Remember when
photos of Dustin Lance Black engaged in adult recreative activities leaked in June? And
he was not happy about it? And his lawyers were furious too? Now they are doing something about it. Namely: A lawsuit!
The Oscar-winning screenwriter’s henchmen at Lavely & Singer — the bulldog law firm behind seemingly every celeb’s sex tape lawsuit threats — are going after Starzlife.com and its proprietors, which the lawsuit alleges distributed photos (and supposedly has video) of Black and a one
Jeff Delancy having anal sex (without a condom, as everyone has noted!). Something about invasion of privacy and copyright infringement.
But Black doesn’t fancy himself some Paris Hilton, or even a Kim Kardashian. He is a serious, Academy Award-y professional, and these photos are disparaging. Which, they totally are. Particularly to his reputation!
But parts of Black’s lawsuit, filed July 23, are pretty ridiculous. Like the part where he denies even knowing illicit pictures were being taken while they were having sex — because, if you’ve seen the pics, it’s clear he knew there was a camera (but claims not to have known it was aimed “down there”). Unless a certain screenwriter was not in a, uh,
proper state of mind? Whatever. Black’s lawyers
have to say these things.
So what is Team Black even after? A few things. Namely, Starzlife.com and its staff — as well as Michael Lawrence, who the lawsuit claims stole the photos from Delancy’s computer while they were dating — cannot ever distribute the material again. Any profits they made must be turned over to Black. And he’d like $3 million, please. The court filing says Black wants a jury trial, though we doubt this is headed in that direction. A settlement is most likely, for a mostly paltry sum, and the promise to never mention Black’s name again, if only because Starzlife’s proprietors supposedly met (unknowingly) with Black’s own private investigators to discuss a sale. That’d be some pretty damning evidence to hear in open court.
In the end, we learn: Delancey (and/or his ex-boyfriend) is pretty douche-y if he released the photos, especially to earn a profit; the folks behind Starzlife.com will probably have to argue their way into heaven, but hell, so will we; and most importantly: NEVER TAKE PHOTOS OF YOURSELF NAKED OR HAVING SEX, EVER, BECAUSE THEY WILL BE RELEASED. For as wise and talented as Black may be, naivety (about not knowing where the camera was pointing) is not a good excuse.
Not that we should have to excuse anyone from the crime of having sex while being attractive and sharing it with the world.
The full lawsuit filing on the next page:
alan brickman
he keeps getting stupider and stupider about this…
alan brickman
big surprise he’s a mormon….
HayYall
Is a “lawuit” anything like a lawsuit, and does it require you to file a “comlaint?”
Andrew
This AND that silly March around Washington with Cleve Jones is cancelled, too?
terrwill
HEY Q-PEOPLE!! STOP TELLIN CELEBS NOT TO MAKE SEX TAPES!!! There are lots of them I am still waiting for!!! Hey Zac ya hear me, you can ignore what they said, just smile for the camera……
Anthony in Nashville
Whenever someone suggests documenting your “intimate moments” with photos or videos your guard should automatically go up unless you’re cool with those images being exposed to the public.
You can’t trust people to be “discreet” with those materials!
Coco
I can’t stand this man. His nicer than thou attitude yet he let a looser bare back him??? What a shame. He is no different than Perez Hilton
M Shane
Well, at lest he didn’t use the tapes , like Andrew Sullivan, (father of monagamy and mainstreaming) to advertise his barebacking on the web !
Mark
When is this little douche going to shut up and just go away? He clearly has a higher opinion of himself than everyone else does.
Giovanni
Good for him. Stop the fuckers in their tracks! Should he do nothing and allow the video to be mass marketed? I don’t care what his state of his mind was at the time but I am certain this is last thing he and most people would want. As for the hate aimed at him in the above comments I don’t get it. What has he done to you other than give an awesome acceptance speech at the Oscars?
Bri
@Andrew: I haven’t heard of the march being cancelled.
Giovanni
Some of you dudes are bitter compassionless creeps.
D-Sun
@Giovanni:
He dared to have sex with another consenting adult without the use of a condom. It’s truly shocking and horrific, I know.
That, apparently, makes him worse than Hitler ’round these parts.
He’s truly one of history’s monsters.
damon459
I’m shocked that the gay community would judge a person for how they chose to have sex, what’s next anal sex is taboo because of the risk of STD’s and yea I said STD’s not STI’s. If I chose to have sex with another consenting adult without a condom that’s our business and nobody else’s I’m really sick and tired of certain members of the gay community telling me how to be gay. As for his lawsuit good for him he has every right to be upset and not from what I have read with his ex but his ex’s b/f who stole the video to sell it to some garbage rag.
Marcus
@damon459:
No one is telling you how to be gay, Damon.
The main reason some people are judging Dustin is because he’s saying on thing about unprotected sex and then proceeds to engage in it himself.
I have no idea as to why he would say such a thing knowing goddamn well he participates in it himself from time to time. At least that’s the word around here.
Oh well. I like him, I really do, but he’s going to get criticism for this–oh, I forgot. He’s already gotten plenty.
Homo Erectus
@Marcus: Please post a link to the news article where Dustin Lance Black said anything about NOT having unprotected sex. This goes for all the preachy bitches here.
Seanboy
This makes Dustin Bareback sound like even more of an idiot. You mean to tell me that the supposedly bright man that he is thought that when he was completely naked that his “bf” wanted to just snap photos of them shirtless? If that were the case why didn’t Dustin Bareback simply tell him to wait and put on some shorts? I find it hard to believe he was unaware of what was going on.
If I were in the same situation I would grabbed the camera and deleted the pics. Sounds like Dustin Bareback is trying to be more of a victim, but he comes off as pathetic.
Kary
What a bunch of bitchy, embarassing faggots on this site. WTF do you think you are? Christians? Jesus Fucking Christ, you assholes are incredible. This man wrote a brilliant screen play, gave an impassioned, honest appeal on camera for our civil rights internationally, and you faggots attack him as if he were Jerry Fucking Falwell. You make me ashamed to be gay. Assholes.
Helga von ornstein
I wonder if he swallowed at the climatic moment? I would love to see the video but I doubt I would be impressed or envious of it.
Homo Erectus
@Kary: Considering the range of your vocabulary, you probably should be ashamed of yourself .. I bet your parents are.
Blah
@Helga von ornstein: I would be more interested if he took the seed up his anus. Mmmm .. delicious creampie!
Andrew
@Bri: One of my friends has been in the meetings. They decided yesterday that there wasn’t enough interest in the March idea. He said they were trying to do some “Activist University” training for people still interested.
Dabq
Unless there were other guys in the pics not seen, sorry, the term “attractive” certainly does not fit Black and his trick. And, hopefully some judge will toss this out as anyone dumb enough to make a “sex tape” should not be embarassed when its shown to the public, just roll along with it or man up and ignore it.
Andrew
Oh, and they’re supposed to charge for the “training.” People in all 435 Congressional Districts would raise money for tuition and then go to Washington to become Cleve-ish “activists.” I’m not sure activists actually need any training – it’s not a job.
Bri
@Andrew: Interesting. So this just hasn’t caught on yet.
I can’t see a lot of people wanting to pay for this “activist university.”
John from England(used to be just John but there are other John's)
Yawn!
His human and he wants to have sex and video it….so what?
ChristopherM
Oh to be as perfect as the sanctified denizens of Queerty. Of course, they would probably give up their holy lives to have an ounce of this man’s talent.
WillBFair
On the one hand, he’s young. Naivete is the nature of the beast. And barebacking with a sleazoid profiteer is so Hollywood.
On the other hand, it’s upsetting that after 25 years, the heartless crowd is still defending this behaviour. They’re even using the same swear words and vicious tone.
On the other hand, the screenplay was just ok. The documentary format didn’t really work for me. I think it would have been more powerful as a dramatization. I still spent half the movie in tears. But I was there at the time, and any hack could have written that script, and I’d cry my eyes out.
Thomas
@WillBFair:
He isn’t young!! The man is 35. He was 32 when he had unprotected sex. He wasn’t a kid at 32. He was old enough to know better.
Anthony
Here is the problem I have with this man and those pictures. When he won the Academy Award for his work he gave a great speech. Overnight he became an inspiriation for young gay men my age. It doesn’t matter if he wanted to become an inspiration the fact is he did. When those pictures were released it showed gay youth that he participated in unprotected sex. I use that word unprotected because bareback has somehow become a positive word. It isn’t! When you have unprotected sex you are placing your life at risk! This man is showing many people around the world that he places his life at risk for sex with someone he “trusted.” Clearly, he shouldn’t have trusted his partner because the pictures were released. So, YES, my fellow queers what he did was wrong!
D-Sun
@Thomas:
Maybe he knows better and just prefers not to use a condom…
Sickening, horrible, truly unthinkable concept, I know. But it’s something to consider.
Duncan Behines
LOL @ the people who speak of DLB as if he is some kind of GOD. Um, he wrote a screen play honey. GET OVER IT. This law suit business is insulting to my intelligence. He is calling me a fool if he expects me to believe those photos were taken without his authorization or consent. If you believe the photos were taken without his consent you are a fool honey. I did not judge him when the photos came out. I thought he addressed the matter properly. Now he’s just being a typical drama queen, what I call a fag. He needs to just drop it and get back to business. Don’t make it a bigger issue than it already is.
tim
@Kary: Wrote a brilliant screenplay huh?
EVERYONE in hollywood knows his screenplay was unfilmable. Two weeks before shooting Ron Nyswaner (who wrote philadelphia and soldiers girl among others) was called in to to an emergency re-write which included the ENTIRE love story. Dustin threw a huge tantrum and nyswaner went on uncredited… and the little bitch won an oscar for a crappy script that was basically a scene for scene rip from the existing documentary.
Check the facts, check the script revisions. This little shit is basically a party boy hack with no talent riding (bareback) on other peoples coat tails. He deserves every bit of criticism he gets.
Mike
This dude is a bad example for all the gay youth. He needs to zip his mouth and go away. He is as annoying as Dan Savage, Perez Hilton and Michael Lucas.
Marcus
@Homo Erectus:
Well, he did say this:
“I have had the privilege to speak to people across the country, both gay and straight, on a number of critical issues including safe sex. More important than the embarrassment of this incident is the misleading message these images send. I apologize and cannot emphasize enough the importance of responsible sexual practices.”
http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid90060.asp
I like the guy– and he can bareback all he wants, but he just needs to be more careful about saying things he can’t live up to. He will end up finding nothing but trouble.
Paul
Lance would have received a lot more sympathy – and support – if he hadn’t put himself forward as the “spokesperson” of the gay community. Like a bunch of sanctimonious know-nothings who’ve proceeded him – Lorri Jean, Peter Paige, Signorele – he’s fallen on his sword of contempt for the community. Out and about ie., the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on Santa Monica Boulevard, where he hangs out, his nose is so high up in the air, it’s amazing he doesn’t levitate.
To see Dustin “Lance” Black parading himself around in his matching sweater set – lecturing everyone on the Today show, waving to his subjects riding in the back of tacky Cadillacs – only INSURES his lawsuit ushers him into laughingstock land. It’s particularly hard to swallow his “outage” given the photographic FACT that he’s getting butt-fucked without condoms.
Hypocrite, much?
Although it’s an interesting read (the details of the “peddlers” sleazy behavior), Lance would have been wiser to leave well enough alone (the pix are down but any fag in America’s seen his peen and that he gets f***ed doing the Phyllis Diller straddle … so who cares) AND addressed it. Until Lance gets real, he’s slotted himself into irrelevance.
His silence – and now this lawsuit – speak of a holier-than-thou prig. And, as for his “career,”
MakeItNotBeTrue
DLB more and more is reminding me of Dr. Evil in all his stupidity: 3… million… dollars! bwahahaha… for photos he did not know were being taken? Oh poor Mr. Black, from pious, sanctimonious media-whore to greedy, money-grabbing, hypocritical Hollywood phony. Just go away sir, PLEASE…
Cbus Chris
@Kary:
100% Agreed. The bitchy self righteous queers on here are being no better than the religious zealots that criticize our every action. There is not one human being on this earth that has never been hypocritical.
MakeItNotBeTrue
HIS NEXT ROLE! “Scripting” for Michael Lucas. Then, please, oh please, vanish…
John from England(used to be just John but there are other John's)
Gays are their own worst nightmares…….
Dusting Black shouldn’t have tried to do ANYTHING to try and stop midwestern young gays from feeling suicidal.
No.
That meant NOTHING if you measure it like a logical person with a brain.
HIM having sex without condoms, despite the facts that straight people do this all the time and leave their kids to adopted or abused in homes etc, IS the problem.
FUCK Milk.
FUCK Dustin.
We don’t need him.
We don’t need someone who tries and ‘stick up for us in front of millions of people’, esp when his own goddamn family hate him! lol! lmao!
After me, we ONLY want people who act non human! And if this means we have NO ONE sticking up for us AND more your gay kids STILL commit suicide, then that is better.
We’d rather that, then a guy who filmed himself sleeping with his boyfriend without condoms.
No way.
John from England(used to be just John but there are other John's)
@Cbus Chris:
Gays-black, white, pink or green are possibly the most nasty and destructive people on this planet. They will hang themselves, again and again and again.
Kyletime
Dustin is a douche. He made a mistake a couple months ago but I got over it. BUT this lawsuit just proves he is crazy. To have unsafe sex is one thing but to then try to make money off HIS error in judgement is bizarre. That he would stoop to this leads me to believe that what came before was premeditated for career and financial gain as much as the like of Pam Anderson/Tommy Lee, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian’s videos. Why is he making such an ass out of himself? Leave it in the past and move on.
Marc
@John from England(used to be just John but there are other John’s):
Why are the gays destructive and nasty and not Dustin? He is the one trying to get rich for his own foolish judgement. For a man approaching 30 he really needs to grow up.
Marc
whoops! i meant approaching 40.
TANK
If anyone is going to bareback (an all too common occurrence amongst gays right now, and escalating with seroconversion rates) because of DLB’s bareback sex pics, they’re retarded. SO now that we’ve ruled out having DLB’s barebacking harming people, who cares.
Roxy
Has anyone seen a photo of the horrific Stephen Lenehan and his hideous/obese “wife” Kelly Stagg-Lenehan? Hope the judge hasn’t eaten before the hearings, he’ll definitely hurl!
Danny Boy
Leo Ramos (whose parents live in Coachella, Ca.,) was the one who posted the photos and wrote the blog item on Starzlife, under the name “Charley.”
Charles Globan
I understand being embarrassed but a lawsuit– for 3M dollars???? I mean he issued an apology for it, so he knew it was hypocritical. So now he is trying to profit off his hyprocrisy?? Give me a break. Why would he want to just drag this on and on— stinks of a publicity stunt to me. Looks like he is trying to “Milk” this for everything its worth which at the end of the day is probably nothing. If I hear “young Academy Award winning blah blah blah” one more time I am going to puke. Sounds like his PR machine is working overtime in the spin zone. He loves the attention, I know that from personal experience. If I were starzlife I would counter sue.
Adam & Steve
Great message you sending the gay youth Dustin– if you have money you can sue your way out of your mistakes. If you have money or you really believe you made a mistake you should be remorseful– not trying to profit from it.
Kant
John has a point..you’re all pathetic, self-loathing idiots.
meowie
I don’t understand. What’s wrong with the guy getting a court order to prevent the internet website from selling/distributing his sex video/photos which he obviously did not authorize them to sell/distribute? Yes, it’s stupid to create the sex videos/photos in the first place but what’s done cannot be undone, and the guy has to do something about his present situation. If this had happened to you i.e. your nude photos or videos got into the wrong hands and you found out that a particular party is trying to sell them, you would sit around and do nothing about it? It’s obvious that the rights of the photos do not vest with the website, so isn’t it right for legal actions be taken against people who try to profit from stuff that do not belong to them? What Dustin Lance Black is doing sounds like what a rational person (whether straight or homosexual) would do.
Charles
@meowie: Yes but the rules are different for public figures. Especially those public figures that preach one thing and do another.
Danny Boy
Sorry, he’s not a public figure, stop anyone on the street and show them his photo and they do not know who he is or his name.
Pete
@Kary:
If you think the “Milk” screenplay was brilliant, you probably think “Harry Potter” is “War and Peace!”
Pete
@tim:
Hmmm, very interesting. I wonder if the script-doctor plans to sue.
Quite frankly I think “Milk” was honored as a way of ‘making up’ for ‘dissing’ “Brokeback Mountain”. While that was another movie that received far more praise than it merited (too long by at least a half an hour), DLB is no Larry McMurtney, whose screenplays for ‘Hud’ and ‘The Last Picture Show’ are among the best ever written.
Pete
@Thomas:
Don’t tell him that! He’s a twink, an emo-twink just like his friend Brent Corrigan! They patronize the same stylist! They both have a latex allergy!
Pete
@Dabq:
Thank you for referring to the web-camming hustler in the pictures as a ‘trick’ and not a boyfriend. Among other things, this suit will discover the transactional relationship of their twelve hour LTR!
My other problem with this incident is that this ‘Proud Gay Man’ was living out every self-loathing homo’s mad dream of having sex with an advertised ‘straight’ guy.
Pete
@MakeItNotBeTrue:
Believe it or not, I understand one of his screenplays in the works is another gay ‘Profiles in Courage’ biopic: rumored FB Brent Corrigan!
Pete
@Marc:
Approaching 30? Off by a decade, pal!
Phil
I can just hear it now . . .
“Mr Black, how is it possible that you were unaware you were being photographed?”
“Well I’d been at tweeked-out on Meth in a bath house for a couple of days, and my ass was so numb I had no idea there was a penis in it . . .”
As Ross Perot was fond of saying, “that dog won’t hunt!”
Phil
@Marc:
Yes John I agree, and I’d like to know why I’m an ‘internal homophobe’ or some such nonsense for refusing to stand-up for an egotistical jerk who just happens to be a ‘gay brother’.
I’m going to go further, I thought his much-lauded Oscar speech was way over-the-top! A lot of sanctimonious, self-serving cant! I cringed! He took this advantage of this forum which is supposed to be about the movie industry and instead of graciously thanking cast, crew, friends, and family, he turned it into a bully pulpit! He was no better than those ‘Christians’ who show up at nationally televised sporting events with their ‘John 3:16’ posters. The very fact that ‘Milk’ won was, I think, statement enough.
Had he limited himself to appropriate comments, no one would be in the least interested in his god damned sex pictures!
rhonda
Lavely and Singer are EVIL– they will do anything to win and judges are highly corruptible in LA.
alan brickman
he’s the “AL GORE” of gays….obvious and a total hypocrite too…