Franco experienced his own sort of flashback in making “Milk,” at least in regard to LGBT characters: he played queer in his first film, “Blind Spot,” and the TV movies “To Serve and Protect” and “James Dean.” He characterizes Smith as extremely supportive of Milk on a personal level yet ultimately unable to endure strains to their relationship resulting from Milk’s political ambitions. After Milk’s first three failed campaigns, they broke up. Prior to and following Smith, Milk had other relationships, including one with the clingy, insecure Jack Lira (Diego Luna), typically fraught with emotional turbulence. “The real Harvey had a history of going out with guys who committed or attempted suicide,” Franco notes. “Scott was one of the few who didn’t.”
“Scott wasn’t necessarily a weak guy, although the real Scott had a dark period after they broke up, involving alcohol and other stuff,” he continues. “But just based on the fact that he met Harvey in New York when Harvey was fully in the closet, working as a businessman and lying to all his coworkers about who and what he was, the fact that Scott was there and moved to San Francisco, supported Harvey in all his dreams and ambitions — he was a great guy and a partner you’d really want to have.” The real Smith passed away in 1995 from AIDS complications, but he was pivotal in keeping Milk’s name alive following the assassination.
Of course, the Franco-Penn sex/kissing sequences have received their share of mainstream reportage (their first takes place during the first 10 minutes). Van Sant certainly exploited their commitment to this aspect of the roles — one of their kissing scenes was “inspired by a Douglas Gordon film called “The Kiss” where the two people are kissing for like 12 hours,” Van Sant says. “I had suggested to them that maybe in order to get the realism I needed them to kiss for a long time — and they weren’t exactly sure how long that was gonna be.”
And how did Penn measure up as a kisser? “He seemed like a fine kisser I guess,” Franco laughs. “Kept it focused.”
“I think Josh makes him quite human in the movie,” Van Sant opines. “We’re not showing his background or days as a policeman or fireman, or [the fact he had] a heroic fireman father he had to live up to. But we’re trying to get a shorthand of the things happening in Dan’s world [that contributed to] his snapping like he did.”
One of those things was the changing of San Francisco’s political landscape: the city had just been broken into districts that each voted for a specific supervisor, and while Harvey represented a new, young, and queer population, White represented the conservative old guard. “The old time politicians tended to be conservative, Catholic, lifetime politicians,” Van Sant says. “All a sudden those guys were out so City Hall was basically being taken over by the city, a new type of representative, and a lot of the old guard didn’t know what to do about it and couldn’t take it. Dan was representing that interest group and the pressure on him was, basically, ‘Dan, we have to save City Hall.’ It was a really intense situation. But we really didn’t get into that side of it.”
Much conversation and speculation has transpired regarding what Milk’s future, had he lived, might have held. Van Sant feels he would have assented farther up the political ladder, Mayor being the next step. But there’s no question that Milk’s message lives on and resonates today as the Proposition 8 battle boils — and hopefully audiences will literally come out in droves.
“It is important for us to know our history and, as much as we can, to learn from it,” Jones states. “I’m sometimes fearful that the new generation is so unaware of how many people had to struggle so long and so hard to have the beginning of freedom that we have now, though our struggle is not complete yet.”