My interview with "Milk" scribe Dustin Lance Black...

I've seen "Milk" screenwriter Dustin Lance Black two out of the last three days. Yesterday at the Oscar nominees luncheon, he was wearing sneakers with his suit and looked adorable as he sat at a table that included fellow nominee Marisa Tomei. On Satuday night, we gabbed at the Directors Guild of America Awards where he showed up to support nominated "Milk" director Gus Van Sant and was seated with Gus, Sean Penn and Josh Brolin.

Here is our conversation from DGA night:

Q. I'm so excited for you because when we talked at the Hollywood Film Festival Awards, I didn't know who you were and now everyone knows who you are.
A. I remember you from that. That was my first red carpet!
Q. Well, you did great. So how has it been since then with an Oscar nomination and a Writers Guild nomination. Are you changing?
A. Am I changing?
Q. Yeah, are you going Hollywood as they say?
A. Well the one thing that is different now is that different designers are lending me their clothes so if you notice, I'm a little better dressed than I was at the hollywood awards. That's certainly changed. (The photo on the left is Lance at the Hollywood Awards, pre-designer days.)
Q. Are you enjoying it?
A. Yeah, I am enjoying it. It's unreal. This whole thing is unreal. It's a dream come true for me. It's also a dream come true for us, for the filmmaking team. We all wondered if America would embrace the film? Would our colleagues embrace a film with this kind of subject matter? These are out, gay activists people demanding their civil rights. When I was at the Hollywood Awards, I didn't know yet so it's amazing to see that the film has been embraced, that it has done well. It's been received critically and by the public and that message is getting out there.
Q. What I didn't know when we first talked was what you did to put the script together. We had wanted a film about Harvey Milk for years and you are getting a lot of credit for putting it together. What was it that you knew that the other people didn't know?
A. I have no idea (laughs). I just know that when I started doing it almost five years ago, I didn't know that there were any other projects even alive anymore. I knew there had been and it was awful because Harvey Milk was a huge hero to me and I really feel like he saved me in many ways. To ask my friends, 'Do you know who Harvey is?' and they would say no. These were gay people and activist people. I thought we can't lose this man, this man's legacy and the lessons he taught us are so important to defeating the fights today. We can't lose it. So I think it was just persistence. It's not like this happened overnight. It's like a half-decade's work.