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February 11, 2009

STEPHANIE SALTER: The life and times and city of a consciousness-raiser

By Stephanie Salter

TERRE HAUTE — A good friend in San Francisco told me not to bother seeing “Milk” because it is melodramatic, overly romanticized and not half as good as the 1984 documentary, ‘The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.”

Transplanted back to Terre Haute from San Francisco for more than four years now, I decided to ignore my friend’s usually good advice.

The view from here is different, and the need to connect to a specific time and place in which I lived was stronger than aesthetic sensibilities.

I’m glad I went my own way.

True, Gus Van Sant’s account of the first openly gay person elected to a major office in the United States is not as good as the documentary. But 30 years after Milk’s assassination, it tells a story that is rich and important enough to be interpreted, Hollywood-style, for new generations in all corners of the country.

(Unfortunately, despite eight Oscar nominations, the movie’s short run here at Honey Creek West is over.)

“Milk” reminds me of the 1993 Jonathan Demme film, “Philadelphia.” Both are based on real people and star heterosexual actors (Sean Penn and Tom Hanks) as homosexual men. Both make much of opera and use Maria Callas recordings. Both have swelling musical scores and black-and-white bad guys versus good.

An actor pal of mine, who had a role in “Philadelphia,” said Demme advised cast members before shooting began that his picture was not aimed at savvy gay rights activists or even audiences in big cities with sizable gay and lesbian populations.

Rather, the director was reaching for people not yet or just out of the closet, for their parents and siblings who might still be grappling with the issue of a homosexual in the family, for people whose fear of gays blinds them to the fact that — gay or straight — we all are human beings and pretty much alike.

“Milk” seems tailored for many of the same folks. It is also good for anyone who needs a brush-up history lesson in late-20th-century U.S. culture and politics.

As a San Franciscan who watched Harvey Milk’s rise to a seat on the board of supervisors — and the transformation of the city’s Castro District into a gay mecca — I had forgotten the pivotal role Anita Bryant played in pulling gays and lesbians from their fearful hiding places across the country.

Anyone who thinks the current anti-gay marriage religious fervor is something unique need only watch archival news footage in “Milk.” Bryant’s soft and smiling condemnations of homosexuals are eerie and grotesque. Among other beliefs, Bryant and her acolytes interpreted Northern California’s drought at that time as God’s punishment for homosexuals in San Francisco.

Without the orange juice queen to galvanize it, the gay rights movement might have inched along for decades in shame and trepidation.

Another key player my memory discounted, until I saw “Milk,” was San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. Take his pro-gay public support out of the controversial socio-political mix, and Harvey Milk might never have rallied gay and straight troops to defeat Proposition 6. The hateful “Briggs Initiative,” Prop. 6 would have denied job protections for homosexuals and effectively kept them from teaching in public schools.

Moscone was good-looking, sexy, Italian-American, Catholic and a natural politician. He seemed to symbolize the San Francisco of that era; he was smart, liberal, fun-loving and convinced that he lived in the best place on Earth.

Milk and his activist associates knew they needed Moscone’s political connections and his juice with the straight majority to fight Prop. 6. Moscone knew that without the political juggernaut the gay community had become, he had little chance of being re-elected.

Moscone took an active role in defeating Prop. 6, but, like Milk, he never got a run at a second term.

On the morning of Nov. 27, 1978, both men were shot to death in their city hall offices by a former cop, firefighter and San Francisco supervisor, Dan White.

Only nine days before, news of the hideous Peoples Temple massacre in Jonestown, Guyana, had rocked the city. The Rev. Jim Jones (born and raised in Indiana) had experienced his own rise to power in San Francisco — and begun his descent there into utter insanity.

Most of the San Francisco Bay Area was still reeling from Jonestown when White killed Moscone and Milk. The double blow caused millions of us to question our own grip on reality.

Jonestown isn’t mentioned in “Milk,” but knowing the proximity of events brought tears to my eyes near the end of the movie.

Van Sant first depicts a sparsely attended, post-assassination service in city hall. Two of Milk’s closest friends wonder in disgust where everyone is and step disconsolately out into the night.

As they head toward the Castro on foot, the answer comes at them in spontaneous waves of mourners carrying lighted candles.

Using more archival footage borrowed from local TV stations and (with major screen credit) from “The Life and Times of Harvey Milk,” Van Sant shows the tens of thousands of shaken citizens who did indeed fill the streets of San Francisco that night.

Gay, straight, Republican, Democrat, rich, poor, political or apathetic, we were drawn to one another in our pain, and to city hall, the domed center of our civic life. So many people marched that night, television cameras high above Market Street and Van Ness Avenue could not capture the whole of the throng.

Harvey Milk accomplished more social reform during the eight short years he lived, worked and organized in San Francisco than most people could dream of achieving in a long lifetime.

Yes, it is 2009, and many involved in organized religion and conservative politics still view gays as an immoral threat to God and country. But tens of millions of people do not. The right man in the right place at exactly the right time in history helped raise the consciousness of good, fair people and, as a result, embolden and liberate future generations.

“Milk” is yet another in a collection of fitting tributes to that man, that place and that time.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

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