Milk

[Shuggy]

It was subtley portrayed in the film.

Further, Milk's activities with teenaged hustlers and boys is a commonly known fact among people who were in SF during the 70s. Such activities were not topics for newspaper articles of the time, partly because it was somewhat rampant and overlooked, but it was what it was.

His enemies would spread that kind of rumour about him. The Shilts biography "The Mayor of Castro Street" is clear and doesn't pull its punches. His early affairs with late-teenagers were when he was in his 20s. Anyway, nobody says he was a saint, but he was a martyr: if he hadn't been gay he wouldn't have been killed.

[Shuggy]

I saw it yesterday. Loved it. (Cried and cried.)

The resemblance was amazing. I was particularly impressed by James Brolin as Dan White. Since I'm concurrently watching "Brideshead Revisited" on the Arts Channel, I also found a similarity between Kurt and Jack Lira (Diego Luna).

I was impressed by the way they merged documentary and re-enactment footage. It was hard to tell which was which. I think they colourised and "grainised" some of the re-enactment footage to make it look like 16mm film from the 70s.

Historically, one major event they left out was the Jonestown Massacre, which happened nine days before the Moscone/Milk assassination and involved many people still in San Francisco, including Moscone and Milk, who had supported Jim Jones and the People's Temple.

When I was in SF in 2006, I made a point of finding the site of Castro Cameras, and here are my pix.

The first looks north up Castro St towards the Harvey Milk Plaza (where the big flag is), taken from the shop doorway.

Harvey is commemorated with a mural that is a trompe l'oeil window next to a real one.