Milk (film) Milk (film) Milk is a 2008 American biographical film based on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Dustin Lance Black, the film stars Sean Penn as Milk and Josh Brolin as Dan White, a city supervisor who assassinated Milk and Mayor George Moscone. The film was released to much acclaim and earned numerous accolades from film critics and guilds. Ultimately, it received eight
Harvey Milk the major port city of San Francisco had been home to a sizable number of gay men who had been expelled from the military and decided to stay rather than return to their hometowns and face ostracism. By 1969 the Kinsey Institute believed San Francisco had more gay people per capita than any other American city; when the National Institute of Mental Health asked the Institute to survey homosexuals, the Institute chose San Francisco as its focus. Milk and McKinley were among the thousands of gay men attracted to San Francisco. McKinley was a stage manager for Tom O'Horgan, a