpected I mean
:12:40. > :12:43.some of those people who you might think are your enemies. If you are
:12:44. > :12:47.going to build the coalitions to create progress. Now, that means
:12:48. > :12:54.looking past yourself, looking past your needs and desires, and I don't
:12:55. > :13:01.just mean 1978, I mean 2017. Minorities need to live listen to
:13:02. > :13:07.the message, how do you breach the coalition of the uses? Care for your
:13:08. > :13:10.neighbour and your own needs. How do you understand every single person
:13:11. > :13:14.in this planet right now is a minority in one way or another. It
:13:15. > :13:18.depends how you slice the pie. You can help them find the interest that
:13:19. > :13:23.they have in your plate if you help them with yours. He went to the
:13:24. > :13:27.union workers, white, working class union workers who could not afford
:13:28. > :13:31.to put their talented kids through school, and created an alliance with
:13:32. > :13:35.him, with them, that is how he got elected. What you have said to me is
:13:36. > :13:39.incredibly positive and it is about building alliances and coalitions,
:13:40. > :13:44.perhaps some of them unexpected, but you also have to take things on and
:13:45. > :13:48.it seems to me one of the things you have done, you have had to do, is
:13:49. > :13:52.confront to a certain extent your own religion and your own
:13:53. > :13:56.background. Sure. For example, you have had a lot of successful TV
:13:57. > :13:59.scripts and films in your life and you have taken time-out to be a
:14:00. > :14:06.political activist. One of the things you were most activist on was
:14:07. > :14:10.proposition aid, came the fight to stop gay marriage in California. For
:14:11. > :14:13.a while they were successful. My church was leading the way
:14:14. > :14:17.financially. You had to take on the Mormons and you made a film about it
:14:18. > :14:19.which, too many people inside the faith that you had been born into,
:14:20. > :14:31.was disgraceful. Was a betrayal. I would imagine it was also a
:14:32. > :14:38.revelation to many of them. The director of the documentary said
:14:39. > :14:46.would you take part in this and help make the documentary that holds the
:14:47. > :14:54.church accountable? I was nervous and I called my mother and she said
:14:55. > :14:59.he do you go again. I said, yeah, but I just want to tell the truth.
:15:00. > :15:06.What trouble can we get in if we do that? We were just following the
:15:07. > :15:13.money. On the other side of that, there was no attack from the church.
:15:14. > :15:19.They gave me a phone call. They said speak with us. We want to meet with
:15:20. > :15:26.you in Salt Lake City. The lessons are learned from my mother, keeping
:15:27. > :15:40.channels open, I said yes. I went there. Day invited me to a Mormon
:15:41. > :15:44.Tabernacle Spectacular. It is their biggest show of the year. They
:15:45. > :15:52.invited me and some gay and lesbian families. What became evident was
:15:53. > :15:56.that those lesbians and their children, they were having as much
:15:57. > :15:59.trouble keeping those children quiet as the straight couples. The
:16:00. > :16:14.challenges were not different. I will never forget the white-haired
:16:15. > :16:18.man, the bleak -- public relations manager of the church, he took my
:16:19. > :16:30.hand, and said, do you want a family one day? I said yes. He got tearful
:16:31. > :16:37.and said I did not realise that. In the subsequent conversation, it
:16:38. > :16:42.became clear the mission was about breaking down the institution the
:16:43. > :16:47.Mormon church holds dear. And what they learned in those days and weeks
:16:48. > :16:53.was that we want our families protected and respected, along with
:16:54. > :16:59.our children. That is the bottomline. That is interesting.
:17:00. > :17:07.Although you are now a campaigner and activist for gay rights, you
:17:08. > :17:12.sound like a conservative, especially when you talk about what
:17:13. > :17:16.marriage means to you. We have language in common with
:17:17. > :17:22.conservatives and progressives. We all have children. We start speaking
:17:23. > :17:27.the same language when we are all together. What is interesting in
:17:28. > :17:35.politics, both in the United States and much of the West, is the fight
:17:36. > :17:46.you are fighting, the right for a marriage, it has been won. -- gay.
:17:47. > :17:52.63% of Americans believe it is right and accept and embrace it as part of
:17:53. > :18:01.America. You have just made a film called When We Rise, looking at 40
:18:02. > :18:06.years and more of gay rights, you have been filming and reporting and
:18:07. > :18:14.remarking on a journey that has reached its final destination.
:18:15. > :18:21.Absolutely not. Gay marriage was the prime mover unexpectedly of our
:18:22. > :18:29.movement. We all got together with some folks, legal minds, and we sued
:18:30. > :18:41.the State of California and the Federal Court over the proposition.
:18:42. > :18:47.If we were going to do it right, we needed some allies. We had a lawyer
:18:48. > :18:55.go to The Supreme Court for us, the same who went for George Bush to the
:18:56. > :19:00.White House. We told the personal stories, because we understood we
:19:01. > :19:04.could get five out of nine votes of The Supreme Court but if we wanted
:19:05. > :19:16.to change the culture, make the world safe for LGBT families, we had
:19:17. > :19:22.to tell stories, about them and children. Those are the stories were
:19:23. > :19:28.told in public in those five years on the way to The Supreme Court.
:19:29. > :19:34.They were told in court. They did not only convince those five of nine
:19:35. > :19:40.judges, but public opinion is well. I was doing what I did with my mum
:19:41. > :19:43.on a massive scale. Getting back to the point over whether you have
:19:44. > :19:49.reached their destination, a sense of achievement, how deep it runs,
:19:50. > :19:55.Donald Trump is now in the White House... I can barely hear you say
:19:56. > :19:58.those words. It is tough for me. I wonder whether you believe the
:19:59. > :20:08.election of Donald Trump... Certain things already happened. For
:20:09. > :20:15.example, is rollback, the predisposition of allowing
:20:16. > :20:19.transgender children in schools to choose which button they want to go
:20:20. > :20:24.in, it has been rolled back. -- decision. It is disgusting. You said
:20:25. > :20:32.it was so important to build bridges and understand people with different
:20:33. > :20:36.views. How do they sit together? I think first and foremost, if this
:20:37. > :20:41.was a man I truly believed did this because of his belief, I would be
:20:42. > :20:44.more curious about where he is coming from, but it is incredibly
:20:45. > :20:50.apparent this man is using fear to get power. That is what that is.
:20:51. > :20:54.This is not a man of true faith who believes there is something actually
:20:55. > :21:03.wrong here and is taking action on it. This is a man who, like Nero,
:21:04. > :21:05.believes if you divide, you can conquer, and he did. People of
:21:06. > :21:23.perversity, who -- diversity, who have become drunk
:21:24. > :21:26.on their success a little bit, need to look at this. I remember going to
:21:27. > :21:35.The Supreme Court remembering how proud we were. But I believed we had
:21:36. > :21:38.lost sight of how we got there, through coalition of the usses.
:21:39. > :21:50.Anyone on their own is vulnerable. You would hear the chanting, black,
:21:51. > :21:54.white, same fight. But I did not see many LGBT people at those rallies.
:21:55. > :21:58.We are losing the people that got us where we are. From the passion I am
:21:59. > :22:02.hearing in your voice, we clearly have to keep fighting. I wonder if
:22:03. > :22:08.you still have to keep the filmmaking on hold to continue this
:22:09. > :22:18.political fight. You know, I am doing some filmmaking addressing it,
:22:19. > :22:22.like When We Rise. It was billed as a reminder and warning, if we lose
:22:23. > :22:28.sight of our brothers and sisters and other movements, we are
:22:29. > :22:35.vulnerable. That is why it is called When We Rise, not When LGBT Rise. It
:22:36. > :22:50.comes from the black movement, and the peace movement from the 70s
:22:51. > :22:54.which we have forgotten about. I was writing this as a warning to get
:22:55. > :22:57.back to coalitions so we would not be defeated and the pendulum of
:22:58. > :23:01.progress would keep going forward. Instead, we were conquered. Now it
:23:02. > :23:05.is a warning. I am doing projects which show a path forward. It is not
:23:06. > :23:11.unique to be in this position where the pension is so far back. It is
:23:12. > :23:16.part of a process, and there is a way forward. -- pendulum. You have
:23:17. > :23:23.talked a lot about what drives your filmmaking and activism. You also
:23:24. > :23:29.said earlier you want a big family. You are married, happily married.
:23:30. > :23:34.Yes. Children is definitely something you want to embrace.
:23:35. > :23:38.Absolutely. Yeah. I am wondering how would you will fit all of this in.
:23:39. > :23:43.The wonderful thing about writing in particular is that reduction is
:23:44. > :23:49.difficult, but with writing, you are also looking for distraction, and
:23:50. > :23:55.children provide that. You need something when your brain is
:23:56. > :24:00.exhausted. No eyes are better than children's eyes to help you do that.
:24:01. > :24:07.I want to raise children and look through their rise, to make mistakes
:24:08. > :24:12.and encourage them to learn more and more and more. -- eyes. That is why
:24:13. > :24:22.I have been in this fight for so long. For me, it is about family.
:24:23. > :24:24.Dustin Lance Black, we have to end it there. But thank you so much.
:24:25. > :24:47.Thank you very much. Yesterday was one of those days
:24:48. > :24:51.for the southern half of the UK. Yes, the covers were
:24:52. > :24:53.on the court at Wimbledon. The rain was heavy at times
:24:54. > :24:56.and the umbrellas were out. It wasn't just across the south-east
:24:57. > :25:00.of England where we saw rain.