Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Dustin Lance Black

Transcript

Dustin Lance Black · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black, who's
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: the director of a new series, Rock Out. I could
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: describe it, Dustin, but you tell my audience what it's about.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Well, it's an exploration. It's trying to answer a question,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: which is, was there ever, is there a place for
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: LGBT people, queer people in rock and roll, punk, metal,
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: the sort of black painted, heavy beat world of music,
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: which my brother loved and felt outside of.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Well, I would say it's more than that because it,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: it's also talks about the influence of gay people in
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: gay culture in the music sphere.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: For sure. Which was a lot of that was a
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: discovery for me. I didn't know. I mean, I I'd
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: heard of, uh, Brian Epstein and what he did with
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: the Beatles, but beyond that, I didn't know. I think
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: it was, um, Simon Napier Bell, who had managed the
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Yardbirds and then later he did George Michael. And he
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: said to me, he said, listen, there's gay people, particularly
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: back in the 50s through the 70s, hated the establishment
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: more than just about anyone because the establishment said that
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: gay people were criminals. They were mentally ill. They should
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: be in jail or they should be lobotomized. He said,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: so The only people that wanted to break down the
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: establishment more than young rock and rollers were these gay
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: guys and a few lesbians. And so they could relate.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: And they pushed the acts to get more and more radical,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: to break down the establishment, what was, both culturally and
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: in music. And that influenced so many of the greats,
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: whether that's Pete Townshend or the influence on the Beatles,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Roger Daltrey– credits Ket Lambert, their manager, for pushing them
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: harder and harder.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Let's stay with Brian Epstein. There's more in this film
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: about Brian than I've ever seen elsewhere. You know, I'm
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: a student of the game and I was stunned how much,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know Simon, I know some of these people,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: but I was stunned how much I learned. How did
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: you get all this information about Brian?
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the great gets of this
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: documentary is getting Peter Brown and who managed the Beatles
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: with Brian Epstein and really took over once Brian passed,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: who was also a gay man. But he's not one
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: to really go on the record a lot. And he
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: hadn't talked on camera publicly in this way before. And
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: I think some of it is that his generation now
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: is realizing, understanding, you're no longer a pariah if you
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: come out, if you're outed. that it actually is kind
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: of cool, that it puts you into a place and
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: a time that's very current. And Peter, I mean, listen,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: I had to chat with him for about a year
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: to get him to a yes. And once he finally
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: got to a yes, he was very, very candid in
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the interview. Though even in the interview, you see occasionally
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: he stops, he won't answer a question. And So I
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: put my voice in there because I thought it's also
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: very telling what he still won't say. But he was
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: very candid about the ways Brian brought the Beatles out
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: of Liverpool into the world, but also about how Brian
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: being gay and him having this fashion sense and this
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: style and understanding what men and women would find attractive
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: about the Beatles helped them grow. out of the cavern
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: in Liverpool to the world. And then got even more
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: candid than I ever imagined about John Lennon's relationship with
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Brian Epstein, which could be described as romantic even in
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: the beginning, but certainly loving.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Well, there's certainly things in the film, I mean, not
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: in terms of John Lennon, just a couple of things
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: that haven't come out before. But what stuck with me
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: is Brian asking Simon to come for the weekend. Simon
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: doesn't go. That's the same weekend that Brian commits suicide. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And I found that very moving and I hadn't heard
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: that story either. And I sort of– I was curious
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: because I needed to look back. I thought, you know,
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  Speaker 2: Brian was a really handsome guy and, of course, very popular.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: I mean he was also famous in his time. And
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: I thought, why– what did he see in this Simon character?
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  Speaker 2: And then I found that footage of Simon and he
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: was beautiful. And he was driving around in his sports
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  Speaker 2: car and I thought, oh, yeah. I can see why
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  Speaker 2: if you're sort of down and you wanted company– Simon
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  Speaker 2: would have been, you know, a hot commodity. And so
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  Speaker 2: I found myself believing the story. And, you know, I
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  Speaker 2: decided to include it because it rang true. But it
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  Speaker 2: was also heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking how hard these men
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: had to work just to have the things that are
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  Speaker 2: ordinary to straight people, like companionship and affection without fear.
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  Speaker 2: And Simon didn't seem very afraid of any of it.
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  Speaker 2: He knew how to conceal it. But Brian, it became very,
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  Speaker 2: very clear, was afraid and was afraid of exposure and
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  Speaker 2: the ramifications it would have on him and the boys
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  Speaker 2: he loved more than anybody on the planet, the Beatles.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Okay. You also reference a blackmail situation with Brian. Can
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: you tell us about that?
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  Speaker 2: Well, Brian was into– for a guy who– you know,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: he was upper middle class, as you would say in
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  Speaker 2: the UK, he was, he was wealthy, came from a
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: wealthy family and he was, he dressed very well and sharp.
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  Speaker 2: He was into what we'd call rough trade. He liked
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: the rougher, often straight, uh, men that he would meet. Uh, he,
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  Speaker 2: he liked looking for those men in New York when
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: he was there in New York and, and his lawyer, uh,
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: was in New York who was also gay. Um, And
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: his lawyer, we found this footage that was in a
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  Speaker 2: garage of a director who'd done a little BBC piece
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  Speaker 2: on Brian Epstein many, many years earlier. And I'd seen
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  Speaker 2: the clips in it, which were pretty anodyne. It was
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: nothing groundbreaking. But we found him. We went into his garage.
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  Speaker 2: We found the complete footage of the interview of Brian's lawyer.
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  Speaker 2: And in it, there was this entire story of blackmail.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: And the understanding that Brian had picked up Maybe not
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: officially a prostitute, but someone who was willing to engage
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  Speaker 2: in a relationship as long as there was reward. And
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  Speaker 2: when the reward wasn't there anymore, he stole Brian's briefcase,
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  Speaker 2: which had evidence that he was gay in it, photographs
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: and such, and also contracts and Beatle contracts. And he
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: blackmailed Brian, saying that he would expose him. began a
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: real slide into darkness for Brian. And he started to
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: self-medicate in order to sleep. And then he needed more
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: pills to wake up again. And that self-medication is what
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: we believe led to his very early death. He died
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: at 33 years old.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Okay. You referenced the influence of the managers who were
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: gay upon the acts of You make a point that
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: really the Beatles were relatively rough. They'd spent that time
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: in Hamburg. They were wearing leather jackets. And it was
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Brian that cleaned them up.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't just the leather jackets. They
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: also were wearing these boots with like leather, red painted
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: leather flames on them. And it was... I don't think
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: they were pulling it off in the way that perhaps
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Elvis could pull off a leather jacket. It didn't look
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: right on them. It seemed a little dated. It seemed
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  Speaker 2: a little expected. And sure, Brian says to them, and
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  Speaker 2: Paul McCartney credits Brian as well in the film, he said,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: go get some suits and let's cut your hair. And
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: what's interesting about those haircuts and those mohair suits is
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  Speaker 2: back in that day, That was style and fashion and
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: code that you were gay, that haircut. That was not
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: a straight, heterosexual, acceptably heterosexual haircut. And those suits would say, oh,
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: you might be more of a fancy boy. And he
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  Speaker 2: put them in these suits. And in that way, they
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  Speaker 2: became attractive not just to the young women who would
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: hear them, but all of a sudden they became attractive
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  Speaker 2: to young men. And it expanded their audience. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: now it didn't matter if you were male or female.
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  Speaker 2: You loved the Beatles. You were attracted to the Beatles,
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  Speaker 2: not just their beat and their music, which was fantastic,
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  Speaker 2: but also their style and their look. It felt original.
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  Speaker 2: It felt different. It felt daring, which now we look
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  Speaker 2: at it and it doesn't seem daring. It might even
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  Speaker 2: seem conservative. But for that time, Brian made them over
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  Speaker 2: to look a little gay, which is a pattern you'll
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  Speaker 2: start seeing in rock and roll. all the way to
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  Speaker 2: the New York Dolls and Kiss. And then the king
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  Speaker 2: queen of it, David Bowie, would also do the same.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. The point is driven home a number of times
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  Speaker 1: in the series that it was illegal to to have
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  Speaker 1: homosexual acts in England. What was the story in America
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  Speaker 1: at that time? Same.
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  Speaker 2: It was illegal in both places. So you could get
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  Speaker 2: jail time, but you certainly would lose your job. You
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  Speaker 2: would lose friends. You would become a pariah in that way.
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  Speaker 2: So it was criminalized.
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  Speaker 1: And then it's.
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  Speaker 2: Hard to think back in this way about what it
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  Speaker 2: also was. From today's perspective, when it became a mental
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  Speaker 2: illness and categorized as a mental illness, that was almost
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  Speaker 2: more kind because at least you didn't go to jail.
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  Speaker 1: Or if you dial.
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  Speaker 2: Back even a century before, you weren't killed for it,
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  Speaker 2: put to death for it. So now it was a
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  Speaker 2: mental illness and a crime, but you would then be
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  Speaker 2: sent to treatment instead of prison. But those treatments were
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  Speaker 2: electroshock therapy, which was common. conversion therapy, which was very
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  Speaker 2: gentle and usually would happen later, but also, you know,
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  Speaker 2: the leading, the number one effect of conversion therapy is suicide.
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  Speaker 2: That's what it leads to. And then of course, more
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  Speaker 2: extreme lobotomization. So these were not good options if you
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  Speaker 2: were discovered. There was real fear around being discovered. It
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  Speaker 2: wasn't just that perhaps friends would think less of you.
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  Speaker 2: It was a you know, a needle into your brain.
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  Speaker 2: It was electrodes put onto your body and shocking you,
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  Speaker 2: or it was prison time.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. As we reference Peter Brown, there's a moment in
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: the movie, it's more than one, but one specific, where
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  Speaker 1: he says, I'm not going there. Generally speaking, because, well,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: we're in Los Angeles right now, and there are certain
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: areas which historically it's been easier to be out than others. However,
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  Speaker 1: It would seem the younger generations have less of a
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: problem being out than older generations. We talked about Peter Brown,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: but in general, these older people, historical figures, are they
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  Speaker 1: still affected by the old rules or are they now
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  Speaker 1: liberated and they're out?
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  Speaker 2: More and more. It's a great question because some, I
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  Speaker 2: would say Peter's one, And there are a few others
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  Speaker 2: who we couldn't get interviews with. A lot of men
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  Speaker 2: and one lesbian who are, you know, in their 80s now. And,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: you know, for them, their youth was spent pre-Stonewall. Stonewall
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: being kind of a marker of when gay liberation began,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: when this idea of coming out even was born. Because
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: that wasn't an idea before then. Yeah. And so their
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: memory of what it would have been to be outed
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: or to be out is that that's just incredibly dangerous.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: It would affect your friendships. It would affect your career.
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  Speaker 2: And it's hard to shed that. And I felt for
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  Speaker 2: some of the people who I was pursuing interviews with.
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  Speaker 2: And I had to have conversations with Peter Brown being
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: an example saying, you know, it's not like that here anymore.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure they know that. But they don't always
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: feel that. And I had to encourage them and in
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: some cases show proof that we could talk about people
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: like Brian who had passed and to talk about their
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: sexuality candidly. And that wouldn't be trash talk anymore. That
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: would just be honesty. And so in those ways, I
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: really felt the effects of homophobia still pressing down on them.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: And that was– it's really illuminating, I think, in the documentary.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: You sense it in some of the things Peter still
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: doesn't want to say. Then there's others like Jane Wayne
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: County and Simon Napier Bell. They don't give a shit.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: They didn't back then.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Well, Jane Wayne is a little bit younger. But– OK.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I mean I was alive in those eras. You read
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: about Jane Wayne for the, well, he's a man whose
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: stage persona was a woman and never had commercial success
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: in the U.S. He was a scenester in the New
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: York area. In the U.K., he had a much larger presence. A,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: who hipped you to tell you, you got to talk
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: to Jane?
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Another almost impossible interview to get, Danny Fields.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Why was it impossible to get from Danny?
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Danny just didn't want to talk about any of this anymore.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: He had made a great documentary that Danny says, which
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: is out there, worth watching. And I think he thought
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: he had said everything he needed to say about it.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: He didn't think it was cool to keep talking about it.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: And I don't know that he– he didn't know me.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: So there wasn't trust there. And to get to Jane,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: I had to win– end his interview. I had to
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: win trust. And do you know how that happened?
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Tell me.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Well, we were almost, it was almost a lucky turn
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: because we had started talking and then COVID hit. So
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: we had years down on this documentary. And in that time,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Danny likes to go to London and I was living
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: in London and I fell in love with Danny and
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: his stories and just who he is as a person.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: So I started having him over to dinner and my
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: husband and I would cook him dinner. And we had
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: at that point, our son who was like three and
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: he said, watch this. I said, all right. He pulls
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: out his phone. And he starts playing the Ramones for
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: our son, who's three. And I watch my son's face
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: light up and he loves it. And it's just one
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: song after another, after another. And Danny's like, that's right.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Kids know. Kids love that beat and the length of
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: the song and the clearness of the song and the
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: fun of it and the joy of punk. And, and
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: I watched him fall in love with my son falling
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: in love with his band, the Ramones. And, um, you know,
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: and I, I just became friends with him. And so
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: when COVID was over, I just asked him again, I said,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: would you interview for this? And he said, all right, yeah, sure.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Let's do it. And he said, um, I'll do it
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: on the condition that you go get the real deal.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: That means you got to go to Georgia. I said,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: all right, what about, I said, you need to talk
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: to Jane Wayne County, who's now trans and identifies as she,
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: I believe. And, um, And we did. We went down
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: to Georgia. And in this amazingly insane house sat this queen,
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: this boogie-woogie rock and roll queen, who one look at
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: her and you understand everyone that learned from her borrowed
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: from her and stole from her.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Okay. I'm always fascinated by these people. Because there's been
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: no news about Jane Wayne for decades. Yeah. And it's
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: set up well in the series. I keep saying film, whatever.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: But it's set up well in the four-episode series, which
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: is not a huge committee. It could have been a
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: film altogether, just for my listeners. It's not heavy lifting.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Each episode's a little over a half an hour. What
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: the hell is this guy living on?
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It's not like there's a lot of
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: residuals rolling in.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: And I worry about a lot of these folks, particularly in–
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: it's a problem not just for queer rock and rollers.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: It's like LGBTQ people of this age probably weren't given
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: a leg up in terms of their involvement in any business.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: And so– She inspired a lot of people whose names
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: you know and didn't really get paid. So I don't know.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: But if anybody wants to find Jane Wayne and start
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: a GoFundMe, she is deserved of those checks. She is awesome. Also,
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: get her on the phone. She is funny as fuck.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Okay. She's not living in luxury based on the images.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Where in Georgia is she?
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: I don't need the address, but- Yeah, it was outside Atlanta.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: How far outside Atlanta?
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: I think we drove about 40 minutes.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Okay. So quasi-suburban. Sure. Yeah. And it's a- It's like
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: he's living completely in the backwoods. She's living completely in
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: the backwoods.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: No, it's not. It's a neighborhood, but it's honestly a
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: pretty cool house.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: It's big.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: It's got some land. It's filled with, to the brim,
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: some of the greatest artifacts of pop culture and rock
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: and roll. Cause you also have to know Jane was
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: like really deeply involved in the Andy Warhol scene and
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: the factory scene. So there's some just amazing stuff in
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: that house. Okay.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Jane's got her look on, you know, did she have
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: that look on when you walked in the door or
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: did she have to get herself ready?
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: I don't think that's the look anymore. I think that's
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Jane now. I think it was probably the look, you know,
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: back in.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: The, Yeah, it was a look in the 70s, whatever,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: with the blonde wig. Jane is such a personality. So
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: if you know the history of whatever, it's mind boggling.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to the beginning. How does this series
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: get inspired?
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Well, Bill Gerber, the producer, did Stars Born, called me
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: up and said, Live Nation's interested in exploring the queer
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: roots of rock and roll. And I had read an
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: article by Jim Farber, who's in the film in the
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: New York Times called the, I think it was called
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: the Gay Architects of Rock. And that had sparked my curiosity.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: That was focused mostly on like Robert Stigwood and Kit
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Lambert and Brian Epstein. And for me personally, it's because
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: I had a big brother who was obsessed with punk
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: and the Dead Kennedys, the Dead Milkmen, the Ramones, but
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: also heavy metal, Metallica. And of course, you know, if
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: rock and roll came on, he was there for it.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Black leather jackets, pins all over them, auto mechanic, NASCAR fan,
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: and gay. And when he came out to me, I
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: was really shocked, I must say. I mean, he didn't
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: check any of the stereotype boxes. And, um, He moved
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: in with me. He had been in Virginia where it
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: was at that time still you could be fired just
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: for being out. So he moved to California, moved into
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: my house in Los Angeles. And I was going to–
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: I said, you know, we'll introduce you to some other
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: gay people and see if you can find your people,
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: your scene, a place you feel safe. And I remember
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: coming home a few months into him living with me
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: and I go to the back. little porch area. And
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: there's just like, I think there's already two packs of
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: Marlboro reds burnt through and a bunch of beer bottles. And,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: and I knew this, my brother was in a state and,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: and he, he said to me, are there any gay
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: people like me? And, you know, I know, I know there,
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: there are gay guys who are into leather, but it's
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: a whole different scene. This, he wanted to know if
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: there was a place in, hard-hitting music in rock and roll, punk,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: metal for gay people? And where could he find them?
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: And I wasn't in those scenes. And I said to
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: him something I'll regret forever. I said, I don't know.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Well, you say you regret that in the series. That's
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: a reasonable answer if you don't. But in the series,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: you're illuminating it a little bit more here. But Is
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: it that he was specifically looking for people in that
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: musical scene, or did he feel that he was out
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and he couldn't find his people, and because there were
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: other characteristics having nothing to do with homosexuality, alienation, or such,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: that he literally just couldn't find his people?
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think music was his first home, right?
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Gay was secondary to him, but... You know, he was, what,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: in his later 30s, and I think he also thought, hey,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: am I going to live a life without love? You know,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: a question Brian Epstein was asking himself. And he couldn't
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: figure out anybody he related to. My brother wasn't going
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: to get in a relationship with a theater, musical theater queen.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: It just wasn't going to happen. And was looking for
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: those people, didn't know where to find them. And yeah,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: he would end up leaving my house, disappearing forever. For
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: some time, he would get back into the drugs and
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: he was gone. He was dead within a year.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: It was okay. That's not clear. It was a year
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: after he left your house and he was dead?
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: Within a year or so, yeah. Yeah, it was quick.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: It was quick. He had started getting cleaned up when
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: he came out because I think that was– a weight
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: was lifted. But that weight fell back on him when
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: he realized, shoot, I'm like– I'm an aberration. You know,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: there's no one else out there like me. He felt,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: he felt really, he felt, he was, he started to
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: feel like an outcast among musical outcasts. So to be
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: that far outside of anybody else, I think that isolation,
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: you know, listen, same thing that road that Kit Lambert
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: stepped down, that Brian Epstein stepped down, it took both
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: their lives, drugs, alcohol, the things you do to survive
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: that kind of loneliness, that isolation, that fear. And I
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: wanted to do the film so I could answer that question.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: I wanted to excavate history. I wanted to find out,
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: is there a place for someone like my brother now?
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Because there's probably a lot of other people. And in fact,
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: in this documentary, we find out there are a lot
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: of other people in these worlds. And not only that,
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: a lot of these people helped build this music. And
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: are still performing in this music. And there's a few gasps,
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: I think. We've screened it, actually, as a feature at
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: film festivals before we broke it into episodes. And there's
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: some gasp moments in the film.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Okay. Not wanting to reveal everything, I'm going to leave
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: out the major gasp. But I want to establish here
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: that your brother dies of cancer.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Because it's implied you're watching, you believe he's going to
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: take his own life, which he does not.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: No, he doesn't do it actively, but neither did the others.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, he was told as soon as he got,
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: it was a bladder cancer, which is from this kind
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: of drug abuse, this kind of, this level of smoking.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: This is what you get it from at a young
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: age like that. That's where it comes from. He was
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: told that. Just.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: To nail this down for listeners, if one gets bladder
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: cancer from use, you can get it from smoking any
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: specific drugs?
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Um, well, really anything that your, uh, your body's going
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: to struggle to discard. So, yeah, I mean, it's anything
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: that's pretty hardcore. Um, but he was a big, heavy smoker. He,
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: he was, you know, he was into the heavy stuff and, um,
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: and he tried to put it down many a time
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: and he was, he was succeeding in that. Uh, but,
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: You know, I think he fell back into it. I mean,
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: there's a shot in the film like this guy, he's
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: dying of cancer and he's still sucking down a marble
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: red in his lips, you know, with the ash red
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: and long. And, you know, he was not going easy
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: on himself, even when he knew that was a death sentence.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: How did he metabolize finding out he had cancer at
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: a young age?
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: He, you know, he called me. So we were quite close.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: And he said, can you come out? He had moved
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: to Michigan. And so he finally gets in contact and says,
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: would you come out here? And he just wept. And
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: he said, I was just starting. I was just getting going.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: I was finally going to get going in life. And,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: you know, but he pushed it too far. And, you know,
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: I do, you know, he lived fast and hard. He
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: partied really hard. He loved that music. He loved the scene.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: But I also think he was looking for love in
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: his life. That was always missing. And I think he
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: had hoped by finally being candid about who he'd always
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: been that he was going to find that. And he didn't.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: So he really never had a good love relationship?
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: No. He had relationships with women who were awesome, who
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: were like friends. You meet one in the film. But
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: these were– well, in the film you find out that
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: his girlfriend is now a trans man. I mean they
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: found each other and they found safety in the appearance
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: of being together. But was there anything ever genuine? I
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: don't think so.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to Kit Lambert. Lambert and Stamp were
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: the managers of The Who. Notoriously bad business people. Okay.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Brian Epstein, great promoter. It was a little different because
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: he was blazing the path.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: And there was no history to go upon like there
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: is today. But this is not in any of the series.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: In your interviews, did this come up?
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it came up. And I mean, there's a movie
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: about Kit and Stamp that needs to happen. I mean,
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: just walking into that. That's what a lot of people described.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Walking into their offices in London was wild. And the
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: characters were wild. And it was a bit unbridled and messy.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: And you certainly would never have heard that about Brian
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: Epstein's world. Um, you know, and, and, and we have,
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: there's footage of Kit Lambert while he's recording, um, I
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: think with Arthur Baker. You know, and there's a bottle
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: of liquor there.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: I think being Arthur Brown. Oh, sorry. Arthur Baker is
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: the famous, you know, remixer. Yeah, yeah. Just to make
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: it clear. Sorry. But that's a highlight of the film.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Arthur Brown, yes.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Because the fact that Arthur Brown is even still alive, crazy,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: you know, did fire. And he comes out in makeup.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: That's that along with Jane Wayne is quite impactful.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: He was a great interview. He tells the story in
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: like vivid technicolor because and by the way, he comes
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: in that day and he's, you know, he's an old
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: guy at this point, but he's got the makeup on.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: It was so cool. And and yeah, he describes what
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: it was like. in Kit's office. And it sounded feral,
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: purely feral. And, but, you know, again, it was that
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: courage that got Kit to even produce those songs the
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: way they are, you know, where that sound that would
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: become the sound of the Who, the encouragement of Pete Townshend,
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: like break more guitars, do that, get that going. That's
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: the rage this generation's feeling, you know? Show them what
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: they're feeling. Because Kit was feeling it. Pete Townshend was
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: feeling it. Roger Daltrey's in the film and he talks
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: about the rage of that generation, trying to bring it
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: back to life, to put color back into a world
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: that had turned gray because of World War II. And
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: no one better than an out-of-his-mind, high, wild homosexual to
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: help take what's flat and give it life and color again,
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: to break the rules, because the rules weren't working anymore,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: and to help give birth to rock and roll. How cool.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: How cool.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. So, you know, you're approached by Bill.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: You have this history with your brother. What's the next
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: step in deciding to do the series, and what do
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: you do?
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, you go, am I willing to work
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: on something for a very long time for free, because
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: these things don't pay. You don't I mean, you don't
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: do any documentary because you think you're going.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: To– Just to establish, you get paid something. It's just minimal.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's minimal.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: And you're putting money into it as well because you
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: want it to be good. And that's fine. That's why
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: you do it. I mean, listen, I have my main gigs.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: I have my jobs. I did a TV series, a movie,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: a book, another movie all in the time I was
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: making this. So I was having to kind of squeeze
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: it into the cracks. So first you had to decide,
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: do you love it enough to never let it go?
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: Because it's going to take years.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: And it did. When did it start?
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: We started shooting. We shot, Peter Brown was our first interview.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: And it was in January of 2020. So you know
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: exactly what happened a few weeks later. We had it
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: all planned out. It was going to get shot in
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: like a year or two. No. We shut down. Okay.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: So I interrupt you. The first question is whether you're
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: willing to put the effort in.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So that was an easy one because it was
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: personal to me. I mean, listen, it's not far off
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: from some of the other things I've done. Gay history
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: is buried for good reason. It was very dangerous to
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: talk about our history. You talk about our history pre-1969,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: you go to jail or you get lobotomized or electroshocked.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: So it needs to be excavated. So that Plus the
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: fact that it was personal to me because there was
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: this unanswered question with my brother. I said, yes, let's
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: do it. And then I had to educate myself. I
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: thought I knew about rock and roll, but I had
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: to learn more and then build the relationships with some
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: of these guys. I really wanted Danny Fields. I really
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: wanted Peter Brown. And I knew they were hard. to get.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: So I had to get to know them. I had to,
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: I had to, and you can't trick these guys. They're smart.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: So you, you know, I had to educate myself enough
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: that I could have a conversation with them that they
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: felt was illuminating, you know, not just retreading old stuff. And, uh,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: and so then building those relationships.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Was a lot of work.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: There was a lot of, you know, Zooms and phone
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: calls and making dinners for, for them. And, making them
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: part of my family. And, you know, I genuinely made
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: friends with some of these people.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Okay. You cross the threshold. You decide to do it.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: What's the next? You say you start to educate yourself.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: But once you say, okay, I'm in. Do you plot
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: it out, whether it be literally on paper or in
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: your mind, this is what I want to do? And
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: then you start filling the holes or do you go
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: on a journey? Let me start here, see where that leads.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: I had a question I wanted answered and I had
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: a timeline. So I had a chronology and a question.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: And so that's really helpful. And so I knew where
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: I needed to start and I knew what I needed
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: to get to. And then I start lining– I start
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: asking questions, looking for people. Who's still around? Who will
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: still talk? And, you know, and some of it's really
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: hard because people didn't want to talk.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: But– Who is it who doesn't– I don't need their names.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: They don't want to talk. But who– characteristics. Who is
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: it who doesn't want to talk?
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to name them because I know some
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: of them. But it's kind of shocking who was less–
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: Keen to talk because some of them are the ones
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: who prop themselves up as gay rights folks. And I went, okay. Shocking.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: So why?
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: But I don't.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Leave them out. I don't leave them out because these
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: are people who made huge contributions. I just don't get
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: the interview occasionally. But I got a lot of good interviews.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Okay. So you're saying there was a lot of footage
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: of people who didn't want to talk. But were there
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: people who didn't want to talk and as a result,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: there was no contribution to the film and they're not
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: in the film?
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: No, I wouldn't do that. That would be– I wouldn't
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: do that. I mean some people, it's very personal why
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: they don't want to talk. Maybe they're concerned. I mean
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: I do like to dig deep. I do like to
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: get into why they may have made decisions that they
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: made before they came out. Wait, wait, wait.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Give me an example of that.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, you're getting dangerously close to some touchy territory. But,
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: you know, some people lived, you know, Simon Napier Bell
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: was open about it.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: He tried to get married to Vicki Wickham.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: Who was, you know, a producer of one of the
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: biggest music TV shows in the UK. Ready Steady Go.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Ready Steady Go, which broke all kinds of acts. But
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: she's a lesbian.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: So like he knew I have to get married to
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: a woman in order to be safe. And that wedding
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: never happened for very funny and revelatory reasons that are
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: in the film. But he's not alone in having done that.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: And I think there are some other artists who also
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: did that, who concealed the truth. And they don't want
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: to talk about it anymore. They'd rather just go away.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: And you can probably already figure out who the fuck
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about. But, you know, I was really heartened
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: by the people who would talk, who never talk, and
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: what they would say. So, you know, I think in
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: balance it works out.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Okay. So there's a lot of emphasis on the early days. Yeah.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: There's some legendary gay figures. You can't include everything in
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: a project. Right. But did the concept or the issue
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: of Bill Alcoyne come in? Yes.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, there are so many people who
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: we didn't get to either because they didn't want to
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: interview and someone else kind of stood in their shoes narratively.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: Like they told the same kind of story about how
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: they dealt with it and what their contributions were. So–
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: You know, there are some people who are, hey, closeted,
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: huge contributors to this kind of music who might not be–
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: there's some who are named, but we don't go deep
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: into it. I mean, we– listen, a huge– David Geffen.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Right. Huge.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: We definitely name him and talk about him. But at
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: that point in the film, we understand where we're headed.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: We know where we're going.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: And so– Did you approach Geffen? Yes.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: And he said– He said he thought it was a
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: great idea, but he wasn't interested in being interviewed.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. And let's go back in the film. There's
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: a certain footage of Little Richard, who's a progenitor. Yeah.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Based on your research, did people know at the time...
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: To what degree was the public in denial of obviously
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: gay things? Of course, you have Freddie Mercury. He said, ultimately,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: the band is named Queen. Yeah. Okay. Tell me about
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: how the audience perceive these gay people or gay elements.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: Well, I think Jim Farber talks about this in the film,
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: I think quite eloquently. And he says, you know, it's showbiz. So-
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: And in particular in music, for some reason, the audience
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: checks their instincts and goes, oh, it's just showbiz. This
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: is what they wear. This is what they do. We
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: allow them to do this. Eyeliner, fine. Even wearing dresses.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, the New York Dolls, by the way, were
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: all straight but wearing dresses and makeup. So it got
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: very confusing. You know, Jane Wayne was genuinely trans. Right.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: But all the people who borrowed from her, from David
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: Bowie to Kiss, were not. Maybe they were for a time.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: but would end up marrying women and doing all of that.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: So it was all very confusing, I suppose, to an
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: outside audience. Does their look, which might be stereotypically gay,
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: mean that they're gay in music? And I think, what
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: is the quote Jim Farber uses? Which is, Hollywood is
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: filled with gay people trying to appear straight. And music
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: is filled with straight people trying to appear gay. And
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: it was really– it was wonderful because at a certain point,
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: I'm looking– I had the same question about Elton John,
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: who I adore and admire. But I'm sorry. My gaydar
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: goes off the second I see anything with him in it.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: And America's wasn't going off in the period when he
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: was first famous. He was on the cover of like
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: teen magazines as like a heartthrob for girls. And I said, how?
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: And as I made the film, I realized, oh, no.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: The way he was dressing in the feather boas in
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: the sequence, that's how straight rock stars dressed. So who
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: was ever going to call out Little Richard? But did
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: people know? Well, the Beatles knew because he was on
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: tour with them and he was hitting on them all
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: the time. But they were cool with it. They were
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: cool with it. And they were learning a lot from him.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, we owe Little Richard.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: Such a debt.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: When it comes to this music, when it comes to
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: rock and roll, the Beatles owe him a debt and
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: they know it. It's just often forgotten because, you know,
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: we think of Elvis at the beginning of rock and roll,
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: but really you got to go back to the blues,
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: to Ma Rainey. Listen to Little Richard's early lyrics. It's
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: like hardcore gay sex before he rewrites it a little
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: bit for the record. So we owe these guys... These
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: men and women, a great debt. And there was incredible
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: courage from Little Richard to be fully himself. What breaks
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: my heart is that even Little Richard would have to
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: come out and go back in and come out and
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: go back into the closet time and time again. And
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: you can see that struggle live in his story, in
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: his life, of whether he could ever be comfortable or
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: feel safe being out.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Well, what about people like Mark Bolan, people like Bowie,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: who were married, but was it just for publicity, or
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: were these people really, did they really have fluid sexuality?
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: It's a great question, and I think only they can
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: honestly answer it. I think not. In Bowie's description– because
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: Bowie came out as gay.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: People forget that. We talk about it. But he was
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: married and he would be married time and again to women.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: We do go into a relationship he had with a beautiful,
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: incredibly talented trans woman.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Who you also say, which is something that stuck with me,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: that Bowie ripped off a lot of the trans women's act,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: so to speak.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: And Jane Wayne's and the factories. I mean he– ripoff
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: is a tough word with art, isn't it? Because we're
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: all borrowing.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Let's not get hung up. He was influenced. He didn't
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: come out of thin air. Oh, no.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: I mean he was more than influenced. He was copying.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: And in fact, the folks from the factory, including Jane Wayne,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: were actively helping him. Like you got to shave your eyebrows.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: You got to become Ziggy Stardust because you look too boring.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: But I think he was experimenting. You have to remember
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: the era. So by 1969, things are really changing very rapidly.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: for gay people. Decriminalization starts to happen in the US
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: and the UK. So you're no longer going to go
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: to jail. It's not cool to electroshock gay people anymore.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: There was a lot more freedom. And in that freedom,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: as young people, there's going to be sexual exploration. And
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: are you telling me that David Bowie isn't going to
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: try it on once or twice? I mean, according to
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: the documentary, Peter Brown and Simon Napier Bell, John Lennon
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: tried it on. In fact, in his own words, he
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: says in the film. So, you know, it becomes a
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: thing you can try and explore. And not everybody is
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: going to say, oh, yeah, that's for me. I'm of
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: the belief that Kinsey had it right when he said, listen,
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: there's a handful of people who are purely 100 percent
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: straight and a handful of a smaller handful of people
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: that are 100 percent gay. And then there's all this
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: gray in between. People are all built uniquely and differently.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: And I think this new generation now really sees that
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: and understands that. And I think artists who try to
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: pay less attention to the walls in society are going
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: to try. And they might enjoy it for a time.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: But it seems to me David Bowie eventually settled and said,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: I prefer being with women.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: But why is it that English people, there's Mark Boland,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: there's Ray Davis of the Kinks. We don't see the
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: equivalent in America. Why do we see it in England,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: these people trying it on? It's in the press, whatever
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: the truth is. Rarely see it in the US.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: You know, the United States is a far more religious
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: culture than the UK. I learned this firsthand living there
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: for a decade. You don't meet a whole lot of
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: people who are buying records in the UK who go
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: to church every Sunday. There's an incredible... swath of the
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: United States record buying population who go to church every Sunday.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: And so if you're able to come out or even
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: just express yourself differently in the UK, there was a
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: little more acceptance. It was still criminalized for a time,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: but you're not being damned to hell by the people
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: you hope will buy your records. That's not as big
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: a part of it. Whereas in the United States, they'll
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: start burning your records. I mean, the Beatles, in their
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: comparison to the popularity of Jesus Christ, I mean, that
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: was a big problem for them in the United States.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Would have been less of a problem in the UK.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: You know, this being an incredibly religious country in certain places,
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: you know, it's limited us creatively and personally.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, you touch upon gay in metal. You have Rob Halford.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: And that is a genre of music where appearance is key.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: You have people with a lot of tattoos. They have piercings.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: It almost looks like the movie Cruising, if you remember that.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, with the leather jackets. That's sort of gay-coded.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Right. Why is that in metal?
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know exactly except that, and we don't get
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: into it. I mean, the manager of Metallica, was he
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: gay or straight? Gay.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Wait, which manager are we referring to? Because the present
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: managers are not gay.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: No, but the original managers I sat with in, I
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: don't know if he's out, so I shouldn't say his name. But,
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: you know, I sat with in Danny Field's house. Okay.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: And we're talking about, you know, his early days managing them. And,
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: you know, so there is still, again, that influence. And
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: you have to understand in the timeline of music, that's
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: where music was headed, right? It was gender bendy. I mean,
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: the Rolling Stones were very gender bendy in their attire,
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: in the hair. The hair is getting longer. You get
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: into glam rock. It starts getting very gender bendy in
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: terms of how it's confronting the stereotypes. So this was
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: the direction that music was going. And you also have
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: to understand, as metal's being born and there's still these
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: gay influences in metal, this also coincides with the period
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: in gay culture where we started talking about the clones,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: the clones of the Castro and the gay areas, which
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: meant they started to dress really masculine. You see this
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: in even the village people, different genre, but you start
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: seeing the construction worker attire The leather jacket attire, the
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: jeans and the boots and the white T-shirts with a
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: leather jacket over them. All of this was in gay
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: culture and it starts being adopted via some of the
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: managers and producers and record label execs into their acts.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: And you see the acts doing it. I mean, we
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: look back now and we would say, oh, yeah, that's
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: an interesting choice. But at the time, it's like that
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: was the natural direction, I think, that music was going.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: And it actually meant that you were tough. You were macho.
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: It's all just a little, it feels a little reversed now.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Okay. For those of us who are in the business,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: shall we say, we watch these documentaries and we see
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: what archival footage and what music the producers can get
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: and who they can get on screen. There were certain
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: things I was stunned that you got, because you're also
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: saying this is a low-budget effort. So tell me about
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: getting the rights.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: It was one of the most beautiful and gratifying moments things. Uh,
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: you know, so the Beatles, we went to their people
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: with it. We said, take a look. It was a big, yes. It, it,
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: it really touched me. Same with the Bee Gees, with
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: the Who. Um, and we, we just time after time
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: after time got yeses, use it at a rate. And, um,
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: I hope that's a compliment to what we made.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And, uh, some of those people never say yes. Yeah.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: They never say yes. Um, and, uh, and, and they did,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: you know, I think it's always notable who didn't say yes. Um, uh,
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: which is often surprising, but there were only a couple and, uh, and,
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: and we really, we got some of the best music
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: in these genres at very little cost. Because I showed
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: them the edit, and we got a lot of love.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: A lot of love.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: Okay. Presently, yes, there are still gay influences in the images.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: There's still a lot of gender bending. But were these
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: people pioneers breaking down walls, and the walls have fallen
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: to the point where we don't have these gay influencers,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: shall we say?
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: Or.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Are they as influential as ever? There are.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: There's a whole new generation. I mean, I think this
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: film touches on, I guess you could say, four, if
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: you really reach back, generations of these groups of producers, managers,
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: music shapers who were mostly close friends. And today it's
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: the same. there are these groups of, of, of game
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: managers and producers who are friendly and they are encouraging
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: their acts to push forward. I mean, it's more in
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: pop music than other genres, but it, it, that still exists.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can look at, you know, Lil Nas
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: X and, and Troye Sivan and, and some, you know,
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: or Miley Cyrus, certainly Lady Gaga with a game manager is, is,
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: been incredibly courageous and helpful. So it's still happening and
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: out there. I think we didn't notice it as much
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: for a little while because gay liberation was that pendulum of,
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: I call it progress, was really swinging forward for a
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: good long time. It's going backwards right now globally. You
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: can see laws protecting LGBT people being rolled back. You
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: can see that right here in the United States, the
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: spaces where and places where queer people feel like they
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: can be themselves and be safe, those are shrinking again.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: And so I think there's a call for this kind
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: of expression to take the stage in a big way again.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: And my hope is that the executives, the producers, The
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: managers are helping give their artists courage to be upfront
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: and to be confrontational because we need that. But frankly,
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: you know what? I want to go beyond that. And
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: it's not just for gay people. There's a lot of
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: people in the world right now who are being told
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: that they're just too different because of where they're from,
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: the color of their skin, their gender. We're seeing things
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: roll back. And I hope we're headed into a time
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: where the music industry says, fuck that. We're going to
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: keep pushing forward.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: That's a long debate. I would not hold your breath
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: on that. But let's stay with that. How old are
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: you today?
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: 52. Okay.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Certainly don't look it.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: Bless you.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: But to what degree... Is this an intellectual conversation for you?
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Or on a personal level, are you affected, not intellectually,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: like this is a bad thing, but in your everyday
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: life and your choices by this anti-gay LGBTQ movement, so
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: to speak?
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: I'm in a pretty privileged place, right? I've got some money.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: I'm married to someone from a different country. So I
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: can be quite mobile. If things go awry here, I
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: can get out pretty quick. And I, you know, money helps.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: So not as much as most people for me personally.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: I am raising two kids and they mean the world
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: to me and they've got gay dads. And I really,
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: that is where I feel it now. I don't want
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: them to be treated poorly because of us. And I
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: would like for them to live in a world where
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: their peers or their teachers pay no mind to it.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: And I'm not looking for special treatment, but I'm concerned,
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: a little concerned about that as they move forward. I'm
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: mostly concerned for people who don't have The privileges I
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: do that don't have the finances that mean they can
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: move about more freely. And, you know, I grew up
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: in Texas. I grew up in the military. I grew
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: up in the Mormon church. There are a lot of
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: people out there right now living in those sorts of
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: places where it's still really hard. And currently it's getting harder.
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: And I think back to me. I think back to
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: my brother. at that age. And I know there are
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: people out there struggling and suffering. I mean, not to
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: get too precious about it. You know, I hope people
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: find this. It's why we've put it on a free channel.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: Because I think even in the best of families, LGBTQ
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: kids are born behind enemy lines in a way, meaning
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: like even their most amazing accepting parents most likely don't
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: know what it takes to To survive as this kind
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: of minority. And so, you know, we got to provide
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: some hope, some inspiration, some foremothers, some forefathers who came
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: before who said, you know what? It's all right to
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: be who you are. It might be cool to be
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: who you are. And we've been out there trying to, like,
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: make it better, maybe even help protect you for a
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: good long time.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: You're not alone.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: I think that could be at least self-esteem saving, if
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: not life saving.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: You know, this is not a narrow film. Anyone who's
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: interested in the history of rock and roll will enjoy this.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Because as I say, very rarely do I learn something.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: I definitely learn stuff. If for no other reason, gay
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: or not gay, these areas have not been exposed. How
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: did it end up on this channel that it is?
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about the distribution.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's hard, by the way, to get
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: these documentaries out these days. We first put it out
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: in the film festival circuit, which did really well. I mean,
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: it was really wonderful to watch it as a feature film.
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: I said, I don't think the people who we really
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: think need to see this watch things like this for
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: two hours. So I worked with my editor to turn
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: it into a four-parter, though I agree. We didn't cut
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: anything out. You can watch it from top to tail.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: And then we needed a place that would show it
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: like that. And I– We had a few people interested.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: I thought this platform because, well, you have to bear
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: with some ads here and there when you see it.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: But because anyone can access it who has the internet
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: without subscribing to places that some of my family who
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: are very conservative and red don't like you to subscribe to.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: I won't name the channels because I love them. They
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: can find this. They can get this and they can
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: watch it.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: Just to be very specific, someone listening to this wants
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: to watch this, how do they see it?
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: Go online, go to Reverie. And at Reverie, you will
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: be able to log on starting September 20th for the
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: very first episode. And each week thereafter, you can watch
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: the subsequent episodes or you can just wait a second
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: and just binge the heck out of it, which is
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: what I prefer people to do.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: Okay. Do you have to register?
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: You don't.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Okay. Let's go back. When did you realize you were gay?
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: I knew early on because I had a word for it.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: So I was about six. And, you know, it wasn't
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: about sex at six. It was just about like butterflies when,
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: you know, you met someone who you thought was cute
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: or attractive or interesting, crushes, little kid crushes. And I
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: think most people don't know what that is. I grew
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: up in the military. So I was hearing, you know,
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: an F word. And I that about gay people that
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: I knew was, pejorative it wasn't a good thing and
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: I'd ask what it meant and then in the Mormon
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: church there was a prophet at the time who would
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: be beamed in via satellite and he said next to
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: the sin of murder comes the sin of homosexuality and
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: again I what is that what a cool word I'm
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: a writer By trade. So what is– that's a big word,
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: lots of syllables. What does it mean? And so when
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: I got those definitions at a very young age, I
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: knew it applied to me. I knew it was bad news.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: And it would take a very long time for me
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: to come out to anyone. I would be in my 20s.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: I'd be almost done with college.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Okay. Irrelevant of coming out, did you have experiences with
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: other men? No.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: No.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: Because? I didn't.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, well, when you think about my age, there's
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: two reasons. It wasn't cool yet. Now it's cool to
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: come out. I mean, I think it's so cool that
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: people are coming out who probably are mostly straight. But
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: then you didn't dare. And number two, this was my–
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: when I really came of age sexually, not just knowing
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: I was gay and crushes, it was in the height
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: of the AIDS epidemic. There was no treatment, no cure.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: I was working– I was interning at theaters up in
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: Northern California and my mentors were disappearing. And my mom
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: was an immunologist. And so I knew exactly what this
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: was and I knew it was my tribe, people like
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: me who are dying. So I didn't dare. It was terrifying.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: Okay. Did you take action in your private life or
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: come out first?
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: I came out. Yeah. Isn't that wild? I would come
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: out and even– I've never talked about all this. I
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: would come out in college at UCLA. I was in
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: film school. It was a pretty great place to do it.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: The dean of our film school was Bob Rosen, who
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: was awesome. And he was openly gay and I felt
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: safe doing it. But I– I was just such a romantic.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: I was like, well, I'm not even going to kiss
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: anyone until, you know, I'm in love. And so funny enough,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: I went on my first date and we went to
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: the Universal City Walk, which is a new thing at
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: the time. And I finally met someone. I thought, oh,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: this is it. And it was my first kiss. It
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: probably took a year after coming out for that to happen.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: Okay. You're aware of people passing from age. Your mother
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: is in the so-called business. I can't tell you how
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: many people I know who were fully aware of the
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: AIDS crisis and had unprotected sex anyway. A lot of
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: them after their medication, so they're still here. Forgetting the
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: people before, a lot of them, there was not any knowledge.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: Having that knowledge, did you always employ safe sex?
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I did. And I think I owe my mom that.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: Gratitude for being very candid about that with me, though
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: she was military Mormon conservative. She peeled that off because
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: she wanted to keep me alive and well. But, you know,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: a lot of people didn't. And I have some perspective
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: on that, I think. You know, Jabrieth in the film.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: Who was such a promising rock star. You know, he
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: died of AIDS in obscurity. And there was a point
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: at which. It was being– people were being cautioned in
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: a way. I think of an ad that was like
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: two skeletons having sex. And I know it was well-meaning.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: But it felt so inevitable and so dark and terrifying.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: It created– and there was a name for it at
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: the time called Bug Chasers. It was like, well, this
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: is inevitable. I can either become asexual. And just shut
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: that part of myself down. Or I can live my
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: life while I still have some to live. And there
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: was that. There was also, though, you have to understand,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: the testing was so slow for so long that a
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: lot of people had. And it took a long time
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: for some people to ever have symptoms. Some people would
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: go fast. I lost friends who went really fast. Other people,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: a decade. And they may have had it. well before
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: there was good testing, well before it was good information.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: And yes, it would be years after tests were available
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: that really worked, that were timely enough that you could
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: trust them, that there was information out there that you
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: could trust, but they already had it and they just
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: didn't know for a long time.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: Okay. You talk about being from a military family. Your
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: mother was in the military?
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was civil service in the military.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: And your father?
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: I had a series of stepfathers, one in the Air
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: Force and then one in the Army.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: And your biological father?
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: He vanished when I was six and into a form,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: I suppose, of fundamentalist Mormonism. Ran off with his first cousin.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: And I wouldn't hear from him or find him again
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: for decades.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: Did he find you or you find him?
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: I found him.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: What was that experience like?
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: I was very, God, you're so good at this. I
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: never talk about any of this. I got so depressed. Hey, listen,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: the people in my doc are so candid. I should
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: be candid. I got so depressed by 25, 26, thinking,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: you know, what kind of guy abandons three boys. My
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: mother's paralyzed, was paralyzed, by the way, with a paralyzed woman.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Just to be clear. Was she always paralyzed?
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: From polio, since she was two.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So to what degree is she impaired?
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: Chest down.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: So hands-on.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: She had a chair? She had her spine fused, and
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: so she could be on crutches, but she had to
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: walk kind of like a pendulum. There's a documentary about
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: her on HBO called Mama's Boy.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: Who made that?
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: That was produced by Steven Spielberg and his documentarian, Laurent,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: who's fantastic. And it's on HBO.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: And is she still with us?
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: Okay. So back to finding your father.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: So I just– it didn't leave me as a hell
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: of a lot of self-esteem. And there was a lot of–
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: as we've talked about, the gay thing didn't help. And
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: I felt abandonable. And by 26, I was homeless, couch
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: surfing at best, and deeply suicidal. And the Gay and
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: Lesbian Center here in Los Angeles had free counseling if
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: you wanted it. And I'll– you know what? I'll say
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: his name. His name is David Crane, psychologist there who
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: I'm sure was volunteering his time. And he just saw
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: in me– I guess he had faith that I could
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: handle it. And he said, well, why don't we just
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: solve it and you go find the guy who made
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: you feel abandonable? And I– at the time, I had
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: to track him down I think with a private investigator.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: Now it would be much easier. I could ask ChatGPT,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: I suppose. But I found him, he was in Texas.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: And I.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: Arranged a meeting and I met, we went and had
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: a meal in a restaurant that was rather crowded. And
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: the guy was a mess, making excuses, rationalization still, throwing
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: it to God and You know, blaming, saying, you know,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: rationalizing his behavior because he says, you know, his version
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: of Jesus Christ thought it was okay. We'd be reunited
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: in his version of a polygamous heaven. And I was prepared.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: And I read him to filth at quite a volume
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: in that restaurant. And I walked out of there that day.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: And I was so grateful he had left. Yeah. It turned,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: in just one hour, I went from thinking I was
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: worthless and abandonable to going, thank God whomever, this guy
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: was gone. Because then I got raised by a really tough,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: paralyzed woman who, despite her occupation, where she worked, the
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: religion she believed in, still loved me. even though I
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: was a bit different.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Okay. You go on, you say this happens when you're
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: at a low moment. You go on to worldwide success,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: especially with the film Milk, which you wrote the screenplay for. Frequently,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: when a family member has that level of success, estranged
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: people come out of the woodwork. Yeah. Did that happen? Yes,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: it did.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: It did for sure. I mean, I, I, but I didn't,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: I didn't mind it so much, you know, part of, uh,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: it went really fast. I mean, I gotta say like
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: self-esteem really helps. So I went from couch surfing to
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: in three years, I was on a huge HBO show,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: big love.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: Milk would happen. All these other films would happen. It was,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: pretty fast, meteoric really. And a lot of that side
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: of the family, my father's side of the family who
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: I never knew found me. This is also coinciding with
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: when social media is really catching fire. So it was
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: easy to find people. But I've enjoyed that because– I
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: also have context now. I never knew that side of
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: the family. I have context that this guy, my father,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: was the black sheep of that family, that they're not
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: all bad, that he had been pretty horrible to most
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: of his family. So I didn't mind. We haven't become
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: super close.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: However, there's a spectrum here. There are people who literally
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: ask for money. There are other people who say, well,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: you must know so-and-so. Can you get me a ticket
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: for this or that? To what degree of these people
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: you didn't have previous relationships with ask for things?
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not much of that.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Not much of that.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: I think I've had a couple of distant cousins ask
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: if I could help them get acting jobs. And it's
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: pretty easy to say, that's up to you, buddy.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: Okay. Trying to say this in a way that it
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: won't come back at me. There's a perception. Yeah. that
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: all gay people in Hollywood know each other. What would
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: you say to that?
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: Well, there's some truth in there. I think less and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: less so the younger you get now, because I don't
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: know that we coalesce for safety for comfort the way
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: we used to have to. I use as an example,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: in my early days out here, when I was at UCLA,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: I would go out to West Hollywood and it was
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: not what it is now. It was not half as
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: big or populated and it definitely wasn't that safe. So
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: we would band together really closely. We knew each other.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: We had each other's, at that point, pagers and numbers
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: and And you knew like if you're going to walk
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: back to your car from say the Abbey, now known
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: as the Pink Pony Club, if you're going to walk
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: back from there, you didn't.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: Do that alone.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: Because a few times when friends did, they were either
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: stabbed or beaten. A friend was beaten to death with
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: a baseball bat because folks who wanted to attack knew
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: where to find us. And if one of us was alone,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: it could be deadly.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: This is the 90s.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: This isn't This is far away. This is the 90s
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: into early 2000s. That's changed so drastically. Now you go
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: to West Hollywood and it's like, boy, it's a lot
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: of bachelorette parties. It's like a cool place to go,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: I guess, for all kinds of folks.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: And it.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: Feels safer in places like Los Angeles or New York
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: or San Francisco to just be openly gay wherever you'd like.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: And in business... It doesn't mean you're going to get fired.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: Certainly not, I would guess, in the music business anymore.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: Certainly not in the film business. And so we don't
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: have to create what people have called the Velvet Mafia.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: Dolly Parton talks about that in this film. We don't
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: have to do that in the same ways for safety
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: and survival. And I think that's really good news.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. Anybody can reach anybody these days. And there's
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: issues of persistence, but there are also doors. Let's assume,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: David Geffen is not that hard to reach, assuming you're
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: at a certain level. But let's say for some reason,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: you want to reach someone else who's very powerful and out,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: like Barry Diller. Is it easier? I can give you the,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: just because it sounds so weird. In the 90s, I
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: knew a guy. And without getting into what he was writing,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: what he was writing was not political, but it was
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: on the right wing of the spectrum. He could reach everybody.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: You know, he would say, oh yeah, Fred Barnes, this,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: whatever he would ask, they would give him money, et cetera,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: et cetera, because there were so few people on that side.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: Is it the type that you're a member of a
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: club that if you're in it, and there's different levels,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: just being gay is not enough, but you have a
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: certain level of success where doors are open that may
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: not be open to people who are not gay.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: I think that was true for a long time. I
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: think that was true in the early days of my career.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: I don't find that to be true now. It's actually, well,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: as someone who's interested in just those dynamics, it's like
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: the gay, the LGBTQ community now is more like a
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: real family in that, yeah, we'll help the ones we like,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: but fuck the ones we don't. We fight with our siblings.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: There's rivalries. There's ribbing. And I think that's great. I
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: think we're allowed to be a more normal– normal is
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: the wrong word. But we're allowed to be like a family,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: like any other group is a family, which is kind
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: of great. I hope it keeps going that direction because
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: I don't work with just gay people.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't expect you to. I was thinking as you.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: Were saying it.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: I want to be clear. That was not my question.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: I was purely talking about access.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: But I'm thinking about like, yeah, well, you know, in
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: the early days of struggle, the first person to really
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: give me a leg up was Paris Barclay, who was
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: gay or is gay. And that was really helpful. And
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: I do think that he was keen to help me
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: out because of that. He also wanted to write some gay–
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: or have those written. And so I, you know, came
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: from that experience. So that made sense. But in terms
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: of my representation, do I even have anyone? I have
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: a gay manager, but my agents, lawyers, all of that
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: are straight and they always have been. And so I didn't,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: and that's not by design. I just, I didn't need that.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's a different issue. That's the nature of,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, somebody has to be really closeted, a very
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: religious person in some sect To only interact with that sect.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: But let's move on. How many kids are in the family? Two.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: My family.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: And your brother is your older brother.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: My brother was my older brother. Okay. In the film- Oh,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: in my family.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: In my- Yes.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: I thought you meant in my family now. My kids. No,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: the three.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: Three boys. Where are you in the hierarchy?
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: Middle.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: And the younger one, male or female? Boy, yeah. And
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: what's his life?
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: He lives in Burbank with his wife and kid.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. So- When your brother, this is in the film,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: calls you up and said he had relationships with another man. Yeah.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: What was your reaction? Were you shocked or did you
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: know it was just a matter of time? What did
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: you think?
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: No, I was shocked. I was absolutely shocked. I had
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: no idea.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: No suspicion.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's horrible to say because I was
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: in a position where I was, at that point, I
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: was making the film Milk and I should have been
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: aware that gay people don't necessarily check all the stereotype boxes,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: and he certainly didn't. So I was shocked. I was surprised.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: I kind of didn't know what to say. I tried.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: But did he know you were out? Oh, yeah.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: At that point, I was very out. Yeah, I had
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: written and made a lot of gay things, documentaries. My
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: early projects.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: Had been gay. Let's talk about Milk, which– Sean Penn
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: won the Oscar. It's a phenomenal film. Saw it exactly
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: when it released. How do you get involved in it?
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: I was on an HBO show, Big Love. So I
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: had a job and it was great. It was so exciting.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: And I felt really lucky. It also afforded me the
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: opportunity to make something without getting paid for it. And
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: I had I'd known Harvey story from my time up
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: in the central coast when we had been transferred to
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: an army base that used to be there. And I
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: heard the story as though, despite its ending was one
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: of the hopeful stories still, particularly in AIDS ravaged San Francisco. And,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: and I wanted to tell it. I thought it was
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: a shame that it had been absolutely lost. There'd been
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: a documentary, but it was at that point very old
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: and it was hard to find if, if you could
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: at all. And Harvey's story had been really inspirational to me.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: And you have to remember, it's hard to think back.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: There wasn't a lot of documented gay history yet. Now
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: we're making up for lost time. It's great. But I
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: just wrote it for free. I met as many people
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: as I could who knew him, asked a lot of questions.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: And I wrote a script for, I showed it to
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: some of my fellow writers on Big Love. They were
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: like my early unofficial producers. I shared a cinematographer with
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: one of my inspirations, Gus Van Sant. I got it
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: to him.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's go a little bit slower. From
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: the moment you put your finger to the keyboard, how
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: long does it take you to write it?
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: A couple of years.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: A couple of years. Now it's done. Is it done
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: or are you tweaking it? forever?
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: I love to tweak forever. You usually have to rip
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: stuff out of my hands. But this one, for whatever reason,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: came out pretty fully formed. And not a lot changed
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: between the first draft I shared and what we made.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: So you're done. You know, you're a hopeful in Hollywood, whatever.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: You have a connection to Gus Van Sant. Yeah. But
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: was he the first person you thought of?
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: Yes. Why? Because he had made My Own Private Idaho,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: which is one of my favorite films to date. And
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: talk about, you know, that has, you know, a gay storyline,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: character themes. And at a time when that was really
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: hard to do. And like a decade earlier or more.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: And I loved his style and I thought he'd get it.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: I also knew he had been involved in trying to
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: make a movie about Harvey Milk with Oliver Stone, I believe.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: So I knew he had interest. And also I didn't,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: you know, I was doing great in TV, but I didn't.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: Have a lot of.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: You know, filmmakers in my phone book.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: So you get it to Gus. You give it to
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: your friend. He gets it to Gus. How long until
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: you hear from Gus?
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: Oh no, I get my friend to introduce me to Gus.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: I go up to Gus's house. I don't really know him.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: I sit down next to him at his breakfast bar
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: in his home, hand him the script, print it out.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: And he starts reading it next to me. I'm like,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: oh my fucking God, he's going to read it with
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: me sitting next to him. And he did. He sort of,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: and then he flipped it a couple of times, looked
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: at other pages. Flipped it back, kept reading. And he
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: was done. And if you know Gus, who I just love.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: I do not. Oh, man.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: What a special human being. He just doesn't say a
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: whole lot. And I think he just cleared his voice
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: at the end, which probably meant he was feeling emotional
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: about it. And he just said, yeah, it's good.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: Then what?
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: We went and got Sean.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: Well, nothing is that easy.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: This was a pretty special experience. I mean, no one
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: wanted to pay for it.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: But, you know, Gus had access to Sean. First, Gus,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: within the next couple of weeks or so, we were
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: sitting down watching Sean Penn give political speeches on YouTube,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: I think. And we thought, boy, you know, he's going
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: to get it. We knew Sean was living up in
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: San Francisco, so he probably heard of the story. And
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: Gus had access to him. We get into my car,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: Gus and I, we drive to San Francisco. Now I'm
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: sitting with Gus Van Sant and Sean Penn in his
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: house and Sean says yes, yeah. I think at some
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: point I got nudged by Gus, like ask him, like,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: because we knew he was interested. He wouldn't have had
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: us to his house. And I said, yeah, so what
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: do you think? Are we doing this? And I think
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: he said with an expletive, like, why the fuck do
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: you think I had you up here?
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: Which was great.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: And I was asking really smart questions the whole time.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, so now he's in. But the business, even though
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: it's been a few years, the business has changed. The
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: star doesn't guarantee the money. So how do you get
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: the money?
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: We had to add Emile Hirsch, who was hot at
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: the time, and James Franco, who was really hot at
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: the time. Then we were able to get the attention
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: of Focus Features who, you know, without Brokeback Mountain having
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: made a ton of money for Focus, they likely never
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: would have said yes because this was far more political.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: But they did.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: And with Groundswell helping finance it, it was go. It
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: happened really fast from then.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: Okay. As shot, how close to the screenplay you wrote?
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: A hundred percent. I mean, you know, nothing is, but 95.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: Any imposter syndrome? Any saying, well, I think it's good,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: but maybe it isn't really that good?
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: The day I lose my imposter syndrome is the day
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: I start to fucking suck at what I do. Like,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: I'll stop trying hard. Like, yeah, it's... I doubt myself
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: all the time, and I'm grateful for that. And certainly
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: with that. Because I had done television, a good bit
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: of television, but I was right out of the gate
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: with features. And then I'm standing on a giant Oscar stage.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: And I really questioned why I stood there so soon.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: And that actually would take me a good long time
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: to figure out and to get back into filmmaking, to
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: be honest.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: Because, you know, you can have the best script, but
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: the nature of a movie, there's a budget, there's a schedule,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: and you can literally be making a movie seeing it
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: go in the wrong direction. Yes.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: Okay?
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: When did you know it was good?
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: There was a day when we were filming in a
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: recreation of the camera shop that Harvey had put together,
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: the real Harvey, and we were filming it in the
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: same storefront. And- The vibe with the actors felt really authentic.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: And Sean was a big part of that, helping it
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: feel like a family. And I think all the actors,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: because we were out of town, were living in the
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: same hotel and they were really bonding. And I was living,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: I got an apartment up there with the film's editor
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: who was a friend of mine. And probably I wasn't
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: supposed to be doing this, but I would just sit
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: He would be editing on a laptop in his bed
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: late into the night, our dailies. And I would just
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: sit next to him and watch. And I thought, God,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: it just has him. It feels like what I hoped
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: the reality was. And it felt alive. And so I thought,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: we have a little bit of a chance. I also
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: remember one of the producers coming up to me. I
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: was stood across the street during that shoot. And he
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: had made some big movies. And he said, remember this.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: I was like, why is it? He said, it's not
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: always like this. And so I think he also was sensing,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: you know, we were on to something. It was a
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: beautiful experience. Gus was fantastic. Sean was fantastic. The cast
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: was fantastic. It was just everybody. No one was making money.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: That would beg the question, if it's not made for money,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: did you, A, get a back-end piece by contract, which
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean you get paid, and B, did you
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: have that piece, and B, did you get some money?
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: No and no.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: I had no.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: I think I got whatever Writer's Guild minimum was because
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: Focus would have to do that. And no, no cut
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: of the back-end.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: And so no, no. But- Who fucking cares? No, no, no, no. Yeah,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: I didn't care.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: Usually you do the first one for them. This is
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: Hollywood 101, but when something is made on a budget,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: in a low budget, the finances... Let's not go down
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: that alleyway. I asked my question. Next thing is you
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: were nominated. Okay. How do you rationalize yourself in that experience?
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: There's occasionally someone knows... I just can't win because that
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: person is in... You know, they never won an Oscar.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: They're 75, whatever. But in this case, I don't think
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: that applies. How do you endure the time from nomination
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: to literally sitting in the hall saying, you know, could happen.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: Odds are not a slam dunk. How do you deal
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: with that?
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: It was a really unique situation because... You have to
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: remember this film was dropped in the middle of a
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: huge debate around gay rights in California, Proposition 8, that
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: was going to take away the right for gay people
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: to be married. So I was sitting waiting for a
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: film we had made about how an unlikely gay politician
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: had beat a statewide proposition in a far more homophobic time.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: And it looked like we were going to lose Proposition
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: 8 because we'd lost his entire strategy. We were in
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: a very me, me, me, only gay, gay, gay time
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: in the movement, which by the way, we're sort of
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: in that again now. And it doesn't work. And so
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: I felt like I had been educated on a strategy
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: that could work. I was watching the movement fail. And
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: in that time between– the film coming out and the
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: Oscars proposition eight passed and it took away the right
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: to marry. And I found myself, uh, sitting in a
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: very different chair than Oscar winner hopeful. I was sitting
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: in a place where I knew, um, cameras were rolling
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: when I would give interviews. I needed to share what
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: I knew. I needed to help lead in this moment. And, um,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: If you know me, especially then, I was a very
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: shy person. And I've come out of my shell a little,
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: but I had to push through. a good bit of terror,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: probably built of self-loathing to lead. And so I wasn't
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: really thinking, I didn't have gold fever, I'll say that.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: And I was feeling a whole different set of pressures.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: And I, I knew like the morning I was nominated, um,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: I was mostly grateful cause I knew I had a
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: platform for another few months and the night I was
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: so terrified of winning, if I'm being honest. I mean,
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: of course you, you want to, but you're, I was
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: terrified of having to get up on that stage. And,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: and I, because I also, I felt a responsibility and, um,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: Two things happened. One, there was this Oscar party and
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: I was kind of falling apart inside. And a friend
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: sent over Oprah Winfrey.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: Who took me by the hands, looked me in the eyes,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: and she started to tear up. And she said these words.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: She said, it's already happened. That's it. And I was zapped.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: into comfort, I was zapped. I thought, okay, it's already happened.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: That means I don't have to worry about it. I
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: don't have to worry about the future. You know, anxiety
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: is about thinking about the future. She said, nope, it's
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: already happened. And so I found some calm. And then
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: my mother, when I said, what happens if I have
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: to get up there? Crazy, you know, I'm talking about
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: it all backwards. And she said, Maybe you should just
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: say what you wish you would have heard as a
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: kid growing up in our home. And that's what I
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: did that night on that stage. And that would turn
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: me into a leader in the movement. And that role
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: that I took would help lead to my foundation with
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: Robin Michelle Reiner and Chad Griffin. That would lead to
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: a Supreme Court case. That would lead to marriage equality
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: in the United States. which is why I didn't make
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: another movie for a very long time.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: Where is the Oscar?
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: It's now in my house.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: Where in your house?
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: It's now in a bookcase in the living room, but
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: it's overshadowed by my husband's multiple Olympic medals and world
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: championship medals that There's a lot more gold bling on
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: his side of the family than mine. It had been
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: with my mom, so I won. My mom's in the audience.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: She was dying of cancer at that point, and I
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: plopped it in her lap, and she took it home
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: with her. I would only see it when a plumber
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: would come to fix the pipes in her house and
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: would inevitably take a picture with it and tag me.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: Okay. That's the pinnacle of awards in the film business. Yes.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you were numb for a period of time. Sure.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: You felt great for a period of time. How long
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: do you, does it take to return to normal? And
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: to what degree does it affect your emotional life?
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: Well, it was very disorienting. And I, I think I,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: I was, I, I felt a lot of joy for
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: a few months, um, It was really– I was– I
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: drew a lot of power from it that I'd never
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: felt in my life. And I felt I was putting
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: that power into the right places. It wasn't into my
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: poor agents were like, what are you doing? But I
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: put it into political work. But it was– I've never
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: talked about this.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: But I was.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: Destroyed by Perez Hilton, the gossip blogger. He released photos
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: of me with a boyfriend that were meant to be private.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: It was, you know, it's since been deemed illegal. It
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: would be illegal now. A violation of my privacy, and
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: I wasn't closeted. There was no reason to do that.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 2: Everyone knew what they would find if they stepped into
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: my bedroom. And I was broken- by that attack, that vicious,
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: horrible attack by that pure sociopath for a good decade.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: And I, if I'm being very honest, I'm turning you
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: into my therapist, I didn't want to succeed in the
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: same way again, ever. I was terrified.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: You mean the level of success or the type of project?
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: No, the level of success. I didn't want it. I
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: didn't want that kind of attention that would lead to
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: that kind of heartbreak and hurt and harm again for
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: a long, long time.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: It took 10 years to get over it. How did
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: you ultimately get over it?
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: Well, I grew up. I fell in love. I got married.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: I had kids. I started to have perspective. Also, it
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 2: now seems like a rite of passage for any celebrity
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: to have all kinds of things leaked about them. Like
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: you haven't made it until, you know, people have seen
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: your you know, your private bits all over the place. And, uh,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: also these were photos that were quite old. I think
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: I was 26 in them. I had a tan and
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: now I look back at 52 and I go, guys,
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: take a look.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: I look great.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: Like I look hot. Thank God. Like, look at that
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: evidence of, of, you know, and, and so I just, I,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: I still had a lot of shame to discard, uh,
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: and a horrible human being had profited off of that.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: And so I... But I eventually just... I just discarded it.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, I can't let that kind of person have
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: power over me anymore. And, you know, having kids and
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: being a dad, well, like, who fucking cares anymore? My
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: priorities are so different. And... And so I eventually would...
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: kind of wake up back into myself and move on.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: And I think you can see it. In the past, what,
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: four years, I've had another movie nominated for an Oscar,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: Bayard Rustin, a television series nominated for Emmys and Golden
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: Globes and Critics' Choice Awards. I started throwing myself back
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: into the work in a way that I knew would
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: garner attention. I started putting my whole self back into
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: the work. and less terrified of reaching those heights again.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: But I've never talked about it, but I can't tell
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: you how incredibly debilitating and harmful that attack was. And
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: I know this person is supposedly suffering out there. I'd
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: like to care. I don't.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, just going back to when this happened, I remember
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: the turn of the century, I was very online, still
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: very online, and I started to experience what is called
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: now internet hate. I would go to the psychiatrist. Psychiatrists
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: would have no idea what I was talking about. No
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: one knew what I was talking about. Whereas today, Jimmy Kimmel,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: they do hate tweets of famous people.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: Paris takes this swing at you. Was there anybody you
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: could talk to and say, hey, I know what you're talking,
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: irrelevant to how it made you feel. It's like, hey, yeah,
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: this goes with the territory.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: No, I was one of the very first. So I
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: think this predates Paris Hilton, different than Perez. I think
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: this certainly predates the Kardashians release. So they knew what
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: to do with it. They became celebrities with it. I
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: am shy. I come from a background of where these
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: things are shameful. I come from a, I'm a very
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: private person. And so no, there was no one to
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: turn to. Even my publicists who were great, some of
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: the best in the business, didn't know what to do
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: with this. They thought it was over for me. I'd
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: heard that. And I had to work really hard to
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: move past it in certain ways.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: Okay. Just staying on the same tip, You have Peter Thiel,
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: who's outed by Gawker, ultimately sues Gawker into bankruptcy. What
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: is your viewpoint about people being outed?
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: I only believe outing is okay when it's someone who
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: is actively trying to bring down the gay movement.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: Otherwise.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: It's their own business. And listen, I would disagree with
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: Harvey Milt who outed people who were not working against
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: the gay movement. He outed the heroic person who intervened
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: when Ford, I believe, was about to be assassinated. And
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: I don't think that was right. But, you know, there
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: have been– it's in politics. You can almost– with incredible accuracy,
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: I believe, you can identify– the homosexuals in Congress by
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: who's the most anti-gay. I mean, Lindsey Graham was a
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: famous example. And so those people who are actively trying
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: to bring down their brothers and sisters, really, out them.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: Out them.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: Okay. I'm a crack hour fan. I went to somebody's
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: 40th birthday party. And as a party favor, they gave
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: out the first book he did, which was a compilation
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: of stories, Eiger Dreams. Then he did the one about,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: you know, Alaska, the guy retreating there. Then he did
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: Into Thin Air. He writes under the banner of heaven.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: I believe it's 2009. I don't have an inherent interest
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: in Mormonism. I happen to live two winters in Salt
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: Lake City, which is a very different place today because
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: it's very cosmopolitan today. It was not at that era.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: But you read that book and you are kind of
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: shocked at some of the things that the originator of
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: the religion does. How do you end up reading that book?
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: Were you on the continuum of what they no longer
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: even call Mormonism? And how do you end up making
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: the series?
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: Well, I grew up in the faith and I was
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: very faithful. for a long time. Did you go on
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: a mission? I didn't because we left. I'd been saving
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: for a mission. We finally stepped out of it when
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: I was about 16, 17 years old. So right before
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: I would have gone on a mission.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: So tell me about stepping out.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: Well, my mom, I think at a certain point, we
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: had had my father who stepped into fundamentalist Mormonism. So
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: closer to the Joseph Smith version of And the version
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: I was depicting at the time in Big Love, the
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: TV series, is about a polygamous Mormon family, how I
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: got the job. And she had then been assigned a
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: husband by the Mormon church. I'll just say he was
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: the Boy Scout master that probably tells you all you
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: need to know about the guy.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: This is your mother.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 2: My mother was– because you have to be married to
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: get into heaven in the Mormon church. She's a paralyzed
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: mother of three kids, boys. Who's going to help her
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: get into heaven? Well, the Boy Scout– who was also
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: unmarriable for his own reasons, who ends up being incredibly violent. Again,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: this is detailed in my book.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: Unmarriable because he's violent or he's gay?
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know what his sexuality was, but it was
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 2: fucking weird. And he was very violent. And we would
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: find out much later that he had tried to kill
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: the family before ours. And yeah, so that's all in big.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: In Mama's Boy, that documentary, if you want a deeper
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: dive into all the whys and whos. So at that point,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: my mom, for survival's sake, was like, I think we
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: got to get out of this. And she met this,
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: she's 43, kids paralyzed. She meets this guy, army soldier, paratrooper,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 2: who'd gotten in an accident. He couldn't jump out of
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: planes anymore. He had to retrain. She was civil service.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: She started training him in immunology. He was into, evidently,
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 2: paralyzed women with three boys, older. And he was great.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: I love him to death. He's still around. And he
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: got orders to ship off to the Central Coast, to
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: Fort Ord in California, and we followed him there. And
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: it changed the trajectory of our life. He was a
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: Catholic who would go to church, you know, Christmas and Easter,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: and that's it. And it just was a whole different,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: it was a whole new start for us. I would
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: have been in my teens and it was hard to leave. I,
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: because I believed it was the only thing I ever believed,
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: you know, part of what the Mormon church does is it,
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: it keeps you in the bubble. You don't have access
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: to other beliefs, other information. So it was a huge
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 2: period of unlearning and, um, And so I was exposed
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: to all of it. I was exposed to the good
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: of it, which was, hey, you know, family comes first.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: I still treasure that in my own family. I like
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: to prioritize my family and my kids. I learned that
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: from Mormonism. But the bad of it, the misogyny in it,
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: the homophobia in it, at the time, deep racism in it.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: I know they're trying to fix all that, but hard
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: to do. And then, of course, through my biological father
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: and exposure to what fundamentalist Mormonism believed. And so when
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: I read Krakauer's book— A little bit slower.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: How do you pick up Krakauer's book?
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: It would have— I was on Big Love starting, I think, 2006.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: So it would have been on my radar immediately. I'm
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: sure I was one of the first to pick it
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: up and read it. And then I was working with Imagine,
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: an executive named Erica Huggins, who's now at Fuzzy Door,
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: and she's just fabulous. And she said, what do you think?
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: And I said, yeah, let's see what we can do
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: with it. And initially, we were looking at it as
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: a movie. It just wasn't possible to fit in all
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: the story into two hours. And so it would sit
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 2: on a shelf for a good long time. We tried
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: to make it at Warner Brothers, I think. And I
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: think Erica, maybe Ron Howard, someone over at Imagine called
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 2: up and said, you know, this limited series thing, it's
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: not dusty. It's not dusty anymore. They're doing them again.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 2: What do you think of that? And that was a
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: no brainer. And first stop was to John Landgraf at FX.
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 2: He said, yes. I said, I don't want to pitch
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 2: it anywhere else. Let's do it there. And he was great.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: Okay. You were on Big Love. You made Under the
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: Banner of Heaven. To what degree have you experienced LDS backlash?
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: You know, it's a— and I ate the Mormon proposition. I
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: produced Prophets Pray. You know, I— I've given them a
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: hard time. What's interesting about the Mormon church, and I
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: think they're brilliant in this way, use a Book of Mormon,
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: the musical as an example. Do they come out with
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: fire and fury? No, they put an ad in the
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: back of the playbill. And so I started getting outreach
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: from both Equality Utah saying, hey, would you come out
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: here and chat with us? Because we're an equality movement
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: in the heart of Mormondom. But I also started getting
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: outreach from people in the PR department at the Mormon Church.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't, we hate you. It's, can we talk?
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: And that began a series of conversations that I had
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 2: with folks in the Mormon Church that would end up
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: leading me towards Mormon leadership in the church. And I
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 2: remember walking into the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, which is
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: where You know, the head honchos are. And I sit
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 2: down with these guys, a lot of white haired guys.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: And it's all very serious. And I say, listen, I
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: know the homophobia thing. It's a tough subject. And I
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: know where you stand. I mean, they had just won
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: Prop 8. But I said, you guys need us. And
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 2: there was confusion. I said, look around this place. It
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 2: needs a fucking redesign already. These curtains, this carpet, you
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: need us.
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: And they just cracked.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: They all cracked up laughing. And we just broke the ice.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 2: And then I, because I grew up Mormon, I knew
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: well enough to ask them about their families. And because
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: I care, I was interested. And then they started asking
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 2: about mine, which is, you know, my gay relationships. And
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: they just started to see me, understand me differently. The
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: people at Equality Utah started to introduce them to some
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: other families, lesbians with kids, some gay people with kids.
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: They started inviting us to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Spectacular,
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 2: which is like their Oscars. And, you know, I got
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: a lot of hate from the gay movement for a
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: while because they're like, why are you going? You're a pawn.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: And I just remember the head of PR, who had
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 2: been the guy responsible for Proposition 8, pushing it, getting
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: it to win, took my hand on the way out
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 2: of one of these Christmas specials and just said, uh, Mr.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 2: Black or Brother Black, I think he said, do you,
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: do you ever think about having a family? And I said, yeah.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, I was raised Mormon. I would love to
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 2: have a family. I'd love to have kids. And he,
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 2: he teared up and I, I asked him, I, you know, I,
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 2: And he said, we just really, he's like, I really
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: did believe that the gay movement was about breaking down
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 2: the family. I said, so that's where it comes from.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: He's like, that's where it comes from. There are a
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: lot more conversations, a lot more work, and many, many
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: people who engaged in the effort. But the Mormon church
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: came out in favor of marriage equality. when that vote
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: came before Congress, Mitt Romney came out for marriage equality. And,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: you know, we demonize the other side, both sides do this,
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: so much so that we can't even talk to each other.
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: I feel like the work that I did and many
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: people did with the Mormon church on the other side
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 2: of Criticism from both sides. The fact that we could
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: come together and talk is why we are where we
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 2: are today. And if you look at the last election,
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: there's only two states that moved to the left. And
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 2: Utah is one of them. Takes conversations. Takes having the
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: courage to sit across from people who have said horrible
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: things about you. And I have said horrible things about them.
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 2: And to see if you can't find a little common ground,
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 2: a little understanding. And it's hard. And compromise is not
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 2: a dirty word. Sometimes it's the beginning of the path.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: I have to ask, though, as a Mormon, when you
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: read the book, Under the Banner of Heaven, and it
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: talks about Joseph Smith with the tablets, and then him
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: learning overnight to speak a foreign language to interpret these tablets.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: Never mind, I'm going to, I believe it's Missouri, and
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: marrying multiple people. As a Mormon, you read this. How
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: do you react?
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I like science fiction and Star Trek, too. I mean,
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: come on. At that point, I knew enough about the church.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 2: I knew enough about Joseph Smith. This was a kid.
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: He had already been busted for being a charlatan in
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: other ways. I knew all of that.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: I was.
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: You know, I love history. I like to study history.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: I ask a lot of questions. And that faith falls
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: apart really quickly under any sort of scrutiny, historic, scientific,
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: all of that. And so none of it was really
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 2: a surprise to me. I think it was probably a
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: big surprise to a lot of Mormons who read it.
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: And I think a lot of Mormons read it, even
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: though they were told not to. But, you know, it's nonsense.
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: I feel like I can say that. I think there
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 2: are things in Mormon culture that are worthy of admiration.
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: But the story Joseph Smith told, it's science fiction and
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: it's not even that good.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: And are you a believer in any God higher body
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: at this point in time?
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: No, because I don't really put. myself in belief situations.
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying there couldn't be.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know. What do I know?
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: I only know what I can know. And as you
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 2: get older, you increasingly realize how.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: Little you know.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: And the wiser you become, you realize there's a lot
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 2: more to know. And I've become just very comfortable not
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: knowing belief. That doesn't have a place for me as
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: a writer, as a thinker. If I have a belief
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: I want to follow my mother's footsteps and have a
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: hypothesis and test it. And you can't do that with
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: these notions of God. And I increasingly can't stand what
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: people do in this world in the name of God.
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: And so if God is what a lot of Americans
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: use to rationalize their behavior and their votes, I want
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: nothing to do with that. because it has nothing to
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 2: do with what I do enjoy and have read and
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 2: do find value in, which is the book of John
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: in the New Testament. I don't take it as truth,
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 2: but it's one of the most beautiful love stories you'll
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: ever read. Love between these men of belief, not in
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: belief of something ethereal, but belief that we ought to
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: be good to each other. And understanding that that's not
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: easy to treat. your neighbor, how you want to be treated.
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: I love that book. And you can love that book
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: without having to believe in all the mythology around it.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: How'd you meet your husband?
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: I was invited to a dinner. where I was told
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: some of the people– I don't know if it was
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: nominees or hosts or whatnot of like the sexiest Athletes
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: Alive TV show, something like that. And, of course, I
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 2: had a script due the next day. But I thought, well,
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 2: I'm not passing up that invitation. So I went. He
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 2: was incredibly late to that dinner. Came in with– Some
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: beautiful women dripping off of him. So I thought, well,
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 2: you know, this guy. I'm going to get out of here.
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 2: I want to get back to work.
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: So you're saying your gaydar is not that good?
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: My gaydar is terrible. I have to tell you. Yeah,
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 2: I don't always have good gaydar. I missed my brother.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: I missed my husband. And I was about to go.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 2: And my friend sitting next to him said, you might
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 2: want to hang out. He's looking you up on Google
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: right now. on his phone. And I hung around for
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: a bit and we exchanged numbers and he put his
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 2: into my phone with a little winky face. And I thought,
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 2: I don't think a straight guy's ever put his number
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 2: in another man's phone with a winky face before. So yeah,
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: that was the beginning 14 years ago or 13 and
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: a half years ago.
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: Okay. So what are you working on now?
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: All kinds of things. Because I love that you asked
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: about The post-Oscar thing because I did not rise. I
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 2: fell pretty hard on the other side of that. And
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 2: getting back up also included moving back to Los Angeles.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: From where? London.
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: So I moved to London because my husband's an athlete
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 2: and he competes for Team GB, Great Britain. So I
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: needed to be out there. He said my office is
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 2: thousands upon thousands of gallons of water. Yours is often
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 2: a laptop.
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: Just to be clear, your husband was a diver. Yeah.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: An Olympic diver. Yeah. And so I came out of,
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 2: I finished things I started like the Bayard Rustin movie,
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: Under the Banner of Heaven, things like that. But I
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: had started them, most of them before that Oscar, if
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 2: you can believe it. And so I came out of
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 2: a soft retirement and I've come back to Los Angeles
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 2: and I don't know that I can get terrifically specific,
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: but I have two TV series that are far along.
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: These are ongoing series.
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: One at.
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: Netflix I'm very excited about and a couple of feature
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 2: films and two other TV series in development. So I'm
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: really busy. And you know what's interesting? We're in such
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 2: a rush all the time to be successful and to
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 2: the silver lining, if there is any, to the debilitating
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: post-Oscar time, is I took a long time to let
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 2: ideas percolate and to grow. And these are all ideas
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: that have been growing in my mind, in my heart
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: for a long time. And so by the time I
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 2: got to LA and my agent said, no one's buying
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 2: anything anymore, I was able to go into rooms with
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: really fully formed ideas, I hope original ideas, and they
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: did sell. In fact, They all sold. So I'm very,
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 2: very busy. One that might be the first to go
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: into production is someone you might be familiar with. And again,
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: I don't know what magic you have, but I'd like
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: to break news on your show, is centered on Stevie
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: Van Zandt, one of the most spectacular human beings I've
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: ever had the pleasure to meet. And I'm writing a
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 2: feature film about his time in America. the mid-' 80s and
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: his involvement in the ending of apartheid.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: Did you have the idea first, or did you know Stevie?
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 2: The idea came, and it was in collaboration with Kathy Schulman,
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 2: the producer, and then I met him.
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: Okay. Historically, it is very hard to get a project
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: off the ground in Hollywood. However, then we had the
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: TV boom where streamers were buying everything. That's reduced by
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: an incredible percentage. How hard is it to get a
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: project off the ground now?
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 2: I think it's harder. There was this time, I think
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: part of it was a reaction to COVID, thinking it
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 2: would be so impossible to continue to make content. Everyone started,
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 2: you know, every iron in the fire got greenlit. And
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 2: there was also some business considerations and some competition considerations
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 2: to take into mind or take into consideration. And we
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 2: had hundreds, I think, hundreds of new shows, miniseries and series.
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 2: And of course, that's well under 100 now. So the
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: business contracted. I am thankfully from a time when I
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: started when the business was smaller. So I understand how
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 2: you need to develop things so they're fully formed before
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 2: you share them, before you bring them in. So it's very,
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: very hard, but it means you have to do a
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 2: lot of work before you share. And I think... in
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 2: that time of great abundance of shows and all of
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: the green lights going off, people brought projects into studios
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: and streamers and networks that are rather nascent. And I
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 2: think that's a mistake. I'm a big believer in the
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 2: spec script. Just build it.
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: Make it.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: Refine it before you share it. It's also helpful because
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: then it can be wholly yours. You don't have to,
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 2: you're not subjected to notes from people who might have
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 2: business in mind not creative in mind and um and
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 2: you're able to do things that are innovative or daring
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 2: because you kept them close for a long time you
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: bet on yourself so i say that you know people
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: ask me how do you do it how do you
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: get into it i say well be you uh ignore
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 2: the fad of today because it won't be um you
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 2: know what's popular by the time whatever you're making comes
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 2: out so it Be yourself. Explore yourself. Originality is having
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 2: the courage to do what the fuck you like. I
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 2: think Bowie is a great example of that. And then
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 2: bet on yourself, meaning if you're only doing it to
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 2: get paid and so you want to go out and
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: get the paycheck before you write it, you probably should
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 2: get out of the creative business anyway. So do it
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 2: for free. If it doesn't sell, you didn't waste your time.
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 2: You grew. And take it out fully formed. That's what
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: milk was. Almost everything I've ever done that has come
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: to any good, I did for free. And some of
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 2: it you get a little bit muddy in the back end,
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 2: but not a lot.
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: Okay. As we speak, the Paramount Warner Brothers Discovery merger
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: is still up in the air. based on things that
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: were even in the paper today. It could just be
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: solved in a day. It could wait till the trial
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: to march. This is a little bit like politics. There's
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: left and right. Let's leave out the issue of production
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: that has left Hollywood, which is a serious problem for
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: people who've made their living in Hollywood. But we have
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: this focus on features. One of the big things was
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: Ellison's guaranteeing he would make 30 features a year. You're
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: one of these people, you made your bones in television first.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: We lived through this in the music business. Music business
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: is canary in the coal mine, where the train is
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: going and you can't stop it. There is a theatrical business.
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: It's turned into an event business. There are people... Spielberg,
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: he walked this back a little bit. Oh, you got
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: to see it on the big screen. We live in an...
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: I'm going on. That was revealing my attitude on this.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 2: I'm enjoying it.
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, go on.
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 2: I'm curious what you think.
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: We live in an on-demand society. I remember saying, I
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: want to see this movie. First, it doesn't start when you're,
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: you know, when you want it to. You have to
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: go there. And I'm sitting there going... I'm not calmed
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: down from the work I did. I can't really... I
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: didn't walk out, but I can't really experience this. So.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 2: And they're eating popcorn right behind your head. And it
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: drives me nuts.
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: But for the popcorn, not to mention the facts I'm
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: sure you do, if you're willing to pay and it
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: keeps going down in price, you can get an LG
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: OLED screen that is just mind-blowingly good. Sure. So, where
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: do you sit on? Because... Yes, we have all these
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: Hollywood faces saying, oh, the merger's got to stop. We
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: have to believe in theatrical. Or in reality, it's a
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: practical matter. The ship already sailed. And the other thing,
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: of course, is if Warner Brothers and Discovery merge, it's
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: less than 30%. It's 27% presently. You know, we have
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: in the music business, we've consolidated to three. And one
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: of the companies, UMG, has, you know, Not quite 50%,
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: but it's approaching it. Yeah.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of questions in there. I'll start with
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 2: my feeling on feature films is that probably I'm going
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 2: to be.
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: One of these.
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 2: I'll watch a lot more at home, but that's because
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 2: I have a really big TV and an amazing theatrical.
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 2: I basically have a movie theater in my house, so.
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 2: I'm fortunate in that way. But, um, I also like
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 2: stepping out of the house to do something now and then.
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 2: And I love taking the kids like going to the movies.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 2: And so we take them to the, you know, they
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 2: want to see the new Spider-Man in the theater and
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 2: the new Paw Patrol in the theater. And, um, they
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 2: like that. Uh, you know, people, if you, if you're
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 2: going on a date, it's a little creepy to invite
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 2: them to your living room on a first date. So,
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 2: you know, you go to the movies. I think, um,
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 2: It's going to change, and if you're just averse to change, well,
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 2: get off the planet Earth and be inhuman. But I
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 2: think the movie theater experience going extinct isn't going to happen.
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 2: That's been threatened forever. Television came along. Movie theaters are
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 2: going to disappear. That didn't happen. Now there's easier access
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 2: to the programs you want at any given time. That's
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 2: going to kill it. Probably not. There's a very unique
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 2: experience to seeing things in theaters. I mean, certainly, you know,
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 2: the Odyssey is proving that true. You can't even get tickets.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 2: So I think the experience is going to remain. I
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 2: think in ways it'll become more special. It's when you
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 2: really love something, when you want to see it immediately,
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 2: you want to see it on a grand scale. You
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 2: want to see it with someone special. It becomes an event.
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 2: I love that. I'll be a member of that. So
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's completely going away, but it's definitely
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 2: going to change shape. And to completely resist any change
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 2: is silly. But to let it die would be a
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 2: terrible loss. So I suppose I stand there. And I
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 2: personally love the big screen experience. I'm really privileged. I'm
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 2: a member of the Oscar Academy, so I can go
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 2: to those screenings and you get a really well-behaved audience
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 2: and there's less chewing and there's more attention being paid.
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 2: So I love to watch things there. And in terms
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 2: of the consolidation of the business, I'll just say straight up,
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 2: I don't want to see HBO change. I love the
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 2: people who are there. I grew up with them. The
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 2: people who are leading HBO today creatively are the people
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 2: who were cutting their teeth when I did on Big
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 2: Love and You know, they have been the recipients of
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 2: the education of the people who are senior to them then.
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 2: There's a great, in a way, familial tradition of passing
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 2: down knowledge and bringing people up from within. And it's
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 2: such a special creative cauldron. And so I want to
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 2: see it stay independent. And I hate to think that
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: it will be shattered and dissolved further.
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: And so I do.
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 2: I don't like the idea of consolidation. I'm sure a
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 2: lot of people in the music business don't like everything
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 2: that's occurred because of consolidation. And so as much as
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 2: humanly possible, just because I want things to stay creative,
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 2: and creative to me means individual voices, unexpected moments, unexpected tone,
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 2: things I never saw coming or felt coming. Well, that's
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 2: going to benefit from having a lot of different perspectives
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 2: in charge, making the decisions.
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I don't want to hammer this point
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: too much, but that's what we get in YouTube. I mean,
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: two of the biggest movies of the summer were basically
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: from YouTube creators in that, you know, we see this
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: in consolidation in the music business. The major label releases,
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: the hits are reducing in overall market share. Having said that,
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: You've worked on both sides of the fence, features and series.
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: Okay. At this point in time, I only watch series
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: and I watch a lot of series. Okay. Because I
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: like the deeper, richer experience. Same. Yes. There's some subjects
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: that are limited, but generally speaking, what works for you?
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: Well, if the idea is the size of a poem,
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 2: it should be a movie. And if it's any bigger
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 2: than that, you're going to stumble in a movie. You're
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 2: not going to have the time. Carolyn Strauss at HBO
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 2: was like my– she was my executive, right? Oh, boy.
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 2: She worked on all the great shows, still does. And
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 2: her advice to me as a baby writer when I
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: would turn in early drafts was slow down. Go deeper.
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 2: And you have that luxury in television. And you don't
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 2: really have that luxury in film. Film is much more
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 2: shave off anything that's quote unquote unnecessary because you need
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 2: to keep the length of the film the size of
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 2: your audience's bladder because they're going to have to get
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 2: up and pee. And there's a certain attention span that's shrinking.
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 2: And so I think... When I hear an idea now,
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 2: it's one of my first questions, which is, can I
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 2: move at the pace it calls for and go deep
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 2: enough into who these people are that I can get
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 2: it done in two hours? And if the answer is no,
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: it might be a limited. And if the world is
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 2: big enough and it's more a situation than just one story,
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 2: situations which are very compelling those are series those can
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 2: go on forever um and and you have to you
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 2: know you it's nice now because it had been that
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 2: doing tv was looked down upon and features were the
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 2: prize well that seems to be gone now uh and
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 2: now it's more well what size is the story and
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 2: where does it best live and you know that's why
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 2: i have two movies right now And four television series.
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 2: Stay tuned. And and they I've put them in those
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 2: boxes because that's where I think they fit best. Not
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 2: because I think, oh, I'll be it's more esteemed to
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 2: have it on the big screen.
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: OK, Dustin, let's leave it at that. Once again, we're
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: speaking with Dustin Lance Black, who has a new project.
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: Rock Out, which, of course, is the perfect moniker for
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: a film about gay influences in the music world. Dustin,
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: thanks for taking the time with my audience.
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 2: This has been great. Thank you very much, truly.
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: Till next time, this is Bob Lefsetz.