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In a very syrupy interview with Tavis Smiley Wednesday on PBS, leftist actor Sean Penn talked about his role in “Milk” and how “the criticism people get tend to be from failed actors. Like the Fox anchors who are just clearly very envious.” I suspect that’s a shot at Bill O’Reilly, and I would expect Bill to reply.
Smiley honored him for his embrace of humanity, and wondered if America could yet celebrate a film about gay liberation:
SMILEY: Before my three minutes is up with you – this whole show goes so fast – I want to come back to the close of our conversation by talking about the thing – respectfully, and this is just my own opinion – that I honor about you as much, maybe even more, than your acting gift, which is your embrace of humanity, and I want to know where that comes from. What is it about you that allows you to stand in your truth, to raise these issues, to not bite your tongue, to embrace humanity? Where does that come from? You’ve always been that way or you grew into that? Help me understand that.
PENN: I think that it relates to acting, in a way. And I appreciate you saying it, but to the degree it’s true with me. I think that the demand inside, if there’s a final demand, it’s to feel your own life while you’re living it, and that’s the demand of what you have to be searching for in a character also, when you’re playing a character. And so it’s all one thing to me because it all was based on that, and so when you’re not involved in the world, you’re not involved in the movie. When you’re not involved — I get very bored guarding myself from feeling the world around me, and so I do find myself drawn to participate.
SMILEY: And how do you juxtapose the feeling that you get from doing that, the call to do that, with the risk you take in so doing?
PENN: For example, the criticism people get tend to be from failed actors. (Laughter) Like the Fox anchors who are just clearly very envious; the failed actors, and that kind of people. And what they don’t know is that you’re raised on resilience as an actor to that.
SMILEY: I’ll leave it at that. That’s about as straightforward as it comes.
Earlier, Smiley urged Penn to tell him about how he embraced humanity in the making of this movie:
SMILEY: Did you see this script — this screenplay, as the telling of the story of a gay man who made history or a movie about humanity?
PENN: When I first read the script I would say that I saw it as a movie about people in this situation which is very present. It’s present in all stages of politics, of people’s, I think not right, but the human need for equal rights and all of those things that become an emotional story.
And that can be in a fiction, it can be in a biopic. But I didn’t — you know, you’re aware. I do live in the broader society and I’m aware as I’m reading it of the particularities of the gay aspect of the story and so on, but they’re not dominant in the way of perceiving it originally.
It becomes very important in terms of the motivations of the storytelling and the performances of all the characters, because it’s a particular kind of oppression that’s been experienced for forever leading up to it that has so much to do with the choices that they make and the needs that they have and the obstacles that they’re up against, but in terms of playing a character in a movie, whether it’s a real person or so on, it’s really so much more to do with personality than sexual orientation or job description or any of that.
Then Tavis wanted to know if Penn was disappointed because America, as backward as it still remains, isn’t exactly breaking through the turnstiles to see this movie:
SMILEY: I want to move beyond this. The back story of why I asked that question, which I will turn into a question – I ask that question in part because I wanted to know what your reactions were when you first saw it, because I wonder whether or not there was ever a thought through your mind at this point in your career that a story like this, no matter what you thought of it, could sell, could work, could be celebrated – never mind all the great acting skills you bring to the table.
Could a story like this be celebrated in this America? This ain’t the America that it was a hundred years ago, but any thought ever to whether or not you wanted to invest yourself in a project like this that no matter how good you were going to play this character, that it really wouldn’t get off the ground?
PENN: That’s always a question that you have. It’s not always the deciding factor, but it’s always a question. And increasingly, I think, with time and the investments you have in stories that you’ve been involved with or in the people that you’re involved in the making of it and the way it’s important to them, you become increasingly aware of the possibilities of distribution.
Because whether you’re making a film that’s very personal or for very broad appeal, the intention is to share it with as many people as possible. And it’s very difficult with stories like these, and it’s not until it gets certain accolades or things that happen to it that it has a chance at all of that, of getting a wider audience. But I think when something is strong enough in you and it hits you hard enough, and that’s very difficult to identify why or how, that you go forward with it nonetheless.
PS: One reason the Academy Awards broadcast has been sinking in the ratings is the tendency to embrace arty or edgy movies that critics love, but few people have seen. There are some exceptions this year – Dark Knight, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and the surprising nod for Tropic Thunder – but most of the “celebrated” films have seen meager returns at the box office. Milk, for example, has grossed only 23.8 million dollars to date in limited release.
LOS ANGELES, California—Sean Penn and Tom Cruise in “Milk”? That’s the dream casting that director Gus Van Sant had in mind when he was mulling the film project that would eventually metamorphose as “Milk,” the Academy Award-nominated biopic that some say will give Sean Penn his second Best Actor Oscar award.
In our interview with Gus in San Francisco, he told us that as early as 10 years ago, he already envisioned Sean as Harvey Milk, the first elected openly gay official in the US, while Tom would play Dan White, Milk’s colleague and eventual murderer.
“I talked to Sean about playing the role in 1998 or 1999, but it was an ill-fated moment when I tried to put together a cast that would have had Tom playing Dan opposite Sean portraying Harvey. It was an entirely different project, screenplay and production,” recalled Gus, whose acclaimed films include “Good Will Hunting,” “Drugstore Cowboy,” “My Own Private Idaho” and “Elephant.”
Meetings
“The movie was offered to Sean and Tom. It was just me operating outside of the official project. Basically, there were two meetings—one with Tom and another with Sean, but it ended right there, because I was sort of inept as a producer. I didn’t know that I had to call every day and keep in touch.”
According to Gus, an earlier version of a Harvey Milk biopic was being planned at one point, with Oliver Stone as director and Robin Williams in the lead. But, for Gus, he had always wanted Sean to portray the member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who became a staunch supporter of gay and human rights.
Gus was glad that, many years later, he would still be able to cast Sean. He shared: “I had an opportunity to go back to Sean with the same idea. He had grown into the same age as the character.” Gus emphasized, “If you’re looking for a very strong lead actor, Sean is one of the best choices, because, for me, he’s the greatest we have.”
The filmmaker discussed the casting process that resulted in a movie full of excellent performances. Also noteworthy are Josh Brolin, who is in the Oscar Best Supporting Actor race for his portrayal of Dan White (the role that Tom Cruise would have played); James Franco and Diego Luna, as Milk’s lovers; Emile Hirsch and Alison Pill as Milk’s friends and allies.
“We did the traditional Hollywood casting process,” Gus narrated. “Francine Maisler was our casting director. We had a list of characters, brought people in to read the parts and pieced it together bit by bit. We built the cast around Sean. I happen to know James Franco from hanging out with him socially. I had seen some of his plays. He quickly said yes to us.”
“The part of Cleve Jones (the gay rights activist and one of the first people to find the slain body of Milk, his friend and mentor) was important,” Gus stressed. “It went down to two choices. Our first choice decided to do another movie. Then, Emile Hirsch became available. I was aware that Emile knew Sean.” Cleve, one of Milk’s pals who served as consultants and did cameos in the film, became an important resource for Sean, Emile and Gus.
Gus also disclosed, “Matt Damon was originally going to play Dan White, but because of scheduling difficulties, he also fell out. Josh Brolin was Sean’s idea.”
The director recalled how he and Sean fleshed out the actor’s well-received performance, which was recently recognized by the Screen Actors Guild for Best Actor. “We started out by having meetings,” Gus enthused. “We talked about how we were going to do it. Not having directed Sean before, I observed how he worked, which was strikingly similar to what I was accustomed to. He wasn’t super serious. There were choices made early on about how he would look. He had a lot of muscles that he wanted to tone down, so that he wouldn’t appear so big.”
Footage
Gus added, “Sean had meetings with Tom Ammiano (a friend of Milk’s). He also locked himself up with stock footage of Harvey. He studied his speeches, debates, pictures, will, interviews and voice recordings. But, Sean isn’t the type of actor who arrives on the set in character.”
“We didn’t think that Sean looked like Harvey,” Gus clarified. “But, by the time Sean played him, he already looked like Harvey! But, that wasn’t why we chose him. It was partly because when it came to political speeches, we thought that Sean would really be riveting.”
Asked why he thinks Penn accepted the role, Gus answered: “Sean never really said this, but I always assumed it was because Harvey was a figure he was familiar with. He had read about Harvey when I had given him the script 10 years ago. Maybe it was also because of the climate of today’s politics, and for him, it was a challenge to play an openly gay politician. It was a great push for him! He really had to work on it.”
Gus, who’s openly gay, talked about how he directed his straight actors: “I didn’t personally coach any of them,” he bared. “A lot of them were drawing on people they knew. Sean thought it would be good to have Bill Groom, who had worked on two of Sean’s movies, as our production designer, because he could use him as a resource. Bill is 56, and he came out of the closet at 54.”
“Each actor had his own references,” Gus added. “Emile had lived with a gay couple for a number of years in Arizona. James has gay friends in LA. I never really asked them. They presented me stuff, and I just approved or disapproved them.”
Sean Penn is sickened by his movie star peers who sign up to model for clothing companies and designers – because he thinks they should concentrate on acting. The Oscar nominee has no time for stars who aren’t committed to acting 100 per cent, and he’s calling on those who want to be taken seriously to ditch their sideline jobs.
Penn tells the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine, “People are spending too much time modelling for some f**king clothing company instead of acting, and I resent it. It’s like, ‘Are you going to do the Chanel ad today? I thought you were in the middle of shooting a f**king movie.’
“Just let me know if you mean it. I want to know you’re trying to write the great American novel every time. Fail all you want, but f**king try.”
It’s no secret why Sean Penn is the leading actor of his generation. His talent is right up there on screen, blazing so bright that you can’t miss it. That’s what makes him the frontrunner for this year’s Best Actor Oscar for Milk, in which his performance as the assassinated gay rights activist Harvey Milk is an act of total character immersion. In the Rolling Stone cover story, Penn talks about the importance of committing to a role, taking a shot at actors who put more energy into selling themselves as products than putting in the necessary work it takes to build a performance.
Has Penn ever sucked? You bet. Try Shanghai Surprise, the 1986 laugh-free farce he did with his ex-wife Madonna. Or All the King’s Men, the 2006 political drama that takes risks that just don’t pay off. It’s always been my theory that no actor can be truly great unless he or she risks falling on their ass. Look at Brando. Look at Streep. Penn belongs in that classy company.
Watch him take the screen as if by divine right in his first major screen role in 1981’s Taps, costarring with Tom Cruise (whatever happened to him?) as a cadet in a military school about to start his own revolution.
Of course, for most of us the breakout Sean Penn performance came a year later in Fast Times At Ridgemont High, playing Jeff Spicoli, the surfer dude who thought nothing of ordering pizza to be delivered to his history class. For Spicoli, life was all about “a cool buzz and some tasty waves.” Penn was tasty comic perfection.
Students of Penn’s career know that comedy was not the area he pursued. Look at the movies that won him Oscar nominations as Best Actor — the murderer on death row in Dead Man Walking, the haunted jazz guitarist in Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown, the mentally challenged father in I Am Sam (a role tweaked for laughs by Robert Downey, Jr. in Tropic Thunder), and the parent of the murdered girl in Mystic River, which won him the prize in 2004. Now, with Milk, Penn is on the verge of collecting well-deserved Oscar bookends. Other Penn performances in such films as At Close Range, The Falcon and the Snowman, Casualties of War and Carlito’s Way, hold a place of honor in my personal Penn pantheon, as does his directing talent, seen in The Indian Runner, The Crossing Guard, The Pledge and 2007’s magnificent Into the Wild.
Cut your own path through Penn’s career and I’m sure you’ll come up with your own favorites. At 48, Penn shows the talent and spirit of an actor and filmmaker who’s still spoiling to heard.
With a supremely effective visual, this PSA for the United Nations World Food Program in which Sean Penn illustrates how, comparatively speaking, cheap it would be to feed every hungry school child for a year makes a powerful statement.
With the Wall Street plan costing $700 billing, the Iraq war costing $600 billion and the European stimulus plan costing $200 billion euros, the $3 billion dollars needed to feed hungry children for a year seems quite affordable.
Santa Barbara Film Festival honored the legendary Hollywood filmmaker Clint Eastwood with the prestigious Modern Master Award. The event held on 29th of January had Sean Penn give way the award to Eastwood.
“He is the director actors dream about. His career is one of continuing jazz,” Contactmusic quoted Penn, as saying. The actor praised the director endlessly. Sean Penn won an Oscar for his role in the Eastwood film ‘Mystic River’ and stated that working with the director was the highlight of his career.
Eastwood received the award with gratitude and said that he loved to make movies as it involved various new people and new projects. “There’s a ton of people I haven’t worked with. That’s a fun thing about making movies. There’s a lot of people, there’s a lot of new parts that come along you need faces for,” Eastwood said.
Cleve Jones can cite the exact moment when Sean Penn morphed into Harvey Milk.
It occurred during filming of a crucial scene in Gus Van Sant’s multiple-Oscar-nominated biopic ” Milk,” which stars Penn as the former San Francisco supervisor, one of America’s first openly gay elected officials.
After honing his political skills as a flamboyantly courageous, bullhorn-toting community organizer, the so-called Mayor of Castro Street decided to run for office. He shed his aging-hippie couture, cut off his ponytail and took to wearing conservative suits, the better to reassure anxious Pacific Heights matrons that he was a serious candidate.
When Penn emerged on set one day in that incarnation, ready for filming, Jones was struck by the actor’s uncanny resemblance to his beloved friend and mentor.
“That was the day it all came together and Sean, like, had this direct line to Harvey,” says Jones, a longtime Bay Area gay rights and labor activist who served as a consultant on the movie and appears in three cameos, in addition to being portrayed in “Milk” by actor Emile Hirsch.
“It was weird,” Jones continues. “It was eerie and wonderful and at times just incredibly sad.”
Judging by the evidence of Oscar voting, a number of factors harmonically converged in the making of “Milk.” In Van Sant, the movie found a director capable of imparting a resolutely independent vision to a film that’s intended to play as well on Main Street as on Haight Street.
In Dustin Lance Black, it procured a screenwriter able to humanize and dramatize an opera-sized chapter of American social history.
And with such supporting actors as James Franco, Diego Luna and the Oscar-nominated Josh Brolin as Milk’s political rival and eventual assassin, Dan White, along with Danny Elfman’s inventive musical score, the filmmakers were able to conjure not only one man’s remarkable story but also the turbulent sensibility of a mind-blowing epoch.
Still, none of these contributions would’ve added up without a lead actor who could bring focus and verisimilitude to Milk’s ebullient, prismatic personality, an actor who could embody, rather than merely impersonate, the actual man.
Enter Sean Penn.
“I don’t think anything could’ve prepared us for what he brought to the screen,” says Bruce Cohen, who produced the movie with Dan Jinks.
“What we’ve heard from so many people is, you forget you’re watching Sean Penn,” Jinks concurs.
When White’s bullets struck down Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone on Nov. 27, 1978, America lost not only one of its most intellectually nimble and socially progressive politicians, it also lost a man whom Jones calls “one of the most empathetic people I’ve ever met.” Among those who knew him best and worked with him most closely, Milk was cherished not only for his relentlessly determined leadership but for his wit, sensitivity and grace under pressure.
No one associated with the film doubted Penn’s ability to meet the role’s enormous technical demands — indeed he is among the film’s Oscar nominees. Besides his professional credentials, he brought to the table other experiences as a political activist and occasional globe-hopping journalist that made him seem a natural fit to play Milk.
Van Sant says that during the casting process, he watched a number of YouTube videos showing Penn giving speeches at town hall meetings and in other forums, demonstrating his oratorical flair and charisma.
“I think a lot of it was aimed at Bush and the Iraq war,” Van Sant says. “He was funny, he was also daring and also accurate and extreme, which are a lot of things Harvey was. We were very inspired by his talks.”
As part of his research process, Black interviewed more than 40 people who had known Milk in various capacities. His screenplay provided Penn and the other actors with the foundations of authenticity on which to construct their roles.
“He and I talked about the ideas somewhat,” Van Sant says of Penn, who wasn’t available for interviews, “but I think he kind of assimilated his character through studying Harvey and using his imagination and willing it into being.”
Even so, certain aspects of Penn’s screen image and popular reputation might’ve appeared to be at odds with Milk’s persona.
“Maybe the surprise that Sean brings to it is because of his roster of characters being pretty macho,” Van Sant says. “That’s kind of an interesting turn.”
Jones acknowledges that, before meeting Penn, he “had this overall general impression” that “he was a blunt, possibly arrogant kind of a guy.” Then during an early phase of the filmmaking process, he and Penn were discussing how the actor intended to portray Milk. “He said, ‘I’m just going to play him as a kind man,’ ” Jones recalls. “I felt tremendously relieved at that point.”
Through working with Penn, Jones discovered him to be “a smart, generous, incredibly well-informed person” who possesses Milk’s quality of “empathy and genuine interest in other people” mixed with what Jones characterizes as a type of fearlessness. “I doubt Harvey was ever intimidated, and I don’t think Sean is either.”
During filming, by all accounts, the on-set atmosphere was highly amicable and relaxed. “There were no meltdowns, there were no raised voices, there were no egos on parade,” Jones says. The cast cultivated a true ensemble atmosphere befitting the cooperative spirit of Milk and his political entourage during the volatile late 1970s. “Something this article should say is, everybody took a tremendous pay cut to be part of this movie,” Jinks says.
Yet at times it was emotionally draining to relive those electric, traumatic years. “The first couple of weeks I was a blubbering idiot,” Jones says. Among the most difficult scenes to film was Milk’s killing. Jones, then 22, was one of the first people to discover Milk’s dead body, the first one that he’d ever seen. Watching that sequence “just about destroys me every time,” he says.
But if parts of Harvey Milk’s life and times were painful to reenact, the filmmakers share a sense of optimism that the movie has spurred renewed interest both in Milk and in the origins of the gay rights movement. With last fall’s passage of California’s controversial Proposition 8, many of the themes that “Milk” raises have acquired a reinvigorated relevancy.
“I tend to think in some ways it’s been timely the whole time,” Van Sant says. “But it’s timely this year as well.”
It may be especially well-timed for young people, including younger gays who’d never heard the story. Jones says that in recent years whenever he gave talks to students very few of them knew anything about Harvey Milk.
Now, he says, “I ask, ‘How many of you have seen the film?’ and everybody’s hand goes up.”
He was spotted chatting up good friend Sean Penn at yesterday’s Oscar Nominees Luncheon in Beverly Hills, but come February 22nd, Mickey Rourke will be competing against the “Milk” stud for the Best Actor award.
When he won the Best Actor Golden Globe award, Rourke thanked all his dogs for their support, telling the audience, “Sometimes when a man’s alone, all you got is your dog. And they’ve meant the world to me.”
But Mickey isn’t so sure he’ll fare quite as well on Oscar night. He told press, “I’ll probably be up there clapping for Sean Penn. I don’t think that far ahead.”
Whether or not he takes home another trophy, Rourke’s comeback success as a result of “The Wrestler” has been quite a ride. And it sounds like he’s just getting re-started.
Milk had to be a great movie. Anything less would have been an insult to Harvey Milk and everything he fought to change. It had to be true to the story, true to the people in it and, most importantly, true to the people still fighting for equal rights in the LGBT community.
This film had been in the works for 15 years, but never had everything come together until now.
Focus Features took on the project and put all the right people into place. Director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) wanted to make this back in the 1990s. He’s been tracking it since he began his career in 1982. Sean Penn signed on to play Milk, and he deservedly earned a “Best Actor” Oscar nomination for this role.
Penn is never afraid to take a risk, and he nails this performance. The cast around him is also brilliant, especially James Franco as Scott, Milk’s only true love.
It’s unfortunate that Milk won’t make much money at the box office in its first wide-release weekend. American audiences aren’t ready for this one, yet.
But it’s still a great movie. It’s a good thing, too, since there was so much riding on it. The story wasn’t all that long ago and the fighting continues to exist today. California passed Proposition 8, eliminating the ability for gay couples to legally marry, on election day 2008. The outrage that followed shows us the issues presented in Milk are still very prevalent today.
Milk’s fight was against Proposition 6, a bill which would have caused gay school teachers and those who associated with them to lose their jobs. His fight cost him his life, and forever made him a martyr for the gay community.
The script draws an obvious line between the homosexuals and the rest of society. And what Van Sant and writer Dustin Lance Black do is make sure we never see the human side of the heterosexuals.
Milk’s second campaign slogan is “Harvey Milk vs. The Machine,” further dehumanizing the mid-1970s government, while showing us the personal side of the gay community.
This needed to happen simply because this movie topic is still taboo, no matter how many of us like to say it isn’t. We all needed to connect with something, and that’s achieved through one emotion: love. Milk loves his longtime partner Scott. When we see that in the opening scenes, regardless of sexual orientation or preference, we can relate to the feeling. We needed to see that Milk is a human to break down the stereotypes. If that doesn’t happen, then the film risks the audience not caring about his cause. We also needed to see the government as evil. The best way to do that is to never show us their emotions. Milk succeeds in those tasks.
Dan White (Josh Brolin), the man who eventually kills Milk and Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber), and Senator Briggs (Dennis O’Hare) are the most robotic. Both opponents calculate every move with precision. Before Milk, nothing stood in their way of getting their bills passed and getting elected to the next level of office. But now, with one kink in the machinery, the whole system is on the verge of crumbling. Neither like it, but we certainly do.
Through dehumanizing the opposition, the audience can really focus on what Milk is trying to accomplish in his campaigns and in office. Once we buy into the cause, we start to pull for it. And when that happens, the movie has little left to do other than tell the story as accurately as possible.
Accuracy is perhaps the most important thing in a historical film like Milk. If it’s not accurate, then it turns into propaganda. Milk is very accurate. There are thousands of articles available online and through libraries which back each event. On top of that, since this story took place only 30 years ago, many of the people involved are still alive. Van Sant and Black interviewed them all to make sure this story was right.
If that wasn’t enough, the movie opens with Milk reading his own political biography into a tape recorder. It’s only to be played in the event of his assassination. That actually happened. The script was practically already written. This is Milk’s lasting legacy. He may have been a martyr, but his words will always live.
Milk doesn’t just serve as a biopic of the man’s life and accomplishments. It brings to the forefront the dilemmas still facing the gay community. It reignites the conversations that must happen for change. Because of all it does outside of the theater, it continues the message of hope started by Harvey Milk. Five stars.
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