"Harvey would have opened it in October": Is Focus Features the latest Prop 8 scapegoat?

[KamaAina]

The theory here is, if more people had had a chance to see Milk before they voted, fewer of them would have done the wrong thing.

http://www.slate.com/id/2205564/pagenum/all/#p2

In ways its makers could not have expected, Milk is very much a movie of its moment—it now seems like more than just a movie. It has sparked copious pre-release commentary—not many films occasion three New York Times articles and a Maureen Dowd column before they open. Amid all the ruminations about Milk's eerie relevance and the talk of life mirroring art mirroring life, two questions have come up repeatedly: How does Proposition 8 change the meaning—the symbolic significance as well as the real-world function—of Milk? And if the film had found an audience early enough, could it have made a difference?

The first question is easier to answer. The passage of Prop 8 transformed Van Sant's film from a delicate, serious-minded period biopic into something altogether more urgent and emotional: a threnody, a catharsis, a call to action. Its hero, played by an unusually warm and giddy Sean Penn, is not simply a trailblazer who threw open closet doors; he's a prophet whose words still matter and, what's more, have gone sadly unheeded. There are moments in the film that now seem to traverse time and space, as if telepathically addressing the struggles of the present day. As the Prop 6 results start to roll in, Harvey tells his followers: "If this thing passes, fight the hell back."...

Viewed in a post-Prop 8 environment, Milk might well suggest strategies for the culture wars to come. But had it appeared earlier, could this particular battle have been won? While it's naive to presume that movies can swing electorates—just ask Michael Moore—those what-if questions are hard to dismiss, not least for the filmmakers. Interviewed by the San Francisco Bay Guardian recently, Van Sant conceded, "Harvey would have opened it in October."

That the question of timing and impact is being raised says something about where Milk falls on the spectrum of gay cinema. In one sense, it belongs with the AIDS melodrama Philadelphia and the closet weepie Brokeback Mountain in the relatively small group of serious gay-themed Hollywood movies that, partly because of their scarcity, still exist as consciousness-raising vehicles or as markers of social progress. (Milk is all but guaranteed a good night at the Oscars, given that many members of the Academy are likely to see a vote for Milk as a vote against Prop 8, not to mention a way to make up for giving the Oscar that was thought a lock for Brokeback Mountain, also a Focus release, to the odious Crash.)