Background

Dustin Lance Black was born on June 10, 1974, in Sacramento County, California. His father walked out on his polio-stricken mother, Roseanna, and his two brothers, Marcus and Todd, when he was young.

Following his mother's second marriage to Merrill Durant Black in 1981, he and his brothers were adopted by their stepfather and changed their surname to Black. They grew up in a Mormon household, at first in San Antonio, Texas, and later moved to Salinas, California.

Education

While attending North Salinas High School, Black began to work in theater at The Western Stage in Salinas-Monterey, California, and later worked on productions including Bare at Hollywood's Hudson Main Stage Theater.

Black attended the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Theater, Film, and Television (UCLA) while apprenticing with stage directors, taking acting jobs and working on theater lighting crews. He graduated with honors from UCLA's School of Theater, Film, and Television in 1996.

Career

In 2000, Dustin Black 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, Black directed and was a subject in the documentary On the Bus about a Nevada road trip and adventure at Burning Man taken by six gay men. Raised as Mormon, he was hired as the only such writer on the HBO drama series Big Love about a polygamous family. He has written for all seasons, serving on season one as a staff writer, executive story editor in season two, and was promoted again, to co-producer, for season three.

Dustin Black had first visited San Francisco in the early 1990s, while AIDS was devastating the city's gay community. Black said that, "Hearing about Harvey was about the only hopeful story there was at the time." He had first viewed Rob Epstein's documentary The Times of Harvey Milk when he was in college. Researching Milk's life for three years, Black 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. Black is an old friend of Milk producer Dan Jinks, who signed on to the biopic after he called Black to congratulate him and discovered that the project did not have a confirmed producer.

Black's film Pedro, profiling the life of AIDS activist and reality television personality Pedro Zamora, premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. Coming up, Paris Barclay is slated to direct his screenplay A Life Like Mine and Gus Van Sant is set to direct his film adaptation of Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Black directed his own script Virginia, starring Jennifer Connelly.

On October 11, 2009, Black marched in the National Equality March and delivered a speech in front of the United States Capitol to an estimated crowd of 200,000 LGBT rights activists.

In 2010, Black narrated 8: The Mormon Proposition, a documentary about the involvement of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in California's Proposition 8. Black accepted the award for best documentary for 8: The Mormon Proposition at the GLAAD Media awards in San Francisco and spoke out on discrimination in the LDS Church and meeting with the church to make it more LGBT-inclusive.

Black wrote the screenplay for J. Edgar, a biographical drama released November 11, 2011, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

In 2011, Dustin Black wrote the play 8, which portrays the actual events in the Hollingsworth v. Perry trial and the testimony which led to the overturn of California's Proposition 8. He created the play in response to the federal court's refusal to allow release of video recordings from the trial and to give the public a true account of what transpired in the courtroom. It is written and performed using original transcripts from the trial and journalist records, along with first-hand interviews of the people involved. 8 first opened at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in New York City on September 19, 2011, and later broadcast to a worldwide audience on YouTube from the Ebell of Los Angeles Theatre on March 3, 2012.

The American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) and Broadway Impact, sponsors of "8", have now released and licensed the play for readings nationwide on college campuses and in community theaters free of charge.

Dustin Black appeared as himself in the documentary film Hollywood to Dollywood (2012).

In 2014, Black was one of eight potential commencement speakers invited by Pasadena City College, and he accepted. After school officials learned nude pictures of Black were stolen and leaked online five years prior, the college announced Black had not been officially invited and the unofficial invitation was "an honest error". After talks between Black's and PCC's attorneys, the college board of trustees apologized and formally invited him.

On April 30, 2019, Dustin Black released a new book, Mama's Boy: A Story from Our Americas.

Achievements

• Dustin Lance Black is a filmmaker and social activist, known for writing the Academy Award-winning screenplay of the Harvey Milk biopic Milk, and for his part in overturning California’s discriminatory Proposition 8.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Mama's Boy: A Story from Our Americas

    (This heartfelt, deeply personal memoir explores how a cel...)

    2019

• movie

  • Milk

    (Milk is a 2008 American biographical film based on the li...)

    2008

Religion

Dustin Black grew up in the "conservative" environment of a devout Mormon household in a military community. Dustin eventually left the Mormon faith after taking issue with things he considered "abusive about the church", including attitudes to his sexuality. Afterwards, he went through "a stint" as a Baptist.

Views

Quotations: "I'm always interested in getting to know people, and that means vilified people as much as those celebrated. You find out that heroes aren't always so heroic, and villains have some bit of humanity in them."

"Tolerance is something you don't like, but put up with."

"When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas, to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life; it gave me the hope that one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married. Most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he'd want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told they are less than by their churches, or by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value. And that no matter what everyone tells you, God does love you, and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours."

Membership

Dustin Lance Black is a founding board member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights.

Personality

Dustin Lance Black came out in his senior year of college.

Connections

Since Spring 2013, Dustin Black has been in a relationship with British Olympic diver Tom Daley. In October 2015 it was announced that Black and Daley had become engaged, and in May 2017 they married at Bovey Castle in Devon.

On February 14, 2018, Black and Daley announced they were expecting their first child. On June 30, 2018, they announced the birth of their first child (by surrogacy) Robert Ray Black-Daley.

Mother:

Roseanna Black

husband:

Thomas Robert Daley

Thomas Robert Daley is a British diver, who specialises in the 10-metre platform event and is a double World champion in the event.

stepfather:

Merrill Durant Black

Brother:

Marcus Black

Brother:

Todd Black

Son:

Robert Ray Black-Daley