The 2014 Arts Dean's Lecture Series comes to a close on Wednesday, May 28, with a special panel discussion featuring prominent artists from the television and film industry.
Titled “Queering Television: A Panel With the People Who Make It Happen,” the guests will include producer Dante Di Loreto (The Normal Heart, Glee); screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk, Big Love); director Jamie Babbit (Girls, The L Word); and producer Dan Jinks (American Beauty, Milk).
The event is the final installment in a series of free lectures by guest speakers from the film course "Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Cinema," taught by UCSC professor and award-winning film critic B. Ruby Rich.
The panel will take place in the Media Theater (M110) at UCSC's Theater Arts Center, beginning at 5 p.m.
Admission is free, and the public is invited.
Dante Di Loreto, president of Ryan Murphy Television, has produced for television, film and Broadway. Programs produced by Di Loreto have been nominated for a total of 93 Emmy Awards, including Glee, American Horror Story, and Temple Grandin.
Di Loreto is also co-producer of The Normal Heart, an adaption of Larry Kramer’s acclaimed autobiographical drama about one man’s experiences during the emergence of AIDS/HIV in New York, starring Julia Roberts, Mark Ruffalo, and Jim Parsons. The Normal Heart premieres May 25 on HBO.
Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black won an Academy Award and a Writers Guild of America Award for the 2008 film Milk. Black is also writer and co-producer of HBO’s Emmy and Golden Globe nominated drama, Big Love.
Black wrote the screenplay for the 2011 film J. Edgar, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 2012, he merged his creative and civil rights work with “8”--a play based on the Federal Proposition 8 trial—that has now been staged in 8 countries and all 50 states, including a cast in Los Angeles that featured George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Martin Sheen.
Jamie Babbit has directed episodes of HBO's Girls, United States of Tara, Gilmore Girls, Ugly Betty and The L Word. She is also the director of the satirical comedy But I'm a Cheerleader (Sundance 2000) and The Itty Bitty Titty Committee (SXSW Grand Jury Prize 2006).
Babbit graduated from Barnard College as a Centennial Scholar and has been profiled in Out Magazine, The Advocate, and The Huffington Post. In 2012, she directed one of 11 vignettes in the anthology film Made in Cleveland, collaborating with writer Karey Dornetto of TV’s Portandia and Arrested Development.
Dan Jinks won a Best Picture Academy Award as the co-producer of American Beauty. He also produced Milk, directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Sean Penn; Down with Love, starring Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor; and Tim Burton’s Big Fish, which starred Albert Finney, Jessica Lange, and Billy Crudup.
In television, Jinks executive produced the acclaimed ABC series Pushing Daisies, which received eight Emmy Awards and was nominated for a Golden Globe award as Best Television Comedy. Jinks also produced A Timeless Call, a tribute to war veterans that Steven Spielberg directed for the Democratic National Convention in 2008.
