Best Original Screenplay Oscar Winner Dustin Lance Black Backstage Q&A

Academy Award Winner for Best Original Screenplay Dustin Lance Black was interviewed backstage at the Oscars, here is a brief snippet that we wanted to share with you here on BWW.

Q. Congratulations on your win. It was very touching, and I loved what you said. Do you think President Obama should reverse the stand on gay marriage?

A. I think that there's a few things that I would love him to do immediately, which is to repeal "don't ask don't tell," and DMA, Defensive Marriage Act. But I do think that for inspiration for the gay community, we need to look not to Proposition 8, but dream bigger and look back to 1964 and the Civil Rights Act, because no group has ever won full civil rights in this country going state by state or county by county. I think it is time for the gay and lesbian community to have a federal civil rights act for full civil rights.

Q. So you think it should be reversed?

A. Absolutely. We are equal. Everyone.

Harvey Milk was an activist and politician, and the first openly gay man to be elected to major public office in America; in 1977, he was voted to the city supervisors' board of San Francisco, representing the Castro District.

From an original screenplay by Dustin Lance Black, Milk is produced by Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, the Academy Award-winning producers of American Beauty, through The Jinks/Cohen Company. Groundswell Productions and Focus Features co-financed Milk, which is a Focus Features presentation in association with Axon Films of a Groundswell production and a Jinks/Cohen Company production. Executive producers of Milk are Groundswell CEO Michael London (an Academy Award nominee for Sideways), Mr. Black, Groundswell's Bruna Papandrea, Barbara Hall, and William Horberg.

Photo Credit: Sarah DeBoer/Retna Ltd.