Sean Penn’s 2008 Oscar-winning performance in Milk as the titular gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk was nothing if not a proper salute to a fallen hero of the LGBT community.
But it’s his recent revelation on Conan about how he prepared each day of shooting in San Francisco that got us thinking about the film in a new way.
If this anecdote is to be believed, Penn prepped each morning with a plate of spicy chicken wings and a rousing jam sesh to The Weather Girl’s 1982 hit “It’s Raining Men” as he entered the Castro.
Or as he calls it, “homosexuality by musical hypnosis.”
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Watch below:
Taskebab
As a gay man I find it horrifying that a man who physically and mentally abused the Queen of gays Madonna won an oscar portraying a hero of the LGBT civil rights movement.
AtticusBennett
@Taskebab: and i find it horrifying that you’re a grown man and yet think like a child.
Penn’s performance was tremendously moving, and had the blessing of Milk’s actual friends and family. As for Madonna, they long ago patched things up over their tempestuous marriage from when they were in their 20s.
Taskebab
@AtticusBennett: I do not want wife abusers being praised for how good and “tremendously moving” they are. Penn should pack his bags and leave, let somebody who is actually a potential good role model play a role like Harvey Milk, Sean Penn can go back to his trailer park where he belongs.
Hollywood is WAAAAAAAAAAY too easy at forgiving abusers and wife-beaters. Great message they are sending out; beat up your wife with a baseball bat while she’s tied up, and we’ll give you an Oscar.
BJ McFrisky
As someone who’s seen a year’s worth of footage of Milk, I thought Penn’s portrayal was shallow and way off base, especially the fact that he portrayed Milk as a whiney queen rather than a man of the people.
MacAdvisor
As someone who know Milk, not well, but we socialized in the same crowd and I worked on some of his campaigns, I was stunned at Penn’s portrayal. While he is much shorter than Milk and doesn’t resemble him physically, Penn’s movements, gestures, posture, mannerisms, and vocal patterns were Milk to a T. There were times while watching the movie I honestly forgot I was seeing Penn and saw Milk. After the film ended, I sat there in the theater unable to leave for several minutes, having been brought back in time so completely to that specific time and place.
Recently, while reading Slate, they had an article on gay men in San Francisco in the 1970s. Out of the blue, there were photos of the great love my life, the man I lived with and loved from back then. He died in 1981 and to see him again so out of context was a shock. The movie was much like that, I was confronted with Harvey Milk, someone long gone.
Penn did a remarkable job. One of the finest acting jobs I’ve ever born witness to.
Clark35
The Harvey Milk movie conviently edited out that Milk was a sick ped0/chickenhawk who preyed upon teenage boys when he was a lot older than them.
Clark35
The Harvey Milk movie conveniently edited out that Milk was a sick ped0/chickenhawk who preyed upon teenage boys when he was a lot older than them.
Clark35
@Taskebab: Exactly. People forget that Sean Penn beat the shit out of Madonna and other women.
NoName
@BJ McFrisky: Cleve Jones was a friend of Harvey Milk and he loved Penn’s portrayal of him. I think the man who actually knew Harvey trumps your “year’s worth of Milk footage”.
IvanPH
I think the movie MILK easily beats out Brokeback Mountain as the best LGBT of all-time. Sean Penn’s peformance is the best performance of an LGBT character too.
BJ McFrisky
@NoName: Okay, I’ll go with that. Milk was an insecure, effeminate hand-waver. Thanks for clarifying.
onthemark
Who was the dialect coach who taught him that old-fashioned “gay accent”?
@Taskebab: But Madonna liked the rough stuff, didn’t she make a video about it? And I bet she was on top most of the time!
AtticusBennett
@BJ McFrisky:
http://littlekiwilovesbauhaus.blogspot.ca/2013/05/happy-birthday-harvey-milk.html
as someone who has been lucky enough to befriend one of Harvey Milk’s best friends, i can happily inform you of how wrong you are. Harvey’s friends championed Penn’s performance – it *was* their friend Harvey.
BJ, of course, is just here to complain. That’s what trolls with no life do. What is “BJ McFrisky”? An internet troll, with no balls, no spine, who will forever waste his life sucking up to the conservative dad who resents having him for a son.
BJ mocks “whiney queens” online because his dad mocks them in real life, and BJ will never be man enough to earn his father’s love.