Gay film?

[icarus]

Am I the only person who didn't know that Sean Penn has a gay drama coming out (oops, pun) next Tuesday?

The movie is called "Milk," has a gay romance at its core, and is about a famous gay politician, Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1978.

I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to it.


ETA: How did I end up with two identical posts? LJ... what are you doing? *funny sideways look*

Comments

[jackoweskla.livejournal.com]

I knew about it because Stephen Colbert brought it up (he thinks setting it in San Francisco makes it a little gay), but if he hadn't mentioned it I wouldn't have had a clue.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Setting it in San Francisco makes it gay? How about the gay sex scene they have early on.

Okay. That alone has me in line at the movie theatre.

[jackoweskla.livejournal.com]

But that's not in the preview. The preview makes it look like a great display of social activism for... something.

[roaringmice.livejournal.com]

It is about social activism, for gay rights.

[jackoweskla.livejournal.com]

I know that, that's the something I was implying. It's just that the preview is very ambiguous when you see it -- if you didn't know who Milk was, you'd have no idea.

[bruinsfan.livejournal.com]

Is it wrong of me to gleefully imagine thousands of conservatives unknowingly going to see it on opening weekend because of Penn's two-fisted scrapper image, and getting the surprise of their lives when the man-on-man lovin' starts?

[whimseywisp.livejournal.com]

I knew ;).

I'm very, very excited.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Way ahead of the rest of us. *bounces* I think this is going to be good.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Saw a preview for it at W., and it looks really good. I also saw it mentioned somewhere else, but that was the first preview. I don't know whether I want to find out more about Milk before I go - I know nothing about the dude - or if I want to be surprised, but I guess, given the level of accuracy of most films, I should learn more now.

Also, seventies haircuts in period movies always crack me up.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen W. yet. I dunno. I read the reviews and it didn't grab me. I thought it was a bit soon to be doing a movie about Bush.

I'm going to go in blissfully ignorant, so I don't spend the movie wincing at the factual inaccuracies.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Oh, W.'s a terrible movie. I mean, the acting is good, and I really liked the way whatshisface played 41, but it's a total mule of a movie. It shows us things that we know are already true - Bush's drinking, for ex - without saying how we got there, so it's not good as a documentary, though Stone keeps wanting to make big-budget documentaries (if that even makes sense) and everything else is pretty much not a surprise. It would only be a surprise if you hadn't been paying attention for the last eight years; watching the Cabinet interact is fine, and, again, well-acted, but ultimately, pointless. The movie doesn't say enough to the viewers to be a documentary, and doesn't fictionalise enough to be a movie. It doesn't draw enough conclusions to be worth seeing (Thandie Newton keeps looking at 43 exactly like Rice does, and it LOOKS, as it does in reality, like someone infatuated with someone else, but we don't get that conclusion because Stone is not evaluating, he's showing.)

So. Well-acted, ultimately pointless. I know what you mean about factual inaccuracies, but I'd rather not have this be Michael Collins redux, where I took that as gospel (I was young, okay? *g*) and later found out that actually it pretty much wasn't that way at all.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Oh, Harvey Milk was an AMAZING person, and Sean Penn's portrayal is said to be spot-on accurate by those who knew Milk in life.

Try Randy Shilts' The Mayor of Castro Street, his biography.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

I'll check it out! Thanks for the rec!

[kestrel127.livejournal.com]

I'm from San Francisco-ish and therefore really excited. I was about to give some details about the guy except that then I realized that might be considered spoilers... can you have spoilers for a biopic?

[jackoweskla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know about him from all of the schools named for him, but... is that a spoiler?

[whatifisaidno.livejournal.com]

I saw the trailer at Burn After Reading. I'm so excited.

Spoilers for history?

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

*bouncebounce* I heard about the movie on Colbert, and ptyx sent me a link to a Reuters article about the (lack of) movie publicity.

Sean Penn's supposed to be fantastic in this. I am SO looking forward to seeing it. I remember Harvey Milk's assassination, which also killed then-San Francisco mayor George Moscone, and the subsequent White Night riots. I didn't, at the time, appreciate Milk's importance to the San Francisco gay community, or realize what an amazing (yes) community leader he was, in the very best sense of the term. He did so much for everyone in his constituency.

[sarcastic-irony.livejournal.com]

Didn't know and am wildly interested. Harvey Milk has always been an interesting bit of gay history for me in particular.

[sarcastic-irony.livejournal.com]

Oooh, you didn't say it was Gus Van Saint...."Elephant" is without doubt the worst movie I've ever seen. Am ever so much more wary now. Optimistic, but wary.

[byandby.livejournal.com]

I did know. Emile Hirsch is in it. I can't wait.

[roaringmice.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the documentary "The Times of Harvey Milk?" That's amazing.

I saw the previews for the Penn film, and that also looks great.