Milk and snow

Early afternoon yesterday I was starting my day slow when all of a sudden I looked outside and it was snowing! Again! Big, thick flakes coming down heavy. At that very moment I had just decided to go and see Milk, finally, and had a half hour to get to the Fox Tower before it started. I lashed on my hiking boots and dashed to the MAX station and got to the theater just as previews were starting. (A MATINEE is $8.25 now? Jesus allmighty, being a journalist has spoiled me.)

So, then, Milk. It’s not Brideshead Revisited, but it’s pretty good. (They’re verrrrry different films anyway, so that’s not a fair comparison, but it’s on my mind since I finally got my DVD copy of Brideshead a couple days ago! I’m watching it with Dylan on the 20th, the day before I film Art Police.) Sean Penn does a great job as Milk. James Franco is hot, although his character suddenly disappears about halfway through the film with no explanation that I heard, only to reappear just as suddenly closer to the end. Next to Penn, Josh Brolin’s performance may be the best in the film, albeit in service of the “villain” of the film, the guy who shoots Milk. (Hard to believe this is the guy who played Mikey’s older brother Brand in The Goonies so long ago!) There was a subplot involving Milk’s latino lover that was pretty annoying, the character is written as an obnoxious, childish drama queen who locks himself in a closet at a party because people aren’t nice to him – ugggh. The best scenes were the ones in which Milk speaks to and connects with his crowd in the Castro after some police action or political upheaval that has them buzzing like a stirred ant-pile. A lot of the script was kind of melodramatic and contrived, and I think I understand why Gus has shied away from being overtly political for so long – it doesn’t suit him. He’s much more at home being literary and cinematic and poetic – I have that same sensibility, actually. Music or films that are stridently political never lift me as high as peoples’ personal narratives when they have an elegiac quality to them (and I’m back to Brideshead!) I am interested in individual human response and experience and politics smashes all that flat and says “individuals are not important, what is important is the larger picture.” But it isn’t hard to see how Milk fits into a moment in history that’s happening right now and it’s obviously a labor of love on Van Sant’s part.

After the movie I went home (cold rain now, snow gone), surrendered to Taco Bell, then interviewed Kevin Reedy, the author of The Best Nonreligious Quotes Ever. I can tell when I conduct a smashing interview and this one was smashing. Totally smooth, no awkward moments, I had my questions prepared, but left the script when we just started talking, and I was able to effortlessly switch between asking him questions and relating my own experience to his responses. I said he needs some quotes from Andy Warhol and Virginia Woolf for his website and that I would pick some out and submit them. (I also suggested “Nothing is funnier than humor” for the humor section which is MINE!) They printed their book P.O.D. through LightningSource and I picked his brain a little about that, so in addition to getting what I needed for the article, I gleaned some more advice that I can use for my own book.

Joel came over to buy my DVD player and we ended up watching a 3-hour movie, one of his favorites: The Right Stuff, from 1983. It really didn’t look that old, if I was guessing I’d think it was made in the 90s. It’s definitely a guys’ film, or rather a boys’ film: reminded me of being a lot younger, like in the Mt. Rainier days. The script and acting both went awry at certain points, but it won a bunch of Oscars for things like editing and score and other technical things, and it deserved them. I’ve heard it described as “the intelligent man’s Top Gun.” Sam Shepard looks like a melange of four other celebrities – Matt LeBlanc from Friends, Val Kilmer, and a couple others whose names escape me. Ed Harris has the youthful face and glowing blue eyes of a baby or a little boy even though he’s a balding man. Anthony called to say he and J. have left Bora Bora and will be in San Fran now until shortly before I leave Portland, he said while they were away their dog attacked their neighbor’s dog and tore part of its ear off and other damage and I said, “So your dog won?” but I really wish they were cat people, I hate aggressive, violent dogs and I sure am gonna miss Lucy, even on Maui.