Milk

Cafe Society
1

This movie finally broke in theaters near me, so after a long wait I just got back from viewing it. I first became aware of Harvey Milk and his work when I read And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts (fantastic book, probably one of the most interesting and moving I’ve ever read.) I was very, very excited for this film and had quite high expectations.

Overall I am not disappointed. I loved the documentary, often grainy style of the film and the intimacy of the directing. Sean Penn was absolutely perfect in the role. The movie does a fantastic job of immersing you in the Castro District in the 1970s–I really felt like I was learning something from a historic perspective. I have always understood the Castro District, and L.A. in general, to be a safe haven for homosexuals, but I was surprised by how much hostility and police brutality they had to endure even in the 70s. I actually came out of the film feeling very optimistic about the future of civil rights – as the emphasis was largely on Proposition 6 and the fight to prevent the repeal of workplace discrimination. With the tragic recent passing of Prop 8 and other such laws, it is easy to get discouraged. But it truly is a different world now, and this is in part due to Milk and his efforts to make a once-silent minority visible. If things can change this much from that point, then imagine what we can do in the next 20 years.

I only cried at one part – and boy did I bawl – when Harvey Milk first got the call from the suicidal boy in Minnesota. I had a lot of friends who were that Minnesota boy when they were in high school, and that’s exactly why Milk had to do what he did. That was his moment of realization that what he was doing was affecting people all across the country, his realization that his conscience would not let him quit.

So yes, overall I really thought this was an original and well-done film.

Thoughts?

2

I thought it was a very good film. Good performances from Sean Penn and Josh Brolin. I didn’t even recognize Emile Hirsch.

It’s a shame they didn’t release this before the elections.

3

It’s a shame they didn’t make this 30 years ago.

4

Did you forget, Olives, that you were the last poster in this thread?

Just so’s I don’t have to repeat myself. I hate when that happens, and so does everybody else.

5

I’m terribly sorry, prr. I confused that thread with the thread asking about the accuracy of Milk and Frost/Nixon. I even ran a search and everything to see if there was another thread on the topic. Damn.

6

That would have been one hell of a tough schedule to meet.

Actually, I wonder if now is not exactly the time this had to be made. It’s not really the forum for a long discussion of civil rights, I guess, but would a movie with gay rights as such a central issue have made as much of an imapct in 1978 - when most people didn’t give a shit about the issue on the surface and would have opposed it had it come up - as it can in 2008, when it appears the issue is closing in on a tipping point?

7

I saw it and thought it was excellent. A lot of people have commented, positively or negatively, about what a standard (though good-quality) biopic it is, which I think was kind of the point: it’s to the point now where our heroes are important and our history, well, historical enough to get that treatment. And it’s such an important story, and deserves to be so much more widely known, that people know what things were like then and what a breakthrough he made. I feel it really conveyed what the atmosphere was at that point, and by so doing, made it come alive how totally essential and important these struggles were to living, human persons.

Maybe now we can get around to telling all the other stories (I’m looking forward to a Genie-award-winning Egan, etc.).

It’s kind of funny to feel nostalgic for a time four years before I was born – just the idea that we were so instantly prepared, so many of us, to pull together for something important, that we could be so strongly motivated by politics, was remarkable. I wouldn’t go back there for a million dollars – between the cops, the complete lack of protection, and AIDS just over the horizon – but I wish we could recapture some of that spirit today. It’s as though in those few areas where we have some sort of security, rather than banding together to protect that safety, we take it so totally for granted that we end up partially dissolving it.

(It also didn’t help by making me brood over not being as good a candidate as Harvey, not as good a campaign manager as Anne, and not as cute as Cleve, either.)

Sean Penn dissolved as totally into his role as Helen Mirren did into the role of the Queen, which I thought was remarkable. I agree with those who said Diego Luna was overacting. There’s incarnating a hammy, annoying, overdone person, and then there’s just being hammy and annoying yourself. He didn’t make us care about the character or look under the way he was. Which was too bad.

I cried at the part olivesmarch4th did, for the same reason. One thing that irks me are the reviews saying that the kid in the wheelchair was some kind of cheap sensationalism, as though that’s the only conceivable reason for showing a person who is both queer and disabled – they do exist and they do have the problem the kid in the movie faced: increased vulnerability to abuse. And Harvey’s look of both despair, and anger at himself for making the assumption, were very well done.

And of course I cheered when the kid turned up safe and sound.

I’m also looking forward to seeing The Times of Harvey Milk in the near future; I hear it’s even better.

8

Here’san interesting interview with activist Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch’s character in the movies). Between founding the AIDS Quilt project, he had also pledged to do everything possible to perpetuate the memory of Harvey Milk, so it’s both a dream come true for him as well as bringing the odd feeling of seeing yourself played on screen.

9

I think you have a cart/horse displacement here; it can be speculatively argued that this moment might have come earlier if such films had come earlier. I don’t think it can be argued at all that this movie was made possible by the success of Brokeback Mountain. I still say it’s sad that the first director to dare to make such a film is from China, not the U.S. We’re still an outrageously, abhorrently, self-destructively puritan society.

10

Sure, make me feel old… I have to say, that even with all the problems of 1978, I’d love to go back and see things again as an adult (I was 18 when Harvey was killed)…

It’s only looking back that you realize how bad things were… I was totally open from the time I was 18 - co-hosted a weekly Gay radio show for two years, and a couple years later set up an AIDS organization and ended up on TV and Radio whenever the media needed someone to talk about the “new epidemic”… and believe me, when you went on TV as the face of an AIDS organization in a relatively small town back then, it was just like wearing a big sign saying “Gay”…

And yet, I never had any problems being open - even when I started working in “straight” jobs a couple years later… (Except with my own family, unfortunately) …

When The Times of Harvey Milk was released in 1984, I remember convincing some straight friends to go see it the first night it opened… and for the first time feeling totally exposed and vulnerable… I think that was the first time I realized that being openly Gay was a big deal…

And strangely enough, seeing Harvey in that movie helped convince me to move to San Francisco a few years later…

11

Entirely possible. It’s frankly impossible to say for sure.

12

It is remarkable you had the courage to do this… One thing I was surprised about the film is the avoidance of the AIDS epidemic altogether. While it is true that it didn’t become an entirely visible issue until the 80s, Harvey Milk was alive at a time when this was beginning to hit the Castro District. I’m surprised it wasn’t at least alluded to.

One very interesting thread throughout And The Band Played On is that the gay community itself shared some responsibility for making decisions that perpetuated the HIV virus. For one thing, they outright refused to shut down the bathhouses against the advice of the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

When reading the book it’s very easy to come at them from a ‘‘WTF were they thinking being so defiant in the face of this huge epidemic?!!’’ angle – but seeing the film and the kind of opposition they were up against, and the kind of oppression they had known, I can see how it would be easy to feel the attempts to contain the virus as just another idea based in homophobic mythology. I can also see, even for those who knew better, how they might feel like they were being asked to choose between their freedom and their life.

13

I didn’t find being open very courageous, but I guess it was unusual… I remember my partner asking for me to be put on his benefits at work 20 years ago, and we were told that they would do it, but “people might find out” we were Gay… We got the benefits and thought nothing of it… Looking back, damn, a lot of people were closeted back then…

Oh, and Harvey wasn’t alive when AIDS was hitting the Castro… It didn’t start showing up til about '80 or '81… He was killed in 1978.

14

Just saw Milk today. I thought it was a really good movie, but it was hard to watch for me. Hard because of his success in light of our recent failure, and hard because you know how it will end. If he had lived, who knows what he would have done.

I also find it interesting that the advice he gave to the Minnesota kid is still so true. If you are in a small town in America, and you are gay. Get out to the nearest big city. It was true when I was growing up in the 90’s, and it is true today. My friend was recently contacted by a kid in our hometown who is a friend of his younger cousin, wanted to know how to deal with being gay, that he wanted to know it would get better. The advice for him was hold on till you graduate HS, and get to the big city of your choice.

15

First of all, at the time of Milk’s death, there was no knowledge whatsoever of the AIDS virus. The first mention I remember (and I was in the center of the NYC gay community at the time) was an article about a handful of deaths of gay men in SF, LA and NYC. This was around 1980/81. Nobody knew the cause of the deaths, or even whether they were related. Nothing was known, except that some doctors reported some gay men getting sick and dying from diseases they never should have had. It was several years before the acronym “AIDS” was coined, and the virus was identified. So when the Health Department moved to close down the bath houses, there was very little evidence that the decision had anything to do with disease prevention. There was still a great deal of homophobia, even in a city like New York, and many people were looking for an excuse to limit the expression of our newly-found rights. For many of us, places like the bath houses represented a freedom we had never known before; and considering the lack of evidence, plus a strong homophobic element in City government, we weren’t about to give up that freedom without a fight. What eventually happened, as the epidemic progressed, the bath houses became crucial centers of information about AIDS prevention. There were a large number of people whose only connection to the gay community was the baths, the only places where they could get information without all the homophobic hysteria. So my guess is that many lives were in fact saved by keeping the baths open. And with the formation of groups like GMHC, we took responsibility for our lives into our own hands, because we knew we couldn’t count on anyone else.

16

I was 24 in 1978, and I remember the exact moment that I heard the news of Milk and Moscone’s murders. For someone growing up near the Bay Area, of course I was keenly aware of the happenings there. Yes, Sean Penn did an excellent job. But Josh Brolin gave me chills as Dan White - it wasn’t so much the hair or clothes, more like the hesitancy in his voice and his concern about financial problems with his family.

I think this movie will get many nominations, not sure that Penn will win Best Actor (sentinmental favorites are Brad Pitt and Clint Eastwood, with darkhorse Mickey Rourke) or that Gus van Sandt will win Best Director.

After Milk was done, we snuck into the next theatre and caught the end of Slumdog Millionaire. I really wanted to see the ending credits with dancing in the train station again! Now I think that movie has a shot to be the “feel good” movie this year with Best Picture and Best Director nominations.

17

I lived through the politics of the 70’s in SF. The film was great in recreating the sentiments at the time. Penn was magnificent portraying Milk. I usually don’t like biopics, but this one was extremely well-done. Someone mentioned about the lack of mention about AIDS in the film, but that’s also very realistic. I remember absolutely nothing public about AIDs in the 70’s.

18

I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to respond with a very unique and thorough and thought-provoking post.

19

In the late 80s I unearthed some 10-year-old Time magazines in a small-town public library. Perhaps they were not as old as I thought … although I was looking for articles about Gary Gilmore, who was executed in 1977. I seem to remember seeing articles about “gay cancer.” Although I these could have been later issues, I suppose, that I pulled at the same time.

20

Part of my confusion about this is that any education I have about it came from the book And the Band Played On, which is investigative journalism published in 1987 from the perspective of a gay man looking backward in time, and as they say, hindsight is 20/20. The book is about all the threads that had not yet been woven together – the ‘‘gay cancer’’ publications, the miscellaneous reports, the WHO, the scientific researchers, everyone sort of trying to come to a conclusion without knowing what the other was up to. And there were a lot of bad political decisions, there were controversies within the medical community and the gay community, and it’s very tragic how many people died as a result. The truth is, there was convincing evidence that HIV was sexually transmitted quite early on, but due to politics, funding decisions, and even some stupid egotistical scientists, nothing was done.

In this book Shilts traces back the first apparent case of HIV in the late 1970s in Africa. His interviews with the gay community reveal that the last time they really remember a time when everyone was not sick was in 1976 at the Bicentennial Celebration in New York City. So my confusion was in assuming that shortly after 1976 there was at least some public consciousness about the illness.

Shilts died of AIDS in 1996. He refused to be tested for HIV until his book was completed because he was concerned it would interfere with his objectivity as a writer.

This book is honestly one of the most interesting and eye-opening and truly tragic things I have ever read. It might not seem like a big deal that it took a few more years to get public recognition of the virus, but in the book you have this crushing sense of impending doom, because it was spreading exponentially. The number of people who ended up dying from AIDS ended up surpassing even Shilts’ then-cataclysmic predictions. And I honestly really never grasped what a horrible, disgusting disease it was until I read this book. It’s a grisly, horrible way to die.