Monday, March 10, 2008

So ya wanna be in pictures...

I spent time on Sunday as an extra in a movie they're shooting in San Francisco about Harvey Milk, starring Sean Penn. For those of you who might not know, Harvey Milk was the first openly gay San Francisco supervisor, who was murdered in City Hall along with Mayor George Moscone. (I had never heard about any of this before moving here -- although maybe that had to do with my age at the time.)

It was kind of fun, although unusually hot and sunny and I ended up with a bit of a sunburn. The scene they spent the most time shooting was one in which Harvey Milk gets up on stage to give a speech at the 1978 Gay Freedom Day. The best part was during one take, where instead of giving his Harvey Milk lines, Sean Penn instead went on a rant against George Bush, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and the likes. I think he got even more cheers from the crowd for that than when he was acting. Maybe they'll put it on the DVD extras for the film.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You'd think even in the seventies San Francisco would have been too cosmopolitan a town to have a murder based on sexual orientation. What shocked me the most at the time was WHERE the murders happened. Downtown Dallas I could see it, but SF? What a difference a couple of decades make.

dingdingwikki said...

Not that this necessarily has any bearings on whether I'll end up in any shot in the movie, but I think I did sort of make it into the paper. Or at least my back.

On this article (or this image if that stops working), I'm pretty sure that's me in the back almost at the far lower right, with the black sleeveless top and grey cap.