Metcalf's Screening Room: Gus Van Sant's "Milk"

Bayside resident Mark Metcalf is an actor who has worked in movies, TV and on the stage. He is best known for his work in "Animal House," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Seinfeld."

In addition to his work on screen, Metcalf is involved with the Milwaukee International Film Festival, First Stage Children's Theater and a number of other projects.

He also finds time to write about movies for OnMilwaukee.com. This week, Metcalf weighs in on "Milk," the new biopic about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to hold public office as city supervisor in San Francisco; he was later assassinated.

MILK (2008)

The film honors the man and it honors the movement. And I think that the movement really needs to be honored, because it may have been forgotten or swept aside with everything else there has been to think about.

My son is going through middle school on the North Shore of Milwaukee and one of the most common putdowns from one male child to another is to say that he is "gay." I don't know where that comes from, but we should be long past that by now. I get it in the adults, too. There is a tension in some of the men when homosexuality comes into a conversation. Voices drop to near a whisper to say the word. A similar thing happens when you talk about race. I guess the education and economic privilege that has found a haven on the North Shore of Milwaukee does not make it immune to intolerance.

The gay rights movement came on the heels of the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam and it, and the women's movement, carried those energies forward into and through the seventies. It's entirely too easy to make fun of all those movements and it shouldn't be done by serious people.

When AIDS became a well-known disease and it became apparent that the gay population was being affected in a disastrous way, the focus turned away from breaking down the barriers of intolerance and bigotry. Energy was needed to mourn and to call attention to the need for a cure. AIDS is not gone, but it seems to be nearly at the point of being managed. People are living longer with HIV. More people are practicing safe sex and making sure their needles are clean.

Perhaps, these days you are less likely to be beaten to death if you are gay, but tolerance is still low. The fundamentalists, like Anita Bryant in the mid-‘70's in the film "Milk," are still having their time in the sun. Gay marriage at least makes it onto the ballot and even into law in some states, but it is immediately challenged and even in a state as liberal as California, it is denied.

So, it is a perfect time for a film like "Milk." And it is a nearly perfect film for the time. There is great performance by Sean Penn. Less of the operatic intensity of "Mystic River" and more of the whimsy and joy of "Sweet and Lowdown." But the seriousness of purpose is there. Sean Penn is the best leading man as character actor that we have right now. Emile Hirsch is wonderful as Cleve Jones, a trickster boy from Phoenix who finds his way to a good and purposeful life when Harvey Milk sees him on the streets and gives him direction. Gus Van Sant uses, not every cinematic trick in the book, but many of them; and he orchestrates the wild circus of the 1970's in America into a wonderful tapestry. It was one crazy party, but beneath it all was the desire to be free of fear, to not have to live a hidden life, to be able to celebrate and create with friends and to give it all back to the community in equal measure.

Thirty years ago, a lot of people in America behaved as though you could catch homosexuality like you catch a cold -- if you stand to close to it. And they were afraid of it, tried to ghettoize it. They were successful in many respects. Things have changed at the glacial pace that deep social change usually takes, and the will continue to evolve as long as there is well made public art like "Milk."

Harvey Milk carried the banner and led the parade of gay pride and human rights throughout the ‘70's in San Francisco and Sean Penn and Gus Van Sant have picked up that banner.