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
Gay-for-pay the role of the real-life gay rights activist-political leader Harvey Milk). In film and TV, "pinkface" is the use of straight actors to play LGB roles or characters. Anna King of "Time Out" likens "pinkface" to blackface. The LGB community raised concerns about the film "Brüno", in which a straight actor (Sacha Baron Cohen) plays the role of a gay man to "...mak[e] fun of the queer community". Dennis Lim states that the depictions of gays in mainstream film typically include the "gay joke" (in which LGB people are depicted to create humor); depicting gay men pejoratively as a "daisy,