Milk’s Oscar-winning writer Dustin Lance Black on directing Jennifer Connelly and kinky Mormons
Dustin Lance Black is best known for writing politically charged biopics like Milk (which won him the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 2009) and most recently, Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar. The ex-Mormon was also a staff writer for the first three seasons of Big Love, a gig he got in part by submitting a script based on his childhood growing up poor in Texas with a disabled mother who required more care than she could give. That script is the source of his newest film, Virginia (out May 18), which he also directed. Black recently sat down with The A.V. Club to talk about his first impression of Virginia star Jennifer Connelly, the challenges of writing biopics vs. narrative films, and the changes he made after the film was poorly received at the Toronto Film Festival.
The A.V. Club: You do a lot of research by interviewing people when you’re writing a biopic. How was the process different for you with Virginia, since it’s based on your own experiences growing up?
Dustin Lance Black: I kind of didn’t need to do that much. I did research in the schizophrenia department because I wanted to make sure—even though I have a family member who has the same condition and at the same level. I didn’t know the science behind it, and I really wanted to understand it better, so I did record an interview or two with both a clinical psychologist who specializes in it at Cal State Northridge and a couple of people who have the condition who were willing to talk, which was surprising. And then I took Jennifer there as well. She met with this professor who was lovely and who would act out the different levels of schizophrenia. It was lovely to watch this professor acting in front of Jennifer, and we were just giggling ’cause she was so good. But that was really it. ’Cause the rest of it is just pulling from my own…
AVC: How much of Jennifer Connelly’s character is based on your mom?
DLB: You know, my mom is disabled in a different way. She had polio, so she’s paralyzed. It’s an algorithm of her and this other family member that raised me who had that brand of schizophrenia. It’s based on the idea of all of that, which is, I grew up in the South. I grew up Mormon. I grew up very, very poor with a mother who needed more care than we did, oftentimes. And so the caretaker relationship was a bit different. I would tell that story especially when, you know, you’re with new friends and you’re a little drunk and you’re in a bar and you start telling your life story. You start trying to out-trauma each other. [Laughs.] And often I would win. They would look at me with, like, real compassion and pity. Then I would just laugh and say, “You don’t get it at all; we were Southern. We wear this stuff as a badge of honor. It’s like, ‘This is who I am. This is what I went through.’” In fact, you know, I think what it makes you do is become more aspirational, dream bigger, and do more outlandish things to survive. In the South, you’re kind of celebrated for being that bigger dreamer, being a bit more aspirational, and being a bit more of a character for having had that trauma. Tennessee Williams is the master of bringing that to life. I was just so curious. I thought, “Wow, I would really like to bring this to life. This situation.”
AVC: And one of the main themes in Virginia is that of the American Dream and how hard it is to achieve. Was that on your mind at all when writing?
DLB: Yeah, because it’s what we have. It’s what we have when we’re down and out. We have our dreams; that’s all we have. We’re in that time right now. It’s interesting that this is coming out now, after eight years. It’s coming out at a time when people are forced to dream again, and to live in their dreams again. People are down on their luck. In fact, we have a Mormon running for public office. So it’s all sort of playing out in this very strange way. What better people to bring to life this idea that in tough times, our dreams are our salvation, but a Mormon guy who’s living his whole life for the afterlife? And to a lot of us, that afterlife sounds like a pretty wild dream. A planet and your own creatures, your heaven-children and heaven-wives—and the schizophrenic is willing to buy into it, believe it, and celebrate it. We have these two ultimate dreamers who absolutely believe their dream, for different reasons. I think that’s the place we find ourselves in today.
AVC: And they’re both living in a warped reality of sorts.
DLB: I would say so. That was my experience growing up with this one family member. If you’re willing to buy into the delusion, you can get along with him fine and have a lovely relationship. You would just have to kind of sign off and accept it, and then they would keep you in their fold. It was a very warm place to be, so that’s what I wanted the film to feel like. You come into the film from the perspective of Virginia. You’re being welcomed into this world of a woman who’s schizophrenic and has some delusional beliefs in a man who also has what a lot of people would call delusional beliefs. [Laughs.] You’re being invited in, and I wanted the film to feel like you were also there in terms of color and light and the way it was made. I hope you feel like you’re living a little bit in her mind.