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he TO Y 810g The TONY 810g > Film, Gay & Lesbian, TONY blog > Sean Penn talks about hi. role in Gus Van Sant's' IIIIiIk
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Sean Penn talks about his role in Gus Van Sant's Milk
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10 by Anna King on November 211h, 2008 Director Gus Van Sant, Sean Penn, Josh Brolin and other cast members from Mllk-a biopic about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public
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Penn had a cold He sat huddled ,n a black puffy jacket and signaled for more Kleenex . At one point, he looI<ed into his tissue and frowned . Like fellow casl members
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Josh Brolin and James Franco, he was Sporting a fetching goatee, while Alison Pill, who plays MIlk's lesbian campaogn adviser, had cast off the frizzy w~ she wore in
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the movie. Brolin, who plays Dan Wlrte, MIlk's cohort on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and, later, his assassin, leaned inlo the mICrophone and admitted in a gravelly voice that he didn't find Pill "remotely attractive' in her '70s haIrdo. "Bul I'm k>oking at her last n~ht and
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As this comment may suggest, Brolin and many of his fellON cast members are straight Van Sant noted that allhough they tned to cast gay actors, there were "not that many of box~ffice stature," adding that two actors in the cast WIth smaller roles, Stephen Spinella and DenIS O'Hare, are openly gay. Not many of the leads even knew who Harvey Milk was going into the project. Pill didn't know anything about Milk's stO/)' other than "a vague notion of the Twtnk", Defense"-a reference to lhe infamous moment In Wlrte's lrial when it was suggested that his junk-food diet may have led to mental instability
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Playing Milk's boyfriend Scott Smrth, James Franco, who grew up in the Bay Area, said he 100 hadn't heard of Harvey. KiSSIng Sean Penn must've been good, though , as Franco's about to play his second gay role: Allen GInsberg In the upcoming HowI-<odirected by Rob Epstein, who also helmed the 1984 documentary The Times 01 Harvey Milk "I was born the year that [Milk) died, 1978, Franco noled. Penn looked up from his tissue. "You were born Ihatlate? Fud<." Penn 's lake on homosexuality is simple: "For some people, guys give hIm a boner, for others It'S a woman. The sex IS
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With 8 in Ihe headlines, Harvey Milk's name has frequently been Invoked (by those of us born before Franco, alleast). Dustin Lance Black, who wrote the script for Milk, explaIned, ' PeopIe in lhe gay movement need hist"", [like that shown in Ihe film) so we don't keep repealing lhe same mIstakes: For Black, the fight for gay equality was lost in Cal~omia and Florida because there are no galvanizing gay politICal figures like Milk around today. Penn added his lhoughts on the recent vote in California: ' Any support for Proposition 8 would be, minimally, manslaughter, because hum,., hist"", lells us that there are going 10 be leenage boys who are going to hang themselves out of a reach for an identity they can 'l get. As long as this mOVIe is part of an engine that is going to reveallhat, Ihat's going to make all of us really happy and proud.' For Penn, the problem lies with ' a pseudofaith community Ihat has nothing 10 do with God, love or anything of real failh--it's really just hypocrisy and hatred. " Then Penn, despite hIS sniffles, walked out with whal k>oked suspiciously like a Cigarette in his hand. Outside the holel, though, only Brolin could be found puffing. Pemaps Penn was spiriled _ay to the Regency's last smoking surte.
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