Milk

The big trucks are gone. The signage and business fronts restored. The last vestiges of 70’s era corduroy, denim and leather hang conspicuously not on film extras but the unselfconscious locals who never gave them up. But I find myself still daydreaming about the filming that took place just down the street from my apartment.

In the space of just a few weeks, most of them glum and rainy, one of my favorite filmmakers and his crew descended upon the Castro to film Milk - a biopic about Harvey Milk, the “Mayor of Castro Street” and the first openly gay man to win office just about anywhere. The film stars Sean Penn as Milk and while I’m not sure I ever caught Mr. Penn in action I couldn’t help but walk wide-eyed every day through the set, as it were, of Castro Street circa 1978.

The most enchanting part of the whole experience was participating as an extra in crowd scenes. I’m certain my likeness won’t amount to anything more on the big screen than one of hundreds of other figures, but walking down Market St in a hushed recreation of a candlelight vigil is a wonderful, if somber, memory to savor until Milk hits the theaters.

While the location shooting is over for the most part (there’s still a call for extras on March 9th) and the neighborhood reverts back to its same boring facades, there remains one spectacular part of the set left intact: the restored Castro Theater marquee. The neon is ablaze and even the letters blink their way down the sign. I don’t remember it looking this good…ever.