Dustin Lance Black wants everyone to find their people

0:00From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment. Maybe I'm amazed at the way you love me all the time. Maybe I'm afraid of the way I love you. Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. In the 30 years I've been doing this show, there is no one I'm ever happier to see than my guest, Academy Award-winning screenwriter, But also tell our stories about people looking for a place to belong, looking for a tribe. Let's run through everything he's done. My guest, of course, is Dustin Linz. It's always a pleasure to sit down across from you. And your newest project is a four-part docuseries called Rock On.

0:43Rock Out, forgive me. Yeah, first of all, it's so good to be here and to see you in person. My treat. It's all my treat. Rock Out is about LGBTQ people, queer people in the hardest hitting music there is. So it spans history from the beginnings of rock and roll in the 50s all the way to heavy metal and punk in the late 70s, early 80s. And really just an examination of were we ever there? If we were, what role did we have? and is there any place for us in those black painted worlds? I mean, if you look back at all the Rolling Stone covers, basically Jan Winter had been coming out since Rolling Stone started.

1:27Oh, yeah. Every cover was a young guy with his shirt off. That's right, and he knew it. He knew full well what he was doing. You know, that was one of the interviews we were glad to land, and he doesn't always talk candidly about this, and boy, once he got going, I mean, talking about Little Richard coming on to the Beatles, And, you know, there wasn't resistance there. There was joy in that and fun in that and how Paul McCartney nicked all of Little Richard's high notes. You can't hear the live version of Maybe I'm Amazed and not hear him doing Little Richard. That's right. Right down to screaming in the way he plays piano.

1:58He's doing it even 20 years after the Beatles are over and done with. Still doing it today. What I think was fascinating about this film is that it's a story that's been dying to be told. And as soon as I saw the first few minutes, I thought, this should have been done years ago. you the perfect person to do it, but also because you make it about family. That's right. And everything you've done has been about family, either actual family or people looking to build a family. And it's the story of your brother and his attachment to what was called hardcore, hardcore punk, although hardcore could have meant something else.

2:34And I think he was into both, frankly. And that was a big discovery for me. My brother was an auto mechanic. He was into NASCAR. He was into heavy metal and punk and some rock and roll, leather jacket with, you know, all the pins and buttons on it. And none of us ever saw his coming out coming. It was actually when I was making the film Milk, he called me up and came out to me. And, you know, no matter what I said, and I knew all the hope speeches. I knew the right things to say of all people. And it gave him no hope. It would be years later. He'd move in with me. We were trying to find his people, people he connected with.

3:15And I walked to the back patio of my little house where we were staying, and he had lined up a few cartons of Marlboro Reds and beers and just burned through them all. And just tears in his eyes, he said, are there any gay people like me? And I knew there were gay people who liked leather, but it was a totally different genre of leather. But actually not just coded in a different way, really. You think about it. Very much so. I didn't have an answer for him. I said, I don't know. And you can almost trace that answer or lack thereof to his passing away a few years later, turning to the drugs and alcohol that a lot of people, not just gay people who can't find their tribe, turn to to survive.

4:04And that's what he did. And so when I had this opportunity, thanks to Bill Gerber, producer, and Live Nation to fund it, to seek those answers to find out what I should have said, I took that opportunity. That's something that runs through your work, too, the thing that somebody wishes they had said. And it's interesting that it ends up being a part of a story about your life as much as the lives. And you've written about other people's lives before. Or you found a way to take these real-life figures who are desperately so anxiously looking for something to connect to. Think about that sort of schism between Dan and Harvey in Milk.

4:45Right. I mean, that's almost that same kind of story that we're talking about, isn't it? Is that what made you think your brother connect to you in that way and confess? I grew up as such an outsider, and so did he. We just found out about him later. You know, military, Mormon, Texas, and we're both two gay boys. You know, that outsider experience can be very, very difficult. But I always think back to Audre Lorde, who says, it's the gift. It's the present. It's the thing that gives you perspective. You get to look at it all from the outside a bit. And so it was painful and challenging, but I treasure being an outsider.

5:28And of course, if there's anything I'd love to do for others who are still in pain or feeling hopeless because of their outside status, I hope films like these give them some hope and say, hey, there's value. There's value in being an outsider. And frankly, I also like to put up the signposts that say, hey, your tribe is this way. Come here. Join in the party. It's the treatment. Our old friend Dustin Lance Black is back. His new project is the four-part documentary Rock Out. I always thought the thing that really scared people about rock and roll was that it was such, so dichotomous because it wasn't about the Protestant ethic of repression, but about sort of the Black Baptist ethos of exuberance and shouting your message to the rafters.

6:18And it gets so sexually explicit so early on, not just the Little Richard lyrics, but let's be honest about Elvis swinging his hips. That was not the model of heterosexuality at the time. You know, I mean, these were men who, for the first time, were starting to find power in being looked at, being seen as sexual objects. That's a pretty new idea that comes with rock and roll. And you start to dig and you go, well, why is that? How did they find that? And it really doesn't take much digging before you find out that all of the early great producers and managers were gay. Some of them deeply closeted, some of them in what Dolly Parton in the film calls the Velvet Mafia.

7:11And so if we go through just the great bands of early rock and roll, the Beatles, the Who, the Bee Gees, their managers, their shapers were all gay men. And they understood what it was both young women and young men would like to look at in men. And they tailored their acts for that. I mean, those haircuts on the Beatles at that time were gay. That's not how you dressed if you were a butch rock and roller. And you can see their transformation from playing in Germany to when he takes them to the United States in those beautiful suits and those, at the time, rather feminine haircuts, and it worked.

7:53What I find fascinating by this, this is one thing that occurred to me in watching Bowie and Freddie Mercury, is that they were basically sort of doing melodramas as songs. I mean, they were basically sort of staging these gay melodramas. as narratives inside these songs. And so they were, to your point, it was easy to do this and do it in plain sight if you also make it part of the storytelling. And I think that's the thing that rock and roll did is it offered a narrative that didn't exist before, but these things that people, especially people at Tribe who need to express themselves, oh, so if I tell a story about myself, then at least people can understand me.

8:34what's interesting about the two people you just chose freddy and and bowie is that for freddy i i believe it was who he was and he was able to express that on stage and be as theatrical as he truly was without being thrown in jail because performance bowie it's very interesting because he would come out as gay one of the first to ever do so but it's highly questionable whether he was or not. And he even admits later on that Ziggy Stardust was a character he put on because he kind of wasn't that interesting to begin with. And he wanted to transform, and he met all the fabulous queer characters from the factory, and he started to model himself after them.

9:26In fact, you know, they participated in this. They went to his house. They helped him shave off his eyebrows. He got into makeup and all of the sudden he was reborn as Ziggy Stardust. And so unlike Freddy, he's performing a character. It's not naturally who he was, but he was able to perform it. And it was really embraced by all of these kids of that generation who were looking for someone who was, appeared as different as they felt. And they found acceptance in him and they found him so beautiful. And so he became very, very famous. And of course, he would transition out of that again. He would shapeshift again and he would then say, oh no, I'm not actually gay.

10:06We have to take a break. There's too much to talk about with our old friend Dustin last night. His newest project is the four-part docuseries Rock Up. It's the treatment this morning. Come stay with us.

10:24I haven't seen my son since 2012. This is Deborah Tice. The disappearance of her son, Austin, is one of the biggest missing person cases in the world. What do you want from me? I should solve the mystery. I know that my son is somewhere alive. Listen to Where Is Austin Tice from NPR's Embedded and BBC Radio 4 on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the treatment. I'm so excited to have Dustin Lance Black sitting across from me that I can barely keep my hands on the table. We're talking about his newest project, Storyteller, the four-part docuseries Rock Out. So much of this falls into who you are and that sort of schism between anxiety and comfort and people looking for somebody who knows what they are.

11:12Because it's still about our discomfort with something that's that different. but these people become aspirational because Harvey Milk was, especially the way you treat him, he's kind of like a star by natural right. Yes. He knew how to communicate. He knew how to listen. He knew, as he's written, when to say somebody's name in a sentence so they felt like they could, oh, this guy's listening to me. Clearly Brian Epstein and Kit Lambert and all these guys are people who knew the exact same thing, who were stars who weren't in front of the camera what stars anyway. And part of this series to me falls into your affinity for people who are by charisma and sort of natural ability to read a room are stars by, in nature's terms.

12:01Oh, sure. You know, what you just said that I really relate to is this existing between anxiety and comfort. I get most anxious when things start feeling comfortable. I don't feel at home in that space. I wasn't raised in a comfortable space. And certainly when things start feeling very, very comfortable, I think I'm off my path. And I'm drawn to people who are like that. And certainly Brian Epstein, who came from an affluent family, could have just stayed in the family business of selling furniture in Liverpool and led an incredibly comfortable life. But he kept putting himself into rooms that were uncomfortable.

12:48I mean, this was not a guy who had a whole lot of easy friendships. And he would go down into the cavern in Liverpool, which was just filled with hip kids, and he wasn't that hip. And he would sit there and he would say, gosh, I feel so uncomfortable in these spaces usually, but there's something about that music that these kids up there are playing who would become the Beatles that I feel at home and I can be with them and I can take my discomfort and feel not comforted, but not alone in it. I'm with my people, the outsiders, the rebels, the rule breakers. And, you know, he found himself drawn to discomfort.

13:34That includes turning the Beatles into a huge act, perhaps the biggest the world has ever known. That was also a very uncomfortable position for him because he became a star. People knew who Brian Epstein was at the time. And the higher he raised his profile as he makes these boys into superstars, the more dangerous the world became for him because he could be discovered. And he also was attracted to people who weren't safe. He could have fallen into a relationship with someone who was willing to be closeted and safe, but that's not who he was drawn to. He was drawn to boys off the street, rough trade, as you would call it, and really drawn to one person in particular who he loved deeply named John Lennon.

14:26And that relationship went beyond friendship. And I think one of the most fascinating interviews I was able to secure was with Peter Brown, who managed the Beatles with Brian Epstein, was teenage friends with Brian Epstein, and doesn't talk often, not candidly. And he, in this documentary, puts words to what many assumed, which is there was, for at least a time, a romantic relationship between Brian Epstein and John Lennon. You got a number of people to talk on camera who don't normally talk, didn't you? Yeah. I mean, I think, and it was difficult, by the way. A lot of the people who are in the film are in their 70s or 80s now.

15:13And some of them still on camera won't go much further than these are still sort of fresh experiences for them that they don't want to reveal in front of the camera. They're still frightened in a way. Or at least they still feel the rules from when they were young and it was more dangerous. And so they're hesitant to share these things, hesitant to share them for their own safety, but also because in their time these would have been derogatory things to say about their good friends. They're not so much now. And it's actually how I started to end up a little bit in the documentary is that I felt it was important to hear that I was asking questions and they were refusing answers sometimes.

15:59In their refusal to answer is so much information. It tells you so much about where they came from. And a few times I get them there. But also, you know, I think Danny Fields is another great example. Who never talks. I mean, that you got him to sit down. That's a story in and of itself. It was a journey. And actually, this is where I have to be a bit grateful for what COVID did to our film. So we start shooting, and two weeks later, the world shuts down. I'm in communication with Danny, who's saying, never, we'll never do an interview. I don't want to talk about this stuff. And so then over the course of years, before we can pick up a camera again, I become friends with him.

16:46He's coming to London. I'm living in London. And Danny managed the Ramones. He built the Ramones. Let's not just say you managed the Ramones. He created the Ramones. Well, he's a legend as a producer, as a manager of so many incredible acts. And so he pulls out his phone and he says, watch this. And he shows it to my three-year-old son and he starts playing the Ramones. And I just watch my son's face light up. He loves it. I mean, I had listened to the Ramones with my big brother and just loved how hard it was and how fun it was. Kids love punk. They love the vibe. It's all energy. It's all energy.

17:27And he was so joyful. And at that, in those moments, I feel like I became good friends, if not family, with Danny. And so then it just became that. I forgot that we were supposed to be doing a documentary together. their years are going by before we can safely interview, particularly people in their 70s and 80s. And then we're rolling again. I say, Danny, hey, I have some questions. Would you be willing to go on camera? And at this point, he just said, yeah, of course. I still love him dearly. He's getting on in his years. And if you're in New York City, you've got to find him because he is a jewel.

18:01Well, before you do that, you've got to find the documentary series by our old friend Dustin Lance Black. It is Rock Out. So much of this, this series, is about the joy of finding community, of hearing this literally siren song that said to you, you're not alone. Again, so many of these songs, even some of the Ramones songs, are the stories. And that's the thing that sort of was the thing that I think brought so many people in. And sort of creating like a concept album with an extended story. Hearing Elton John do his take-off from Tommy on Pinball Wizard. That's a story. That's a song cycle. And creating these sort of stories that are basically these journeys, these lands that people can go to, the listeners can follow.

18:51That's as much a part of this as anything else. sort of creating these landscapes of sort of clarity and hope that listeners from punk to rock and roll were able to fall into. I love that you said joy. I mean, you listen to this music, and it's rock and roll. It's heavy metal. I mean, to the people who like heavy metal, that's joy of a certain kind. Certainly punk. I mean, listen, Didi Ramon writing the lyrics to 53rd and 3rd. Well, that's not where he picked up his, you know, cheeseburgers at night. That's where he sold some other meat. They knew what it was. And there is joy in the music and certainly in the height of rock and roll.

19:26I mean, you're talking about the Stones and the Beatles. And that's why it's important to let queer folks know you're not excluded from this. In fact, you not only were in these arenas, you helped build them. And so I wanted the documentary to also feel joyful. And I got to say, all but one surprising person gave us the music for next to nothing if not nothing. And there's a lot of music. Oh yeah. The Beatles, the Bee Gees, the Who. I mean, we got all this music. People were so generous once they saw the film. That meant so incredibly much to me. And then as folks are talking and it starts turning into a documentary and I was watching early cuts, I thought, oh God, it loses its beat.

20:08You can't do that. And so I just had this idea. I said, what if we go get one of the best drummers there is who's in my community, LGBT community. Let's go get Patti Schimmel from Hole. And she, the Hole score to the film is her drumming her heart out. She's the first thing we see. You know, I also just thought, let's see her because there's not a lot of women in this time. There's a few. And so I, you know, I thought we, let's have a woman be the spine of this rock and roll documentary. Let's put her where she's always belonged at the heart of it. So I don't think you're going to be depressed.

20:46I hope people are moved. But you're certainly not going to be depressed in this documentary. This thing is joyful. This thing's got a beat. This thing's, it hits. My guest is our old friend Dustin Lance Black. His terrific doc series is Rock Out. And where can people see it again? On Reverie. Thanks so much for doing this, Lance. Thank you. Thank you. Beat on the brat, beat on the brat, beat on the brat with a baseball bat. Oh yeah, oh yeah. It has always been screenwriter and director Dustin Lance Black's charge to give us a new way of looking at a subject we thought we knew, with projects such as Milk, his Oscar-winning screenplay on The Life of Harvey Milk.

21:29His newest eye-opening effort is a four-part docuseries on the underexplored intersection of gay life and rock and roll. It's called Rock Out, now available on the streaming platform, Referee. At the archive, kcrw.com slash thetreatment, find previous interviews with creators charging ahead with eyes open, such as Dustin Lance Black, among others. Then go to kcrw.com slash thetreat to discover artists reliving the inspirations that shaped them. This week, the treat comes from Adam Meeks, the writer-director of the film Union County, and his discovery is a group of Ohio-based independent theaters keeping movies alive.

22:14We stay alive here thanks to Rebecca Mooney, who produces and edits the show, and Kitty Gilchrist, who mixes. To better days, everyone, I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's the Treatment.