Milk

Tuesdays are movie nights at our house, and this last week Mark and I watched "Milk", the story of a San Francisco politician in the 1970's. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay politician to be elected to a major office, in a major American city. What I found so compelling about the movie, is not so much Harvey Milk's story, I already knew most of that, it was the fact that I took part in many of the events that were depicted in the movie. In 1978 I was living in Oakland California, and worked in San Francisco. In my mind it is all still very clear and vivid, but in the movie they used archival movie footage of the events of the day, and honestly, it made me feel extremely old. The historical footage was all scratchy, grainy, and faded and I have to ask, am I also that scratchy, grainy, and faded?

A couple of the events that I participated in that year, were the gay pride parade that is shown in the movie, and the candlelight march and vigil depicted at the end of the movie. I looked closely to see if I was in the footage, and the only time you can see me is during the candlelight vigil outside city hall. I am the dark indiscernible spot 359 people from the left and just three inches above the bottom of the screen.

One other interesting thing about the movie was Emile Hirsch's glasses. They were very ugly, and very much in style back then. I know, it was the first year I started wearing glasses, and I had the same hot style.