Harvey Milk, before his assassination, stated, “If I’m killed, let that bullet destroy every closet door”. Gus Van Sant’s new film, “Milk”, shows us the tragedy of Milk’s death and the triumph of his visibility as the USA’s first openly gay and highly visible elected politician in San Francisco.
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected official in San Francisco’s history, elected as a Supervisor in 1977(similar to being on a city’s governing Council, except San Francisco is a City and County). He was assassinated in 1978 by another Supervisor, Dan White, in a shocking and brazen murder, at the same time that the then Mayor San Francisco, George Moscone, who was known as an openly liberal and gay-affirming leader. Gus van Sant, the brilliant film director, spent much of 2008 filming his new biopic, Milk, in San Francisco.
I ran into a longtime acquaintance, Cleve Jones, on Tuesday, 18 March 2008, in the Castro. He recounted a wee bit of his experience participating in Gus Van Sant’s filming of Milk. Cleve observed how powerful the entire experience has been and spoke of crying at the end of the project, as it came to [...]
