’Milk’ toast: Castro turns out in style for new film, sad memories
It has been said that San Francisco has so many hills just so it could have plenty of places to turn around and look at itself in admiration. The city that never saw a mirror it didn’t like turned out in its best duds and on its best behavior Tuesday night for the world premiere of "Milk"--Gus Van Sant’s cinematic profile of assassinated Harvey Milk and the political acts 30 years ago in San Francisco that brought heartache and hope to the global queer community. It was a night to reflect on who we are, where we are, where we came from--and what might have been.
Castro Street, the iconic neighborhood of the LGBT’s coalescing political, social and economic strength three decades ago that today remains the heart of the city’s gay spirit, was blocked from 17th to 18th Streets to all but VIP limos and buses, trucking in a veritable Who’s Who and What’s That of San Francisco politicos and Hollywood celebs. Sean Penn, Tom Ammiano, Emile Hirsch, Bevan Dufty, Diego Luna, Mark Leno, Josh Brolin--all rolled out of their rides and stopped by on their perp walk over the red carpet in front of the photographers’ pit to chat with each other and their fans, to see and be seen, to cheer and be cheered.
Lightly manned barricades surrounded surging crowds trying to catch a glimpse of the goings on at the brightly lit Castro Theatre. Decades ago those barricades would have been manned by surly cops and angry mobs. Tuesday they symbolized acceptance and arrival. Behind them stood not just gays and lesbians, but Marin moms and working stiffs and families with kids and drag queens and sign after sign after sign urging people to vote to preserve same-sex marriage, just as 30 years ago they urged people to vote to save teachers’ jobs.
Inside the theater
The cheapest tickets to the premier and the accompanying late night dance and cocktail party at City Hall were $50 and just about impossible to come by: the previous night, at the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association awards reception, veteran broadcaster Tony Russomanno ended his acceptance of his honor with a hilarious description of some of the events of those years and a plea for a ticket, any ticket, to the premiere. The events were fundraisers for the SF LGBT Community Center, Larkin Street Youth Services, the Point Foundation and the Hetrick-Martin Institute.
The theater was sold out to the very last seat in the uppermost balconies--behind the nosebleed sections and into the dark hard-to-see-from seats best for taking a clandestine date for some impromptu making out. Smokers with bad lungs and arthritic knees clambered up to the rafters in this most wheelchair unfriendly institution to be a part of history--or rather, be a part of history revisited.
Shortly after 7 p.m. Mayor Gavin Newsom and movie makers began to make their remarks. The acoustics in the upper decks were terrible, but when the audience in the lower sections applauded at pauses, those in the upper decks applauded as well. It was just that kind of night.
Then the movie. When it is released through national distribution in another month, it will be met with predictable love and hate, critiqued and analyzed, hailed and condemned, but on this night it was for all of us just a moment to absorb, and for many a time to remember the sad and happy steps that brought us here and keep bringing us back.
This was our movie. This was our night.
City Hall is ours
Immediately after the film, the VIPs were bussed to the Civic Center for a brash cocktail party in City Hall: a swift transition from where Milk first gained prominence as neighborhood activist to the marble halls where his historic role as the first gay man elected to a high public office in the United States came to such an abrupt end when former fellow supervisor Dan White fatally shot both Milk and Mayor George Moscone on Nov. 27, 1978. White, evoking the now infamous "Twinkie Defense," served five years for manslaughter, then two years later returned to the city and committed suicide.
Milk himself had realized he was likely to be assassinated, and left a recording in which he said that if a bullet exploded in his head, he hoped it would knock down every door that had held the queer community back. The degree to which his words have come true was evident at the party as queers and allies rocked to a steady diet of ’70s disco classics, free flowing drinks, shrimp cocktails, tamales, sushi and chops.
They roamed past photo displays of production shots from the movie and photos of Harvey Milk and the Castro of thirty years past. They wore their "Vote No on 8" and "Harvey Milk Supervisor" buttons on their lapels while they sipped and chatted and remembered. There hadn’t been a dry eye in the house at the movie’s end, but here there was nothing left to do but to share the moment and enjoy the night.
Thirty years ago, 30,000 queers marched from the Castro in silence by candlelight, mourning their loss before the building that once symbolized all that rejected them. Thirty years ago, queers stormed in anger the building that symbolized the hatred and injustice they felt. But this night ... this night, City Hall was theirs.
