The Times Of Harvey Milk By Rob Epstein And Richard Schmeichen

The Times of Harvey Milk, by Rob Epstein and Richard Schmeichen, is a documentary about the career and assassination of the first openly gay elected city supervisor in the city of San Francisco, California. The main emphasis on the film lies in the groundbreaking nature of Milk’s election and public service to the city of San Francisco in the 1970s before his ultimate death at the hands of his former colleague. The narrator uses film clips from Milk’s time during his several campaigns as well as his time in office, combined with interviews of people who personally knew him that were filmed years after his death to depict the sheer influence of his work and mere existence on the gay rights movement, despite his time in office only being 11 months.

Tory Hartmann, his political consultant, suffered a miscarriage and mentioned that he showed up on her doorstep with a bouquet of roses and offered to do her grocery shopping for her. Although he had no previous experience working in law or politics, he began running for elected positions in San Francisco in the early 1970s, losing three times, although his votes increased every time as he continued to establish himself as a broker in the neighborhood, gradually garnering even more trust from locals, even those who were previously hesitant to support an openly gay candidate due to his support for issues that the majority of constituents valued deeply. After the election of openly gay Mayor George Moscone, who deeply valued and championed all neighborhoods, cultures, and people, there was a shift in the election process for the San Francisco board of supervisors, from city-wide to district elections. Milk ran in the fifth district against two other major opponents, including one other openly gay man, a lawyer named Rick

The director included a clip of Milk claiming that “the biggest crime in this city is the fact that some government officials don’t care about senior citizens” (Epstein). These kinds of issues proved to those who were not quite as on board with the idea of a gay city supervisor that he was indeed a competent and effective representative who genuinely listened to his constituents regardless of his sexuality. In 1977 and 1978, there was a barrage of gay rights being repealed, including state-wide Proposition 6, endorsed by California Senator John Briggs, that would effectively prevent any gay person from becoming a school teacher. Briggs used the fallacious narrative that gay people are child molesters, refuted by openly lesbian activist Sally Gearhart. When Briggs claimed “we cannot prevent child molestation, so let’s cut our odds down and take out the homosexual group and keep in the heterosexual group [of teachers]” (Epstein), Gearhart cited fact-checked evidence that in fact, heterosexual men made up the majority of child