Seeing “Milk” where it all happened…
So last night, my girlfriend and her best friend (in town from Eugene, OR) went to see Milk at the Castro Theatre, on the same street where Harvey Milk had his camera store, in the same neighborhood where Milk built his base, became the first openly gay city official in American history and led the modern gay rights movement from Stonewall into political maturity.
We know how this story ends. On November 27, 1978, fellow San Francisco supervisor Dan White shot and killed Milk and Mayor George Moscone.
More than 30,000 San Franciscans turned out for the memorial service.
An an anniversary march seven years later, Milk’s friend Cleve Jones conceived of the AIDS Quilt, the largest community art project in human history.
Its an amazing life story, the basis for an equally amazing movie, funny, warm, beautifully acted and firm without being hysterical. I’m sure there’s already Oscar talk for Sean Penn in the title role and should be also for Josh Brolin, who plays Milk’s killer. The film’s 93% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes is well deserved.
But something about seeing it where it all happened rung deep within me. We so rarely get that chance these days, often seeing movies on whatever technology is most convenient when the desire strikes. Seeing it in Milk’s old neighborhood, beneath the long shadow of Proposition 8 felts like someone grabbing my rib cage and shaking.
After the movie, my girlfriend and I stood across the street from the Castro, waiting in line for the ATM. I thought about what had happened in our city 30 years ago and the fight that continues today. I thought about what great things Mr. Milk accomplished in middle age not propelled by the indignance of youth and the terrible senselessness of his death.
And I cried. And cried and cried. I mostly felt dumb, weeping over an event that happened when I was in kindergarden, 20 years before I moved here. I felt as though I was co-oping the suffering of a community I didn’t belong to as my own.
But I cried anyway, hugging Cariwyl and just repeating "It didn’t have to happen this way."
I will never fully understand what it meant to be gay in 1978. But I do understand what kindness snuffed out by rage and misunderstanding feels like, like kicking over a flower pot or yelling at a kid on their birthday or just being cruel and violent when its so simple to be otherwise. That’s a loss we all feel as human beings, when we fail to rise to the better angels of our nature and instead give up and act like savages.
It did happen this way. Some say Harvey Milk dying pushed gay rights into the national spotlight. That’s a fair interpretation. But I wish he were still here, reminding each of us, gay and friend of alike, to fight, not with our fists but with hope. To fight for the chance to be better than we think we can.