http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/24/DD0F149N2C.DTL&hw=danny+nicoletta&sn=001&sc=1000
Photographer
Danny Nicoletta - shown as a young man in a photo shot by
San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk - met Milk when he was 19. (Harvey Milk)
Lucas Grabeel (from left),
Gus Van Sant and
Danny Nicoletta gather on the set of Van Sant's film
"Milk." (Dan Nicoletta)
San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk photographed by Daniel Nicoletta.
Danny Nicoletta photographed Milk's walk to City Hall from the Castro neighborhood after winning a supervisor's seat.
Photographer Danny Nicoletta, 53, was a close friend of Harvey Milk.
(Lacy Atkins / The Chronicle)
Harvey Milk's photographic memoryby
Edward Guthmann, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, November 24, 2008
When
Danny Nicoletta met
Harvey Milk in 1974, he was 19 years old and "pretty clueless," he says. They met at
Castro Camera, a funky, informal store that Milk operated with his partner,
Scott Smith.
Milk was playful, animated. A flirt and a goofball. "I remember leaving there and remarking to myself how friendly those guys were," Nicoletta says. "Especially that one - Harvey."
A photographer and longtime chronicler of San Francisco's gay culture, Nicoletta joined the circle of friends that Milk tended like a mother hen. In 1978, when Milk was assassinated in City Hall by fellow
San Francisco Supervisor Dan White - a year after he became one of the nation's first openly gay elected officials - Nicoletta lost a beloved friend and "gay parent."
That tragedy took place exactly 30 years ago this week and is brought to life in "Milk," the new film by
Gus Van Sant (
"Good Will Hunting," "My Own Private Idaho" ) that opens Wednesday at the Castro Theatre and Friday at the Embarcadero and Sundance Kabuki. Milk is played by
Sean Penn, White by
Josh Brolin and Smith by
James Franco.
Nicoletta talked about Milk, the man, and "Milk," the movie, at his home in the Sunset District, where one room houses a huge archive of photos crammed into bookshelves, file cabinets and banker's boxes. He's soft-spoken with a slight crack in his voice that sounds like he's recovering from a cold.
Slight of build and still boyish at 53, Nicoletta has for 30 years devoted himself to preserving Milk's legacy. He photographed each of the candlelight marches that commemorated the anniversary of Milk's death; co-chaired and juried the community effort to place a bronze sculpture of Milk in City Hall's Ceremonial Rotunda; and did research and production work on
Michael Korie and
Stewart Wallace's opera "Harvey Milk."
Today, Nicoletta says, he speaks "three or four times a week" to students, writers and filmmakers who seek his counsel for Milk-related projects.
He's a keeper of the flame, and so central to the Milk legend that Van Sant and screenwriter
Dustin Lance Black made him an important supporting character in "Milk."
Lucas Grabeel, one of the stars of Disney's
"High School Musical" films, plays him and in one scene wears the actual patchwork vest that Nicoletta wore in the '70s.
Nicoletta was also one of two still photographers on the 10-week San Francisco-based "Milk" shoot.
"The set was just such a love fest," he says. "It was a hard shoot because there was a low budget and people were working their little tails off. (But) people were really thrilled to be working on this. It was very verklempt."
Danny Glicker, the costume designer on "Milk," says Nicoletta's presence on the set was "heaven-sent. With other technical consultants, so many of the insights were expressed through a filter of memory and emotion. But Danny would back up his wonderful stories with photographic proof. There was never a question of people, time or place that Danny could not answer by reaching into his unbelievably meticulous archives."
Van Sant also surprised Nicoletta by casting him in a cameo. It's a scene in which history turns. Nicoletta, playing Milk's friend
Carl Carlson, is in the supervisor's office when White interrupts and asks to speak with his colleague. White then takes Milk into his own office where he shoots him.
Watching Penn play Milk was "amazing, right down to the quirky way Harvey twisted his forearm when he spoke, using a restrained but clenched fist to emphasize points. Also his tenderness to the men in his midst, his sexiness and sense of humor and of course his infamous smirk ... at times I felt like I was in the same room as my buddy Harvey."
That accuracy was evident throughout the movie. The scenes at Milk's camera store, which functioned as a social nexus and political hub, were filmed at the exact location: 575 Castro, near 19th Street. Nicoletta says Van Sant and set decorator
Barbara Munch captured the physical detail and intimate, comradely vibe of
Castro Camera.
"The cadence of the scenes in the camera store really brings me back. They were able to distill that and it's just very, very delightful and very moving."
When they met in 1974, Nicoletta says, Milk was 44 and had just cut his long hair in preparation for his second, unsuccessful campaign to be elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. (He was finally elected in 1977.) Nicoletta, apolitical at the time, never discussed politics with Milk: "We talked theater and film and sexual identity. In a sense, I had this nice autonomy with Harvey because our engagement wasn't politically based."
For Nicoletta, "there's something about the gravity of a feature film that allows a certain kind of closure for us. And not only closure, but fun. The film is incredibly heavy so it's not that the catharsis is not there. It's just that there's a completion."
Had Milk known that a feature film would be based around his life, just as the 1984 Oscar-winning documentary
"The Times of Harvey Milk" was, he would have been thrilled.
"He loved any kind of fanfare, really. He was kind of a little kid that way."
E-mail
Edward Guthmann at
[email protected].
