Have I always agreed with my Southern, military, Mormon family? Absolutely not. Have we always figured out how to get along? Yes! At the point at which politics supersedes the family and community, we've got a real problem.
— Dustin Lance Black
How amazing is it that when a young gay or lesbian person has their first crush, no matter where they live in the country, they can imagine that all the way to marriage? When I first experienced a crush, in Texas, there was maybe a second of butterflies that were then dammed in by the fear of what that meant.
When I got the deal to do 'J. Edgar,' which was really the brainchild of Brian Grazer, 'Milk' hadn't come out yet. We had just completed principal photography, and it was still basically this little film where we just really hoped someone would see it.
It's really difficult for me to sit and watch anything that I do because I always think about what's there, and what there could be to make it even better.
There was a criticism of 'Milk' that I found truth in, which was that it was focused on gay white men.
We need to maybe think a little less about the science of building walls and that waste of time and energy and start to understand what is love.
Some people only look at the good stuff and some people only look at the bad stuff.
I had a lot of success for many years, and the critics had been so kind. Sometimes it's good to get cut down to size a little bit.
And the film that I've seen a million times is 'When Harry Met Sally' with Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, and directed by Rob Reiner.
Most of my family is still active in the Mormon Church. They live in Utah and Provo and Orem and Salt Lake City.
Growing up Mormon, you learn how to be very, very organized, and it's a passionate group. I mean, in that way, it's prepared me very well for Hollywood.
I watched Sean Penn, you know, bring Harvey Milk to life. I was on the set every day.
My father, my Mormon father, took off when I was a young man and, or actually very young, I was like six years old, so a young boy.
My mom achieved so much more than the doctors said she ever would. I miss her.
Eventually my courageous Mom did something we do all too rarely. She got on a plane and she came to see me in L.A. - this place where we'd always been told sinners lived. She came to see my gay friends.
Mom came from what has been called the poorest place in America - Lake Providence, Louisiana. She was born on the south side of the Mississippi which was mainly African American and even poorer than the rest.
The drive to be a parent is strong. It's one of the most ingrained human traits there is.
My mom would watch me giving speeches on TV and she'd call and say, 'I don't know who this son is.'
The octogenarians who have pictures of Hillary Clinton under their toilet-bowl covers - they've completely accepted me.
I think of the biopics I've written as exploring a more grown-up side of myself, through other characters' lives.
Gay people are more powerful when they work with lesbians. We become more powerful when we're L, G, B and T.
We've got the same problems any other gay couple and any other straight couple have. But it's 90 percent great. And that's better than most, I think. That's me and Tom.
I like the gray movies. I don't know if audiences always... it makes them work a little harder. And they have to work hard in 'Hoover.'
I love the true life stories and the biopics - people say I'm pigeonholed, but it's a fantastic kind of pigeonhole - but it's tough to then go and direct it because I know all the real people.
The things that I'm interested in directing are fiction, because then you're not married to a particular reality.
I probably saw 'When Harry Met Sally' for the first time in college.
I always thought that the film would be successful if we captured Harvey Milk, like the way Harvey really was-the personality, the humor, the corny bad jokes, all of it.
You know, growing up Mormon, I always got the sense that it was hard for the leaders of the church to feel like they were outside of Christianity. I think, you know Mormon people believe that they are Christian, and a lot of people outside of the Mormon Church, you know, don't see them that way.
I grew up in the Mormon Church and I have a very strange relationship with that.
I grew up quite poor, and the Mormon church was always there for us as a family.
I turned in a script that meant a lot to me and an executive at Warner Bros said he was disappointed in me. I took a hit of confidence and stepped away from film-making for some time.
Mom got very heated about the new government policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In her view it was going to allow closeted gay people into her military and she was really against it... she just assumed I agreed with her opinions.
I hope we build a son who's strong enough to stand up for other people. And if Donald Trump is out there teaching folks how to build walls, we're hoping to instil in our son the ability to know how to take them down.
There has been this resurgence in anti-LGBT language in the U.K. and the U.S., and the rest of the world. In the U.S. we've heard it with Trump's rise. Here, I've heard language borrowed from the most conservative anti-gay voices in the U.S. used by some gay and lesbian people against trans people.
Our brothers and sisters in the trans community, they showed up to every one of our marriage marches when it wasn't necessarily what they needed. So we have to be there for them, use our lessons learned in the marriage fight - how to win when it's difficult, how to change minds that are difficult to change.
If you go to Paris, try to speak French. If you go to the South, try to speak Southern. Southern isn't stupid. Southern is narrative; Southern is family.
As a Southerner and as a Mormon you approach life in this aspirational way: 'I will rise above my station.'
My problem is always the number of hours in a day, not the number of things I want to do.
When we walked out of that hospital, we had a birth certificate with our names on it that said: 'Father one and father two, Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black.' And we knew our son was not only ours in our hearts but also legally and protected that way.
I do try to deliver a solid first draft, meaning it's my tenth or twentieth draft and then I call it 'first' and hand it in, much to the chagrin of the studio sometimes when they look at the contract and go, 'You've passed your deadline.'
I love Jennifer Connelly.
Here's the thing with 'When Harry Met Sally,' it doesn't matter how many times you watch it, it's always interesting, and you're always identifying with a different scene in the movie - at least I am.
I am hopeful that there are three or four Harvey Milks. It would be nice to have one in California and one in New York and one in Texas and Oklahoma-it would be fantastic. Maybe even one in Salt Lake City. I would like that.
I think for too many decades, the politicians have driven a wedge between the gay and lesbian communities and the religious communities for their own benefit, and I think it's time to start to broach those divides.
I think it's very important that, you know, gay actors get to play gay characters.
You know, for a long time I became almost atheist. I believed in nothing. And it was tough for me to believe in anything at all because I had believed so strongly. And I divorced myself of spirituality, I think.
One of the great things about being married to my husband, who is also an impossible dreamer, is that we just do things.
I have incredibly sensitive hearing. I often hear people talking about me. Sometimes it's amazing and sometimes you hear gossip you'd rather not.
Tom and I have never claimed to be perfect, whatever that means in a relationship. We're not trying to be anyone's example. We're living our lives and building our family and doing what we love.
I get emotionally attached to someone if I talk to them on the street corner for five minutes.
