MILK IT

Well, I saw "Milk" the other night. Directed by Gus Van Sant. His movies always sound good but never are. I've been duped for 20 years now. I used to see a lot of movies, so that's how I stumbled onto his first one, "Mala Noche," which I don't remember except I hated it and remembered the name Gus van Sant, like, I will never see another movie by this guy again. But like an idiot, I went to see "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho" and even Nicole Kidman's stuck under an ice pond, "no one's anything unless they're on tv," what the hell was that called? Oh yeah, "To Die For."

The best thing he's done is the scene-for-scene remake of "Psycho." Although how did he fit Viggo Mortgensen's ass in there? Wait, it's better than Hitchcock!

"Elephant" was okay, I guess. It was Columbine if the shooters were gay. See? Just be gay and all violence will cease. Or, the opposite? Well, let's just say the question's more important that the answer.

"Milk," I'm sure you've heard, has Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected to high office, as supervisor in we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore San Francisco of the 70's. He and the Mayor, George Moscone, were shot down by Dan White, a disgruntled fellow supervisor who felt both Harvey and Moscone were thwarting his career. The movie focuses on Milk's rise from closeted office worker in New York to gay activist organizer in San Francisco-- specifially, his successful attempt to defeat proposition 6, which would have banned all gays from teaching in California schools, on the premise that gays, since they can't have children, need a source for "recruitment."

The defeat of Prop 6 was his shining achievement, but he started small and grass roots, getting a liaison with the police to stop them from raiding gay bars in the Castro district gayborhood of San Francisco. Hard to imagine that in 1975 in the gayest neighbourhood in the gayest city in the world, cops would just charge into bars and start beating people up. Jesus Christ, to think, just 7 years later, I was basically going to my suburban high school with a teasing comb in one back pocket and a black eyeliner in the other. For all you straights, that's code, but I won't say for what.

Maybe that's why I found the movie so, um, moving. I mean, Jesus Christ, I wanted to be there in 1975, getting pummeled by billysticks and shoved and groped by hot beefy cops. I'll do anything for the cause.

But it was only after the lights came up and I had surreptitiously wiped the tears from my eyes that I realized the movie was bad and flat and manipulative. I mean, anyone who's seen the great documentary "The Times of Harvey Milk" knows it's a fucking great story. It's hard to not make it affecting. But the whole damnd "Milk" movie is peppered with such clichés. The gay teenagaer in a wheelchair who happens to call and inspire Harvey at his lowest. The scene at the end after Harvey's death-- oh, hope I'm not giving anything away-- with Harvey's two friends at a deserted City Hall asking, "doesn't anyone care?" "Oh, I hear something's going on in the Castro," says the other. Cue procession of lighted candles-- oh, they do care!

Or the scene with James Franco, as his boyfriend, Scott, slamming dinner down on the table and shouting he doesn't want Harvey to talk about the campaign or politics or anything-- and Harvey says, "can I just say this is delicious?" Oh, cue relieved laughter and hugs and reconciliation! That scene, by the way, is the only suggestion there's any tension between the two, so it comes as a surprise when Scott walks out of Harvey's life.

Scott is the only character with any actual personal relationship with Milk, so why couldn't they make it more, you know, personal? Scott just seems to be there most of the time, hanging around. Perhaps they were trying to keep it historically accurate, but if they can invent a kid in a wheelchair, why couldn't they accentuate the relationship with Scott?

The biggest letdown, of course, was the big kiss between Sean Penn and James Franco. The way Franco's been talking about it on talk shows, you'd think there was a Busby Berkely routine with whips and midgets and and a fucking singing Boy Scout jamboree-- well, maybe that's what he saw, but all I saw was a kiss, like 30 seconds? If you're suggesting there's a goddam marathon of kissing going on I want to see faces going blue from lack of oxygen and muscular collapse and lacerated tongues and James Franco's face with brillo tracks-- that was one mangy beard Sean Penn was wearing.