PICTURING HARVEY MILK: Filming of movie evokes memories, emotions in the Castro

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 1/30/8 | Steven Winn

[SmithL]

Dressed in a tan cloth coat and crocheted white hat and pulling a wheeled shopping basket behind her, Eve Rojek trudged up and down Castro Street in a sputtering rain the other day. She walked up a stretch of sidewalk between 18th and 19th streets and then down and then back up again.

Rojek is an actress, cast as a middle-aged extra in a long-anticipated feature film about the life and death of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk that began shooting in the city last week. Like everyone and everything in view of the camera, Rojek needed to convey the precise look and feel of the Castro in the 1970s.

"It's a good old Irish neighborhood, and now it's changing," production assistant Matt Miller coached her. "You're pretty grim about everything."

Rojek nodded and got ready for another take.

"Milk," which stars Sean Penn as the groundbreaking gay politician, won't be in theaters until some time next year. But the making of the film on the streets of San Francisco - especially Castro Street - excavates a potent piece of the city's history. Feelings are running high about the movie as the Castro takes on the trappings of a '70s neighborhood.

People who lived through the era are revisiting the turbulence and exhilaration of Milk's rise to prominence as one of the first openly gay people in the country to hold a major elective office. They are also remembering the black day in November 1978 when Milk and Mayor George Moscone were shot and killed by aggrieved rival Dan White in City Hall.

"I have cried every single day since we started working," said Cleve Jones, 53, a longtime gay activist who is best known as creator of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt....

[SmithL]

Harvey Milk rides along Market Street in the 1978 Gay Freedom Day parade. Chronicle file photo, 1978

[SmithL]

Sean Penn?

I guess the Film Actor's Guild isn't on strike.

[garyhope]

Surely, (”don’t call me Shirley” )another boffo at the box office film for Hollow Wood. American’s by the millions will be lining up by the millions to see this one I’m sure.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

Wonder what Milk’s comment would be on the recent story that a particularly nasty strain of MRSA (staff infection) is being found on the buttocks and genitalia of gay men in San Francisco?

[AxelPaulsenJr]

Whoops, make the “staph”....my apologies.

[trisham]

Good grief. Another Hollywood stinker.

[ikka]

I won’t be seeing “Man Milk” anytime soon.

[skipper18]

“They are also remembering the black day in November 1978 when Milk and Mayor George Moscone were shot and killed by aggrieved rival Dan White in City Hall”

...while Diane Feinstein climbed out of her window, tossed off her heels, ditched the 10 pounds of jewellery weighing her down, and broke the world record for fastest mile by a chunky middle aged broad, ever.

If they can pull off the candlelight vigil scene, it’ll be the only part of the film worth watching. The doc footage I saw of it in High School ... the whole town looked like it was on fire. (insert gay joke here).