A Stealth Milk Run?

By Steven Zeitchik

"Milk" is one of the most promising movies of the year. Though it's a Gus Van Sant flick, it follows in the steps of his more focused previous efforts -- call it Good Milk Hunting. The movie is poignant and political. And given both Sean Penn's skill and the general polarized climate of November every four years, a culture-wars movie -- even one with a general message of love and understanding -- is always on point.

Yet before its San Francisco premiere Tuesday night, Focus is being more targeted in its media appriach; while it did do some ads around the presidential debates, it didn't take "Milk" to fall festivals and has been more restrained about showing the pic to short-lead media. Of course San Francisco will no doubt finally set the press in motion on the Van Sant title. (What's also clear about the future of Van Sant and scribe Dustin Lance Black, who came out of nowhere to write the spec for "Milk" and steal the thunder of the long-gestating Zadan/Merron project, is that the pair will again team up to chronicle the country's countercultural history; as Borys Kit reports, the duo will collaborate on a project that will finally move toward the goal of putting Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" on the bigscreen.)

The quieter approach to "Milk," which we spent the last few days hunkering down in, has a specific goal: with all the politicking going on (not just the election but, here in California, with Proposition 8, a subject that mirrors eerily one of Harvey Milk's battles), the company was eager to avoid talk-radio defining the movie for it.

Lionsgate took a somewhat different tack with "W" and "Religulous." When you're promoting a smaller political picture (the budget for "Milk" is probably in the $20 million range, high for a Van Sant movie but humble given the movie's ambition of capturing an entire place and time), editorial page coverage isn't just a way to save on your publicity bills -- it's a chance for the movie to seem bigger than it is.

But the tradeoff is one Focus doesn't want. Maybe it's gunshyness from all the Brokeback culture wars -- which helped at the box office but probably led a little to the Brokebacklash that cost it a best picture Oscar. Or maybe it's just the realization that this movie, unlike that one, really is much more of a political firebomb at the Parents Television Council, the Yes on 8 crew and all their anti-gay-rights cohorts, so it would rather not tackle them head-on.

Either way, the movie world premieres in San Francisco, site of all the historymaking, Tuesday night. Expect the media coverage and Bill O'Reillyization to follow. And expect the movie to be as much of a political football as anything Peyton Manning has ever thrown.

Comments

[bobf]

There's a biographical folk song about Harvey Milk from the 1980s that ties-in somewhat to the Sean Penn movie, that's posted on the following links:

http://bfeldman68.blogspot.com/2008/06/ballad-of-harvey-milk.html

http://www.mp3.com/artist/bobafeldman/summary/

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