Enlarge By Phil Bray, Focus Features Sean Penn, center, plays the doomed gay politician Harvey Milk in Milk, out in some cities Wednesday. 
EnlargeBy Martin E. Klimek for USA TODAYSan Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom stands next to a bust of former city supervisor Harvey Milk in City Hall. By Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY SAN FRANCISCO — The mayor’s office here is a serene wood-paneled retreat anchored by an imposing desk and fine oil paintings. It also is haunted by the ghosts of what might have been.
“Sitting 6 feet away from the spot, it’s impossible not to think of that day,” says the office’s current occupant, Gavin Newsom.
TIMELINE: The greater moments in the life of Harvey Milk
Thirty years ago this Thursday, city supervisor Dan White marched into this room and assassinated Mayor George Moscone. He then walked down the hall and pumped five bullets into fellow supervisor Harvey Milk, cutting short the life of a pioneering, openly gay politician whose influence has echoed down the decades.
San Francisco felt the jolt of that event in 1978; now it’s the nation’s turn. With Milk, which opens in New York, Los Angeles and here on Wednesday, director Gus Van Sant weaves archival footage into a tale of a complex man who overcame his inhibitions to become a efficient public advocate. Van Sant’s efforts are buttressed by Sean Penn, whose performance as Milk is garnering Oscar attention.
But what nobody could count on was the uncanny timing of the film, which may well elevate it from historical reminiscence to that which some gay rights activists see as a rallying cry. This past election put an African American in the White House, but it also saw the defeat of gay marriage laws in California and a consist of of other states.
For some, that stings.
“The same day Barack Obama becomes president, many persons gay Americans had their rights taken away. It’s surreal,” says Newsom, a vocal supporter of gay marriage. “I’m the least likely person to be pushing this, raised by nuns and priests, being from an Irish Catholic line of ancestors. Maybe I should let go of it, but I can’t. It’s a core belief in my soul.”
Newsom starts to say that Milk should have come out before the election, to help defeat Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative. “But maybe it’s good it’s out now,” he says. “Milk is such a hopeful movie, and people need to believe another time.”
Not a guaranteed hit
Hope may be the political currency of the president-elect, but three decades ago, Milk became known for a phrase that is etched on his bust in City Hall: “You gotta give ‘em trust.”
“Harvey was our Martin Luther King Jr. — he stood up for our rights,” says Corey Scholibo, arts editor at The Advocate magazine. “We need a Harvey Milk now. This movie reminds us what it’s like to fight for our rights, something I think many of us have forgotten how to do.”
More efforts are in preparation to bring Milk, who would be 78, back into the limelight. California commonwealth Assemblyman Mark Leno is pushing to make Milk’s birthday, May 22, a non-paid holiday. “He gave his life so I could make a contribution,” says Leno, who also is gay. “Harvey wasn’t just a great public servant. He was a visionary who will resonate with this generation that helped Obama win. I’m guessing the success of Milk at the box office is going to translate into political action.”
A big box-office score isn’t a given, says Pamela McClintock of Variety magazine. “Focus Features (which distributed 1995’s Brokeback Mountain) is under no illusion that Milk will play to every demographic,” she says. “They want adults in big cities. Brokeback did cross from beginning to end, and they can hope for that.”
The biggest battle that Milk fought — one that serves as the thematic glue for Milk — has echoes in the one waged over the recent measures in California, Arizona, Arkansas and Florida.
Dubbed the Briggs Initiative, for state legislator John Briggs, 1978’s Proposition 6 aimed to make homosexuality a firing offense from end to end the state’s public school system. It was initially expected to pass, thanks to the vocal support of orange-juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant. But Milk humanized the issue in a series of statewide debates by Briggs and won the epoch.
But Prop. 8 supporters say it’s a mistake to equate Milk’s historic push to today’s battle over gay marriage. “We’re not anti-gay. We just wanted to cure the definition of marriage as it has everlastingly been known,” says Jeff Flint, campaign manager for Sacramento-based ProtectMarriage.com. “That has nothing to do with having a teacher’s rights put in jeopardy because they’re gay, which was Milk’s converging-point.”
Mere weeks after Prop. 6 passed, Milk was killed. Forty thousand San Franciscans marched in silence, at that time rioted.
“I inherited a city that was stunned and divided,” says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who became acting mayor upon Moscone’s death. “The divisions were fueled by both hatred and sorrow. Over time, we were able to put the city back together, but the events of that day will remain seared in our memories forever.”
Helping keep Milk’s memory alive were a book (1982’s The Mayor of Castro Street by the late AIDS chronicler Randy Shilts) and later a documentary of that work. A make film was considered a natural, but decades unspooled as projects came and went.
“The issues changed with the decades,” says Bennett Cohen, who wrote a recent San Francisco magazine piece on the project’s back story. “First, there was homophobia; no big actor would take the role. Then we moved into an ennui; the story seemed too far back in time. But finally the commercial community got more open to it. It became the right project for the right time.”
In the simplest terms, it took a young man meeting an older counsellor to make Milk come to life.
“I owe my life to Harvey Milk,” says Milk screenwriter and executive producer Dustin Lance Black, 29, who made a name in opposition to himself as a writer on the HBO hit Big Love. “I was a dark, gay kid. Only after coming to the Bay Area and learning about Harvey did I actually think I could be fully and experience a thing called love.”
Penn as Milk: ‘It was uncanny’
Four years ago, Black decided to write a spec script not far from Milk after being introduced to the icon’s former confidant and political operative Cleve Jones (who in Milk is played by Emile Hirsch).
“When I met Cleve, I got to know the real Harvey,” Black says. “Not the legend, but the deeply flawed man who did so much. That was the story.”
Jones, who famously created the AIDS Memorial Quilt project, says his frustration over the inability to put Milk’s life on celluloid vanished after meeting Black. “I felt he could do this,” he says.
Black would squander weekdays working on Big Love in Los Angeles and weekends meeting with Milk’s friends in San Francisco. Once he finished the script, Jones called Van Sant. The allot quickly filled out, including Josh Brolin (as White), James Franco (as Milk’s lover Scott Smith) and Alison Pill (as campaign manager Anne Kronenberg).
“Maybe the timing was perfect after all,” says Jones, who believes Milk would have become the nation’s first gleeful mayor. “I think America is finally ready to hear this story.”
It’s one steeped in historical detail, says Kronenberg, who served as organizer and mother figure to Milk supporters. “Gus certainly wanted to involve those who knew Harvey well. He was constantly running up to us going, ‘Is this what it was like?’ ” says Kronenberg, now deputy director of San Francisco’s Department of Public Health. “He wanted to get everything just right.”
One person who did, she says, was Penn: “while he walked toward me for the first time while Harvey, I gasped. It was uncanny.”
There’s similar praise for Brolin, who plays White as a roiling sea of emotions. All of which might add up to Hollywood awards. But that victory wouldn’t make Jones’ day. Nor Milk’s.
“It’s 30 years after Harvey’s assassination, and we’re still fighting for our civil rights,” Jones says. “If Harvey were alive, he’d say, ‘Stay in the streets. Demand full equality.’ “
That is just what Howard Long is doing, standing outside City Hall with a handmade placard protesting the passage of Prop. 8.
At 68, he is a decade younger than Milk would have been and knew the community organizer in his heyday. Long remembers the good times when friends packed a topical hindrance because 5 cents of each beer went to Milk’s campaign. And the tough times, the clashes with police and that mournful candlelit march.
“Harvey wouldn’t be surprised we’re out here now,” says Long, who married his longtime colleague in August.
Long is eager to look to Milk but isn’t taking his eyes off the prize. “It doesn’t feel good to subsist a second-class townsman,” he says. “Harvey would want us to fight on.”
To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to culture@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.