GOT MILK?

Imagine two directors racing to make a film about an out, witty, slightly acerbic gay man whose legacy would forever be defined by his connection to a horrific murderous rampage. No, I am not talking about Truman Capote, for whom two films — Bennett Miller’s Capote and Douglas McGrath’s Infamous — retold Capote’s infamous struggle to write In Cold Blood, the non-fiction novel that secured his literary fame while nearly destroying his sanity. This time it’s Harvey Milk.

In Variety yesterday, Michael Fleming and Pamela McClintock reported in their article “Dueling Directors Milk a Good Story” that both Bryan Singer and Gus Van Sant are set to make a film about Harvey Milk. A San Francisco supervisor, and one of our first out gay politicians, Harvey Milk was murdered along with mayor George Moscone on November 27, 1978 when another supervisor Dan White went on a killing spree (supposedly set off according to White’s defense team from his eating Twinkies).

Singer has long been attached to adapting The Mayor of Castro Street, the non-fiction account of Milk’s life penned by the journalist Randy Shilts (who gained national attention for And the Band Played On, an account of the early days of the AIDS epidemic). According to Variety, “Warner Independent Prods., which brought in Singer two years ago, is near a deal with Participant Prods. to co-finance and with Chris McQuarrie to write the final draft.” Elsewhere, Gus Van Sant has now stepped up to direct a different Milk bio-pic, this one written by Dustin Lance Black.

Neither film, however, will be the first to cover Milk’s story. Rob Epstein’s documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (narrated by Harvey Fierstein) won the 1985 documentary Oscar for its portrayal of the man and his murder. Leon Ichaso directed the 1999 made-for-tv film Execution of Justice based on a play by Emily Mann and starring Peter Coyote as Milk. And in 1995, composer Stewart Wallace (along with Grey Gardens librettist Michael Korie) created and staged the opera “Harvey Milk.”