Milk

[ellen_datlow]

Today I saw Milk and it's a terrific depiction of the rise and assassination of the first openly gay man elected to office in the US. I saw the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk when it came out and it was very good (and deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Documentary) but this dramatization, incidentally based on the documentary, brings several new things to the story.

Sean Penn's brilliant acting makes Harvey Milk larger than life -which in the movie he is and should be--he's the embodiment of a major civil rights movement that has been building momentum since Stonewall and through the AIDS epidemic. The movie also brings to life Dan White, the man who murdered him and SF mayor George Moscone. Josh Brolin is excellent and terribly believable in the role of a man too tightly wound not to snap. (Brolin did a great job in W too).

Alison Pill was unrecognizable (to me) as Anne Kronenberg, the woman brought in to manage Milk's campaign. I'd seen her on Broadway in The Lieutenant of Innishmore by Martin McDonagh and Mauritius by Theresa Rebeck, and didn't realize it was the same actor (possibly because of the curly hair).

James Franco was also wonderful.

Weirdly, but he and Brolin were in the movie I watched last weekend, In the Valley of Elah--I didn't recognize Franco at all (just noodled around the web to find a still of him in the movie--and had no idea! Franco is cuuuuute and sometimes resembles my two cousins...

Penn's going to win the Oscar for Best Actor....bet on it.

Comments

[colubra.livejournal.com]

Since you're the first person I've heard talk about seeing this who doesn't live in my area, I have to ask: did people burst into hissing and boos when the archival footage of Anita Bryant was on the screen, like they did here?

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Nope. There was not a sound from the audience throughout the whole movie. I saw it in Chelsea, which does have a large gay population but this particular audience didn't seem overly gay.

I suspect that a lot of gays went to see it as soon as it opened. I have no idea what the reaction of those audiences were.

[colubra.livejournal.com]

Probably a lot like two weeks after, out here- it was really weird being in a huge theatre (1200 or so) and having a whole room full of people who laughed at the same parts, cried at the same parts, & so on. I wondered if it would be the same outside of seeing it at the Castro- now I know. Thank you!

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, I just wasn't aware of how people around me reacted--which means I was utterly absorbed in the movie.

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

I heard murmurs (about 30 miles south of SF and a week after opening in SF).

Many of us who'd grown up outside the bay area hadn't really realized how many things were chronologically on top of each other.

What wasn't mentioned really at all was how soon this came after the assassination of Leo J. Ryan, but then they'd have had to put in the whole People's Temple and their involvement in the SF board of supervisors.

[colubra.livejournal.com]

I grew up in the area: Milk was the story I was sheltered from as long as my folks could (the rioting finally required explanation).
The people's temple stuff was what really had me scared.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

What was painful to me was the realization that AIDS epidemic was just looming outside this period of gay political awakening and pride. And how it would begin decimating the gay community only a few years after the Milk was killed.

[colubra.livejournal.com]

Yeah. As a kid growing up in the SF area, really, it felt like '76-85 was- to wax Evangelical for a moment- the End Days.

Didn't do much good for the typical teenager's desire to do stupid things, let me tell you! ;)

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Which may have been a good thing :-)

[colubra.livejournal.com]

I'll call it a bad thing for a 15-year-old to be able to think to himself 'what does it matter if I _______, the odds of me seeing 25 seem to be so demonstrably slender it's absurd'. I could've saved myself a lot of badness!

On reflection though- I made it through, and have very colorful stories, so you may well be right. And if I actually made you grin, good! Call it another small payment on the balance of all the joy you've brought me as an editor.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

You're very lucky.

Why thank you!

[colubra.livejournal.com]

I think the appropriate answer is 'no, thank you!'. You introduced me to the joys of the SF short story @ Omni, you showed me a bunch of authors I treasure in YBF&H: really, you've had a terrifically strong influence on my reading (and writing). So, really, thank you.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Now that's gratifying. I've always wanted to corrupt young minds :-)

[colubra.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad to be corrupted by you rather than by Rush Limbaugh, then.

And yes, I did mention Rush Limbaugh in a vain attempt to influence someone to link to this blog.

Rest assured, I will fight on your side.

Big Time!

[themadblonde]

My husband & I went to see it opening weekend, w/ (what I have to assume was) a mixed audience, men, women, & other "mixed" couples, not just guys, & there was quite a reaction when Ms. B's footage came up. Ditto the crowd scene when whassisname was defending Prop 8. My husband later went to see it w/ a group of Bears & mentioned that the reactions, while there, were not particularly stronger than that first audience. Still, both were @ a local "art" cinema, so the audience was more likely to be liberal & informed about the history than the ones who are now (I hope) watching it as it appears @ the local Cineplexes. It's been out for over a month here, which is a good sign to me, though we do have one of the most active GLBT communities in the midwest (we actually have a larger Pride celebration than Chicago, which is a much larger city).

Re: Big Time!

[colubra.livejournal.com]

It was definitely a mixed crowd where I saw it, too: mostly local folks, and from what I could tell, mostly old enough they were likely to have been around for the chain of events that were depicted. Also, yes, an arthouse cinema (where they premiered the film, in fact).

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

There's some really top quality films out at the moment. Milk hasn't made Aussie cinemas yet (though it should be out before Oscar mania hits). But I'm really looking forward to Milk.

And Frost / Nixon, which I saw yesterday, is also great.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Yes yes yes. I need to catch up and see:
Frost/Nixon which I loved as a play
Revolution Road--although it sounds really depressing
I've Loved You So Long
Slumdog Millionaire
Cadillac Records
The Wrestler

and don't know if I'll get to see them in theaters before they disappear.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

and
Rachel Getting Married

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

I've seen Slumdog, which is also fantastic.

I haven't heard of Cadillac Record, but all the others are must sees. And I haven't seen Benjamin Button yet either. I'd probably also add The Changeling to that list as well.

And I'm really looking forward to seeing Anne Hathaway's performance in Rachel's Getting Married.

The films of the last month or so have been and look so good that I'm starting to get 1999 flashbacks.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Cadillac Records chronicles the rise of Chess records and supposedly has an excellent performance by Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters.
I've seen The Changeling, which I've blogged about (so-so but worth seeing, I guess). I will probably eventually see Benjamin Button but many others are in front of it.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

Benjamin Button is a strange.

I both loved and hated it. I loved the movie that Fincher made -- with a giant heaping side order of reservations and caveats -- and hated what the script was trying to do. To me, there seems to be a real and pervasive tension between what Fincher was given to work from and the movie he made with it.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting. Who wrote the script?

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

Eric Roth and Robin Swicord. Roth was responsible for Forest Gump, which I at least rant about less now that I've seen Saving Private Ryan and Signs.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I avoided Forest Gump for years because of its reputation. Then I rented it a year or two ago and quite liked it. Not loved, but I thought it was much better than I'd expected.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

I saw Gump in the middle of its cultural zeitgeist and it rubbed me very seriously the wrong way. I came away from the theater sort of liking it but within a couple of days, after I'd started to digest the way all the pieces fit together it all started to feel terribly anti-intellectual.

Outside its zeitgeist, I suspect it's a different movie.

This makes me doubly interested in what you think of Benjamin Button when you get around to seeing it. It's got all the most objectively annoying tics that Gump had (no dramatic moment passes without being given a fortune-cookie slogan), but the feel is subtly different.

Thank goodness!

[themadblonde]

I was beginning to think my husband, mother, & I were the only ones who really didn't like it. It just seemed so, so CAPITALIST in its sentiments- "see, this guy is simple, but he works REALLY hard & never complains so he is famous & rich." The misogynistic angle was pretty harsh too.

Re: Thank goodness!

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Karen, in fact your views were the most popular I've heard in the backlash against it.
I don't see it that way at all. To me, it's more a comment on the zeitgeist of the time with a simple minded person's pov. He's a Zelig rather than a real person. I didn't find it particularly misogynistic either.

Interesting

[themadblonde]

I heard almost nothing but praise for it as a "feel good" movie out here in the midwest. Sort of like Wall-E. Also funny that I subconsciously associated "Benjamin Button" with "that kind" of movie (& therefore had no interest in seeing it) long before I knew it shared screenwriters.

Re: Interesting

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

That's when it first came out and was why I didn't go see it.
However, within 2-3 years aftewards it seemed to have picked up an enormous backlash.
And watching it last year, it sure wasn't a "feelgood" movie. I think viewers just didn't get it at all if that's what they thought.

[mallory-blog.livejournal.com]

I totally agree - Penn gets better as he ages, more real in some way.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

He was always amazing. I remember seeing him as the stoned slacker Spicoli in Taps and then in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Bad Boys in succession. I didn't realize he was the same actor at first.

I hope he does...

[themadblonde]

it's the performance of a lifetime & will encourage more people to see the film.

Remarkably, a lot of people have never heard of Harvey. I made it to college & past before Bear told me about him, but then he (Bear) is a CA boy & a little older, so he was more in the loop.

The movie is still playing around here, over a month after it opened, AND not just in the "art" theatres, so I also consider that a good sign. It would be nice if the "mainstream" was a little more up on our heroes & history. Now we just need to find a nice, historic Bi role model about whom to do a major film release & we'll really be cooking w/ gas. ;-)