Although people have never clearly known the reasons why White killed Moscone and Milk, Gus Van Sant implicitly suggests his own hypothesis in the movie, but still leaves the choice to the viewer to make his/her own opinion. In her article “The naked community organizer: politics and reflexivity in Gus Van Sant’s Milk”, Julia Erhart reminds us that a biopic is first and foremost a “fictionalized or interpretative treatment” of history and states that “certain patterns of this genre dictates departure from historical reality”. So one could say that it could be predictable that Gus Van Sant should suggest his own interpretation of Milk’s death since White’s act seems to be incomprehensible. Indeed, White’s act seems to be disproportionate compared to the disagreements he had with Milk and Moscone. For my part, I first did not know who killed Milk and I was really surprised to discover it was White. I thought it would have been a random hard-core homophobic person and not White who could sometimes get on well with Milk. This is certainly why Gus Van Sant implicitly suggested his own interpretation, without imposing it to the audience. All throughout the movie, Milk’s protagonist is convinced that White is actually a closeted homosexual trying to fit into society by leading a very conventional life (he is married and had children). Milk’s protagonist tells it several times to the other characters of the movie who do not seem to agree. All throughout the movie, there is an ambiguous relationship between White and Milk. This is mainly due to White’s ambivalent behaviour. Indeed, on the one hand, he sometimes supports Milk to pass bills in favour of gay rights, but on the other hand, he also opposes some of them. In the movie, White also seems to care about Milk: he invites him to his child’s christening and comes to his birthday party (even if he is late). When Milk does not support him for the bill concerning the rehab centre for youngsters, White seems to consider this as a political betrayal but also as a friend’s betrayal. He seems to feel deeply humiliated by the opposition made by someone he appreciates. Thus, the murders seem to be motivated by the frustration of White who suffers from pretending to be someone else and feels rejected by the LGBT community (he embodies everything they hate). White’s act could be thus interpreted as a crime of passion.  

Dan White was born in Long Beach, California, in 1946 and raised by working-class parents in Catholic faith. White’s protagonist reminds his social background to Harvey Milk and stresses that he represents the religious working-class that is progressively disappearing from the Castro District. As mentioned in the movie, he worked as a police officer and then as a firefighter. In 1977, White was elected as a Democrat to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from District 8. He had strong support from the police and firefighter unions. His district was described by The New York Times as "a largely white, middle-class section that is hostile to the growing homosexual community of San Francisco". As a supervisor, White actually said he was the "defender of the home, the family and religious life against homosexuals, pot smokers and cynics". By his past and political positions, we can then state that Dan White represents the white American middle-class traditional values unlike Milk.  

However, despite their personal differences, White and Harvey Milk agreed on some political areas and they first worked well together. White also persuaded Dianne Feinstein, then president of the board of supervisors, to appoint Milk chairman of the Streets and Transportation Committee. As showed in the movie, Harvey Milk was also one of three people from the city hall invited to the christening of White's child shortly after the election.  

Nonetheless, as presented in the movie, their relationship deteriorated because of some ideological and political disagreements. First, White held a mixed vision on gay rights, opposing the anti-gay Briggs’s Proposition 6, yet voting against an ordinance prohibiting discrimination against gays in housing and employment. This ambiguous position that is clearly underlined in the movie, could have been a source of tension between both politicians. Second, one of the important political disagreements showed in the biopic was on a centre for juvenile offenders. In April 1978, The Catholic Church proposed a facility for juvenile offenders who had committed crimes (arson, murders,..) to be located in White's district. White was strongly opposed, while Milk supported the facility, and their difference of opinion led to a conflict between the two. In the movie, White’s protagonist sees Milk’s position on the center for juveniles as a betrayal and a humiliation.

As showed in the movie, White also had difficulties to earn a decent living for his family because he no longer had a firefighter’s or policeman’s salary since he could not practice legally these jobs while serving as supervisor. He was upset and disgusted by the function of supervisor and finally quit on November 10 1978, before changing his mind a few days later. As showed in the movie, Moscone initially agreed to take Mike again as supervisor, but later refused the appointment at the urging of Milk and others. On November 27, 1978, White went to San Francisco City Hall and shot Moscone and Milk.

The movie stops on the night Milk died and does not show White’s trial. The movie does not provide a clear answer on the reasons why White went as far as killing Moscone and Milk. His lawyers claimed he was not able to premeditate a killing for the reason he had been depressed and had been eating junk food (that episode was called the “twinkie defence”). However, Dan White seemed not to have real clear motives to commit assassinations, and one can only put his acts on the account of his depression. The jury found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter, rather than first-degree murder, which enabled him to have a lighter sentence: he was condemned to eight years of imprisonment. Outraged, the LGBT community organized the “White night riots” on May 21, 1979, which were some of the most violent LGBT riots of American history.

The candlelight vigil that occurred the night Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone died, on November 27, 1978. Here, in front of the city Hall of San Francisco.

Photograph taken during the White Night Riots, May 21, 1979.

Coming out

At the beginning of the movie, Harvey Milk is depicted as a closeted homosexual living in New York City and working as a financial analyst before going hippie and leaving for San Francisco to live as an openly gay person. Actually, in the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), Harvey Milk’s friends stated that they believed he had led a very conventional life in New York. The New York City Milk also obliged his boyfriends to conceal their shared sexual orientation. We can see it at the beginning of the movie, when Milk warns his lover Scott Smith that he could be arrested for kissing him in the subway and invites him at his place so that they can be safer But Milk hated that life. Living in terror and shame and pretending to be someone else was considered by Milk and many others to be close to assassination. He finally finds his true self and manages to be more satisfied with his life by coming out and leaving New York for San Francisco, considered to be a gay enclave and a more progressive city than the rest of the US.

According to Sara Villa's article ("Milk (2008) and The Times of Harvey Milk (1984): The Double Filmic Resurrection of the Mayor of Castro Street") he biopic shows that Milk considered coming out as a form of salvation and rebirth for gays: they could finally be over with pretending to be someone else and even sometimes start a new life from scratch by breaking all ties with their intolerant relatives and finding a new family among the LGBT community. As a consequence, once in San Francisco, Milk kept encouraging gays to come out. Milk considered it was the best way to fight against discrimination and homophobia because gays would cease stopping being invisible to society.

In that matter, according to Sara Villa's article mentioned above, the recurring theme of the toxic and dreadful closet is very present in Milk’s political discourse. He described the closet as a form of death. The biopic takes up some famous quotes of Milk dealing with the issue. We can see it in "That's What America Is," speech given on Gay Freedom Day in San Francisco on June 25^th 1978 and that is represented on screen. The movie tried to give a faithful representation of that day: Sean Penn is wearing the same “I’ll never go back” t-shirt as that of Milk and pronounces an extract of the politician’s famous speech:
“Gay brothers and sisters,... You must come out. Come out... to your parents... I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives... come out to your friends... if indeed they are your friends (…) But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene.”

The representation on screen of the June 1978 San Francisco Gay Freedom Day once again mingles fiction with reality and on some aspects the movie has a documentary approach. Indeed, some archival-filmed extracts of the gay parade are inserted in the movie. According to Sara Villa's article, the “real” Cleve Jones, one of Milk’s activist friends, can be seen as Don Amador on the stage where Milk’s protagonist is giving his speech. In that way, Gus Van Sant followed a documentary approach to pay tribute to Milk and to his legacy.

On the left: Harvey Milk at the 1978 Gay Freedom Gay Parade in San Francisco with his “I’ll never go back” T-shirt.

On the right: Sean Penn at the 1978 Gay Freedom Gay Parade represented on screen.

Milk’s and the LGBT community’s common fates

The biopic parallels Milk’s growing self-affirmation and political rise with the empowerment of the LGBT community. The fate of Milk and that of the LGBT community are linked in this movie that depicts the birth and formation of a well-structured political movement. Milk undergoes a personal transformation as well as his friends, and on a wider scale, the LGBT community. Indeed, closeted conventional New York City Milk turns into a San Francisco hippie before transforming into a successful businessman, and later on, a powerful politician, whereas the LGBT community progressively supports its new leader and becomes an organized and politically visible community. It illustrates what Milk actually thought about his role he played in the civil rights movement. In the biopic, Milk’s protagonist is seen recording some quotes on a tape, which the politician actually recorded on November, 18 1977:

“I have never considered myself a candidate. I have always considered myself part of a movement, part of a candidacy. I considered the movement the candidate.” 

As we can notice, Milk did not want to be considered as a hero. Above all, he deemed he was part of a “movement”, the one of democracy, which was bigger than him. These very words minimize the significance of the individual versus a collective movement.

The economic boom and growing political power of the LGBT community

In the biopic, his rise as a businessman and later on as a politician parallels the empowerment of the LGBT community and the transformation of the Castro district.

Milk arrived with his lover Scott Smith in San Francisco in 1973. They opened a camera store called Castro Camera on Castro Street, in the gay district of Castro. The latter had started being a gay enclave since the 1950s and it had become symbolic of San Francisco’s gay liberation movements and other alternative cultures since the 1967 Summer of Love. In the early 1970s, the Castro district and its outskirts experienced serious transformations with massive arrivals of gays. The filmmaker took pains to recreate the original location of Milk’s and Smith’s shopfront that was recreated on the site of the original camera store.  

Harvey Milk in front of his shop Castro Camera.

The location at 575 Castro Street was carefully recreated as a set for Harvey Milk. The interior decoration was also recreated and includes an old red couch and a barber’s chair that were originally present.

“Gay economic self-sufficiency” in San Francisco

The movie points out the hostility towards the two gay newcomers who were starting from scratch in San Francisco, in 1973. Indeed, even in the district of Castro, a lot of people were hostile to the growing presence of homosexuals. It was particularly the case of the Catholic middle-class families living in the area. In the movie, one of the shopkeepers, who runs a business next to their shop, warns the newcomers that the Eureka Valley Associations will remove their shop’s license in the name of “God’s Law”. It shows how hard it could be for gays to start a business, since their shops could be boycotted or closed. Thus, Smith and Milk could have gone bankrupt.

However, the movie shows that the couple rose as businessmen by relying on the demands of the LGBT community: Smith and Milk started their business with gay clients and had success. As stressed in the movie, their shop even became a gay enclave. Milk was part of a community of gay entrepreneurs that only consumed products coming from gay shops. As a result, gay and gay-friendly shops thrived. As showed in the movie, the non-friendly gay shops went bankrupt. It was illustrated at the beginning of the movie when truck unionist Allan Baird (played by himself) asked Milk’s protagonist to make gays of Castro and its area boycott Coors beer: the number one Castro beer finally collapsed. In exchange, the truck driver union agreed to hire openly gay drivers. Thus, one can see the influence of the gay community that progressively managed to gain empowerment first by becoming economically powerful. In her article “San Francisco’s Castro district: from gay liberation to tourist destination” (2011), Nan Alamilla Boyd states that Milk is a representative of this “gay capitalism” or “gay economic self-sufficiency” that enabled the “economic miracle-on-Castro Street”. As showed in the movie, he was an early participant in the Eureka Valley Promotion Association, a group of Castro Street merchants who consolidated the Castro’s business community. The Castro became a gay-spending zone: for instance, since 1970, the number of new gay restaurants in the Castro had risen by 214%.

According to Nan Alamilla Boyd, in her 2011 article "San Francisco's Castro district: from gay liberation to tourist destination", Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change another organization played a major role in the economic development and the rise of political power of the LGBT community: the little-known Golden Gate Business Association (GGBA), which was created in 1974. It aimed to create a gay business community that had the power to influence local politics. It functioned like an elite club and its members were gay business owners who paid dues and benefited from more visibility in the world of gay business. Since its creation, the GGBA grew steadily (in 1976 the organization had 150 members, whereas by 1980 the membership had been multiplied by four) before becoming a charitable organization and political force. Since the very beginning of the 1979, it has raised funds for charitable organizations like the Gay Pride Parade and has worked with local television and radio to produce friendly images of gay community via events like tea dances. It also strove to cultivate relationships with more conservative politicians like US Senator S.I. Hayakawa. In the 1980s, the GGBA started more overt political involvement, lobbying efforts to support anti-discrimination legislation: the association worked with two national organizations (the Gay Task Force and the Gay National Lobby) to convince US Senator Alan Cranston and US President Jimmy Carter to support some gay political fights.

Even if the GGBA is not mentioned in the biopic, its first president, lawyer Richard Stokes, is. In the movie, he is presented as a powerful and wealthy gay civil rights lawyer. Although the movie does not represent all the consequences of the Castro’s economic miracle, it stresses the influence of some important gay figures that acquired visibility and political power by becoming successful businessmen. We can see it when Milk’s protagonist visits lawyer Rick Stokes and Goodstein, the owner of a gay magazine.

The Castro Street Fair on Castro Street. It was founded by Harvey Milk and the Castro Valley Association, in 1974. Nowadays, it still attracts thousands of buyers and tourists.

From Mayor of Castro Street to supervisor

Milk’s influence and economic success earned him the nickname of the “Mayor of Castro Street”. Indeed, he took several initiatives of leadership in the district. In 1974, he ran for supervisor for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors but lost. However, he was starting to be taken seriously as a candidate and decided to run again for supervisor in 1975. Milk's campaigning earned the support of the teamsters, firefighters, and construction unions. Castro Camera became the center of activity in the neighborhood. He finally lost, but from a few votes. Although he had not been elected supervisor, he was influent. Indeed, he campaigned for George Moscone who became San Francisco’s Mayor in 1975. Earlier that year, Moscone, who was a member of the California Senate, had repealed the sodomy law (considering homosexuality as a crime) in the California State legislature in order to have the gay votes. He acknowledged Milk's influence in his election by visiting Milk's election night headquarters, thanking Milk personally.

Milk finally became Member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from District 5 for the first time on January 8^th 1978 after his fourth campaign. It was due to the support he had gained from several other minorities and people who felt victims of injustice. H. Milk was not only a candidate representing gays but was more largely a civil rights movements candidate: he supported Asians, Blacks, seniors,... He also advocated social justice, fighting against the gap between the rich and the poor. For instance, he tried to stall the gentrification of the Castro district by sponsoring a bill that banned the conversion of Castro Street apartments into professional offices. The movie highlights how Milk represented hope for a lot of citizens who felt left out by the establishment.

The movie takes up an extract from his “Hope Speech” that could illustrate Milk’s faith in making society better for everyone: “And the young gay people in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias and the Richmond, Minnesotas who are coming out and hear Anita Bryant in television and her story. The only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up”. 

Harvey Milk during his campaign in 1975. After losing once more in 1975, he decided to change his look: he cut his ponytail and tried to look less hippie and more “serious”.

A brand new type of uncloseted gay politician

Because he presented himself as openly gay, Milk stood out as a brand new and uncloseted type of political candidate for the LGBT community, as stated in Sara Villa's 2009 article ("Milk (2008) and The Times of Harvey Milk (1984): The Double Filmic Resurrection of the Mayor of Castor Street"). As the audience can notice in the movie when Milk visits Rick Stokes at his place, not everyone among the LGBT community agreed. Indeed, as showed in the movie, Rick Stokes had gained the help of liberal politicians and preferred to support of gay-friendly heterosexual candidates rather than openly gay ones. Therefore, we could say that Milk changed American politics. He managed to make the LGBT community visible and powerful by becoming part of the political establishment, which was a crucial turning point in the civil rights movement. The movie stresses this important aspect when thrilled Milk’s protagonist tells Mayor Moscone that he is “a homosexual with power”, echoing a sentence Milk actually said in an interview: “They [politicians] now have to deal with me and it feels fantastic”.

 Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone at the signing of San Francisco’s gay rights ordinance in April 1977. This scene is represented in the movie.  

Proposition 6 and hatemongers

Milk was a supervisor at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors during eleven months before being assassinated. He improved the conditions of living of the LGBT community during his mandate and fought against several homophobic political opponents. The movie represents the fight that Milk led against the passing of California Proposition 6 proposed by Republican California State Senator John Briggs. The latter organized a referendum in November 1978 all across California in order to make the bill pass, but it finally did not. Proposition 6 aimed to remove all gay and lesbian public school employees or their supporters from their jobs.

One of Briggs’s main supporters was singer Anita Bryant. As I found on Wikipedia, she had led several campaigns around the country to repeal local anti-discrimination ordinances, including campaigns in  St. Paul, Minnesota; Wichita, Kansas; and Eugene, Oregon. The movie represents one of A. Bryant’s highly publicized 1977 campaign to repeal the Dade County (Florida) ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. She was the leader of political coalition “Save Our Children” created in 1977 and that supported Briggs during his campaign for the passing of proposition 6. A. Bryant and J. Briggs both considered that homosexuality could pervert children and thought that homosexuals tried to make children turn gay, especially at school. Indeed, Anita Bryant stated: "As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children". Bryant and Briggs thought that homosexuality was “a real threat to the survival of the country”: according to them, there was a risk that everybody could turn gay and that no more Americans would exist. They did not want to grant homosexuals the same rights as that of the other citizens because they considered them as criminals. According to Bryant, "If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters”. Proposition 6 was thus seen by Briggs and his supporters as a matter of life and death.

The hostile atmosphere that reigned during that turning point period of the civil rights movement was represented on screen: for instance, civil rights activists were represented at work and the September 6^th 1978 filmed debate between Briggs and Milk was recreated in the movie. However, the movie preferred to have Bryant’s original voice and image to maybe represent the homophobic hostility that prevailed at the time in a most realistic way.

The audience is plunged into the frantic world of the civil rights movement activists that are driven by their hopes to change society. We can say that it is one of the aspects that make the movie exciting: the viewer is behind the scenes of Milk’s campaign and shares the LGBT community’s hopes.

Anita Bryant’s tracts for her campaign advocating the voting of Proposition 6 that aimed to reduce gay rights in 1978. 

Homophobia was very present in the United States during the 1970s. Harvey Milk points out the violence gays had to face and the fact they constantly hid. Being gay was deemed to be wrong. Gays were also often victims of psychological and physical violence that could lead to death (suicide, murders).

Homophobic violence and crimes

In the 1970s, the USA was a very religious and conservative country, and most of its citizens considered that gays should not exist. As a consequence, gays feared to be assaulted or murdered by homophobic people. In the movie, the lingering presence of death is stressed either in Milk’s private life or on the wider scale of the LGBT community.

First, the movie constantly shows it in the politician’s private life: on his 40^th birthday, Milk says to his lover Scott Smith that he will not make it to his fifty years old, whereas later on, another reference to death is made once again by Scott at Milk’s 48^th birthday party, as his political career is at its peak (“Maybe you will then make it to 50 years old after all”).

Second, the movie also underlines the ubiquitous presence of death on the wider scale of the LGBT community. For instance, at one moment of the biopic, Harvey is asked to recognize the corpse of Robert Hillsborough, identified by the policeman who talks about the victim in very pejorative and homophobic terms (“a fruit who was walking home with his trick”). For that part, Gus Van Sant got inspired by a real historical event, the murder of a San Francisco gardener Robert Hillsborough who was stabbed to death fifteen times in June 1977, two weeks after the repeal of Miami-Dade County’s anti-discrimination ordinance (that granted equal rights to homosexuals at work). His murderers justified their crime, shouting the victim was a “faggot”. For that part of the movie, Gus Van Sant used what Robert Rosenstone called “invention” in his article “The historical film as real history”. The movie distorts reality a little bit without violating the discourse of history. By mingling historical reality with fiction (actually Milk did not identify Hillsborough’s body), the movie entails several consequences. First, it points out the daily violence gays had to experience: they could be murdered anywhere or find a dead friend in the street on the way home, as Milk’s protagonist did. Second, the biopic appears to be more realistic by referring to real events, which makes the viewers struck by such violence. Third, it is also a way to pay tribute to Robert Hillsborough who became the embodiment of injustice and cruelty.

A discriminating law

American gays were all the more helpless that the Law, which could have been the only way to protect them, was discriminating them. Indeed, homosexuality was considered as a criminal act by the Law and was also listed as a mental disease on the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. For instance, it was legal for the police to arrest two homosexuals because they were kissing in a public place. Employment discrimination and housing discrimination because of one’s sexual orientation were also very frequent: it was then perfectly legal to fire people for that reason.

The police, who represent the State, often raided into gay bars to arrest or beat up some homosexuals “just for fun” as said in the movie. The biopic, in which archival testimony and fiction are constantly intertwined, begins with black and white archival footage of police raids and arrests made in gay bars during the 1950s and 1960s. The viewer can see gay men sitting in bars hiding from the camera, feeling ashamed or overwhelmed by the intrusive and stalking cameramen. We can see gays being humiliated and arrested by the police. Thus, the very beginning of the biopic adopts a documentary approach to show how American gays used to live in the 1970s: hiding and always fearing danger. We can suppose that showing real pictures is meant to strike the viewers in order to make them fully aware of all the violence gays used to suffer of. We can see it all throughout the movie: the characters constantly talk about police discrimination and at one moment, Milk and his friends have to intervene in a fight between gays and violent policemen. Most politicians did not want to take actions to end such violence and discrimination. Worse, some of them were hatemongers and supported discrimination, like Republican California state senator John Briggs.

Indifference and invisibility

The mind-sets were all the more difficult to change that hate crimes and police unfair harassment toward gays rarely hit the nationwide news. A gay death did not raise the indignation of the press. The suffering gays experienced was invisible. Their claims were not mediatized. As a consequence, the LGBT community belonged to an underworld that was invisible to society.

Suicides

As a consequence of a life in hiding and such discrimination violence, suicides among the LGBT community were very frequent. Several of Milk’s lovers and friends committed suicide. Among them, San Francisco instable and depressed Milk’s lover Jack Lira, who really existed and whose suicide was represented on screen. The movie also deals with this issue by representing a fictional character calling Milk because he is desperate and is contemplating suicide. Indeed, this character is a gay teenager living in Minnesota and whose parents want to send to a psychiatric centre to “fix” him. He is physically disabled and cannot move to leave his home. For that part of the movie, Gus Van Sant used what Robert Rosenstone called “compression” in his article “The historical film as real history”. Indeed, the movie here focused on a fictional character that could be considered as the embodiment of gays’ suffering and helplessness (helplessness because of the discriminating law; and in the case of the teenager, physical disability). It is a generalization to which any gay could identify at that time. It also puts a dramatic effect to highlight that awful situation.

Harvey Milk was directed by Gus Van Sant (My own private Idaho, 1991; Elephant, 2003) and written by Dustin Lance Black.

The movie was released at the end of 2008.

It is a biopic that represents the life of gay activist and politician Harvey Milk and the gay civil rights movement in San Francisco during the 1970s. The movie begins with the 40^th birthday of Harvey Milk and does not represent his previous life. He is seen recording his will all throughout the movie nine days before his assassination.

In most cases, the movie was well received by the press and critics and won several awards, such as the Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director.

Sean Penn stars in the movie as Harvey Milk. Like the other actors for their characters, Sean Penn made deep researches on Harvey Milk. He changed his look, his way of acting and talking: one can hear that S. Penn’s voice is more high-pitched than it actually is. He also wore brown lenses to look more like Harvey Milk.