Milk money

The nominations for the 81st Academy Awards, released Thursday, may have ignored a few deserving candidates, but I was extremely pleased to note Milk's nomination for Best Original Screenplay.  For those who are unaware, Milk is Dustin Lance Black's first produced feature screenplay.  Black, also a writer for the HBO hit show Big Love, grew up in Texas as a devout Mormon and closeted gay individual.  Black counts activist Harvey Milk as a major inspiration for his own coming out.  He credits the deceased politician with inspiring the same brand of hope as our new president: "I would be listening to these speeches by Barack Obama and looking at transcripts of the speeches by Harvey Milk and it was eerie and very, very exciting for me to hear that again," he said.

via Reuters