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From: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Newsgroups: net.motss,net.movies
Subject: Re: The NEG&LFF Week #3 [Times of Harvey Milk]
Message-ID: <1425@shark.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Jun-85 22:46:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: shark.1425
Posted: Sun Jun  9 22:46:07 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Jun-85 05:22:44 EDT
References: <1454@bbncca.ARPA>
Reply-To: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 28
Xref: watmath net.motss:1747 net.movies:6606
Summary: 

In article <1454@bbncca.ARPA> rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) writes:
>The New England Gay & Lesbian Film Festival: Week #3
>===========================================

>June 26/27      Wed/Thurs
>TIMES OF HARVEY MILK    (US, 1984)      1:00 5:00 8:00
>A moving documentary about San Francisco's first openly gay Supervisor,
>who was murdered in city hall in 1978 by a homophobic fireman, it traces
>Harvey's eccentric but flamboyant political career, giving just a glimpse
>of the Castro Street culture of 70s' SF (THE book or movie on the Castro
>has yet to be done, if it ever will).  "The winner of of the Best Docu-
>cumentary award by almost every critic group this year, including the
>New York Film Critics and the Boston Society of Film Critics."  But
>someone should've told narrator Harvey Fierstein to gargle before he
>recorded!

The summary is slightly off.  Dan White, who assassinated Harvey Milk and
Frank Moscone, was not just a fireman, he was an ex-city councilor.
Besides being homophobic, he was not particularly good at the kind of dirty
politics which Milk (a master of the fine art of kicking his enemies in the
political crotch) and Moscone (who became a paragon unrivalled by anyone
short of the Kennedys after he died) used to get rid of him.
White was not a very (words elude me) complex? complete? human being.
He seemed to think that killing Moscone and Milk would fix things.
But it isn't fair to just label him homophobic as if that explained
it all away.

Hutch