Mama’s Boy : A Story From Our Americas.  I fell in love with Dustin Lance Black in 2009.  He was in LA accepting his Academy Award for writing the screenplay for MILK in which he made a promise to all the queer kids watching, that things would get better. The very next day Black’s mother reminded him that in their family you must deliver on your promise.  By the end of this documentary we know he certainly did

Filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau starts his adaption of Black’s memoir with that footage but then goes on to show what poor humble conservative Mormon background he came from. The charismatic Black narrates the story of his fascinating life journey giving so much credit to his mother who had to overcome so much adversity in her life.  In fact that this memoir of his is a beautiful love letter to her 

Black’s mother, Roseanne “Anne” Bisch had an extraordinarily difficult life that very few could have survived, let alone turn around so completely.  She was born into a very impoverished Southern family and she overcame childhood polio, abusive marriages, and Mormon dogma to carve out a life as a dedicated mother to three boys and a successful career as a medical technologist in the Department of Defense for 27 years.  She not only accepted her gay son but was the one who inspired his journey of becoming a marriage equality activist.

We tend to forget how grim the outlook was for polio patients back in those days,  and Shriner’s Hospital treatment consisted of multiple, painful surgeries.  When as a young adult she was discharged from the Hospital she refused to use a wheelchair and insisted on learning to use crutches.  She was set on achieving the three things that everyone kept telling her were impossible an education, a career, and childen.

In college, she became a Mormon and was courted by a handsome Mormon man Raul Garrison.  She thought he was the real thing, and it took her some time to cotton that he married her because as she was a  disabled woman, he would not be called up for miltary service.  Though warned throughout her life that attempting to have children would be a disaster for her and likely her offspring, she did it anyway. Three times.

Garrison abuses Anne and also was persistently unfruitful.  After divorcing him she married another Mormon who also soon takes to physically abusing her. Black explains that all problems in a Mormon marriage must be referred to the Church’s bishops who always take the man’s side.  Anne does have one stroke of luck though when Mr Black gets shipped off to  South Korea for work.

Husband number three Jeff  is a much younger man and they relocate with the family to Salinas California. It’s at this time that teenage Dustin is starting to question his own sexuality.   By the time he does come out to his mother …..who kind of worked it out ….. it really emboldens him and we see much more of his mother’s irrepressible courage and determination.  He is the one who must find a way to emotionally support his old brother Marcus who comes out as gay too even though on the surface he had so many hetero traits that even the best gaydar would never have spotted him.

As we see Dustin bloom, married to Tom Daley the Olympic Swimmer and they start their own family, it’s clear to us that he is so very well suited to being an advocate and activist for our community. It was a combination of him being so very charismatic, articulate, and passionate with  the large set of balls he inherited from his remarkable mother.

Mama’s Boy makes you think about your own family.  As a gay person we have to go through an extra ‘situation’ that our straight siblings do not, and I wish they were all supportive and evolved like Anne.

I started by telling you when I fell in love with Dustin for the first time, and it’s impossible not to love him more after seeing this  

Queerguru reviewed this at the World Premiere at NEWFEST, it will be screening on HBO from October 18th

 

 

Review : Roger Walker-Dack

Editor in Chief : Queerguru 
Member of G.A.L.E.C.A. (Gay & Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association) and NLGJA The Association of LGBT 
Journalists. and The Online Film Critics Society. Ex Contributung Editor The Gay Uk &Contributor Edge Media 
Former CEO and Menswear Designer of  Roger Dack Ltd in the UK    
one of the hardest-working journalists in the business' Michael Goff of Towleroad