Something to Watch: The Times of Harvey Milk
Director Rob Epstein made his 1984 documentary about Harvey Milk, one of the first gay elected officials in the country, six years after Milk’s death. Milk was San Francisco’s city supervisor when he and the city’s mayor were shot and killed at City Hall by their former colleague, Dan White, on November 27, 1978. The Times of Harvey Milk delves into the killing, but mostly it’s a vibrant celebration of Milk’s life. It’s a great choice to watch during Pride Month.
Harvey Milk was charismatic and brave, but he was also in many ways an ordinary person. A Jewish kid from a New York suburb, he’d grown up playing football, written for his college newspaper, worked as a teacher, and, in 1973, opened a camera shop in the Castro district of San Francisco. His personality seems to have been balanced between charming goofiness and charming seriousness. Bolstered by his belief that government should work for everyone, he strove to rid San Francisco of both workplace discrimination against gays and of the dog poop that littered the sidewalks and parks.
I remember seeing the movie in a theater when it first came out. I was a sophomore in college and wondering about my sexual orientation. I knew hardly any gay people and had read maybe a handful novels with gay characters. What did it mean to be gay or lesbian? I wasn’t sure. If you discovered that you were, would the world around you fall to pieces? I feared it would.
Watching the documentary was powerful for 19-year-old me. First, there was joy in watching Milk’s infectious charm and determination. Beyond that, there was the revelation of the rich world of the gays and lesbians who made up his community — talking, laughing, mourning, raging, living their lives. That world and those people came through so vividly.
Harvey Milk’s campaign manager, Anne Kronenberg, once said, “What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head, and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us.”
A righteous world. For a few hours, in that movie theater, I could believe in it.
