If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or get my blog updates by email. Thanks for visiting!

A scene from the movie

The opening of Milk director Gus Van Sant’s account of California’s first openly gay politician is four weeks away. But the film seems to be evading all the public images.

Unlike the hoopla over the other Focus Feature gay themed film, Brokeback Mountain which was drawing calls of agenda pushing from right wingers months before it released in 2005, there is been hardly a blip on the radar in the case of Milk.

The election is a major distraction for the film to get a decent coverage. But Focus also is doing something deliberate, eschewing publicity for the Sean Penn vehicle, keeping it out of the high profile fall film festivals and heavily restricted media screenings.

“The best way to help this film win over a mainstream audience is to avoid partisanship, and the best way to avoid partisanship is to let people find out about the film from the film itself,” said one person involved with the film.

Giving up word of mouth to avoid hot air is not a typical trade off. The political agenda that the film addresses will be kicked off when the movie premiers Tuesday night in San Francisco and then put in play after the November 4 th election. And when that happens, the studio will face a marketing dilemma: how to accommodate the gay rights angle the core audience expects while appealing to mainstream filmgoers who might not be immediately moved to see a movie about the subject.

In the test screenings many people found the gay love scenes a bit awkward. But by the end of the film they were happy that they stayed for the whole film. It seems similar reactions will be expected by Focus in the coming weeks. So they need to brace themselves.

Like Brokeback, Milk features a gay romance. But unlike Brokeback, Milk is made by gay filmmakers, features the polarizing Penn and puts squarely in a political context. Milk’s fight against California’s anti gay rights Proposition 6. A drama the movie deals with in great detail parallels the current California fight over Proposition 8, a measure that would ban gay marriage.

Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said that “since this movie is about a beloved politician who was killed, it won’t be easy for our adversaries to fight us on it.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!