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(audience applauding)
Steve Martin: And the Oscar goes to...
Dustin Lance Black for "Milk."
(audience cheering)
I wanna, I wanna thank my mom,
uh, who has always loved me
for who I am even when there was pressure not to.
But most of all,
if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago,
I think he'd want me to say
to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight
who have been told that they are less than
by their churches, or by the government,
or by their families that you are beautiful,
wonderful creatures of value.
And that, no matter what anyone tells you,
God does love you
and that very soon, I promise you,
you will have equal rights, federally,
across this great nation of ours.
(applause, cheering)
Thank you. Thank you.
And thank you, God, for giving us Harvey Milk.
The day after the Oscars,
I was sitting with my mom in our living room
and I remember she just started to ask what's gonna happen now.
And I, I said, "Well, you know, I'm not sure."
And she said, "Mm... really?
"Because you made a pretty big promise
up on that Academy Awards stage last night."
I said, "That's true. I did."
And my mom said, "I raised you to know
"that a promise is a sacred thing.
So, what are you gonna do?"
(light music playing)
♪ ♪
My mom was born on February 28, 1948.
And she was the seventh
of what would eventually be nine children to Cokie.
And then, Cokie, my grandmother,
she came from very difficult circumstances.
She became an orphan
and ended up having to go work for a relative
and that relative treated her more like a servant.
And she met a young man
who was in his teens named Victor.
They got married and they start having children.
They start building a family,
living in, like, Providence, Louisiana,
which then, and still even today,
is considered the poorest city
in the United States of America
with the added honor of having the largest income disparity
because it was deeply racist.
Deborah Westfall: Lake Providence was
my main introduction to segregation.
I remember, you know, "whites only" signs.
And there was a separate entrance to the movie theater.
Everything was very, very segregated.
But yet, my family worked on a farm
and they worked alongside Black and white.
Dustin Lance Black: And Cokie and Victor, because they were so young,
and uneducated, and broke,
they lived in what was called a paper brick home.
I mean, it was a shack.
And that's what my mom was born into.
Nannette Radovich: We lived in a small house
with a porch and maybe, I don't know, two bedrooms?
It was very, very poor.
Lynn Mosley: The more children you had,
the more money you could make hoein' and pickin' cotton.
They'd tell me stories about
when she was ready to have a baby,
they took all the kids out to
a little farm shack and, you know,
they wasn't allowed to come in the house
till after the baby was born.
Dustin: Her full name on her birth certificate was Roseanna
and this name would undergo so many transitions
throughout my mom's life.
It would eventually become, to some, Rose,
which my mom didn't like.
As she grew older, it would become Anna.
And it would eventually, when she became an adult,
she said, "I'm Anne
and you'll have to deal with me."
Reporter: This is 1949's war against infantile paralysis
as seen in Little Rock, Arkansas.
This year, the enemy, poliomyelitis
struck with such impact and fury
that it shook the entire nation.
There has been no escape, no immunity.
Dustin: Polio was this new epidemic
starting in the early 20th century
and it would come in waves.
And these waves would create terror
because it really lived in water,
pools of water, dark water.
And who plays in that water, who drinks that water?
The children.
It was hitting children incredibly hard.
You would get a certain percentage of people
who would get quite ill
and then you would get that 1%
who it would start to eat away
at their neuromuscular system
to the point that they would lose the ability to move their limbs
and eventually, to even breathe.
And there was no treatment, no cure.
And my mother was one of the first signs
that there was another wave of this epidemic
that was going to attack the South.
Don Whitehead: The only thing that I really remember
about the day that Anne got polio,
she was lying on the couch that evening
and I was sitting on one end of the couch.
And then she started complaining about my movement
causin' her some discomfort.
And I thought that she was just bein' ornery.
But my mom made me get off the couch.
And that was it.
Next day, she was just gone
and I did not know where she had gone.
Dustin: When Don was sent to bed,
Anne kept complaining about the pain
and the discomfort and eventually,
she was starting to lose the ability to move her toes.
Cokie grabbed her up and found a neighbor
who actually had a vehicle
and they had to drive as fast as they could
to the nearest hospital and that was
in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
And when they went into that hospital,
those nurses and doctors immediately saw what this was.
Reporter: To what figure, this,
the worst polio epidemic in history
will take us, we do not know.
Dustin: My mom was in that hospital in Vicksburg for years
because it's not like all the symptoms just came on at once.
You would degrade and you would continue to degrade.
And the doctors would do what they could,
which was very little, to try and stop it
from getting worse.
And then something miraculous happened.
Reporter: Once the public health service
authorizes its release,
the polio vaccine can begin
to protect American youngsters.
Dale Morgan: As soon as we was old enough,
we had our polio vaccinations.
At the time, that was one of the big things.
It was almost like the coronavirus.
Dustin: My mom always joked that Jonas Salk,
if he had just worked a little harder and a little quicker,
that vaccine would've been available for her,
but that vaccine came a couple of years too late for my mom.
It was on the horizon, but it wasn't there yet.
By the time the disease had stopped eating away at her body,
my mom would be immobilized,
permanently, from the chest down.
But, as she grew older, she realized,
"Oh, I've got this beautiful golden hair
and these blue eyes."
She had been a March of Dimes girl
on the posters and all that.
And so, she really started to learn how to flirt.
She used her eyes
and she did this her whole life.
And she would just draw you in.
And so, she became the star of the ward.
A lot of the other kids were happy just to be able
to get in a wheelchair again
and my mom was like, "Oh, no, no, no, no.
I wanna be upright."
So she started practicing on crutches.
And my mother, we had one thing in common,
we had a scar that ran across our chin.
And I have it here from a bike wreck.
My mom had it from constantly falling.
Falling, falling, falling
and they'd stitch it back together,
say, "Come on, just get in a wheelchair."
And my mom said, "I don't need a wheelchair,
thank you very much."
Which was my mom's way of saying, "Fuck you."
Nannette: She was home some.
I mean, mostly at holidays she was home.
So, I remember sitting on the sofa with her.
I remember my mother massaging her
because they would put her on the dining room table
and massage her legs because they thought that might help.
But it didn't really help.
She always seemed like she was very strong
and she would want to do anything
that she could do herself.
Dale: The things I always remember about Roseann
was when we would go there to visit
and her comin' out there on them crutches
with her polio.
And I would just feel sorry for her.
But she always had a smile on her face.
She did not let her handicap stop her.
Dustin: And in a way, she had started to defy the odds.
She was getting stronger. She was falling less.
And I think she was starting to feel a sense of hope.
But one of the things that had begun
happening to my mom
was her spine had started to bend and twist.
It was starting to look like a very severe S
and she needed surgery
where they inserted steel rods along your spine.
And I remember her saying how she didn't know it was coming
and she was wheeled into that surgery room.
And they put in these metal rods into her back.
And she just started to bleed out.
They were able to sew her back up
but she wasn't waking up.
My mom went into a coma.
She said there was a nurse on that ward named Willie
and Willie was a older Black gentleman
who had a bird that he took
into the children's ward with him.
The bird swore in Creole.
And when Willie saw her lying there in the hospital in a coma,
it broke his heart.
So he sat with her and all she remembered
was hearing the voice of that bird cursing.
And she woke up.
At this point, it was clear
the time had come for her to be able to go home.
From 2 years old to 15 years old,
after all of those years in children's hospitals,
now she was going home for good.
In a attempt to set the expectations,
a nurse sat down with my mom.
She said, "These are the things
"you will be able to do and won't be able to do.
"You don't need an education. You don't need a husband.
"And you cannot have children.
"That is incredibly dangerous. You will die.
"Forget that stuff.
"What's gonna work for you
"is that the government will help support you.
"Go home.
"Collect the check.
And learn to accept this."
But I imagine she just looked her right in the eye and said,
"Thank you very much."
So, my mom, with this checklist in mind,
starts to try and prove that nurse wrong.
I mean, one of the most striking moments
is when she sewed her own prom dress.
She was determined to go
and didn't care that no one had asked her.
Sewed a beautiful light blue dress,
tightened the corset, expanded the bottom of the dress
so that she looked just like everybody else.
She also, in school, started to excel
academically, very quickly.
And in fact, there's a letter I find really moving
that she wrote to her father,
who she was completely estranged from,
saying, "Dad, guess what?
"I got into college with a scholarship.
Not because of my disability, because of my grades."
And she went to university in Louisiana
and she started to study medicine.
My mom wanted to be a doctor.
(cheery music playing)
(indistinct chatter)
When she was in college,
she would flirt with boys in person,
but one of the things she figured out was
Vietnam was goin' on.
And so, she would do her hair perfectly,
she would get the little picture and she would write notes
to the soldiers in Vietnam,
put her picture in.
And she would get letters back.
Deborah: In college, she had been serious
about a man whose first name was Don.
And his picture was on the head of the bed
and she was writing him letters and puttin' perfume on 'em.
She had the big rollers in her hair
and she had makeup and I just,
I just idolized her.
Dustin: When he came back from Vietnam,
Don met my mom
and he loved her and accepted her.
But Don's mom pulled her son aside and said,
"This young woman, as dazzling as she may be,
"will never be able to give you the family
that you've always wanted."
And Don ended it.
His mother
had convinced him that she could not give him children
because of her polio.
And she was absolutely heartbroken.
Dustin: And I can almost tell you the day
because my mom's grades go from A's and B's
to some C's and D's and F's.
For my mom, being able to get married and have kids
was the most impossible dream.
And then... knock on the door
and two of the most gloriously put-together boys
you've ever seen in your life,
"Hello, ma'am, we are here
from the Church of Latter-day Saints."
Two Mormon missionaries and they preached to my mom,
"Ma'am, we'd like to tell you that one of the promises
"that our heavenly father has made is that when you go to heaven,
"your body will be made perfect again.
And family is forever and eternal."
This was the ultimate dream for my mom.
And they brought her to church
and they introduced her to another missionary.
And his name was Raul Garrison.
Deborah: I remember her bringing Raul here
to introduce him to my parents, Josie and James Mosley
because my mother was worried about it
'cause this was her baby sister.
And my dad immediately hated him.
Hated him. Because he saw through it.
The Vietnam War was going on.
And Raul had been on his mission
for the Mormon church for two years
and when that ended, he was going to be drafted.
Oh, but if he married a handicapped woman,
he could avoid the war.
And my dad saw that
and just immediately thought he was taking advantage of her.
Because here was someone who was determined,
since she was a little girl, to be a doctor
because of everything she'd been through with polio.
And then, all of a sudden, everything is about Raul.
She's dropped outta college after three years.
She just gave up her career of being a doctor to be married
and to have children.
My mom heard all of her siblings' concerns,
but my mom wanted love.
My mom wanted children.
My mom wanted this promise of Mormonism,
this brand-new shiny religion.
And so, when she married Raul in Garrison,
most of the siblings didn't come.
But my mom still plowed ahead.
And the next day, they packed up and they left the South
and ventured out to California, an entire new world,
with a man who she loved,
but most of her family did not trust.
(light music playing)
Now they're in Sacramento,
Raul was struggling to pay the bills.
Holding onto a job or getting a good-paying job was tough.
But that wasn't my mom's focus.
She gave up getting a doctorate to have this family.
She wanted children badly.
That was one of the things she was told she would never have.
She was suddenly Mormon.
The expectation is you have lots of children.
She was supposed to have none, medically.
And she gets pregnant.
And on April 2, 1970,
my mother gave birth to Marcus Raul Garrison.
And I can just see in all the pictures
how incredibly happy she was.
Because she now had a child
and survived the cesarean section
'cause God knows she couldn't push.
But I think, with my mom, it was never quite enough. She wanted more.
I think she wanted more for herself.
She wanted more because she was a Mormon now
and you were supposed to.
So she tries again.
But she had a cold when she went into the hospital
for the planned cesarean section in June of 1974.
And they put her under and her respiration stopped.
Her heartbeat became irregular. She was dying.
The miracle of that
would end up being that they would be able to revive her
and deliver this.
And she says, "You just opened your eyes
"and you made eye contact with me immediately.
"And I just knew
you were gonna teach me so many things."
My mom always wanted to call me Lance,
but Raul wanted to call me Dustin.
And so, because in Mormonism, patriarchy rules,
my mom knew she had to call me Dustin.
So, Dustin Lance Garrison.
But when he would leave for work,
or on these work trips 'cause he was always away,
she would call me her lancer.
So, at home, I was always Lance
and at school, and out in the world, I was Dustin.
And so, I've had that split identity my entire life.
But the truth was, I was so incredibly shy as a child,
that meant I didn't make any friends.
So my mom was my best and only friend.
She was my lifeline.
And of course, she doesn't give up.
She's going to build this big family
and so, she gets pregnant a third time.
And this time, in 1978,
she gives birth to Todd Garrison.
Todd Black: I was born in Sacramento, March 4, 1978.
From a very early start, my mom, she was a force.
I just always remember she was...
(sighs)
ah... she was a very powerful woman,
but she was very loving
and I never really noticed she wasn't the same.
But there were moments where people would stare at her.
And I think we all had the same reaction of like, "What are you looking at?"
She was just proud all the time and proud of us.
And I think that gave us a lot of force for any time we were knocked down
to be like, "That's no big deal."
Lynn: I remember Roseann comin' when she had the babies
each time, you know, they'd come.
We'd have a good family together here
in Texarkana on the Texas side.
You know, me and Marcus played together
and Lance played,
and Todd was just little-bitty Todd.
And I even remember her just sittin' over there.
She had this beautiful smile, this beautiful laugh.
I mean, you would have no idea she had polio.
Donna Whitehead: I just remember offering to help her
and she said, "No, no. I'm, I'm fine."
She was very, uh, clear
that she could take care of things
and she just impressed me as a very independent woman
that was very strong.
Dustin: So now my mom has these three little boys
and I think she's incredibly happy about that.
But I don't think Raul was.
I think it was too much for him.
And he was also struggling to keep a job.
And so, now he's getting either fired or laid off.
And Raul gets a new job.
We end up having to pack up and move out of California
and says, "Let's go, let's go.
This is about survival. We're movin'."
And we moved here...
to San Antonio, Texas.
And I think for one brief moment
we felt like a, a safe little family,
but... that wouldn't last.
One of the things that happened was that my big brother
had this friend who lived three doors up.
And he would come over and, like, usually, he was beatin' me up.
But I sorta didn't mind and I didn't know what that meant.
I sorta looked forward to it.
And then, there was that moment where I realize,
"Oh, that's 'cause I love him."
And it was very clear, at six years old,
this wasn't the love you have for a friend.
This was a whole nother level of something
and I thought he was so beautiful.
And I think...
those butterflies... ah!
Lasted, like, five seconds.
Because if you're Mormon, you know you're going to hell.
And at this time in Texas, for sure,
you were a criminal, mentally ill, pariah.
And all the little butterflies died.
I was six years old, here.
And they would, on special Sundays,
beam in the prophet of the Mormon church.
It was Spencer W. Kimball.
Like all the disease doctrines of the devil,
whether it is an increase in homosexuality,
corruption, drugs, or abortion,
misery achieves a ghastly monument.
Dustin: And on this one special Sunday,
he compared the sin of murder...
to the sin of homosexuality.
So I knew I had to keep it a secret.
I already knew I was, you know, against the law.
I already knew what kids called people like me.
And now,
according to a man I really respected and admired,
I would be sent into eternal nothingness.
I was so confused because--
I mean, listen, they call it sexuality,
but sex had nothing to do with it at the time.
I had a crush.
And I thought, "Man, this love,
"that feeling that doesn't seem like it hurts anyone,
that's gonna, that's gonna be my ultimate demise?"
They were teaching me about a god
who said loud and clear, "Your heart has no value.
Your love has no value."
I just think it's worth asking the question,
"If you rob children of their heart
"and of their ability to love
"and you threaten that they're gonna lose their family,
"are you surprised
"that queer kids kill themselves...
at four times the rate of their own straight brothers and sisters?"
I'm not surprised 'cause I felt it.
♪ ♪
Raul was gone all the time.
He was on the road, traveling salesman.
I mean, my mom has her theories of what he was doing on the road.
And it was a bit more
extracurricular, shall we say.
And at one point, he says to us,
"A visitor from my family is coming."
And that was really rare. And her name was Louise.
Aunt Louise is what he called her.
Aunt Louise was my father's first cousin.
And they were having an affair.
She caught Raul and his first cousin
on the couch havin' sex and his response was,
"Join in. We're gettin' into the polygamy thing."
Well, that's not what she bought out of the Mormon religion.
Dustin: And he would run off with her and disappear
because in most places
it was not legal to marry your first cousin,
but he found a state where he could.
And he knew he had disavowed himself
from the mainstream Mormon church.
He would be excommunicated.
And I just remember going up to my mom
and she said,
"Your, your dad is gone."
And I was like, "Well, where?"
And, you know, "He'll come back. He always comes back."
"No... Your dad's not coming back."
He abandoned a paralyzed woman with three small children.
She'd never had a job.
She'd never driven a car.
And we never, ever heard from him again.
Deborah: He never had anything to do with any of the boys.
He never paid any child support.
I mean, they couldn't even find him to get a divorce.
They had to put ads in the paper and everything.
He never looked back.
Todd: I never really asked about our real dad.
And so, he left when I was so young, he wasn't a factor.
It sounds horrible, but I never cared.
Just me, and my mom, and my two older brothers, and then...
the first stepdad. (inhales) And that's a whole thing.
Dustin: My mom was struggling to make ends meet.
We were in a terrible financial state
'cause she didn't have a job,
but we never had to collect
any government assistance
because the Mormon church
started slipping envelopes with money into our mailbox.
We knew where it was coming from,
but they never expected acknowledgment.
And that community, familial kindness,
I have to praise the Mormon church for.
And we were seven-day-a-week Mormons,
six days a week at church,
one day at home for family home evening
on Monday nights for those lessons.
The church was our everything.
Deborah: The church helped her a lot, financially,
before she got a job or anything.
They do take care of people.
That's what churches are supposed to do.
My mom had to learn how to drive,
which thank God for cousin Debbie
comin' down and helpin' her install hand controls
on that massive Malibu Classic
and scaring the living crap out of us trying to learn.
Deborah: Here I am workin' to get her a job,
to get her some wheels.
You know, we're gonna get independent.
So, we typed up her SF 171 and she was hired
as a entry-level GS five lab tech
at Fort Sam Houston.
But the good Mormon church, as part of their policy,
she was a woman and she had to be taken care of.
Dustin: My mom had been abandoned by a Mormon husband,
so the church has gotta fix her up with somebody.
Who's gonna marry this woman?
Oh, I know, the Boy Scout master
of Troop 624 of the Windsor Ward.
He was an Air Force and Staff Sergeant.
His name was Merrill D. Black.
And I have this picture of getting on top of his shoulders
and he helped us put the star on top of the tree.
And I thought, "Okay,
we'll take all the help we can get."
Deborah: She didn't really, like, meet Merrill
and fall in love.
It was set up by the church.
He's divorced. He had some kids.
She's divorced. She had some kids.
He's going to support her.
Like my mom, he also had been divorced.
He had two children of his own,
but we never really heard from them, never saw them.
So, something was weird.
And they go and get married.
And I immediately say to my mom,
"I want his last name.
I do not want to be a Garrison."
And so, the paperwork came in the mail and it says,
"Dustin Lance Garrison is now officially adopted
"by Merrill Durant Black.
His name is now Dustin Lance Black."
I was so happy.
What I didn't know yet was that would be the best thing
this man ever provided.
What I would find out really soon
is that he had a real problem with his temper.
It was like, "Oh my gosh, you know, we have this--
When they got married, we have this father."
And then it just... (snaps)
I just remember the, the switch flipping pretty quickly to him being,
"We have a father and he's a monster."
Dustin: One day my room just wasn't clean enough
for an Air Force Staff Sergeant.
And with his full might,
he punches me square in the face.
And I landed on my back on the floor.
My nose is bleeding and it's all so blurry.
I just remember my mom charging in the door
on braces and crutches and she comes up
to this six-foot-four man, and says,
"You will not lay a hand on my son again or I will kill you."
And he... cowered, and shook and cried.
Promised to get help.
But that was not the last time he hit me.
Because I was told, "We can't go to the police.
We have to go to the Mormon church."
They didn't want you calling the police.
They wanted you to call the bishop.
And I would find out later
how many times he hit my mother.
And the Mormon church, the entire time is saying,
"The responsibility of the wife is to create an atmosphere
that suits your priesthood holder,"
which is the name for the father in that house.
"And if, if he's having to resort to this sort of violence,
there's something in the home that's not right for your priesthood holder."
They put the responsibility on my mom.
And the problem was, there was nothing my mom could do
to make that home suitable for a man like that.
It just kept going.
Well... knowin' Roseann, she hid it very well.
She might've told my mother. I don't know.
For sure my daddy didn't know, uh.
If Daddy would've known, he'd have done the same thing I'd have done.
We'd have... we'd have been in trouble 'cause,
personally, I'd have beat the hell out of him.
I mean, it wouldn't stop him 'cause that's,
you know, probably what he's gonna do anyway.
But it's, it's just not right.
(ambient nature sounds)
Todd: You know I think about this park a lot.
-Dustin: Do you? -Todd: A lot.
Dustin: What does it mean to yo?
Todd: It was, like, us time.
We'd get away from...
all of that that was going on.
It felt like an adventure coming out here.
-Dustin: I know. -Right?
This was the area. This is where we would come.
-Yeah. -And it was, like,
in the spring...
it was just jam-full of tadpoles.
You remember? And those tiny, little minnowy things.
But, like, I guess it was free fun.
-It was. -Like, other kids got Disneyland,
we got a bucket full of tadpoles.
And it was like, sort of like heaven.
Marcus would go to the drainage ditches
and sit under the underpasses
-and smoke whatever. -Mm-hm.
And I would take you down here
'cause you were my responsibility.
And this was, like, the best place to keep you away from home.
I loved it out here.
And then that one day, when we got home--
I don't know if you even remember it.
We've never really talked about it.
-But that day, we got home. -Never.
I put the bucket down.
That was the day I went inside and saw Merrill try to kill Mom.
(screaming)
I hear the screaming coming from where the kitchen is
and then I see my mom running
as only you can on braces and crutches,
like a pendulum moving as fast as she can
screaming... for help.
And then... after her is Merrill Black holding a knife,
a kitchen knife.
Going after her with that silent,
terrifying look in his eye.
I took in the image and I froze.
And the back sliding glass door flies open...
and Marcus, my big brother, comes charging in
with an aluminum baseball bat,
goes straight after Merrill
and all I hear is bing, bing, bing.
But Merrill ducked into the bathroom to escape the blows
and locked himself inside.
Marcus hadn't been around a whole lot,
but he showed up at the most important moment.
My mom would've died that day.
I'm sure I would've been next.
My big brother saved my life.
What we would eventually find out
that the Mormon church failed to tell my mom,
and of course, he wasn't gonna divulge,
is that Merrill tried to kill his first wife
and I guess the Mormon church
didn't feel like it was a woman's business to know that.
And so, Marcus and I,
we took matters into our own hands.
He said, "I got a plan.
"When everybody's asleep,
you're coming with me into the garage."
And Merrill drove this horrible avocado green Gremlin,
which was, like, a car at the time.
And the, the Gremlin was right here.
So, Marcus came out here and he had, like, a toolbox,
so it was, like, right along here
and he just grabbed wire snippers
and he crawled under here and all I heard was, "dink."
And he, and he crawled out and in that Marcus way,
"Dude, it's done, all right? Just go. Sneak back in.
Don't get caught. Dude, let's go."
He had just cut the brake line.
The next day, Merrill goes off to work...
but then he comes home.
Gremlin's fine.
We, I think, cut the windshield wiper fluid, not the brake fluid.
And Marcus and I are sitting there like, "We're dead."
Because Merrill had this look in his eye.
He was so upset, so clearly, he knew.
He was just waiting for the moment to kill us.
But it turns out he had had a meeting
with his supervisor that day
who instead of giving him the raise he had hoped for
was sending him to South Korea for six months.
Oh, it was the best. He's leaving.
The monster is leaving.
(laughs)
And I don't think we had been more happy
then at any time that he had been there.
Deborah: When Merrill was sent to Korea,
she confided in me then about what was goin' on.
We didn't know, until after it had happened,
how violent this man was.
And she took steps to actually divorce him while he was gone
and get him out of her life.
I also remember bein' down there
when she told me about this handsome guy in the Army
who was gonna take her on a motorcycle ride.
Jeff Bisch: I met Roseanna in January of 1986.
I had just been reassigned
to Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam.
I was involved in special forces training.
I had a parachuting accident,
so they reassigned me back to hospital division.
And that's what brought me to San Antonio.
And I oddly enough, first noticed Anne as I was walking into the building.
I saw this woman pull up in a car.
Blonde hair, lookin' beautiful.
And I just went about my business.
I went in and met with the, uh, senior NCOs.
Had an interview.
They said, "Okay, we're gon' put you
in a microbiology section."
And as they were introducing me to the staff,
I come around the corner
and who's there but the beautiful woman in the car.
She was assigned as my mentor when I started working there.
We just seemed to hit it off and just kind of get along
and I don't think either one of us
was looking for a relationship.
It's somethin' that just gradually happened.
Yes, there was an age difference.
There was (chuckles) 16 years.
But for us, it never was an issue at all.
We had similar interests in music,
a similar interest in movies.
And we both loved the beach, ocean, um.
We just seemed to gel so well together.
Deborah: Jeff Bisch came and got her
and took her on a motorcycle ride.
That's the Roseann I know, the daredevil.
Roseanna was back...
and she was in love.
Jeff: We did keep our affair quiet from the people at work.
And initially, she wanted to keep this from her children
until she felt like now is a good time.
And she asked me to come over to the house and meet the boys.
Todd: The first time Jeff walked in the house,
there was a light in her eyes and we were like,
"It's gonna be okay, isn't it?
Everything's gonna be okay."
(cries) He saved us. He literally saved us.
And I had no clue at the time,
(laughs, sniffles) like, how bad we needed it.
Dustin: My mom had to call Merrill overseas and say,
"Listen, I, I want a divorce."
And I guess he could've made it messy,
but she was well-armed.
I mean, at this point, my mom was becoming
disenchanted with the Mormon church.
We'd stopped going when she met Jeff
'cause now, she met a real man
who, yeah, was macho and tough,
but he was gentle and loving.
Jeff: Soon after she got divorced,
the Army transferred me out to Fort Ord, California.
That was a very hard thing for me to ask.
"Roseanna, are you sure you want to go across the country,
taking the boys out of school, away from their friends?"
And surprisingly enough...
the boys all viewed this as a chance to start over.
Todd: The divorce with Merrill and leaving San Antonio,
it was a clean slate
and we're moving forward
and it was always about moving forward
and looking at the future.
Jeff: We got married in the basement of City Hall
in San Antonio by the justice of the peace.
It was just Roseanna, myself, and her best friend.
I was a little bit afraid for her
because she met this guy that was quite a bit younger
and I was afraid because of the past two relationships.
But she was determined to do this.
Dustin: Jeff packed up and moved
to Salinas, California, before we left
so that he could try and find a place to live and get situated.
So, we were behind him by a week.
And we drove in the Malibu Classic from San Antonio
through New Mexico into Arizona
and in Los Angeles, you gotta kinda take a turn north to get to Salinas
and, and we screwed it up.
We got lost in Los Angeles.
My mom is up front workin' the hand controls
and my big brother, Marcus, has a map spread out
and he's trying to help us find our way out of LA.
I was curious about this place
'cause I knew they made movies here.
But my mom said, "This is the land of sinners."
Though my mom had stopped going to Mormon church when she met Jeff,
she did not ever stop being faithful or conservative.
And so, she couldn't get out of LA fast enough.
And as we're going up out of Southern California,
I just remember thinking, "Oh, boy.
I wanna take one last look."
And I, I just, I felt the call.
(ambient nature sounds)
Jeff: When Roseanna came to work at Fort Ord,
she initially was given the only open slot there was
which was that of a shipping clerk.
So, it was... not the role she wanted.
And then, a position became open
for a medical technologist on the staff
and she took it and ran with it.
She always got through every inspection
with no deficiencies and no findings.
And that made her so proud.
And it drove her
to be the best technologist that she could be.
Todd: Salinas, as a city, wasn't the best place.
Salinas was a big farming community.
Lots of gangs, lots of crime.
But it was a short drive to Monterey and the coast.
It's beautiful.
Jeff and I would take bike rides
out along the beach,
go kayaking in the bay.
And Salinas was just, that's just where we lived.
Dustin: Salinas was just another game of survival for me
for a really long time.
I felt at home, but we were in a slightly more
dangerous school in terms of violence.
There was a teacher shot by a student while I was there.
And it was the first time walking into school one day
I was wearing a black turtleneck and I'd permed my hair
to look more like a New Kid on the Block
and I walked into school thinking,
"Maybe I look good now."
Uh, and instead, a guy said, "Hey, faggot."
And I just kept walking. I didn't turn, nothing.
I just was like, "Oh, my God, he couldn't have been saying that to me, right?"
Thankfully, I found the theater.
Followed my brother into it, really.
Marcus went into theater
and I desperately wanted his approval.
I wanted to impress him. And so, I said,
"Well, I wanna do that, too." Even though I was shy,
I was like, "This will be a great way to confront that."
But my brother would never last in these things.
And he was slipping further and further into drugs
and this very punk rock, heavy metal culture.
Rebecca Clark Mane: I met Marcus in 1989
in the more dangerous parts of Salinas.
And Salinas was by a prison.
So, there's this nice kind of middle-class area
and then I would say 70% of it is hardcore.
And the group of people that Marcus and I hung out with,
I guess you'd call us rockers.
We listened to heavy metal.
We did drugs, drank, all of those things,
We were a bunch of broken kids.
All of us were traumatized in some way.
We didn't know what had happened to Marcus.
He never told any of us.
But we knew he was damaged
'cause he was there night after night with us.
Dustin: Marcus was so tough.
He was an auto mechanic. He was smoking cigarettes.
He was doing all kinds of drugs.
He was just a self-defined redneck.
And I was quiet and shy and sensitive.
And it seemed that we were just growing further and further apart.
But he was my hero, man.
So, I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna do theater."
And I learned that I loved telling stories.
And so, at high school, I was putting on a play
and I needed some hands and help
and I just went into the hallway 'cause I was desperate
and there was this guy with a big mustache,
kind of thinning hair on top, husky,
and his name was Ryan Elizalde.
And he looked at me, up and down, sized me up,
and said, "Spread your legs."
Ryan Elizalde: Back then, I, I liked to play a lot of jokes on people,
so I had this poster in my hand, it was rolled up,
and I took that poster and kinda whacked him between the legs.
He kinda collapsed on the floor and everybody laughed
and I thought that was kinda funny.
I've apologized for that several times. (laughs)
He wanted to put me in my place, show me who was in charge.
And because I didn't just whine and cry and freak out
'cause I'd... bolstered myself,
I got an invitation to go to Denny's.
And in Salinas, California,
to go to Denny's was
an invitation to the cool kid's table.
Ryan: After everyone was done eating, I took a spoon
and passed it to my right and everybody sort of put
a little piece of something on the spoon,
leftover food, sugar, ketchup,
whatever they could find off their plates
and it came all the way back around to Lance
and then Lance puts something on it
and he's-- was handing it back to me and I just went, "No."
I'm like, "If you wanna be here, you have to eat that."
So, I ate that motherfucking spoonful of hell
and it changed the course of our lives.
I wasn't ready to put words
to the connection I knew I had with Ryan,
but my mom could see it and it terrified her
'cause she knew my friendship with Ryan
meant that our relationship would change.
(film projector WHIRRING)
Wanting to be a filmmaker, for me,
goes all the way back to renting a film
when I was a teenager in Texas called
"The 400 Blows,"
Francois Truffaut's French New Wave masterpiece.
And it's about a young boy in a really troubled family
and those were the stories I wanted to tell
that felt more like my life,
that moved people, that changed people.
So, when I graduated from high school,
I just said, "I wanna go somewhere
where I can learn how to make movies."
So I should be where they make movies.
So I convinced Ryan to move with me
and, uh, he had to ponder it for a while.
He had a good job,
all his friends, his family in Salinas.
Ryan: It was shortly after Lance graduated high school
we started having the conversation
about moving to Los Angeles.
What are we gonna do? How are we gonna survive?
It was a scary move. I mean, when you think about what we did.
Dustin: We had no plan, no real place to go.
And my mom was just so heartbroken.
She just said, "My Lancer, you can always come back."
She was terrified.
Ryan: I think I had $400 in my pocket
and I had a car that was 20 years old.
We just showed up in Pasadena. We got a hotel.
And from there we decided, "Okay, I gotta find a job."
We gotta get things goin' because we don't even know where we're gonna live.
And so, we ended up finding an apartment, but it was so tiny.
It must've been 300 square feet.
And I took a job right away. He got a job right away.
So we were able to make that rent and survive.
Dustin: In those first couple of years in the community college
out in Pasadena where we were hearing gunfire at night
because we weren't in the good part of Pasadena.
We were in the rough spot 'cause that's what we could afford.
And then I applied here to UCLA's film school
knowing they only took 15 students a year
from outside the university.
And I remember my mom said, "You gotta have a backup plan."
And in my mom's style, I said,
"No, I don't. I'm gonna get in. I'm gonna be one of 'em."
I mean, this was my dream school.
I had worked years at multiple jobs,
hungry at night, trying to get all A's in community college,
studying film,
then working on that application
and those essays for weeks.
And guess what?
I was one of those 15.
Speaker: Today's ceremony marks the official closure
of Ford Ord as an Army installation
and brings to an end a period of 77 years of cooperation
between the military personnel assigned to Ford Ord
and the people of the Monterey Peninsula.
Jeff: When they started to close down the military bases,
Fort Ord was selected for one of those.
And that forced us to look for a job elsewhere.
We happen to have friends
at Walter Reed in Washington, D.C.
And they said, "Hey, we think we can get you on staff here."
And I said, "Well, we're moving to Virginia.
We're starting over again."
And Roseanna
also applied for a position there and was accepted.
Again, it wasn't in her favorite area of microbiology.
It was in another section called immunology.
In this section,
Roseanna dealt with samples from AIDS patients.
One day while she was working,
she inadvertently stabbed herself with a needle
while extracting some blood from one of the tubes.
And, of course, she was worried,
you know, that, that she might contract the virus,
but she didn't.
We now have, uh, every day,
1,900 people in hospital beds with HIV illness.
Uh, by 1993, we are gonna need
4,000 to 5,000 hospital beds a day.
Dustin: Gay people were fighting for their lives .
I mean, this is in the middle of the AIDS epidemic
and there was no treatment.
This isn't the time where you came out
and it was just a Pride parade and a party.
It was complicated.
Ryan: When we moved to Los Angeles,
I thought that I would have a new opportunity
to rediscover myself.
And I didn't feel comfortable even then.
I didn't have a whole lot of friends.
I didn't really have any friends.
The first two years we were in LA,
all I had was Lance and I didn't really go anywhere.
And I was even more terrified of the possibility of even
telling anyone that I was gay.
And at that point, I think I was heading
for a heart attack, just gaining a lot of weight
and being really, really sad.
Dustin: I had suspected and kind of known Ryan was gay
and I started pushing him to do what I knew I couldn't do,
that I was too afraid to do. It's, like, I wanted to see it.
What does it look like for someone to come out?
And I wanted to hear it.
And I wanted to know if he survived it.
I mean, it's rather cruel.
Ryan: Lance had finished at Pasadena City College.
There was a, a summer break there
where we were gonna be apart from each other for the summer.
And so, we had stayed up all night talking
and Lance just kept hammering me about, you know,
"Why haven't you brought any girls over to the house?"
By the end of the night, I would just, you know-- I'll tell you.
Like, it's, it's what you think it is.
He said it.
Eventually, he came out to me.
And I said, "Well, okay, you know,
I understand. I hear you."
Um, "I don't know if we can still be friends. I don't know."
Ryan: It was scary because he said things such as like,
"I don't know if we can be friends anymore,
if our friendship is gonna be the same because of this."
And so, I thought I lost him.
Dustin: I mean, I was saying all the things I thought
a genuinely straight person
was supposed to say to a person who came out.
I was playing a part. I was playing a role.
And it really hurt him.
I was treating people really poorly.
You wanna know the recipe for treating people like shit?
Hate yourself.
You turn into a monster.
And we didn't talk much that summer.
And that summer, I was in Virginia with my family
and had a girlfriend for the first time.
I mean...
I just didn't want to be gay.
Ryan: There was one phone call that we had
towards the end of the summer where I told him, you know,
"Are we gonna still be roommates?"
Like, "What's gonna happen?"
And then I told him, "You know, I really,
really miss you."
He's like, "Look out the window. Do you see the moon?"
And I'm like, "Yeah, I can see the moon."
He's like, "I'm lookin' at the moon, too."
We're like, "We're lookin' at the same thing right now."
It's like, "We're gonna be friends."
Ryan and I realized just how much we missed each other
and he agreed to two more years
to see me through UCLA.
And so, I flew back to Los Angeles
and I met Ryan here.
But the man who walked into the room
was not the Ryan I had left.
Mustache, gone. Head, shaved.
Body, lean and tan and tattooed.
I had left him in wreckage
and he'd risen like a phoenix.
While I'm here at UCLA, he starts bringing home all of these new friends
from a place called West Hollywood.
And this is a time when young queer kids
were attacked and killed,
even in West Hollywood.
And Ryan was a genuine protector,
which meant my house was filled with the cutest boys
who were out and gay and had gaydar
and I could see them seeing me.
And the clock was ticking.
I mean, it was either...
run away, jump off a bridge , or come out.
And I, over the course of the next few days,
wrote this manifesto.
Ryan: He came to my room and he said,
"What would you think if I told you I was gay?"
And I said, "I would probably hate you."
And the reason I said that is because he put me through so much when I came out.
After that morning when he told me that,
I got up late for work and he had already gone to school.
And on the mirror of our bathroom, he wrote in soap,
"Read this page for page, word for word,
and whatever you decide to do is fine with me."
And on the counter, it was a big arrow pointing down
to this manifesto that he had written.
So, I start reading the first few pages
and I start thinking to myself, "Oh, my God.
Like, what's going on? Is he gonna hurt himself?"
And I, I was panicking looking at this.
And at the very last page,
there was these two dime roles on it
and it just says, "I, Dustin Lance Black,"
and you flip it over, "am gay."
And I was like, "Oh, my God."
And so, I, I immediately ran out of the house
because I didn't know what he was going to do.
And I saw him walking up and he stopped.
The thing that's most memorable from that moment
is he looked at me and said, "Happy birthday."
He said, "Well, this is the first day
of the rest of your life, the first day of the real you."
But I had a lot to lose, including my own family.
And I knew that that day would eventually come.
Where if she found out, I would lose my mom.
We never missed a Christmas.
My mom always wanted to make sure that
every Christmas was better than the last.
But the year I came out in Los Angeles,
I remember saying, "Oh, I can only come home for a couple days."
Thinking that if I was just home for less time,
she wouldn't figure it out.
And so, I always had an excuse for going to my room,
going to bed, being away from everyone,
not sharing stories.
And my mom really felt it.
So, I just remember being in the bedroom
and I hear this sound coming down the hall,
this click clack, click clack, click clack, click clack.
It's the sound I've heard my whole life,
braces and crutches coming down the hall to the room.
And she comes in and she sits down on the bed
and she puts her crutches down beside her
how she always would.
I wasn't gonna talk,
so she starts with the news of the day.
And the news of the day at the time was a thing called
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Which meant that as long as gay people didn't shout out
that they were gay and didn't come out in the military,
they could participate and no one would ask that question.
It is right because it provides greater protection
to those who happen to be homosexual
and want to serve their country honorably in uniform,
obeying all the military's rules
against sexual misconduct.
Dustin: But it was seen as a terrible betrayal by gay people
because it shut the closet door on them.
But to others, like my mom,
it was actually seen as too accommodating.
And so, she just starts going off about how could
Bill Clinton sign this law
that lets these deviants, these perverts, these sinners
into her good military.
And I closed my eyes
and I felt that tear blaze down my cheek.
And she knew.
And it was not good news.
And I just remember her finally speaking...
and she just said, "Why?
Why, why would you choose this?"
But I looked at her legs inside those braces
and I looked at those crutches behind her...
and I said, "Why did you choose those?"
And it was just silent.
The closest person in my life, my hero,
was disappointed in me.
I went back to California
knowing that my mom didn't accept me
and we started to drift apart...
in her America,
the faithful, southern,
red,
and me in California,
blue...
progressive...
and queer.
The next six months or so just raced by.
And now, what's coming is graduation.
And I'm now living with Ryan and one other roommate
and we decide we're gonna throw this party.
And we're in this little apartment
filled with friends, many of whom are LGBTQ,
and I hear that familiar sound again,
click clack, click clack, click clack coming.
I hear the knock on the door and I open it up
and there she was, my little southern mom
in her braces and crutches, had come for my graduation.
And I had not told her
that so many of my friends were queer.
I also hadn't told my friends that my mom hadn't accepted me.
And at this time, there aren't a whole lot of accepting parents.
So, they thought, "Oh, my gosh, she's the mother who loves her queer son."
I mean, this was remarkable to them.
Ryan: I didn't know that it had been taken so negatively.
So I thought we were good, you know, with Anne coming out.
And I thought that this was going to be just a fun event.
She gets to meet some of Lance's friends.
Dustin: And they start sharing their queer stories,
their very personal stories to her
and talking about gay sex and how lesbians do it.
And it just kept getting deeper and deeper and deeper
and I think Ryan thought it was probably hilarious.
I'm absolutely terrified because I didn't expect that.
And so now, I start seeing all of my friends leaving
and my mom just pats the, uh, the, the cushion of the futon.
And, uh, that means, "Come on, it's time. Come sit next to Mom."
Now, one of these friends at the party, Jason--
Ooh, I just was so incredibly in love with Jason.
Jason didn't really give me the time of day.
And my mom lead with that.
She said, "Well, I had a long conversation with him.
"And, you know, I told him that I think he ought
"to start treating my son better.
"And that maybe he, um, ought to take my son out to dinner.
And because he's a bit older, he should pay."
(chuckles, cries)
She just wrapped her arms around me
and held me so incredibly tight.
It was the first time my mom had ever held me
and loved me for me... every bit of me.
Ryan: For Anne to absorb all that in one night,
just having that emotional connection with so many people,
it's, it's mind-blowing to think that, in one night,
like, her opinion was switched.
Dustin: It happened because my mother was courageous enough
to share a space... with my friends and listen.
That's how powerful
story in a shared space is.
You might still disagree, but you start to change.
A bridge is built.
So, after graduation, I waited tables
and I grabbed any and every opportunity I could
to tell gay stories, documentaries, short films,
gay episodes of BBC's "Faking It,"
and then a big break.
Director Paris Barclay read a script of mine
and asked if I would write the screenplay
about the gay HIV activist Pedro Zamora.
Paris Barclay: Well, there's two things I discovered about Lance
when we worked together on "Pedro,"
which is this unique sense of humor
and this ability to structure things in very unusual ways.
And if you're dealing with a real person,
in the case of Pedro Zamora,
he's completely committed to that real person's life
being presented in the most correct way possible.
He really wanted to get at the truth.
And then, Lance writes "Milk,"
which had an urgency about it and a potency,
and that story would help impassion people
and, I thought, find a place to put that passion.
Reporter: As political parades go,
it was a little unusual.
Harvey Milk on his way to City Hall to be sworn in
as a supervisor in San Francisco.
I will fight to represent my constituents.
I will fight to represent the city and county of San Francisco.
I will fight to give those people
who had once walked away, hope,
so that those people will walk back in.
-Thank you very much. -(applause)
Anne Kronenberg: I worked for Harvey Milk when I was a young woman.
And what Harvey Milk tried to do in the 1970s
was to create an environment of equality
regardless of sexual orientation or color of your skin.
Harvey Milk: If I'm fighting for the rights of gay people, and I am,
then I must fight for the rights of all people,
you know, all the minorities, the senior citizens,
the handicapped, the disenfranchised people,
or I'm a hypocrite.
Anne: Harvey was able to pass
a gay rights ordinance in San Francisco,
so that people could not be discriminated against if they were gay.
But on November 27, 1978, Harvey was assassinated.
Dianne Feinstein: Both Mayor Moscone
and supervisor Harvey Milk
have been shot and killed.
-(crowd groans, exclaims) -Person: Jesus Christ!
The suspect is supervisor Dan White.
Dustin: I first heard the story of Harvey Milk
when I was a closeted teenager.
I mean, I learned that there was such a thing as an out gay person.
I didn't know that that existed.
And I heard the story of a man who believed
that minorities and disenfranchised folks,
including gay people and disabled people,
could come together to win more acceptance, to have better lives.
And that message gave me hope.
But that life-saving message, by the 2000s,
was mostly lost to history, forgotten.
Anne: After Harvey Milk's assassination,
there were many attempts at trying to make a movie about his life.
And I spoke to numerous people over the years
and the screenplays or the scripts were horrible.
And so, I had come to believe that
I would never see anything made about Harvey.
And out of the blue one day in 2007,
Lance came to my office and he was so intense
and he was so passionate about the project.
And he let me read the script and I knew from that moment
that everything was gonna work out.
-(crowd cheering) -My name is Harvey Milk
and I'm here to recruit you.
Dustin: Getting "Milk" made
was a huge challenge.
It was a spec script.
It didn't have a studio at first
because I was working on a show called "Big Love" at HBO,
but I wasn't a big-time writer yet.
And so, it was a bit of a coup that
I had gone head-to-head with a competing project at Warner Bros.
and here we were, in San Francisco,
with Gus Van Sant directing, Sean Penn starring,
and we're making this film about my great hero,
a film a lot of people in Hollywood
were probably hoping would fall apart.
And so, I just was dedicated to gettin' it right.
Jeff: When Lance was writing the script,
he would send drafts of the "Milk" script
to her to review and to ask her opinion.
And she thrived on that with him.
We will no longer sit quietly in the closet.
We must fight.
Lance felt that Harvey's story needed to be told
to a wider group of people
because Harvey had given him hope
and I think he wanted to be able to pass that on
to the next generation.
Dustin: I was so focused on "Milk,"
I was ignoring incoming messages and calls.
And the one that I was receiving most frequently
was from Marcus, from my big brother,
'cause he was in Virginia at this point living with my mom.
And it would be a few weeks into the shoot of "Milk"
before I finally picked up the phone on a Sunday
and I said, "Hey, bro. Hey, Marcus, what's up?"
"I really need to talk to you."
You know, and I went, "Oh, God," you know,
"Did you get someone pregnant?"
You know, "Is-- What do you need? Like, what happened?"
And he said, "No, no, no, no. You know Larry?"
I said, "Yeah," you know, "I know your friend Larry."
"Well, um...
Larry broke up with me."
And I just was like, I-- That--
I'm sorry, this does not compute.
And he said, "Larry's afraid if anybody finds out
"what'll happen to us.
And I love him... but he's afraid."
My brother is coming out to me.
I'm shocked.
I'm confused, but I'm gonna get it right.
And I, I said, "Well, you came to the right guy, right?
"I've got every hope speech
"in the world memorized right now.
I can tell you how it's going to get better."
And truly, nothing I said made a difference.
He just was like, "Yeah, okay, all right.
I'll talk to you later, bro."
He hung up, as despondent and broken as when the call began.
And it hit me
that he was coming out in rural Virginia
where there were no protections at the time,
no protections for housing, for employment.
So, Larry and Marcus literally had every reason to be afraid.
And I thought, it was one of those first moments
where I went, "My God, we live in, at least, two Americas."
I mean, how can we live in the same country
and he's afraid for his job, and his home, and his life
and I can be in California
where I can be relatively stable and safe?
And here I am making this civil rights movie
that's supposed to be very hopeful
and I feel like I've somehow left my brother
out of all of that.
The first solution we came up with
was for my brother to move from Virginia to California.
And he moved in with me.
And he tried and really failed with any kind of dating.
I remember coming home one day
and he started to cry and he just said...
"Are, are there any gays like me?"
Rebecca: Marcus was a man's man.
Marcus could talk to other men about cars for hours
and that wasn't a kind of gay you could be back then.
And I think that's one of the things
that probably kept him in the closet for so long
is that there was one way to be gay
and that was the way Lance is gay.
'Cause I was the same way.
When I went to college, I came out as a lesbian.
And I went to Lilith Fair and I was a heavy metal chick.
And I was like, "This music fuckin' sucks," you know?
I was like, maybe I'm not a lesbian
'cause I don't wanna wear Birkenstocks.
I don't wanna go to these stupid folk festivals.
So, maybe, I don't know what I am.
And I feel like that is what happened for Marcus, too.
Dustin: Eventually, he started going online,
trying his best to meet anybody
who he thought he had something in common with.
And one day, he up and moved,
this time, into another corner of America,
a conservative town in Western Michigan
and kind of disappeared into a relationship there.
And I would talk to him intermittently,
uh, but not a whole lot.
And I didn't quite know what was going on with him.
(light music playing)
Jeff: Roseanna had just retired
after 27 years of working for the Department of Defense.
She was given commendations by President and Mrs. Bush
thanking her for her service to her country.
There are letters from the mayor of D.C. at the time.
There are letters from congressmen
and a Virginia state senator
for her outstanding work.
Then, something horrible happened.
Dustin: When we were doing the score for "Milk,"
we were in London and I got a phone call from my mom.
And she said, you know, "Can you come home?"
I'm like, "Well, I'm in the middle of this thing.
Can you please tell me why?" And she finally confessed
that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Deborah: It was devastating to the whole family.
She had been through so much and now to go through this.
But what was Anne if nothing else?
She was a fighter. So, she fought it
just as hard as she could.
Nannette: She had surgery and radiation,
but she was struggling,
not acting like she was struggling,
but she was struggling.
Jeff: A hard part with her
getting into the chemo was she was getting weak.
She had to get used to being in a wheelchair,
which she did not like.
But she just didn't have the physical strength
to continue to walk on crutches.
But when we went to the "Milk" premiere...
she got out of the wheelchair.
She walked down that red carpet and into the movie theater.
Dustin: And then I got nominated for an Academy award.
Almost everyone on the film got nominated.
It was this incredibly exciting day.
And my mom calls me up immediately and goes,
"Oh, my Lancer, I can't believe it!"
I said to her, "Mom, would you come with me?"
And she was like, "Oh, my goodness.
Like, I don't even know if I can."
Like, a little girl from Lake Providence, Louisiana,
is gonna go to the Oscars.
And I said, "Yes, let's do it."
And at this point, she has a wig on,
uh, because she's been going through chemotherapy.
And I'll never forget my mom in her black dress
just starts pinning something to her dress.
And when it's all straightened up,
it's a little white ribbon with a knot in the middle,
which at the time, had become the symbol
of support for marriage equality.
And I thought, "Oh, I never thought I would see that day
when I came out to her."
-(audience applauding) -Steve Martin: And the Oscar goes to
Dustin Lance Black for "Milk."
To all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight
who have been told that they are less than by their churches,
or by the government, or by their families,
that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value.
And that, no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you
and that very soon, I promise you,
you will have equal rights, federally,
across this great nation of ours.
(applause, cheering)
Thank you. Thank you.
And thank you, God, for giving us Harvey Milk.
Lance took that spotlight and he just targeted
what he wanted to say to young gays and lesbians
and it will never be forgotten.
Millions and millions of gay kids who were like Lance,
just a few years out of elementary school,
who saw that and felt seen,
and felt heard, and felt comforted.
Chad Griffin: The timing of Lance's Academy speech
was critically important 'cause it came only months
after Proposition 8, uh, had passed in California.
A ballot measure took away the fundamental right
for LGBTQ people to marry.
And sent a terrible and dangerous message
to young people all around, not just the state of California,
but all around the country and the globe.
The battle tonight has been won.
(crowd cheering)
Reporter: Supporters of Proposition 8,
which bans same-sex marriage, claim victory.
It'd already been a bruising campaign.
Together, both sides raised more than $70 million
making Prop 8 more expensive than any contest
other than the presidential race.
Dustin: And shortly after Prop 8 was passed ,
I'd gotten up and made a promise.
And my mother had reminded me,
in her conservative Christian way,
that a promise is a sacred thing
and I had a responsibility to fulfill it.
And for the next five, six years,
I stopped focusing on making movies.
All of my attention went into
how do we reverse Proposition 8 in California
and to do it in a way where there's hope
that that decision might apply to all 50 states.
'Cause if we won at the federal level,
I get to celebrate and so does my brother.
Chad: Lance and I began plotting the path.
How do we deliver on that promise
that Lance made on the global stage?
We ultimately decided that a legal case
suing the state of California,
putting together two of the best attorneys in the country,
a conservative Republican and a progressive Democrat.
And throughout that time,
while the lawyers were working in the courtroom,
Lance was working day in and day out
in the public square to change hearts and minds
as that case rose all the way
to the United States Supreme Court.
We pledge our allegiance to one America,
not a red America or a blue America,
a northern America or a southern America.
We pledge our allegiance to one America under God
indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
'Cause we, as a people...
we do not leave a single one of our brothers or our sisters behind,
no matter who they love or where they live.
Troy Williams: We thought, if California,
the most progressive state in the country
bans gay marriage,
there's no hope for the rest of us.
And we discovered that so much of the money
and the organizing to pass Proposition 8
came from Utah directed by
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
And this culture war was ripping families apart.
Protestors: (chanting) Equal rights!
Reporter: From a PR perspective,
it's been a tough couple of years
for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Recently, there have been angry protests outside Mormon temples
over the church's support of Proposition 8.
Dustin: Proposition 8 had passed because of Mormon money.
And I was now engaged in a fight to overturn that.
What we have to do, what we must do,
is hold the leaders of these religions responsible
for the lies, and the myths, and the distortions
they've been telling for generations now
that have plagued our people, and made us feel second-class,
and had robbed us of our rights in this state.
And around this time,
I started to think perhaps the way to crack things open
is to follow my mom's example.
My mom showed the courage and the curiosity to meet
with my friends in California,
people who she thought and had been taught
were just too different than her.
Now, wasn't it my obligation to follow her example
and to travel back to my roots to red America
and to sit down with the people who I once called home?
And I got on a plane and flew here to Salt Lake City
to meet with some leaders from the Mormon church,
even when my queer activist friends
began calling me foolish for doing so.
And I went into the Joseph Smith Memorial Building
and, and sat around a table with a lot of white-haired men
in a very pastel room and we shared stories.
I followed my mother's example
and I asked 'em about themselves.
I asked about their families.
I asked about their kids and their grandkids.
And they were really happy to share all that.
And because of that, they asked about me.
And they even invited me to the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Spectacular,
which is a hard ticket to get.
And I went with Troy and some other queer people
right here in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Reporter: Black told ABC4 that it was an honor
to see the concert and an extraordinary act of goodwill.
He also told us a conversation has been started
between the gay community and the church
and that, quote,
"Both sides are trying to find common ground."
This is the power my mom taught me.
Share space.
It does take courage.
And it can create change.
Troy: It's really hard to do this work.
It's not for everyone.
And when you make the choice
that you're gonna be a bridge builder
from one tribe to another,
it's not without consequences.
It takes tremendous courage
to step out and reach out to the other.
Dustin: Within a year or two after that first
breaking of the ice with the Mormon church,
to start that conversation,
Troy Williams called me up and said, "Would you come
and be the Grand Marshal of Salt Lake City Pride?"
First of all, I couldn't believe there was such a thing
as Salt Lake City Pride. That blew my mind.
And so, I agreed to be the Grand Marshal at the parade
as long as it was a bridge-building opportunity.
Troy: In 2012, something significant happened.
A group of Latter-day Saints
callin' themselves Mormons Building Bridges, they called me up.
They said, "We're gonna come march in the Pride parade
"and we're gonna wear our Sunday clothes
"and were gonna sing hymns
all the way down the parade route."
And I was like, "Have any of you ever been to a Gay Pride parade before?"
Dustin: And then it's, like, hard to beli--
If there weren't pictures of it, I couldn't believe it.
Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of active LDS folks
started to show up
enjoying the parade,
marching in solidarity with queer people here in Utah.
And when they brought their banner out
and it said, "Mormons Building Bridges,"
I felt my mother's spirit.
Troy: Three hundred active members
of the church showed up with their signs.
"LDS hearts LGBT."
One sign said, "Sorry, I'm late."
And that moment changed everything for me
because I realized the way forward,
the way we create change,
is through love.
Dustin: That image ended up on newspapers around the world.
It shattered something. It shattered an idea
that we could not come together.
You know, and of course, this wasn't Mormon leadership yet.
These are rank-and-file Mormons and, honestly, they have power.
And a lot of these Mormon mothers
started sharing their own stories.
And because they could now communicate with one another,
they saw they weren't alone.
They were able to start to organize.
And they called themselves the "Mama Dragons."
Active LDS mothers who will protect their queer children
with the fierceness of a dragon.
I feel certain that we can win our full equality in Utah.
And I know that if we redouble our efforts here
and we give 110%,
I know in my heart,
in our lifetime, we will win full equality
in all matters governed by civil law
in all 50 states of this great nation.
And we will be free.
Troy: Lance was one of the major forces
that helped overturn Proposition 8 in California.
And his style of bridge-building activism
energized us in the final years
leading up to marriage equality becoming the law of the land.
The Supreme Court of the United States
found gay and lesbian Americans
have a constitutional right to marry.
Cheers shook the courthouse steps.
Licenses were issued and weddings performed
in states where such marriages were outlawed.
Dustin: I'll never forget sitting in the United States Supreme Court
and it wasn't the decision that would come months later
that told me we'd won. It was a question.
The swing vote on the Supreme Court was Justice Kennedy.
And Justice Kennedy, at one point, leaned in
and said, "The opposition to LGBT equality
"likes to talk a lot about how this hurts children,
"but there are thousands of children
"of gay and lesbian parents out there
"who would like to know that their parents' relationships
"are equally honored and protected.
"Why would we not protect those children
by granting them what we grant heterosexuals?"
He understood that by discriminating against queer people,
that's what actually hurts children.
And all I wanted was to reach into my pocket
and pull out my cell phone and to call my big brother,
to call Marcus and say, "Listen, bro, we did it.
It took all of these years, but we made it there."
I know there's a lot of other issues for LGBTQ folks,
but for the first time, we are going to have a decision
that applies, not only to California,
but to Virginia and Texas and Michigan and the states
that he loved and wanted to call home.
But I couldn't make that call
'cause my brother was gone.
-Dustin: Hi, Mother. -Uh, oh no. No. I'm a wreck.
Dustin: Too late, it's video.
And, Jeff, what is your job?
-Bumble. -Dustin: Yeah.
Grinch, whatever.
I don't have a job. I'm unemployed.
-Dustin: What are the rules? -No rules.
Dustin: No! Only when the camera's on.
We don't, we don't, we don't believe that for a moment.
Dustin: Hi! This morning, look how pretty Allie's hair is.
She looks perfect, doesn't she?
Allison Black: The first Christmas that I spent with them
was so special.
And I got to see
their traditions at its most finest.
That family was always thriving to have the best Christmas ever.
Lance was the older brother for me that makes fun of me
and that knows how to push my buttons.
And Marcus was always the one that had my back.
He was that protective older brother.
And I got very close to Anne very quickly.
She was always so accepting and loving
and I wish I knew then that that was gonna be
the last Christmas that was normal
because exactly a year later
was when Marcus was really sick.
-Fuck 2011. -(Allison laughs)
Allison: Say your lovely name for me.
(Allison laughing)
-Mr. Marcus Black says, "Fuck 2011." -Allison: Woo.
Dustin: He started to have a burning sensation when he urinated
and then instead of just going to the doctor and dealing with it,
you know, out of shame
and the fact that he was broke,
he just kept putting it off.
And so, when the doctors finally saw him,
when he finally got up the courage to go in, they did a scan
and saw that there was a growth in his bladder.
They did a proper analysis
and said, "Yeah, you have cancer.
And it's bad and it's aggressive."
And then he said, "Oh, my back is really hurting."
And, um... within days,
he found out that it had spread to his bone.
And I got to Michigan to find my brother
in an incredibly desperate state.
His partner, at the time, was not taking care of him.
The house was a disastrous mess
and he had degraded so much in those weeks,
he was almost unrecognizable.
My brother is a hippie right now.
And I'm gonna use kitchen shears to cut the hippie's hair.
In fact, I'd cut his hair.
I'd never really cut anyone's hair
but I did my very best to get him looking good.
Christmas was right around the corner
and I thought, we gotta get him home to Virginia in the dead of winter.
And I get ahold of Steve,
one of my big brother's friends,
and I start packing stuff up into my brother's truck.
What's that truck behind you?
-It's my moving truck. -Dustin: Yeah.
-Where you goin'? -To Virginia.
Dustin: We did that drive over the course of a night,
a very, very long night.
Ah!
Dustin: And we arrived in Virginia
at my mom's house in the morning.
(indistinct chatter)
And that Christmas, we all got together around the tree
and we opened presents.
Todd: That's to barbecue in, right?
Dustin: And my mom that year had a fully restored 1967 Camaro
sitting in the garage collecting dust
and she put the keys in a box
and she gave that
Camaro to my brother as a Christmas present.
Let's see, Marcus. Hold it up.
The car he always dreamed of was now his.
That's pretty cool, huh?
Jeff: For that one day, having our family together,
it was like nobody was sick.
Everybody was fine.
And then, soon after that,
Marcus took a turn for the worse
and it was pretty clear it wasn't gonna get any better.
Dustin: To see him in that condition in our home was really tough.
Before we knew it, we're feeding him water
on, like, a little lollipop with a sponge at the top
that you would dip in water
into his mouth and he would suck the water
and that's really all he could do,
and he couldn't talk much anymore.
And Todd and I were sitting there with him,
my mom and Jeff had gone to bed,
and we just were like, "This isn't right. This isn't Marcus."
And we had a tiny bottle of Crown Royal... (sniffles)
and I was like, "Hey, Marcus, you want some Crown?"
And he was like...
That's about all he could do.
So, we dipped that thing in there.
I'm like, "Here. Giving you Crown."
And he's just like, "Yeah."
And I was like, I know what he wants to listen to.
So I put on "Bitchin' Camaro" from The Dead Milkmen.
And he started jamming out.
And I just grabbed his hand. (sniffles)
(crying)
And just watched him go.
Dustin: This kid had been beaten to shit and back,
emotionally and physically.
And he had just figured it out.
He had just come out.
And by coming out, he dropped the drugs,
he had gotten into school, he was just living his life.
And he had said to me, "I'm just gettin' started, bro."
Nannette: Losing Marcus, I think,
was just so painful for Anne.
You don't ever expect to lose...
a child first.
You don't expect that to happen.
Jeff: For a mother to lose her son,
a son that she fought so hard to bring into the world.
She's like, "Bring him back. Bring him back."
It's like, "Well, we can't." She was devastated.
(mournful music playing)
Dustin: In the midst of all of this grief,
I met this miraculous, sparkling warrior of a man
and he was an Olympian.
He was a diver.
He just won his first Olympic medal.
I had won an Oscar.
He had just lost his father and I had lost my brother.
Lance and I connected on a much deeper level
than I ever have with anyone in my life before.
There's not many people my age that have experienced success
and then the crushing low that comes with it afterwards.
People that have experienced loss
in the way that myself and Lance had.
I had lost my dad two years prior to meeting Lance.
Lance had lost his brother to cancer.
So, we were able to connect on such a deeper level
and be able to understand each other way more than,
I think, we've been able to understand anyone.
I'll forever be thankful
that he wanted to come meet my family
and he came to Christmas.
Tom Daley: I first met Lance's mum in person
with Todd and Allie and Jeff
and we all had this really beautiful time together.
And I can really see how Lance became the way he is today.
Being able to spend that time with her really gave me that,
wow, like, I understand Lance in a whole different light now.
Dustin: At the time, I didn't know what was to come.
But certainly, that Christmas,
knowing that my mom met
the man who would become my husband
and the father of my children.
It's gotta rank as one of the best Christmases ever.
(light music playing)
Looking at this picture, this must be almost exactly
40 years ago.
My big brother and my aunt Josie are gone.
But Todd and I are still here.
When I came out, there would be a really long time
that I thought I wouldn't be accepted here
by the family in Texarkana,
in a corner of Texas that's quite conservative.
Was it true that people in different corners of America
are just too different from one another?
And so, I did what people do these days.
I just cut it off.
I'm gonna stick with my people in California.
I don't have to deal with the possibility
of rejection by Josie and this family who I loved.
I don't want them to reject me,
so it's better just to stay quiet, stay away. And I did.
It would take that phone call from my mom saying,
"Honey, your aunt Josie passed away last night."
And, at this point, my mom is so sick,
she can't get out of bed.
And Josie was like my mom's second mom.
She said, "You gotta go there, Lancer.
You gotta be there for me."
And I was terrified to come back here.
Perhaps the family member I was most worried
about meeting was my cousin Lynn.
Partly 'cause I had admired him so much as a little kid.
But he was Baptist and he was conservative.
He's from the South.
We were just so incredibly different
and I didn't want him to reject me.
And I called my little brother Todd up
and I said, "Would you come with me?"
Thank God he said yes.
And I'll never forget walking back in through that door
30-plus years later.
It was like I'd never left.
-Lynn: Oh, look who showed up. -Deborah: Oh. Hi! Finally!
Hey, hey! (laughing)
I haven't seen you in a while.
Lynn: Yeah, I had not seen Lance since he was a little kid,
but we knew he was,
you know, a famous screenwriter.
We knew he had won a Oscar.
We knew he was a gay rights activist.
And he came in for my mom's funeral.
And him and Todd showed up out of respect for my mom.
But, yeah, I was surprised to see him.
Dustin: It's hard to think of now
'cause now we talk on Facebook and whatever,
-make jokes, but, like, at the time... -Oh, yeah, yeah.
...I was terrified of you. I was here for your mom
and I was terrified of everything else.
And in the end,
I loved to be here for your mom,
really for my mom who wanted me here.
But I just thought that this part of my history was history, right?
I just thought-- 'Cause, you know, you--
I, I, I had to go somewhere where I didn't feel like
I was gonna get killed or have to kill myself.
Lynn: Yeah, I think my opinions and my views had changed dramatically
-from what you knew of me. -Yeah.
'Cause before, you know,
when I was a kid, I had different attitude.
-Right. -And...
maybe then I wouldn't have accepted you.
But I'd already accepted you before you got here.
-You just didn't know. -Right.
Well, one day, I might accept you, too. One day. (laughs)
Lynn: Growin' up, I had a different attitude
about gay people. I really did.
I mean, when I was younger, I was just a wild redneck.
If you was gay I, I didn't want nothin' to do with you.
But Lance helped me with that a lot, him being gay.
Then I met other people that were gay, and, you know,
they were good friends, they were normal people.
It wasn't like
what I had in my brain or as I was raised.
Like I said, I was raised Southern Baptist,
but now I'm more spiritual and I believe
it's, it's all between you and God.
Dustin: You know, that was the thing my mom was getting
really worried about years ago,
was it's getting harder and harder
to get in the same room with people you once loved
but now disagree with. And people just are like,
"You know what, I just don't want-- I won't even go in the room."
Like, "I'll just avoid the room 'cause it's uncomfortable."
I didn't care who you voted for.
I just knew, you know, I had a really hot cousin.
(laughing)
Yeah, we live in different places
and we believe in different things
and we vote in different ways.
But blood's thicker.
I was family.
Politics is important.
It builds the systems we live within.
But how can politics ever be good
and serve our families if we don't put family first?
Donna: I had a phone call with Anne,
as I look back on it,
and I remember sensing that she was saying goodbye.
We didn't say officially goodbye,
but it was as if I was saying a blessing over her life
and she was expressing love to me.
Dustin: My mom had beaten cancer,
but she was having every other reaction there is.
And so, I said, "Well, I'm gonna celebrate
turning 40 with my mom in gratitude."
Really flew in, taking a stop--
I'm n-- I was supposed to be going to London,
but I was like, "No, no, no, wait.
I'm stopping in to see my mom first."
And so, I went to the house in Virginia
and we exchanged gifts and we have cake
and my mom just wasn't feeling well.
I said, "Mom, you gotta go, just go to the doctor.
Just go get checked up."
And she said, "All right, Lancer," um...
"help me get dressed."
And I remember as I was...
putting one of the, the socks onto her feet
and she looked me right in the eye
and she said, "Fight for my life."
And I tried to laugh. Like, "Okay."
And she said, "No, I need you to fight for my life.
Promise me."
And so, I said, "I promise you, Mom.
"I, I promise I'll fight for your life, of course.
"If you need me to turn around on the way, just call me.
I'll come right back. It's fine."
I remember it so clearly
because Lance and I hadn't seen each other
for about three or four weeks.
And it was a day that he was coming back to see me in London.
We wish Lance farewell and he takes off in the taxi.
Uh, carrying Anne downstairs and get her into the car
and her last words were to me, "Please hurry."
So, I turn around... to go back to the house to close the door
and when I turn around, she was slumped over in the car.
I got her out of the car. She's not breathing.
There's no heartbeat. I called 911.
I was doing CPR.
After the paramedics got there, I called Lance and I said,
"I need you to come back. Something horrible's happened."
When he was on the way to the airport,
he texts me sayin', "I have to go back. My mom's collapsed."
I looked up into the rearview mirror
and I just told that cab driver he had to turn the car around.
And we got to the hospital and I rush into the room.
And there she is and she's conscious
and her eyes are wide open staring at me.
And I'm thinking in my head what she's tasked me with,
to fight for her life.
Todd: (crying) You see a woman that's
you've known nothing but can fight...
fight, fight her whole life.
And to see her energy getting sucked out...
She fought harder than anything to deserve this.
(sniffles)
It was the hardest thing.
My brother was holding her hand and Jeff was touching her hair.
And I leaned into her ear.
I said to her...
"We're gonna be okay. I'm gonna be okay.
"Fly. You can fly now... You can walk.
"You've built us strong.
We'll survive and we'll be okay."
She flew away.
The person with the strongest heart I'd ever known
had asked me to fight for her life.
And I had failed her.
♪ ♪
Ryan: At this point, I was already living in Seattle
and, uh... I got a call from a friend of mine
and he's like, you know, "Lance is not doing well."
And so, I called him and Lance didn't respond,
so I immediately got on a plane
and, yeah, he was in a really dark place
after she'd passed away.
And to the point where
he didn't know what made sense to him,
why it happened.
You know, he felt very lost.
(ambient nature sounds)
(birds chirping)
Dustin: In all of my guilt and shame, I just got busy.
She wanted to be buried,
so I needed to get her next to her eldest son.
We buried Marcus in California 'cause that was the plan.
We were all moving back to California to be close to each other one day.
But there was one other thing
that was incredibly complicated for me,
which is my mom was not
a member of any faith anymore,
but she was still incredibly faithful.
So, who do you have run that ceremony?
And I call up Bishop Gene Robinson
who had been integral in our fight against Proposition 8
and he was the first openly gay bishop
ordained in the Episcopal Church.
And that night-- And he could clearly tell that there was something
really weighing on me that went beyond
just the loss of my mother.
And it was the first time I admitted that
my mother had made me promise to fight for her life
and I'd failed.
He said, "Tell me what your mother's life was."
And I said, "Well, you know, my mom was
"this incredibly strong kid
"who... when she was told what was impossible
she just didn't accept it." She just decided,
"Well, this is what I want, so I wanna have a family,
and I wanna have kids, and a good job,"
and all the things that she'd been told she couldn't have.
And she showed the curiosity to listen more than she spoke.
My mom believed it was incredibly important
to keep relationships together,
to keep friendships together,
communities and country together.
Courage... curiosity... bridge-building,
that was my mom.
He said, "Your mom knew what was happening to her.
"But she gave you a mission and you promised to keep it
"and it was to fight for her life.
"And you just said her life
"is about having the courage
"to not accept no, to fight for the yeses,
"to fight for the possibility to fall in love,
"and to have a family, if that's what you want.
"And to not accept the lie that our corners of the country
"are just too different from one another,
"to show the courage to show up
"and meet people who are different,
"to have the curiosity to listen more than you speak,
"even when it's difficult.
"To do the hard work to build bridges
"that keep family and community and country together.
"Your mom gave you a mission to fight for her life.
"And if you say a promise is a sacred thing in your family,
"I have to believe that.
So, what are you gonna do?"
I'm gonna fight for her life.
And I hope... I hope I'm not alone.
♪ ♪