{"id":46675,"date":"2024-02-27T12:57:38","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T11:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1998998"},"modified":"2024-02-27T13:31:40","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T12:31:40","slug":"dustin-lance-black-if-the-truth-is-offensive-some-people-will-be-offended","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/dustin-lance-black-if-the-truth-is-offensive-some-people-will-be-offended\/","title":{"rendered":"Dustin Lance Black: \u2018If the truth is offensive, some people will be offended\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The screenwriter speaks to Radio Times magazine about Under the Banner of Heaven. <\/p>

By Robin Parker\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 27 February 2024 at 11:57 AM<\/p>

\n\n

Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black is recalling the time he came face to face with a murderer. In a Utah maximum security prison, he felt the man\u2019s bright eyes and charisma radiate through the Plexiglass and immediately thought of Silence of the Lambs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understood what sociopathy looks like,\u201d Black says. \u201cAs he edged closer, I could see how pleased he was with himself, how much he enjoyed that he was about to have the opportunity to tell his story again. I wasn\u2019t having it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Discovering Dan Lafferty had nothing new to say about the murder he had committed \u2013 indeed, that he stood by the court\u2019s verdict and media coverage \u2013 which Black retells in his true crime drama series Under the Banner of Heaven<\/a>, Black said, \u201cStop right there. I\u2019m not here to help you get off on the torture and murder of women.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1984, the Mormon community was rocked by the brutal murders of Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old baby Erica in American Fork, Utah. Having married into a Mormon family and dared to question its more fundamental members\u2019 subjugation of women, Brenda was killed by her brothers-in-law, Dan and Ron.<\/p>\n

At the time, Black\u2019s family lived in a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas. His father left to marry his first cousin \u2013 \u201chis first step towards fundamentalism\u201d, says Black; the pair remain estranged \u2013 and the community rallied to help his mother Roseanna, who had been paralysed from the chest down since contracting polio as a child, and her three children.<\/p>

When the family moved to California three years later, 13-year-old Black began a journey of discovery. He read about San Francisco gay rights campaigner Harvey Milk, America\u2019s first \u201cout\u201d politician, whose story he would later explore in his 2009 Oscar-winning script for the biopic Milk, starring Sean Penn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Embracing his own sexuality \u2013 he now has two sons with his husband, British Olympic diver Tom Daley<\/a> \u2013 Black began to unpick the emotional damage that fundamentalist beliefs can inflict on individuals\u2019 identities. \u201cFamily comes first to Mormons, which is good,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut only up to a point: for a long time, [that meant] as long as you\u2019re heterosexual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black has previously explored Mormonism as a screenwriter on Big Love, an HBO drama about polygamy, and narrated 8: the Mormon Proposition, a documentary about the church\u2019s opposition to gay marriage.<\/p>\n

But the Lafferty case had stuck with him since reading journalist Jon Krakauer\u2019s 2003 non-fiction book<\/a> about the case, after which the series is named. Brenda\u2019s outspokenness reminded him of his mother: \u201cAll my work addressing Mormon issues is in defence of the abuse I saw her take.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using his Oscar clout to option the book, Black set about adapting it for a movie. More than a decade later, it arrived as a seven-part series (available as a box set on ITVX), reframed as a gripping true crime drama centred on fictional Mormon investigator Jeb Pyre.<\/p>\n

Andrew Garfield, a fan of the book before taking on the role of Jeb, leads a British-heavy cast (\u201cIt\u2019s no secret I like Brits \u2013 I\u2019m married to one!\u201d Black jokes) which also includes Daisy Edgar-Jones<\/a> as Brenda and Billy Howle<\/a> as her husband Allen, alongside Australian Sam Worthington<\/a> and American Wyatt Russell<\/a>, who play Ron and Dan respectively.<\/p>\n

\"Daisy