Penn acts in Milk

2008-12-01 10:00

Los Angeles - Even in liberal Hollywood, an openly gay actor with a marketable name is a hard commodity to find, and if anyone should know, it is the filmmakers behind new movie, Milk.

Fortunately for them they had Sean Penn, the very straight Oscar winner who has loyal fans and seems able to play any role, including San Francisco's gay politician Harvey Milk who was murdered on the job in November, 1978.

"He came in kind of ready made" for the role, director Gus Van Sant told Reuters about winner of the best actor Academy Award for playing a hardened ex-convict in 2003's Mystic River.

In real life, Penn has maintained a tough guy image ever since getting into scrapes with the paparazzi early in his career.

Yet in the movies, he has shown wide versatility, whether playing a mentally retarded man in I Am Sam, a jazz guitarist in Sweet and Lowdown or a death row inmate in Dead Man Walking - all which earned him Oscar nominations.

Best role

Harvey Milk may be his best role yet, many critics say. Writing for USA Today, reviewer Claudia Puig called Penn's performance "magnificent, career-topping" and Kenneth Turan, in a generally mixed review of the overall film, called Penn's performance "strong and convincing".

"It was hard to find gay actors who were out," said openly gay director Van Sant. "There really aren't (many). You could do it, but they would be unknowns and that would be fine with me, but the money (financiers) would start to get nervous."

The fact that Penn and his co-stars - James Franco, Emile Hirsch and Diego Luna - could feel comfortable playing gay roles, coupled with how small the pool of marketable gay actors truly is, shows at least one thing: times have changed in Hollywood for gay men but they have also stayed the same.

In watching Milk amid the current US political battles over gay marriage, audiences can't help, but ponder progress on gay rights because in looking at Harvey Milk, writer Dustin Lance Black has chosen as a backdrop the politician's battle against California's Proposition 6, which would have banned gay teachers in public schools in 1978.

In this past election cycle, the state's voters approved a proposition banning gay marriage and since the vote on November 4, gays have taken to the streets to protest what they see as an assault on their civil rights.

Openly gay public official

What would Milk have done in the same position? "He'd be right there on the streets with the marchers," Van Sant said.

Milk picks up on the politician's life after he moves from New York to California, and it focuses almost exclusively on Milk's political involvement in San Francisco.

Milk lost several early campaigns, but finally was elected to the city's Board of Supervisors, becoming the first openly gay man to hold a major public office in the United States.

- Reuters