Milk - Directed by Gus Van Sant - Starring Sean Penn

I went to see MILK yesterday. My good friend Nick called me and said he’d be here in 10 min., and yes he knew I’m ALWAYS busy, but that I should get off my butt and away from the computer (and my cameras) to go see the movie that we’ve both said we wanted to see since we first heard about it.

It’s showing at our truly magnificent MAYAN THEATER here in Denver on South Broadway. I think it’s by far the nicest movie theater in the city, primarily because of its fabulous Mayan Art Deco design. It just pees. It’s terribly appropriate to have MILK showing there.

We went to a late afternoon showing, so there were only about 20 other people in the theater with us. They were mostly old straight people. There was a group of about 4 Lesbians, but he and I were certainly the only gay men in the place. This was fine with me because I hate crying in a full theater, and I knew there would be tears in this movie.

But, I wasn’t prepared to start crying within the first 20 seconds of the movie. The film shown during the opening credits are newsreels from the 50’s and 60’s of gay men being dragged out of gay bars and being arrested. Honestly, I’ve never seen this before. I knew it happened, and I suppose I’ve seen snippets here and there. But to have them all strung together and used as an introduction to this move was moving to me beyond words.

I can go on about how great the film is, and how it shows so much of the truth of a great man. I could say that it’s funny, and sorrowful, and inspiring, and tragic. I could say that the honesty of the characters is compelling, and the brutality of the times sobering. I could say that I enjoyed the love story much more than Brokeback Mountain. If I had one criticism it would be that there is only one Lesbian character, and the crucial role of women in these movements aren’t show as much as I’d like.

But, what I want to convey to everyone is what the essence of what this film left me with. It left me with something that I think Harvey Milk would be very proud of.

Watching this film makes me remember November of 1978. I had just turned 19 y/o. I was gay and I was poor and I was hustling and I was having so much fun and wanted so much to understand who I was and where I might go in life. Although I had nothing and was practically living on the streets, I saw all these wonderful, dynamic, charming, creative, NICE gay men all around me. I’d moved to Capitol Hill in Denver and had finally gotten over the horror and shame of being a 15 y/o gay boy getting beat up all the time in High School. I was finally beginning to think that I wasn’t something terrible, that actually I was something special and that I might be able to make something out of myself using my uniqueness. I certainly saw others doing it – for the first time in my life – and I even say a gay man elected to public office in San Francisco. That made me feel very good about myself.

And then he was shot. In his office while being a gay man working in public office.

I was devastated. It took me a long time to get over it, and in many ways I never really did. I always had this black feeling whenever I thought of “the first gay man to be elected to public office”. I always had this feeling of dread.

But now, because of this film - after living those memories again and seeing those times revealed anew – I now have a feeling of hope. Harvey left us that, and this film brought it home for me. Men aren’t being dragged out of gay bars and arrested anymore. There isn’t the really disgusting level of vitriol thrown against us the way it was then (although, of course, it’s still bad). The police aren’t our enemy the way the once were. Things are getting better because of the gay rights movement.

Harvey said it, and Harvey did it.

“You’ve gotta give them HOPE!”

Thank you to everyone involved in this film.