I remember how absurdly pleased I was at the sneak preview of Tropic Thunder when the crowd mostly applauded for the gay couple.[1] Restored my faith in humanity, a bit. But, y’know, there’s always the other side of the coin. I’m not shocked by that; it’s all around the political landscape, right? And nevermind all the more personal examples. This stuff is pretty much exactly what Milk is about, which is why I could not have predicted an example right in the theater.

See, the first thing that happens in the movie is eventual gay activist Harvey Milk meets and hooks up with the guy who will be his long-time partner. Pretty much inevitably, this means dudely make-outs. Therein lies my surprise: you would have a hard time going to a movie about a famous gay politician during the first days of the gay rights movement, and not expect to see some gay men doing gay things, right? But as soon as Sean Penn and Harry Osborne started kissing in the subway (I want to reiterate that the movie had not been on for five minutes yet), a [straight] couple got up and left the theater. It was almost a perfect moment for underlining everything the movie was trying to say; thinking about it now, I could almost believe they’d been planted to bolster the rest of the audience into feeling good about themselves.

Anyhow, the flick itself starts off a little choppy. They needed to dump a lot of set-up information, but it never really came together until Harvey decided to get into politics, maybe 20 minutes in. After that, the acting shines through, and it really is an inspiring story. Maybe it could win a few people over. The only thing that bothers me about it is that I’m sad people still need to be won over to what seems like an obvious message: let people have their happiness where they can find it, instead of stealing it from them.

I know there’s more to do, but it really was a little horrifying to see how bad things were around the time I was born. I’m really glad it’s better, and I’m going to be more thoughtful about what I can do in small ways to keep it improving. ‘Cause, yeah, I’m a bit inspired. Not so much with the going activist or having my gay friends hook me up with the parade calendar or anything, but for sure I won’t be as quick to let things go that I’m used to ignoring for the sake of peace. This is important shit, right here. It’s peoples’ lives.

[1] Which, okay, that doesn’t exactly make sense, but I don’t want to ruin it, either; the point is, it was an overwhelmingly positive response to something that I would have expected my Dallas peeps to react to neutrally at best.
[2] Unreferenced footnote: I just want to apologize for my inability to write today. Sorry you had to read this, instead of just having the gestalt beamed into your brain.