Dustin Lance Black in Los Angeles, August 2008. Shirt Band of Outsiders Jeans Ksubi Boots vintage from Denim Revival

The reality still hasn’t fully set in for screenwriter-producer Dustin Lance Black. After four years of researching, writing, and developing Milk, Gus Van Sant’s new biopic featuring Sean Penn as slain San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, the film finally comes out this winter. “Trying to get that story told wasn’t easy,” he says, still jet-lagged from a late-summer journey to London to work on the score. “I’m a little bit shocked, in fact, that we got it made.”

Considering his recent success, however, Black, 34, seems primed to get quite a few more films made (he’s already penned another biopic, Pedro, now playing festivals). After directing a no-budget feature and several documentaries, Black got his break when he joined the writing staff of HBO’s hit series Big Love in 2006. His own background as a gay man who grew up Mormon gave him a unique perspective on the eccentric family drama about polygamists living in suburban Salt Lake City. But even before he’d begun writing for the show, he’d already embarked on an obsessive study of Milk’s pioneering political career (he was the nation’s first openly gay elected official), and his 1978 assassination.

“For three years before Gus came on and before Sean came on, it was just me and the real-life people who ran Harvey Milk’s campaign,” Black recalls. “There were political foes, ex-lovers—just me and my sources, trying to hammer out a story that we thought could be universal.” The project took off last year when Cleve Jones, an activist who was an intern in Milk’s office at the time of the murder (Emile Hirsch plays him in the film), referred Black to Van Sant, his friend and former roommate. “Gus also had a passion for telling this story,” Black says. “We both wanted to do it for well over a decade. We had just never met.”

Soon after, Milk was green-lit by Focus Features, and Van Sant assembled the pedigreed ensemble cast including Penn, Hirsch, Josh Brolin, James Franco, and Diego Luna. And even in a film culture where studios often cast aside writers once their checks clear, Black remained an integral creative partner. “It was in really safe hands from the beginning,” he says. “It didn’t feel real. It will probably be one of the most—if not the most—gratifying experiences of my life and career.”

GROOMING JASON MURILLO (FRANK REPS)
SPECIAL THANKS DEWITT CANON (ALCHEMY VANLINES)
RETOUCHING SIMON PERRY

MILK IS OUT IN DECEMBER FROM FOCUS FEATURES