Deadlinereports that ABC has greenlit an upcoming miniseries about the history of the gay rights movement from its “turbulent infancy” to the present.
ABC is reassembling the team of the 2008 movie Milk for another project about the gay rights movement, eight-hour miniseries When We Rise. Milk director Gus Van Sant has joined the mini, written/executive produced by Milk writer Dustin Lance Black and executive produced by the film’s producer Bruce Cohen. The project, which had been in development at ABC for more than two years, has now been officially greenlighted for production with Van Sant directing the first two-hour episode. He will executive produce the mini alongside Black, Cohen and Laurence Mark.
So 46 years covered in 8 hours. Good luck.
Lets hope that Dustin Lance Black actually does some research unlike that of Roland Emmerich. After all Black won’t have “The Life and Times of Harvey Milk” to adapt this time. And as we know from Emmerich’s “Stonewall” and the flap surrounding it that the events of that night have not been well documented and have been re-written many times.
British tabloids The Sun and E! News are both reporting that the guy dating British diver Tom Daley is none other than Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black who just happens to be 20 years older than Daley. Did they meet browsing a mature singles dating site or something?
Full disclosure. I am not a huge fan of Black. Especially after he kissed Hollywood’s ass and wouldn’t support the Ender’s Game boycott and stopped short of calling for a boycott of the Russian Olympics.
Not every advocate of gay equality and same-sex marriage is convinced that turning away from “Ender’s Game,” which cost about $110 million to make, is the best way to counter Mr. Card. “No way am I boycotting,” said Dustin Lance Black, who in 2009 won an Oscar for writing “Milk,” about the gay activist Harvey Milk, and who campaigned against California’s Proposition 8, which sought to ban gay marriage. Speaking from London on Wednesday, Mr. Black — who, like Mr. Card, comes from a Mormon family — said he would rather engage with, than shut out, political and cultural adversaries. “We haven’t been getting the numbers we’ve seen by disengaging,” Mr. Black said, referring to a rise in public acceptance of same-sex marriage and other measures of gay equality.
Short translation: I am not going to torpedo my career by endorsing a boycott of a major studio’s producer
A gutless, craven move by Black. If he is afraid for his career, he should just keep quiet.
I’m sure Harvey Milk is looking down from heaven deeply and disappointed
Well the Human Rights Campaign had one of its many parties this past Friday in Washington, DC as it hosted its 16th Annual National Starfucker Dinner.
Hosted by new $360,000.00 a year HRC president Chad Griffin in a rare public appearance after keeping a very low profile since hired over 6 months ago. Other speakers included Dustin Lance Black and Newark’s hero mayor, Cory Booker, and Griffin (the highest paid event host in history) presenting the National Equality Award to the NAACP and its president, Ben Jealous and the HRC’s Ally for Equality Award to actress Sally Field with . (Now don’t get me wrong I LOVE Sally Field but what the fuck? Aren’t there more relevent, active and in the now allies *cough* Ben Cohen, Pauley Perette, Chris Kluwe, Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Williams, nd Josh Hutcherson to name a few. *cough*)
Being the mother of a gay son. Sally did deliver a nice talk though about the biological innateness of being gay. “Sam is what nature intended him to be,” she told the audience. She knew well before her son that he was gay, of course, and had wanted to explain it all to him, but thanks to her other sons’ insistence, she let Sam find his own way. And she couldn’t be more proud.
Parents who kick out their children or turn their backs, she said, need to realize “these children have something important to teach their parents:” Love and acceptance. Some children are gay, she explains, “So the f*ck what?”
But what was the relevance of honoring her over others who are more visibly outspoken? STARPOWER and Ticket Sales.
All in all it was just another night at Gay Inc. with the gay elite paying $275.oo a ticket for a catered dinner, to run elbows with the stars, and tell each other just how fabulash they are while ENDA is still stuck in Congress after 20 years and Federal DOMA still stands.
Featuring an all-star cast including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Martin Sheen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jane Lynch, Kevin Bacon and others, “8” is a play written by Academy Award winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and directed by acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner. It is a powerful account of the case filed by the American Federation for Equal Rights (AFER ) in the U.S. District Court in 2010 to overturn Proposition 8 a constitutional amendment that eliminated the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the state of California. Framed around the trial’s historic closing arguments in June 2010, 8 provides an intimate look what unfolded when the issue of same-sex marriage was on trial.
Video of last nights performance made available by American Foundation for Equal Rights — the organization behind the effort to overturn Prop 8 — the event was streamed live on YouTube last night And now you can watch the full program below.
The play itself starts at roughly at the 30 minute mark after a recap of news reports and speeches about the court case challenging Prop 8.
In a recent issue of GQAustralia a writer doing an article on Taylor Lautner asked whether or not Dustin Lance Black and Gus Van Sant, who are both openly gay, hit on him during a recent dinner together where Lautner replied, “No, definitely not. I think they know I’m straight. But they’re great guys. They’re a lot of fun.”
“Really Mr. GQ writer? I’m curious, will you be asking all of the handsome actors I’ve ever had the privilege of working with or meeting if I made passes at them as well?” I’d love to be there when you ask Sean Penn that same question. Or, Mr. GQ writer, were you projecting your own unprofessional desires onto me and Gus
Above and beyond this clear attack on my character, I’m shocked that GQ would allow their writer to lean on the scurrilous, outdated stereotype that gay men are by nature sexual predators. I mean, would you have asked this same question if it were Diablo Cody and Kathryn Bigelow at dinner with Mr. Lautner?
Leaning on lies, myths and stereotypes about gay people is hateful, harmful and outdated. It’s not the 1950s anymore GQ, it’s 2011 and it’s time to grow up.”
SNAP!
Well GQ has issued an apology (via it’s Facebook page not it’s website or print magazine of course) stating:
“We’ve seen some of the comments floating around regarding our recent interview with Taylor Lautner and apologize if anyone was offended by anything in the article.
It certainly wasn’t our intention to paint anyone in the story as a sexual predator. The point we were actually trying to push was that Taylor is irresistible to virtually everyone – regardless of sexuality or gender. Hence the film crew cheering at his shirtless scenes while shooting ‘Twilight’, and Mark Wahlberg deeming him better looking than Leonardo DiCaprio.”
Well I guess that’s something at least.
Perhaps GQ Austrailia never got the memo that GQ is the “Gayest Non Gay Magazine” and 10.39 percent of it’s male readers are gay or bisexual
Personally I think Dustin Lance Black is hotter than Taylor Lautner any day of the week!
In an email exchange with Advocate.com. The National Organiztion For Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher – Srivastav (sans Hindu husband of course. It was in public after all) explains why she attended the Broadway premiere of 8, Dustin Lance Black’s staged reading of the federal Proposition 8 case based on transcripts of the 2010 trial in California.
Gallagher who said that she “wanted to see the play and I didn’t think it was likely to make it to Broadway again,” was at a loss at why she was included in the play at all. “I wasn’t part of the trial, so it’s curious the playwright felt the need to write me in.”
Gallagher even had the nerve to critque Dustin Lance Blacks work on the play by saying “It’s pretty hard to turn a transcript of a trial into exciting theater. “It was pretty ideological. Perhaps not unexpectedly.”
But according to at least one source at the play Gallagher tried to barge her way backstage after play but was stopped by Broadway Impact cofounder Gavin Creel, who “politely said she couldn’t go on stage.”
There is stil no news weather the home brought snacks Maggie grazed laoudly upon during the play was Moosie Mic or Purina Cow Chow.
Last night on Broardway a staged reading play based on last year’s federal court fight over California’s gay marriage ban using the trial transcript, firsthand observations of the courtroom drama and interviews with the plaintiffs and their families made its Broadway debut on Monday night with an all-star cast.
Written by Dustin Lance Black and performed to benefit the American Foundation for Equal Rights. The cast included: Morgan Freeman, Ellen Barkin, Anthony Edwards, Bradley Whitford, John Lithgow, Cheyenne Jackson, Campbell Brown, Christine Lahti, Rob Reiner and Larry Kramer, among others.
But according to Towleroad not all the plays characters were on stage. Maggie Gallagher of NOM had the nerve to go to the play, where she sat in the balcony (And the cow had the nerve to bring a bag of her own munchies!) and then sucked up the limelight after the performance.
Yet the real Gallagher sat up in the balcony apparently having bought a ticket to the benefit. She sat and watched as the drama of the trial played out (she had seen it before, she had participated in it). So what could Gallagher have hoped to glean from her perch in the balcony? Perhaps she was finally enlightened last night, that her mission is flawed and hateful, that it is futile, that what she has been working for for years destroys families, hurts children, and is ultimately un-American?
I fear that she did not. I fear that what was behind her motivation to sit there and watch her words come out of Houdyshell’s mouth was some sort of ego stroke, a pat on the back, a motivational fuel for her anti-gay engine.
Afterward, she certainly seemed to enjoy the attention she was getting just outside the theatre, even though much of it was negative.
And she obviously knew she was coming for a show. My friends Phil and Ronald sat directly in front of her. You can see Ronald in the top photo. They had a hard time listening to the show because along with her nerve, Ms. Gallagher brought a large plastic bag of loud food, which she rustled and munched throughout the production (she’s still got it on the way out). Perhaps she thought it was a popcorn flick she was going to. In any case, someone should have told her that it’s rude, perhaps even against the rules, to eat in the theatre. But we already know what Gallagher and her organization think of rules.
What an evil megalomaniac cow. No shame, no soul, and no class.
Another opportunity missed to for me and my fruit pie to make statement as it hits her fat ugly face. Although I might have to switch to shaving cream on a plate. She’s just eat the pie.
Reed Cowan writer-director of the film 8: The Morman Propo$ition, along with Dustin Lance Black (Oscar-winning screenwriter for Milk) and Charles Robbins (Executive Director of The Trevor Project) on a documentary-style film. on the recent rash of Anti-gay bullying.
“It’s going to be made for television on this recent rash of suicides and trying to get this talked about,” he said. “This was the official meeting and now we’re going to start pitching it to networks. It will be documentary style.”
Cowan offered these details: “The film will start out inside the call center of The Trevor Project which gets some 30,000 crisis phone calls a year. So the film will start out there and we will profile some of the young people who called in crisis. Whether they called with a bottle of pills in their hands, a gun to their head, a noose in one hand ready to put it around their necks. We are going to give that pain a voice, we’re going to turn it into some purpose because this is a teachable moment in our world.”
Cowan ssays that the film has no working title yet but he will be the director and that they will do their best to get the documentary out quickly as they can.
Variety is reporting that Dustin Lance Black has been signed to write the screenplay for 20th Century Fox’s film about infamous 18-year-old outlaw Colton Harris-Moore, a.k.a. the Barefoot Bandit,
The film will be based on a book proposal, “Taking Flight: The Hunt for a Young Outlaw,” by Bob Friel, who profiled Harris-Moore in the January edition of adventure magazine Outside Harris-Moore has committed scores of crimes, mostly in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, including allegedly stealing at least five small aircraft, a boat and two cars, as well as burglarizing at least 100 homes, and also teaching himself to fly via XBox, and whose ability to escape the police and survive in the woods has earned him folk-hero status.
If it ever survies the holywood process and lance does indeed pen the script it shouild be an awsome film.
Too bad Colton was 6 foot 5′. Would have been a great part for Joesph Gordon-Levitt
In an email exchange with 
