PHILADELPHIA TO MILK

Lately I've been on a big kick watching "older" (relative term) movies.  I just finished watching the 1993 movie Philadelphia.  It starred Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Joanne Woodward, Jason Robards, Antonio Banderas, and was under the direction of the great Jonathan Demme with music by Bruce Springsteen.

What's so thought provoking is that at the time, it was a hugely risky movie.  Would an audience (or anyone for that matter?) show up at the cinema and pay money to see an AIDS movie?  Tom Hanks was betting his career playing a gay man, in an age where a straight actor playing a gay man had never been done (yet).  Tom Hanks was at the height of his career, and he choose to do this brave, important picture.  In a sense, Tom Hanks trailerblazed straight actors playing gay roles by winning his second acting Academy Award for Philadelphia.  Hollywood found a great human angle on the AIDS epidemic and made a great film about it.

And now, 15 years later, we have another seminal gay film, populated almost entirely with straight actors in gay roles, and it is no less powerful of a film.  MILK was an amazing film.  Political, but human and another landmark film about gay rights at another cross roads of the gay rights movement.  No less important a film than Philadelphia was in 1993.  Both films were brave, bold, and full of love.  I hope that what Philadelphia did for AIDS, Milk does for gay rights.

Of course, I'm political.  But what the gay rights movement has never been able to successfully articulate is that gay rights is about EQUAL rights.  We want to be able to do the exact same things that our straight friends and family can do.  Equal rights in the 21st century....we've come so far, but we have so much further to go.

So President Obama, Rick Warren can speak, but in the midst of righting the United States, we would like to openly serve in the U.S. military.  And we would like our country to allow us the right to be married to the man or woman that we love.  Equality.

UPDATE:  Sean Penn won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing Harvey Milk, and my friend Dustin Lance Black won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.  Film Editor Elliot Graham was nominated, but unfortunately did not win.  He was run over by the Slumdog train.....