Splicetoday

Moving Pictures
Jan 02, 2009, 08:14AM

Where's the passion?

Gus Van Sant's critically acclaimed Milk is a diluted, soft-spoken look at a brutal time.

Thoughts?:

Was Van Sant afraid that audiences wouldn't be sympathetic if 70s-era gay activists were people who suffered, swore, fought back, and fucked like they meant it? If the street kids actually looked like dirty, starving, broke-ass teen hustlers?

Gay history -- unedited -- is ugly, angry, and violent. It's police dragging us out of cellar bars and down to the station to gang fuck the femmes and face-rape the butches, queens, and trannies. It's military witch hunts; suicides and "experimental therapies," from lobotomies and electro-shock to Christian boot camps. It's Stonewall, where we showered raiding police with bottles, locked them in the bar, and set it afire. It's ACT UP and chaining ourselves to pharmaceutical companies' fences to protest AIDS drugs price gouging.

Discussion
  • um, well i liked it.

    Responses to this comment
  • I also liked "Milk." This writer at The Huffington Post wanted a more violent, gritty film, which is a legitimate point of view. However, as someone who wasn't born was Milk was killed, I knew little about him, and so Van Sant has introduced a much larger audience to a real hero.

    Responses to this comment
  • hey, i really liked this movie a lot and i thought it resonated all too well with the current situation of homosexualists in america today. plus, anytime i can see james franco play a gay...makes me smile!

    Responses to this comment

Register or Login to leave a comment