‘Milk’: The story of Harvey Milk finally comes to the screen

By Charlie McCollum

Mercury News

Posted: 11/22/2008 12:00:00 AM PST

At times in recent years, longtime gay activist Cleve Jones was fearful that the legacy of Harvey Milk — his late friend, mentor and one of towering figures in the early gay rights movement — was fading into the mists of history.

Whenever he speaks on college campuses, Jones said, “I ask young people, ‘Do you know who Harvey Milk was?’ If a few hands go up in the audience, I’m pleased.”

This week, against the backdrop of Proposition 8 and the national battle over gay marriage, that may change with the release of “Milk,” the first film about the murdered San Francisco supervisor to make it to the big screen after years of abortive attempts by such directors as Oliver Stone and such actors as Robin Williams. With a high-powered cast headed by Sean Penn and directed by high-profile director Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting”), the movie — already mentioned as an Oscar contender — could thrust Milk back into the spotlight three decades after his death.

In many ways, the story of Milk is the story of the gay rights movement in this country. In the 1970s, Milk went from closeted gay man to civic activist to being the first openly gay man elected to high public office. His success reached beyond the city when, in the fall of 1978, he led the successful campaign to defeat Proposition 6 that would have banned gay teachers from California schools.

But just days later — on the morning of Nov. 27, 1978 — Milk and Mayor George Moscone were murdered in San Francisco City Hall by disgruntled former supervisor Dan White (who committed suicide in 1985.).White fired five bullets into Milk, the last shot at close range.

Dan Jinks — the co-executive producer of “Milk” — was a student at Los Gatos High School at the time, and he remembers “sitting and watching the candlelight march after the shooting. “He was a hero in a movement that has had very few public heroes.”

“That’s the biggest reason we wanted to make this movie,” said Jinks. “There’s an older gay population that knows who Harvey Milk is but outside of San Francisco, he has become a forgotten figure. Certainly, younger gay audiences don’t know who he is.”

Anne Kronenberg, deputy director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, was Milk’s chief of staff at the time of his death and believes that “Harvey would have loved the film.

“Sean Penn, this hunky Hollywood actor, playing him? Oh, my God, somewhere Harvey is loving the film,” she said with a smile.

Those who knew Milk and lived in the Castro of the 1970s say that the film, directed by Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting”), captures the complexity of the man and the spirit of the place. Jones, who acted as a consultant on the film, said “you look at the crowd scenes on Castro Street, the facades on the buildings, the way people are dressed and it’s just amazingly real.”

But it’s the performance of Penn as Milk that has truly mesmerized those who knew him. Watching Penn, who lives in Marin county, as his former boss “was a remarkable experience,” said Jones. “It goes well beyond an impersonation.”

So much so that actress Alison Pill, who plays Kronenberg, said the cast “really had to keep reminding ourselves that we too were on camera and we couldn’t just sit there in awe of this man’s performance.”

The movie captures Milk not just as a one-dimensional saint but as a multi-faceted human.

In most of the news footage from the time, Milk can come off as “a joker,” Van Sant says. But the director suggests that Milk also could be volatile, intense and not always discriminating in his choice of lovers.

“Harvey was older than most of us and had come out later in life,” said Jones. “So there was a sadness — and a gentleness — to Harvey.”

But what most of those who work with him remember best is his ability to reach people, even those who were initially hostile to the growing gay rights movement in San Francisco.

Milk had “a charisma about him” that could soften even hostile audiences, said Kronenberg. “When he smiled, you just couldn’t help smiling yourself.”

For someone like Jones, understanding the tactic of finding allies in the straight world was life-changing. “At that time of my life, I was incredibly hetero-phobic,” said Jones. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with straight people. And it was working with Harvey, watching him cross all of the boundaries, that changed me.”

And he had a keen sense of how to generate publicity for his causes, whether it was stepping in dog poop to promote a new leash law or challenging Assemblyman John Briggs, the man behind Proposition 6, to a series of debates. “Harvey was always making allusions to theater,” said Jones. “He always referred to the steps of city hall as a stage.”

Yet, it took years for the very theatrical, almost operatic, story of Harvey Milk to be made into a film. Every attempt — most involving scripts based the late San Francisco journalist Randy Shilts’ book “The Mayor of Castro Street” — failed.

Then writer Dustin Lance Black, best known for his work on HBO’s “Big Love,” began researching an original script with the help of those who knew Milk and tape recordings Milk had left behind. When he was growing up as a closeted gay teenager at Ford Ord in Monterey County, Black said, he “found Harvey Milk’s story very inspirational. But then I saw the story starting to fade and I felt it had to be revived.”

In early 2007, Van Sant (who had been involved in one previous attempt to make a Milk picture) agreed to direct Black’s script. Jinks — a friend of Black — called the writer to offer congratulations.

“I was thinking that this was a movie that was set up and on its way to being made,” said Jinks, the son of former Mercury News publisher and executive editor Larry Jinks. “There was actually no financing and — amazingly — no producer.”

The next morning, Jinks and his partner Bruce Cohen (“American Beauty”) became the producers. A few days later, Penn signed on. “In movie terms, that’s pretty fast,” said Jinks.

Now, the question is how film audiences will react to events that took place more than 30 years ago and to a character study of a man many don’t remember or only vaguely recall. Jones feels strongly that there is a universal appeal to Milk’s life and his legacy.

“Harvey Milk was, in many ways, an ordinary man,” he said. “He wasn’t a genius. He wasn’t a saint. His life was full of all of the failings and problems that all of us face.”

“But because he had courage, because he truly loved people, he changed the world.”

Contact Charlie McCollum at cmccollum@mercurynews.com, or (408) 920-5245.

Prop 8 protest San Francisco, CA

Join the Nationwide Prop 8 Protest on Nov. 15th

Join the Impact – Protest Prop 8 on November 15th!
This is a NATIONWIDE PROTEST/MOVEMENT | Fight H8 - http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/?t=anon
Event Info Type: Causes – Protest
Network: Global
Time and Place Date: Saturday, November 15, 2008
Time: 1:30pm – 4:30pm
Location: Nationwide
Street: Your City Hall – Check the Site for Locations- http://jointheimpact.com/

DescriptionTHIS IS A NATIONWIDE EVENT – ALL US STATES HAVE AT LEAST 1 PROTEST LOCATION!
http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/?t=anon for Locations
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Be part of the next Civil Rights Movement – Be part of history – Join the National Protest / March for Equality on November 15th!
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WE NEED VOLUNTEERS! Now is your chance to be a “community organizer”! Go to the website and post if you are willing to volunteer to help get out the word in your city. We need 3 or 4 dedicated volunteers in each town to contact the clubs and organizations in your area and to print/distribute flyers to get a turnout in your town.

This is not a California issue. This is an issue of equality across America. Stand up and make your voice heard. Visit the website www.jointheimpact.com.

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SATURDAY NOV 15TH -
10:30AM WEST COAST
11:30AM MOUNTIAN TIME ZONE
12:30PM CENTRAL TIME ZONE
1:30PM EAST COAST
PRINT OUT THE SIGNS – TAKE THEM TO THE PROTEST

Prop 8 Protest: A Call to the LGBTQ Community, Friends, & Family

I’m sure all would agree that with the election of Barack Obama, this week has been one of amazing wins in the world of equality! Still, Tuesday night was a bitter-sweet celebration. We came together to witness the first black man who will become our president, yet watched in sadness as Florida, Arizona, Arkansas, and California all voted down equal rights for all citizens. Pundits and bloggers alike have put their focus on Proposition 8, trying hard to find an explanation for the anti-gay wins in the face of a huge swell of support for equality elsewhere. Some have blamed the voters, others blame religious groups, and even others blame the LGBTQ community for not being able to mobilize on a larger enough scale. And you know what? There is truth in each argument.

As a community, we have to admit to the fact that we are polarized in various ways. Honestly, I’m not sure what community isn’t and I believe that our polarization is proof to our humanity – we are no different than anyone else, regardless of color, creed, or sexual orientation. Still, our polarization has hindered us from mobilizing as one strong voice. We all come together in the month of June to celebrate Gay Pride, but few of us are even aware of why Gay Pride exists. Gay Pride is a celebration to commemorate the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Many say that the Gay Rights Movement began in 1969, which means that we are still a young movement and have accomplished a great deal in such a short amount of time. The generation that fought for us in 1969 deserves our gratitude and respect. This is a generation of amazing people who fought for our ability to hold hands in the street, to speak out against hate, to dance to our own “thumpa thump”, witness television shows with a queer cast, and come together in the streets celebrating for an entire month! This is the generation that opened the doors for us to even have a conversation about gay marriage, and this is the generation that deserves our help and our voices now. On June 27th, 1969, this generation came together in protest, jumping from closets, taking to the streets, and mobilizing in ways this country had never seen before! And what happened? The country was forced to respond. The Queer identity was forced onto the front pages and coffee tables of people’s worlds and people had to once and for all accept that we are human too!

Now, almost 40 years later we NEED to come together again. We need to show this nation that we are ONE LOUD VOICE THAT DEMANDS TO BE HEARD! We need to be one organized unit. Our gay pride shouldn’t be something we celebrate one month out of the year. Our gratitude towards the ones who came before us shouldn’t be ignored and wasted away with one party after another. We beg to be given a right that requires responsibility and commitment, yet we, as one strong community, have not proven to this nation that we deserve to be taken seriously! The gay pride parade has become a great party, but it has lost the memory of Stonewall and therefor given the nation another reason to cast us aside as irresponsible. It’s time we come together for debate, for public recognition, and for LOVE! Let’s move as one full unit, on the same day, at the same hour, and let’s show the United States of America that we too are UNITED CITIZENS EQUAL IN MIND, BODY, SPIRIT AND DESERVING OF FULL EQUALITY UNDER THE LAW!

On the steps of your City Hall on November 15th at 10:30am PST / 1:30pm EST, our community WILL take to the streets and speak out against Proposition 8 and all of the other pro-equality losses that we have faced in our lifetimes, in our parents’ lifetimes, and for many generations before us. WE CAN’T DO THIS ALONE! WE NEED YOUR HELP! We need organizers in every major city to work with us and get out the protest! I know you’re all tired from all of the work you’ve done for this great election year, but I’m asking for one more push! Let the country hear our voices together. Let them see that we are a strong, adamant, and powerful community that deserves equal rights, and CAN’T BE DEFEATED!

Send this post to everyone! We have one week and must react to the pro-hate votes cast against us! Let’s help our LGBTQ friends, families, neighbors, and each other to IMPACT this country with a demand for our basic human rights! Join the cause, join the voice, and JOIN THE IMPACT!
November 15th
1:30 PM East Coast
10:30 AM West Coast

Click here to Join the protest on Nov. 15

Ex-Minn. legislator Allan Spear, gay pioneer, dies

By ELIZABETH DUNBAR – 23 hours ago

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Allan H. Spear, a former Minnesota state senator who was one of the nation’s first openly gay legislators, has died. He was 71.

He died Saturday of complications after heart surgery performed Thursday, said Don Jorovsky, a longtime friend who used to work for Spear.

Spear, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party — Minnesota’s version of the Democratic Party — was first elected in 1972 and was state Senate president from 1993 to 2000, when he retired. He was the first non-attorney to lead the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Spear announced he was gay in a 1974 interview with the Minneapolis Star, becoming one of only two openly gay legislators in the country. Spear started working that decade to amend Minnesota’s Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. The legislation passed in 1993.

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Meet Deb Mell – running to be Illinois’ first lesbian legislator

By Tomas Guerra, Special to 365gay.com
09.03.2008 2:24pm EDT

Deborah Mell was expecting a peaceful event when she joined hundreds of demonstrators in downtown Chicago for a pro-gay marriage rally in March 2004.
 
Instead, things got rowdy, and Mell was arrested. A female police officer said Mell attacked her, and Mell was taken away in a paddy wagon.
 
Within 15 minutes her father, Richard Mell, a powerful Chicago alderman, came to her rescue—and soon found himself addressing some 300 polarized protesters on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate.
 
“I love my daughter Deb,” the alderman told the incensed crowd. “She believes fervently in a cause, and she stands for that cause—and I will support anybody who does that.”
 
Deb Mell was launched that day—and in November she is set to become the first open lesbian to serve in the Illinois general assembly.
 
A judge later found Mell not guilty on the charges of assaulting a police officer. The officer had claimed that Mell  had gone into the street to attack her, but a videotape and witnesses proved her wrong.
 
“That woman was lying through her teeth,” Mell said. “I can’t believe that a police officer would do that under oath. I had just gone onto the street with my sign and then they grabbed me, and then they fell on top of me.”
 
In the end, though, getting arrested was one of the best things that happened to Mell, because it prompted her to become more of an activist. That same year, she won the NOW Chicago chapter’s award for activist of the year.  She also received the Howard Brown Cornerstone Award for community excellence.
 
And this year, Mell’s candidacy earned the endorsement of the Victory Fund, whose research shows that gay candidates need twice the amount of financial resources of their straight counterparts to win office. 
 
“When someone breaks a barrier, it takes more to let folks know, and more money is needed to prepare for attacks,” said Tressa Feher, the Victory Fund’s leadership network director. “Mell will definitely bring another chair to the leadership table.”
 
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Odd couple: Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan

Odd couple: Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan

At 19, Rachel Maddow shared a house with friends in Philadelphia and wasn’t paying much attention to the 1992 Republican National Convention on television until Pat Buchanan took to the podium.

She was transfixed. Buchanan’s combative conservative speech, which denounced gay rights, was a milestone for people on two sides of a political divide. Either a call to arms or intolerant, depending on your point of view, it couldn’t be ignored.

“Pat’s culture war speech at the Republican convention hit me right between the eyes,” said Maddow, MSNBC’s new star and a lesbian. “He was, without euphemism, declaring that my own country was at war with me. I get it intellectually and strategically now, but at 19, I only got it emotionally.”

So there’s a certain irony that Maddow and Buchanan have a prime-time date many nights now on television.

“It’s Pat” is a semi-regular feature on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” a program that has surprised even the people who put it on with its success after only a month on the air.

Maddow is a regular on the liberal “Air America” radio network and had appeared frequently on MSNBC, particular on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown.” She was given the 9 p.m. EST slot when network executives judged Dan Abrams’ show a failure.

Its second week on the air, Maddow’s audience was bigger than CNN’s “Larry King Live.” King won the third week and the two are settling into what promises to be a competitive battle behind Fox News Channel’s dominant “Hannity & Colmes.” During the week of Sept. 22, Fox’s show averaged 3.2 million, CNN had 2.1 million and Maddow was at 1.7 million.

She has more than doubled the audience that MSNBC had been getting in the time slot, according to Nielsen Media Research, and is keeping much of the audience that watches Olbermann.

Naysayers told MSNBC chief executive Phil Griffin that Maddow would be too much like Olbermann, and there was a risk in turning his prime-time lineup completely over to one political point of view.

Instead, Maddow is something of a happy warrior compared to Olbermann’s increasingly dark prince. The Rhodes Scholar can lap almost anyone intellectually without making you hate her for doing it.

“She’s likeable,” Griffin said. “She smiles, she has fun. She’s interesting.”

If Olbermann’s show has a drumbeat that drives it, Maddow’s “got a little bit of a symphony,” he said.

She also doesn’t back down from a fight. Olbermann’s “Countdown” is well-written and meticulous, but he relies on guests who rarely disagree with him.

Maddow frequently brings on guests to argue with her, none more so than Buchanan.

He can exasperate her, and vice versa. To date, it hasn’t become nasty.

To a certain extent, Maddow credits Buchanan with giving her television career a push. A few years ago when Buchanan hosted a show at MSNBC, he remembered her and sought her out for work.

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Gay candidates expect victory Nov. 4

In his liberal Colorado district, it’s no big deal that Jared Polis is gay. Yet his expected victory Nov. 4 in a congressional race would be a historic milestone and, he hopes, send an encouraging message to gay and lesbian young people nationwide.

Polis, a 33-year-old entrepreneur who made millions creating Internet-based businesses, is the Democratic nominee and overwhelming favorite in the 2nd District encompassing his hometown of Boulder.

If he wins, he would be the first openly gay man to win a seat in Congress as a nonincumbent. There have been at least five other gays and lesbians in Congress, including currently serving Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., but only Baldwin was open about her sexuality when first elected.

“Sexual orientation has been a non-issue in our district. . . . . If any of my opponents tried to raise it, it would backfire,” Polis said in a telephone interview.

“Outside the district, it has taken on a larger significance,” he added. “Young gays and lesbians who might want to run for office look to examples and role models.”

Polis is one of a record 100 gay, lesbian and bisexual candidates for federal, state and local offices winning endorsements this year from the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a national group founded in 1991 to increase the number of openly gay elected officials. The number has risen — steadily but slowly — to more than 420 out of the nation’s roughly 500,000 elected officials.

“We don’t have to accept sitting on the sidelines and hoping others will do the heavy lifting,” said the Victory Fund’s president, Chuck Wolfe. “We can roll up our sleeves and do it ourselves.”

While Polis, Frank and Baldwin are all heavy favorites, another congressional candidate endorsed by the Victory Fund, Democrat Linda Ketner, is an underdog in her race in South Carolina’s 1st District, which includes Charleston and other coastal communities.

Ketner, 58, whose father founded the Food Lion grocery store chain, has been a major financial supporter and organizer of several gay-rights campaigns, including a failed attempt to defeat a ban-gay-marriage ballot measure in 2006.

However, neither Ketner nor her opponent, four-term Republican incumbent Henry Brown, has raised her sexual orientation as an election issue, and Ketner’s campaign has turned down requests for interviews that would highlight the topic.

“She happens to be gay, she’s not a gay candidate,” said Tony Snell of the South Carolina Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement.

“Throughout the South, there’s softening on the gay issue,” he said. “It’s becoming more of a non-issue as we look at the economy, we look at the war. … People are going to go beyond their old biases.”

Among other noteworthy races:

In Oregon, state Sen. Kate Brown, who describes herself as bisexual, is the Democratic candidate for secretary of state. That’s the No. 2 job in Oregon, which has no lieutenant governor.

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