Dustin Lance Black’s “8”

So Dustin Lance Black (writer of Milk) used transcripts from one of the recent challenges to Prop 8 to write a play; last Saturday night, a staged reading was live-streamed online and archived on YouTube. Here’s the description from the YouTube page:

Featuring an all-star cast including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Martin Sheen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jane Lynch, Kevin Bacon and others, “8” is a play written by Academy Award winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and directed by acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner. It is a powerful account of the case filed by the American Federation for Equal Rights (AFER) in the U.S. District Court in 2010 to overturn Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that eliminated the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the state of California. Framed around the trial’s historic closing arguments in June 2010, 8 provides an intimate look what unfolded when the issue of same-sex marriage was on trial.

At about an hour and a half, this is longer than usual for us, but it’s surprisingly compelling when you consider that it’s a staged reading of a play based on court transcripts. And the cast really is stellar. Give it a watch.