Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site bbncca.ARPA
Path: utzoo!linus!bbncca!sdyer
From: sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.movies,net.motss
Subject: Re: The Times of Harvey Milk
Message-ID: <1097@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 4-Nov-84 22:50:08 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.1097
Posted: Sun Nov  4 22:50:08 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Nov-84 05:03:55 EST
References: <1771@sun.uucp>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 31

I'd like to add my own recommendation for this documentary.  Even with all
its positive advance publicity, I entered the theater with a lot of
scepticism--I knew little about Harvey Milk other than what I had gleaned
from idle reading of the Advocate, and I was expecting to see the solemn,
earnest canonization of a third-rate politico whose only claim to fame was
that he was the first openly gay S.F. supervisor, and that he was
tragically, killed along with Mayor George Moscone in the now-famous Dan
White murder case.  It was nice to have my preconceptions swept away by the
power and eloquence of this movie.

The documentary is a montage of archival photographs, TV footage, and
repeated "talking head" interviews, arranged chronologically and narrated
by Harvey Fierstein.  Here, Harvey Milk emerges as a top-notch,
street-smart politician: someone who not only cared about the needs of his
constituents, gay, straight, elderly, and Asian, but who knew the value of
working within the City Hall infrastructure and manipulating the city's
media to ensure that his issues were addressed.  Note the title: this is
not "The Life and Times of Harvey Milk", for the central issue is not Milk
himself, but the galvanizing effect his candidacy and election had upon the
San Francisco community, and the tragic events of his assasination and the
subsequent trial of Dan White.

What happened in San Francisco in the late 70's was, for most of us, only
a 3 minute segment on the evening news, or a column of newsprint.
But the audience here is asked to experience the elation of Milk's election
and the anger and tragedy of the subsequent events, as if for the first
time.  It is a cathartic experience.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
{decvax,linus,ima,ihnp4}!bbncca!sdyer
sdyer@bbncca.ARPA