MILK

Milk: the Movie

Director: Gus Van Sant

Writer: Dustin Lance Black
Cast:
Sean Penn - Harvey Milk
Josh Brolin - Dan White
Emile Hirsch - Cleve Jones
James Franco - Scott Smith
Alison Pill - Anne Kronenberg
Victor Garber - Mayor Moscone
Denis O'Hare - John Briggs
Lucas Grabeel - Danny Nicoletta
Production Co: Focus Features
Budget: $20,000,000 est.
Gross: $31, 841,299 (US)
Awards/Nominations:
AFI Movie of the Year (2008)
Won the Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role to Sean Penn for his portrayal of Harvey Milk (2009).
Won the Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay to Dustin Lance Black (2009)
Oscar Nomination for Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for Josh Brolin, Best Achievement in Directing for Gus Van Sant, Original Score for Danny Elfman, Best Achievement in Film Editing, and Best Achievement in Costume Design (2009).

The movie follows the life of Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn, and his journey to becoming one of the most prominent openly gay politicians. The movie starts with him reading his last testament in 1979 and leads into the his 40^th birthday in New York and then shifts to his new life in San Francisco in which he buys a camera shop in the growing gay community known as “The Castro”. From there Harvey Milk gains an interest in politics as a way to give the gay community a voice. The movie goes over his many attempts at city supervisor and then his final win of the position. The film also tackles his personal life with his relationships with his campaign workers and his partners, depicted by James Franco and Diego Luna.

After Milk wins the position of city supervisor the movie then focuses on his battle with gay rights. After the large anti-gay attacks on a Florida county ruling on gay’s serving in the public sector as school teachers, bus drivers, and etc., spearheaded by singer Anita Bryant and her “Save the Children” cause. The passing of the ordinance to ban openly gay people from working for the public, caused uproar in the gay community across the nation, igniting a fire for Harvey Milks fight  for gay rights in his state of California. As city supervisor Harvey Milk encounters a fellow supervisor by the name of Dan White, played by Josh Brolin. The two have a unique relationship and differ on what and where they want to focus their time on for certain issues especially on the gay ordinances (which Milk passed) and reveling of Proposition 6 in 1978. Prop. 6 brought the Florida ordnance to California, the proposition aimed at the banning of not just openly gay employees of the public system but also those who support gays in the public service system, focusing primarily on teachers. Harvey Milk takes his crusade state wide, participating in debates and rallying support to overturn the proposition. After his success at overturning Prop 6 the movie then conclude Harvey Milks assassination by Dan White and the conclusion of his audio testament.

During the process of filming and creating the film the movie had many consultants many including real people from Harvey Milk’s campaign and life. Cleve Jones was their main historian for the film along with Anne Kronenberg. The director actually filmed the movie in many of the real places where the actual events took place. Harvey Milk’s real apartment and camera shop were used as well as real people who are actually portrayed in the movie: While Cleve Jones is played by Emile Hirsch, the real Cleve Jones had a cameo role as another real-life activist and Milk supporter, Don Amador. Milk's fellow supervisor, Carol Ruth Silver appeared as a volunteer campaign staffer named Thelma. Movie Allen Baird, the union teamster who asks for Harvey's help with the Coors beer boycott, is played by the real Allen Baird.

   “All of them would come by and share with our cast what happened, and how it was," producer Dan Jinks marveled. "They would sit down with our wardrobe department and say, ‘Well, this is what I wore on that day,’ or they would say about a scene, ‘I was standing over there in Castro Camera that day.’ Sometimes they would have pictures.”

Castro Street was completely made over to fit the time period of the late 1970s. The film even went down to small details like clothing and the signs, bringing in the actual sign maker Gilbert Baker who made all the banners and signs for Harvey's campaign and for the marches or parades.They built replica furniture to match the era. Milk's store, The Castro Camera, was extensively recreated. 

What really made the film feel more historically accurate were the costumes. Everyone in the film embraced the style of the late 60's and early 70’s. Because the film is shot over a a long period of time the auidence can see the costume styles progress through the age. When Harvey and Scott first move to San Francisco they are dressed as more care free hippies with ripped jeans, loose shirts, and long hair. Then the transformation to the three piece suit and thick ties for Harvey's campaign. And the high waisted flare jeans with a tight tucked in shirt became popular. Costume designer Danny Glicker received an Oscar nomination for his work on Milk. In an interview with AMC’s Annsley Chapman Glicker said, “When I was planning Harvey's outfit that he wore during the assassination, I worked from the real suit that Harvey was murdered in, which was at the San Francisco archives. The suit and shirt had bullet holes and dried blood. That suit was my wake-up call: This was a dream job, but my first duty was to honor the authenticity of the film”

“The camera store is full of movie film, print paper, developing chemicals, and materials that doesn’t exist anymore. All of those labels had to be created," said Milk set director Mike Groom. "So we had a graphic designer and printer in our department and we were producing all of that material in-house.”

 

Milk, premiered in San Francisco California on October 28, 2008 and then was released to limited theaters on November 26, 2008. Around the time of its release Proposition 8, the bill to ban gay marriage in the state of California, was going on. Although the bill wasn't even on the ballot at the time of filming, the release date of Milk was not coincidental. 

"I hope that some of this will have some effect on California’s Proposition 8, which is the vote to take away the already confirmed right of gay people to get married in California," said director Van Sant. 

"We thought about whether to release the film before the election, especially if it could effect Prop 8. The end decision was not to have the film speaking directly to the election, because if it was seen to be just about the election that might take away its chance of having a life after the election. We decided to straddle the election, to have the opening affect the election and the release be after the election." [Focus Films - FilmsInFocus interview] 

Due to the already current attention of gay rights, the movie was held in the spot light. Many protests of the film happened at theaters that showed the movie and even some boy-cotters of the film protested outside the Oscars in disapproval of the movie, its nominations, and its plot. Milk was nominated for eight Oscars; it won two of those eight nominations including Best Actor for Sean Penn and Best Original Screenplay to Dustin Lance Black.

The Director

Gus Van Sant was born in Louisville, Kentucky and moved around a lot growing up. One of his favorite hobbies was making Super 8 films. He had originally intended to be a painter but during his time at the Rhode Island School of Design he changed his major to film. 

After traveling around Europe, Van Sant moved to California and began his impressive movie career. His first movie, Mala Noche, was a black-and-white film about a gay liquor clerk and his Mexican immigrant lover. The film gained instant success with the Los Angeles Times calling it the Best Independent Film of the year. After many more films and awards, Gus Van Sant signed onto the Milk production, Milk being his first historical movie. Many directors since the death of Harvey Milk had tried to recreate his legacy in film but Van Sant was the one who received the honor in the end. He even tried to make it in 1992 with Oliver Stone as producer but that didn’t work out. Another attempt was made in 1998 with Sean Penn and Tom Cruise but that also fell through. 

[MILK Production Notes:] Van Sant reflects, “The Times of Harvey Milk had set the bar pretty high, but I felt a dramatic version would be an important continuation.," he said.  "I knew pretty much about the story at that point I got this script, and there was always a difficulty in telling it because of the many elements of Harvey’s life and the many other intersecting stories at Castro Camera. But Lance got it in-line and wrote a succinct script that was largely about the politics and less about the day-to-day lives of the characters."

 Dustin Lance Black, a Harvey Milk supporter and Gay man who wrote for HBO’s Big Love, delivered a script that stemmed from the vast research he did on the man and the extensive interviews with Harvey’s friends.  Black went through numerous screenplay drafts over a near four-year period before coming to the final screenplay of 104 pages. Van Sant's main concern was getting the script to a two hour running time so it would be more commercially viable.  He admired Black's script because the dialogue seemed natural. "It felt like you were in a camera store in 1973," he said. Black said he tried to use as much original dialogue from Harvey and his gang as often as possible.

 
His script focused on Harvey’s political career and the impact he had in California. What was different from all the other screenplays considered was it didn’t involve Harvey’s childhood, life in New York, or the Dan White trial. 

 

“I decided that the structure would be Milk’s journey through a movement which he helped to create, from the time [in 1972] that he arrives in San Francisco until his assassination [in 1978]," said Black.

 Black concentrated on which relationships were key to Milk and which ones were representative of the Gay movement that was changing lives. 

 "The personal met the political, sometimes beautifully;" he said. "Harvey Milk had had significant romantic relationships before Scott Smith, but that was the one that helped lift him into office. I don’t know that Harvey could have done it without Scott."
The script was a story about one man, Harvey Milk and was accepted as the perfect way to immortalize Milk on the big screen. 

After the screenplay was chosen in 2008, Gus Van Sant with Sean Penn as Harvey Milk began movie production. Producers Dan Jinks, Bruce Cohen, Dustin Lance Black, and Van Sant convened to talk about their next steps. Van Sant discussed his plan to use archival and news footage at certain points in the movie, not merely before or during the end credits as most biopics do.

"As a creator you want to be able to play with it and not be overburdened by the historical accuracy. But at the same time, you want to stay true to Milk. In some cases, it was easier since we had actual footage, so what we shot was what was exactly what happened."

 For instance, the actual announcement by Dianne Feinstein [now a U.S. Senator] announcing the assassinations of Milk and Mayor Moscone on the steps of City Hall “is such an iconic image that we didn’t want to attempt recreating it,” said Jinks. They had even cast an actress to play Feinstein in a re-enactment of the scene but Cohen said the 1978 announcement to the press was, “such a powerful moment in history that we decided the best way to convey the shock and horror of that moment was to let it speak for itself.”

Anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant was entirely portrayed by archival footage of her speeches, orange juice commercials and appearances in the news. Black wrote her this way because having an actress portray Bryant would have come off as a caricature. But using archival footage let Anita stand for herself.

Van Sant later said in a FilmsInFocus interview that that was one of the reason the team wanted to shoot in 16mm originally, so that the archival footage would be indistinguishable from the modern film.

To add to the authenticity, the executive producers and Van Sant choose to shoot the film with a stereo mic. "So you even if we built the sets, we are using the sound of the real space, which we did all the time in Milk," he said.

"When you use a mono mic, you have to stop traffic and outside sounds so you can later add them back in at a level that is agreeable to you, Van Sant continued. "With the stereo mic, we encourage stuff to go on as usual. We don’t turn off the refrigerator and we don’t stop the traffic. Unfortunately in Milk much of the traffic is modern day traffic, not period traffic, so we had to throw in period traffic. But still we are using what is really there rather than trying to limit it."

In an interview from Focus Features, Van Sant recalls what he was during at the time of Harvey Milks assassination. 

 “ I was in L.A. working in the film business, but I wasn’t really an out gay person at the time. I was driving a car to Portland when I heard it on the news. I assumed that he was shot because he was gay, but I didn’t know much about him. I wasn’t really that aware of his contribution in defeating the Brigg initiative. At the time, I had this image in my head of all these supervisors in suits in City Hall. I’d heard that Dan White killed the Mayor first and then walked down the hall to kill Harvey. It seemed like it was one supervisor killing another supervisor, a sort of in-house murder––a bunch of executives killing each other.” (Bowen) 

Van Sant, a gay man himself, spent countless hours researching for Milk. He especially worked with activist and friend Cleve Jones who was one of Harvey Milk’s closest friends and historical consultant for the movie.  

"It is mostly the same process of trying to learn from reality that we go through in the other films, of trying to understand the logic behind the things that happened," he said. "But using real people and their names in Milk was difficult because you can never really get it completely true. You are doing a play about real characters, but it doesn’t have fictional base. So in a way it’s more like pantomime, the replication of something that happened in real life with the characters called by their real names. It’s like an opera about those people. You can never really get to the real place."

However, the film portrays a very accurate account the life of Harvey Milk and the hope he brought to thousands. Peter Bowen from Focus Features said, “Van Sant does not simply reconstruct a chronology of events but breathes life into a series of tableaux from another time. Milk lives in this strangely real world from the past as well as in our imaginations. He is a figure who still speaks to us.”  
 Gus Van Sant was an important contributor in how successful the film has become. The beautiful way he captured the essence of Harvey Milk and the great energy and movement happening in San Francisco is incredible. With the release of the film in 2008, Van Sant’s movie was nominated for 8 Academy Awards including best director.

DUSTIN LANCE BLACK INTERVIEW FROM NPR

INACCURACIES

- Research Jim Foster said that Harvey invites Joe Campbell first and former lover to help him out with campaign 1st time around. 

- Also, Harvey didn't met Scott until he was 41 and he wasn't working in the finance sector at the time. He was doing theater work and resembled the bearded, hippie man who drives to San Francisco with Scott.

The movie glosses over the time table for when Dan White resigned and shoots Moscone and Milk. White resigned Nov. 10th but did not kill the two men until Nov. 27th. In the movie it seems like White resigns Friday, wants his job back the very same day, takes the weekend off and upon hearing he's not getting it back Monday morning proceeds to load his police-issued gun. However, during that period when Dan had resigned to the murders, he was lobbied by his buddies at the Fire Department and constituents to come back to his position. It was gay political consultant Ray Sloan who finally convinced White to ask Mayor Moscone to reverse his resignation [If Sloan was included in the movie it would have definitely changed the framing of Dan's character]

The movie is over dramatized on how Milk was shot and killed. According to the SF Chronicle, Milk was shot 5 times, first while he was rising [not standing like in the movie] then twice more in the chest. He fell to the ground and white again fired the gun. Then he stood over Harvey and put the gun to the top of his head and pulled the trigger one last time. Harvey had two gunshot wounds to the head three in the chest and wounds in his right hand and elbow where he put his arms up to stop the bullets and where the hot metal passed through his body.

It wasn't Anne Kronenberg and Scott Smith who came across the candlelight vigil after going to City Hall and discovering very few people were there. That happened to two other MILK supporters [The Mayor of Castro Street] Also, the movie shows that there was only a handful of people actually inside the courthouse for Mayor Moscone and Milk's memorial but in reality the total was about 100 people. 

Van Sant changed a scene where Harvey reacts negatively to literature about Proposition 6: "There is a scene when Harvey is meeting with Representative Phil Burton over Proposition 6," he said. "Cleve Jones, who was our advisor, had actually been at that meeting and explained that Harvey had put on a real show, running around the room and flailing the paper in the air. He was livid because they had left the word “gay” off the flyer fighting back against Prop 6 [the proposed bill to ban all gay teachers in California]."

"We were shooting in the exact room that the meeting took place, with the real costumes, even with the same furniture, which hadn’t even been reupholstered since then. We had Sean do an intense version, even wiping his ass with a flyer before throwing it in the fire. But it wasn’t keeping with the rest of the film, said Van Sant. "So we have a much more calm version in which Milk never gets out of his seat."

Harvey's reaction to the flyers in the film, "This is shit and masturbation," he says before leaving the room, was taken out of context. Those words were actually printed in a 1973 SF Chronicle article in which Harvey is condemning Goodstein and Rick Stone for endorsing a pro-gay straight candidate over him for City Supervisor.

So in short, a lot of things were cut out of the movie but it was necessary to create a timeline of events that had a more rapid succession. All the major events included in the movie remain accurate. 

ACTUAL FOOTAGE RECREATED IN THE FILM

       Harvey's Will in Event of Assassination Audio

Celebration of Harvey Milk's Victory

“Harvey Milk is one of the more illustrious gay activists, and since he died in the line of duty, he has achieved sainthood in the gay world. One reason to make this film was for younger people who weren’t around during his time; to remember him, and to learn about him.”