The cover photograph on the
beautiful new Criterion edition of The Times of Harvey Milk features a
profile shot of a joyous populist drinking in one of his greatest public
moments: riding up San Francisco’s famed Market Street as a Grand Marshall of
the 1978 San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade. The then recently
elected city supervisor has his right fist proudly raised in salute to the
crowds lining each side of one of the world’s great boulevards. Supervisor Milk
has what appears to be a Hawaiian style strand of flowers around his neck --
the other detail in focus is the partly obscured sign of a long defunct
business, The Wig Palace.
Fittingly the photograph on the two
disc edition of perhaps the greatest queer movement non-fiction narrative film
is that of a man alone in a crowd.
If you spend the time with this DVD
(available from Criterion in standard and Blu-Ray versions), and you should,
you’ll discover how and perhaps why a forty-seven-and-a-half-year-old
native of Woodmere, Long Island -- ex-Navy man, ex-school teacher, ex-stock
broker, ex-Broadway producer, a one-time Barry Goldwater for president
supporter and former boyfriend to a bevy of attractive young men – happened on this
glorious Sunday afternoon to be sitting on top of a slow moving convertible
drinking in the roar of the crowd as the queer peoples’ tribune.
Once you rip off the shrink wrap
the first step is to watch the original Oscar winning documentary without
dipping into the rich array of special features. As brilliantly structured by
producers Robert Epstein and Richard Schmiechen, The Times of Harvey
Milk unfolds like a classic Greek tragedy in four acts. Epstein and Schmiechen
made shrewd, intuitive choices: this was not to be a biography of the man who
was so briefly (eleven months) America’s first openly gay elected official –
the bare bone details of Milk’s first forty-six years slip quickly by, as
narrated by the film’s “queer Walter Cronkite,” the gravely voiced Harvey Fierstein;
the film opens on one of the most gut wrenching sound bites in modern American
history, a shaken Diane Feinstein (moments before she had reached over the
blood spattered body of Harvey Milk to check for a pulse) announcing to a
chaotic city hall news conference, “As president of the board of supervisors it
is my duty to make this announcement: both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey
Milk have been shot and killed (there’s a collective gasp and a male voice
exclaims, “Jesus Christ!”). The suspect is Supervisor Dan White.” This clip –
filmed by a shaky camera in the aftermath of a human instigated earthquake –
appears twice in the film, both times it becomes an almost unbearable moment,
combined with stark footage of the bodies being carted into a city hall
elevator, with the crackling sounds of police radios informing us that both men
are “DOA,” this becomes simultaneously the film’s “Zapruder” moment and the
backbone of its Shakespeare worthy dramatic arc.
The filmmakers refract the tragedy
through two main devices: a cast of eight storytellers, each of whom is allowed
enough screen time to become dramatic characters whose tears, when shed, will
matter; The Times of Harvey Milk makes a truly brilliant use of
contemporary local TV reporting – remember since this double assassination went
down in a lovely, but to East Coast news editors, a provincial West Coast
metropolis, the national media was mostly absent – demonstrating beyond any
doubt the value of those often derided talking head narrated evening news
pieces; the filmmakers want us both to know what TV viewers knew as events
unfolded and then to get the hands on emotional point-of-views of persons who
each possessed a privileged access to the world of Harvey Milk.
Of the special features three stand
out: the personal and very illuminating filmmakers’ commentary track from which
we learn: that everyone seems to misremember the film’s formal title, as
co-producer Epstein explains, dubbing it The “Life” and Times of Harvey
Milk, Epstein insisting that they deliberately avoided a film biography of
the slain official, deferring to the breezy but authoritative account, The
Mayor of Castro Street, by the late Chronicle reporter Randy Shilts;
Epstein notes how his original intention was to make a campaign documentary on
the efforts to defeat the anti-gay school teacher Briggs Initiative but that
after Milk was killed the project totally morphed into what he calls a
non-fiction narrative account of Milk’s five-year political career and the
movement it helped fuel.
On the personal side Epstein
remembers his brief tenure as a Castro Theatre “usher,” explaining how he was
fired one day for spilling a large Coke into the candy counter: this incident
prompted by his excitement at filming the Castro Fair that day from on top the
theatre’s historic marquee; editor Deborah Hoffman drolly recalls how her
compliments to the film’s director of photography led to a now two decades’ old
relationship.
While it’s not technically deleted
footage, disc two’s ninety minutes of excerpts from Epstein’s grainy B&W
preliminary interviews provide a rarely seen sort of casting couch view of the
documentary process. The six subjects who didn’t make it into the formal
filming process include the late Scott Smith – the unofficial “widow Milk” and
keeper of the Milk archives until his 1995 death; and the late publisher of
this newspaper – Bob Ross’ soft spoken but charged opinions about Milk’s legacy
come as a useful rebuttal to the “cult of personality,” that was a necessary
byproduct of his martyrdom.
Finally there are excerpts from a
2003 panel discussion featuring assassin Dan White’s defense attorneys
justifying their brilliant if cynical strategy to mitigate their client’s responsibility
for the double murders that can still make the blood boil.