Generating Oscar buzz, particularly for its star, Milk’s press day brought together seven of its participants. Sitting on the dais were  scriptwriter and co-executive producer Dustin Lance Black, Sean Penn, director Gus Van Sant, Josh Brolin, James Franco, Alison Pill and Emile Hirsch.

In the role originally for Matt Damon, Brolin plays conflicted straight-arrow Dan White (whose son Charlie has not yet seen the hagiography but approved the actor’s muttonchops and haircut), and his asides such as “the one gay guy in Peoria can’t wait for this” injected the few light notes into an otherwise serious discussion of the project and of gay rights following recent election setbacks. Nursing a cold and Kleenex, Penn (as Harvey Milk) insisted that, in the face of such reverses, what Milk offered was hope, “now maybe our last shot at hope” -- Van Sant’s “new energy” -- after the man’s death, the Reagan legacy, and the “manslaughter” of preventable AIDS deaths.

Heads nodded agreement to Pill’s (as Anne Kronenberg) lamenting the general lack of awareness about the assassinated San Francisco activist and his platform, seconded by Bay Area-raised Franco (Scott Smith) and Black, for the latter of whom the events resonated “from a very personal place but were not [out] there anymore.” Started in spring 2004, his screenplay depended on archival research and in at least equal measure the comments of those who were involved. Spurred in his own emotional growth by Milk, Cleve Jones (Hirsch) was especially helpful, coming every day to the location shoot, mischievous, funny and anxious to debunk post-AIDS myths like that of despair: on the contrary, “in the ‘70s, this was a fun thing, like kids let into the ultimate candy store.”

The subject hero was killed thirty years ago to the day, the day following this commercial release -- and Smith died in the ‘90s -- so Penn prepared by continually playing the 1984 Oscar-winning documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk, as well as actuality footage over a long period, until “like with background music, synapses began to connect.” From surviving “confession” tapes, Brolin felt about the man “a sense of arrogance but also vulnerability,” whereas Penn’s impression was of a “warm, electric” human being. Some of such twelve hours’ historical material is mixed in with the narrative, Black said, because -- among other things -- any actress portraying Anita Bryant would have come across as lampooning, so the real-life singer turned conservative crusader is allowed to stand in her own images and words.

The rest was at first intended for 16 mm in order to seem equally newsreel, but the director was dissuaded by fears about that format not being so stable. Even fifteen years after an earlier association with an aborted Oliver Stone attempt to do the story, he was unable to enlist as many gay actors as he wanted.

Shooting began eleven months ago, when, although not pointed out, nothing like Proposition 8 was yet on any ballot. While the studio might therefore argue that assessments of Milk should be based on its quality, circumstances make that doubtful. Further, the film itself is not strictly modern biopic. First, Van Sant has done “other pieces on people who are dead but more dubious of character,” whereas now the central figure remains saintly even after the loss of original innocent naïveté. Secondly, film lives tend to cover a broader timespan, while here Black has cut down on what he called “stepping stones [to] focus on one moment in the man’s life and the movement.”

Whatever side of that LGBTQ rights fence viewers vote for, the film will clearly not stand apart from the controversy. Concerted or not, there have been vigils pro and con at pre-theatrical release West Coast screenings, chaired discussions at selected campus viewings, even an activists’ plan to link the film to a Shame on 8 promotion. Today’s unequivocal social-political responses of the panel members are of course natural -- had they believed otherwise, they could not have participated in Milk the film -- and battle lines are forming or formed along the roads to gay rights and to Oscar. The two cannot be disentangled at this point in time.

Essential to a director’s job, in the opinion of actor-sometimes director Penn, is the creating among cast and crew of “a sense of family, of environment.” This particular film will work, or not, in that it aims to foster a concrete climate of opinion. When the dust settles, that will remain to be seen.