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The manager of the Microsoft booth at Macworld was going to throw this away after you were finished with your book signing for Reality Check, and I couldn’t bear to see it go into the garbage, so I rescued it.
Then, at the GTD Summit, David Allen inspired me to go through my Inbox (a big pile of random papers) and do a Mind Wipe or a Mind Sweep or whatever he calls it, and I realized that as much as I enjoy looking at a photo of you — (who doesn’t?) — I simply have no use for this.
Again, though, I hate to see it thrown into the trash, so I’m sending it to you care of Garage. Perhaps you can add it to your souvenir collection of professional engagements.
Update: Now that the much-awaited film Milk has premiered, many politically astute observers have noted the parallels between the recent marriage equality demonstrations and the Gay Rights movement of the 1970s that Harvey Milk had come to represent. I will be seeing Milk at the Castro Theatre this weekend, but having participated in both the making of the movie and many of the recent anti-Proposition 8 demonstrations, I feel as though I’ve already seen it. What follows is my story of being one of many extras during the riotous crowd scenes.
* * *
The Castro District in San Francisco, just down the hill from where I live, is abuzz. It’s the most exciting time for the neighborhood since the annual Halloween street party (before it was recently banned) or LGBT Pride weekend, when tourists from all over the world make a pilgrimage to the famous "Gay Mecca." It’s as if the 1970s — when the Castro emerged as the world’s epicenter of the gay liberation movement — is coming alive again. And, in a sense, it is.
Filmmaker Gus Van Sant is in the middle of realizing his long-time dream of directing a biopic of Harvey Milk, a political activist instrumental in creating the gay community and culture of the Castro, as well as the first openly gay man to serve in a substantial political office as San Francisco city supervisor.
Van Sant had been wanting to make a movie about Harvey Milk for a long time. He rejected the original Oliver Stone version from the early ’90s (which was to star Robin Williams, who has since aged out of the role). And there was another reason he couldn’t make the film he’d wanted to: Warner Brothers, the studio he was negotiating with, balked at showing realistic depictions of gay relationships during the sexually liberated ’70s. When I met Van Sant in the late ’90s during a book tour for his debut novel Pink, he said that in making a movie about Harvey Milk, it was important to depict sex between men realistically, so he couldn’t abide by the studio’s prudishness. "They wanted to limit Milk’s sex life to something like just two little kisses, and I couldn’t do that," he explained, "so I walked away." Half-jokingly, he likened working with big Hollywood studios to being in a masochistic relationship.
The events of just the single decade that followed, however, made a difference in the potential for accurately telling gay stories. Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet, Will & Grace became a mainstream hit, and Queer As Folk and The L Word routinely depicted same-sex love scenes and a variety of intimate relationships. In the end, it may have been the success of Brokeback Mountain that convinced nervous studio execs to back a realistic film about Harvey Milk. In fact, all of a sudden — thirty years after Milk’s assassination — the story of the "Mayor of Castro Street" is in demand. Due to the writers’ strike, Van Sant’s version happened to make it into production before a competing version by filmmaker Bryan Singer and writer Randy Shilts.
The building at Market and 16th Streets (now empty after the liquidation of Tower Records and Video) became Extras Holding, where young actors (and some middle-aged ones) are transformed into their 1970s counterparts. Rack after rack of ’70s plaid shirts, coats and jackets, jeans, suits, polyester dresses, large-knit sweaters are meticulously categorized and numbered, as are dozens of storage bins containing wool caps, wide neckties, scarves, large eyeglasses frames, bandannas, hoop earrings, and other period accessories.
Extras sit in front of high-end lighted mirrors at makeshift makeup tables to get their hair styled into long shags and severe side parts (for men) and, for women, face-framing barrel curls, afros (for black women), and plain long, straight locks. Those extras with hair too short or modern had to endure wearing cheap wigs. Rumor has it that the makeup department ordered thousands of fake mustaches and pairs of sideburns in assorted colors to apply to men who hadn’t been growing their own. Wardrobe and makeup is often open twenty-four hours a day to accommodate the aggressive film schedule.
San Francisco doesn’t host nearly as much filming as does Southern California, so the extras, happy to engage in a rare professional film acting opportunity (especially since it’s not easy to be cast even as a "background artist"), have an unusual sense of camaraderie. As fascinating as the quotidian details of making a film are to passersby, the extras themselves compare notes, even on the craft service food. The entire first floor of Extras Holding was converted into a dining hall with folding tables and a whiteboard displaying menu of selections that change daily. Morning extras and crew are treated to custom-made omelets from professional chefs; the dinner menu rivals that of an upscale restaurant:
grilled flatiron steak
grilled trout with lemon butter
chicken cordon bleu
bow-tie pasta
bien cali rice [(I’ve never heard of it either)]
gnocchi with tomato cream sauce
mixed veggies
baked brie
prosciutto-wrapped asparagus
stuffed artichokes
dessert: "Cake Batter" ice cream
Casual observers in the Castro had the good fortune to watch the principle actors at work, including Sean Penn as Harvey Milk. I’ll admit that I was at first skeptical of the casting of Penn in the title role. Snapshots of Penn, however, in full wardrobe, makeup (including colored contact lenses and a nose prosthetic), and the long ponytail and scruffy beard he’d grown to depict Milk’s hippie look during the early ’70s, convinced me — not to mention how seriously he and co-star James Franco took the roles. Steve Carell, slated to star in the Singer/Shilts version of the Milk story, would have been an interesting choice in one of his first comedy-to-drama crossover rolls, especially since he played a sensitive gay character in Little Miss Sunshine so poignantly and delightfully. Adrian Brody might have fit the part, too — certainly physically — but he may have been too young to play the forty-something Milk.
As exciting as it was to observe an active film crew and famous actors using the Castro as a living movie set, I had the privilege of participating even more, as an extra in Gus Van Sant’s Milk.
If you’re in the market for a commuter bicycle, be on the lookout for the collapsible, theft-deterrent Biomega Boston. The Biomega Boston features a cable that locks into place as a structural part of the frame. In order for the bicycle to function, a key is inserted into a lock that keeps the cable taut and firm; without the key, the cable is slack and the frame collapses. The bike, once the cable is slack, can be folded for easy storage in the office or at home. (If a would-be thief cuts the cable, the bicycle is rendered unrideable via collapsing frame. For the owner of the bicycle, though, the cable can be replaced to restore function — although the ease of repair and theftproofness is debatable.)
The design of the Biomega Boston is so cool and innovative that it’s on display in the current San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibit 246 and Counting: Recent Architecture + Design Acquisitions. (When I came across it during a recent museum trip, the key was in the lock and I was half-tempted to grab the bike off the open display board and ride away. I’m guessing, though, that I might not have made it very far — and my museum membership would most certainly have been revoked!)
Biomega offers other lightweight but sturdy models that are popular with commuters and bicycle design aficionados. Keep in mind, though, that in aggressively hilly cities like San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, the limited number of gears typically on a commuter bicycle may not be enough (unless you enjoy consistently walking your bike up steep hills). If your commute involves a lot of ups and downs, I recommend investing in a bike with at least 18 speeds, and practice shifting gears effectively to ascend and descend those hills with ease.
MSNBC produced a slideshow of voter portraits. After viewing just a few photos, though, I could accurately guess the voter’s allegiance. For example, every single African American pictured is voting for Barack Obama. The lobbyist in a business suit is supporting John McCain. The hip young people tend to lean Democratic. The older rural white men are all Republicans. (Well, duh.) While I appreciate the diversity of American citizens featured, the voting populace is full of surprises, and I wish the slideshow reflected some of those instead of reinforcing stereotypes according to the conventional wisdom of demographics.
Tangentially, speaking of demographics, do you know about Generation Jones? Born between 1954 and 1965, “Jonesers” occupy the recently acknowledged generation between Baby Boomers and Generation Xers. For decades, Jonesers had been imprecisely lumped in with Baby Boomers, but their life experiences have been very different from those of Boomers. Instead of worrying about getting drafted into the Vietnam War or dancing in mud at Woodstock, Jonesers were listening to punk rock on their way to the unemployment office in the late ’70s and wondering when Ronald Reagan would get around to mentioning AIDS in the ’80s. (The name Generation Jones, according to Wikipedia, “derives from the slang term jonesing, referring to the unrequited cravings felt by this generation of unfulfilled expectations.”) Both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are members of Generation Jones, and the Jonesers bloc comprises a potentially large number of swing voters.
You can view the Curator’s Choice and playlists assembled by prominent journalists, authors, historians, and political consultants. (Register to create your own playlist.)
People from around the world are paying close attention to the U.S. presidential election. In fact, Economist.com put together an interactive Global Electoral College map, which reveals that except for Georgia, Macedonia, and Moldova, the entire world seems to be going blue. (Sadly, much of Africa seems embroiled in massive, intractable problems to participate in this international survey.)
This is a story about pancakes. It begins in one of my favorite places. Let me explain.
San Francisco is not the densest city by any means, but space is at a premium nonetheless. So when a single store occupies an entire city block — a large city block — that is a big store in San Francisco. The experience of shopping at the only Costco in San Francisco feels like half-privilege, half-pandemonium. Wheeling a ginormous cart around the street-width aisles of Costco, for me, is a guilty pleasure. There’s only so much paper towel and laundry detergent I really need, but I find any excuse to go. I would imagine that anyone who’d grown up behind the Iron Curtain might bask in the consumer abundance of Costco as a sort of earthly paradise.
In one of the refrigerated aisles, an entire case contained shelf upon shelf of bright golden-yellow spray cans. I thought nothing of the spray cans at first, assuming that the cans were just a brand of whipped cream I hadn’t seen before. But I did a double-take as I noticed something horrifying on the cans: the word batter. Costco, you’ve got to be kidding me, right? Batter — (pancake and waffle, that is, not cake) — in a spray can? Look, spray cheese is bad enough, but spray batter heralds the end of civilization.
Perhaps even more amazing was that the word organic also appeared on the can. I’ve been brainwashed by Whole Foods, I admit, but when I see the word organic, I automatically think healthy. (Or at least healthy-wannbe.) Was it possible for something healthy to be stored in spray can — which, by defnition, indicates processed food? Who could have predicted that I would stumble onto such a paradox in the refrigerated section of Costco? Organic and spray can seem like matter and antimatter: how can they simultaneously occupy the same space?
I went home with my jugs of dish soap and jumbo box of Spring Mix pre-washed salad greens and spent several days pondering the mysterious pancake batter in a can. Is this a viable business plan? Are enough consumers able to overcome the inital gross-out factor and purchase this product? Certainly there have been many times when I craved pancakes but had neither the ingredients nor the desire to engage in the time-consuming process of making them. And the yen for pancakes rarely justified a trip to a restaurant. So what to do? The solution to this conundrum may, in fact, be contained within the scary golden-yellow can.
Before I made any investment, I conducted some research on the cleverly named Batter Blaster. I watched the 1960-style demonstration video, which got me to sing the jingle repeatedly: Make a better breakfast faster: Batter Blaster!. (I can’t decide if the jingle is cute or annoying — or both — but it’s certainly memorable. Well done.) I read the canned — (sorry) — testimonials. I was prepared to experiment.
Costco offers a package of three 18-ounce cans for $9.99, which seemed like a good deal until I realized that I had nothing to compare it to. One can produces enough pancakes for a breakfast for two hungry adults or for three moderately hungry adults. In this era of escalating food prices, $3.33 for the bulk material of a breakfast for two doesn’t seem too bad.
Batter Blaster is remarkably easy to administer. Heating the frying pan to medium-low eliminates the common problem of the inedible "first pancake." (To avoid any burning at all, I recommend a quick spray of PAM between each pancake frying.) In fact, if you’re hungry for just a single pancake — and no more — you can fry a shot of Batter Blaster, rinse off the nozzle, and return the can to the refrigerator. (For this reason, and because of its ease of use, the product appeals to empty-nesters as well as to non-cooks.) Waffle lovers can also spray Batter Blaster onto a waffle iron.
In the frying pan, the batter bubbles surprisingly well for a mixture that doesn’t include fresh whipped egg whites; while they aren’t the most ethereal pancakes I’ve ever had, they definitely qualify as fluffy.
The most important question is, of course, how do Batter Blaster pancakes taste? The answer, in my opinion, is: solidly mediocre. Mediocre, however, is better than disgusting, which is what I’d initially expected from pancakes out of a spray can. The batter comprises a few simple ingredients: wheat flour, sugar, dried egg products, soy powder, leavening agents — and something I’m not sure I want to know about called "propellant." The bland taste is probably explained by what’s missing from the list: flavorings (like vanilla or almond extract) and spices. To be fair, I should mention that it’s the pancakes made from the plain batter, without any added ingredients, that are mediocre. Bisquick pancakes, or even pancakes made from scratch that contain no flavoring or spices, are also mediocre. The way to make them not mediocre is to add something to them.
For the purpose of livening up the batter, recipes are available at the Batter Blaster web site. Following the recipes, however, requires squirting the batter into a bowl and mixing in other ingredients. This defeats the whole point of Batter Blaster, which is ease of use and avoiding the whole mixing-batter-in-a-bowl procedure.
Here’s a tip I discovered after some trial-and-error: mix only the additive ingredients in a bowl and add a small amount of the mixture to the pancake while it’s frying. For instance, I mixed a cup of chopped pitted cherries with chopped walnuts and almonds, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg. To each pancake, I scattered a spoonful of this mixture while the pancake was frying. The result was a plateful of uniquely flavorful pancakes. To skip any mixing process entirely, scatter a handful of rinsed-and-dried blueberries and/or sliced bananas into each frying pancake.
Hopefully in the future, if Batter Blaster is succesful, proprietor Sean O’Connor will add new lines of flavored batters, such as cinnamon-apple, spiced pumpkin, blueberry, lemon-ricotta, strawberry-banana, chocolate-peanut butter, savory herbs (for brunch or dinner crepes), and so on. (O’Connor has already tested strawberry and blueberry, as well as a sprayable brownie mix.)
I’ve been enjoying pancakes on weekend mornings, despite annoying myself with the catchy . . . better breakfast faster . . . jingle. I returned to Costco for another set of Batter Blaster cans. The refrigerator case was half full, which bodes well for the company — and for the future of easy pancake-making across America.
Some people find their favorite flavor of ice cream early in life and stick with it. Me, I go through phases. For years my favorite was strawberry, then it was praline, then pistachio, and then, for a while, vanilla bean. (Not regular vanilla, or French vanilla, or cherry vanilla or vanilla fudge, but vanilla bean. I wanted to see dark specks of what looked like dirt throughout the white cloud of cream.)
Now my flavor of choice is coffee. I’ve sampled coffee ice cream from a variety of manufacturers, including Ben & Jerry’s (mediocre at best), Häagen Dazs (passable but too subtle for my taste), Double Rainbow (sadly, Coffee Blast is more eh than a blast), and Starbucks (which, since it’s in the business of selling masstigecoffee, should really produce more piquant coffee ice cream than it does). Sadly, none of these brands truly satisfies the discerning coffee ice cream palate. What disappointment.
Mitchell’s Ice Cream does produce a delectably smooth Kahlúa Mocha Cream — (Kahlúa being a well-known Mexican brand of coffee-flavored liqueur) — but unfortunately Mitchell’s is only available in the San Francisco Bay Area. (This is a great loss to everyone outside this region, and we hope that one day Mitchell’s expands its local empire without sacrificing the superlative quality of its many unusual flavors.)
Thankfully, I eventually discovered Mashti Malone’s, a little-known brand that produces an impressive, pungently flavored Turkish Coffee ice cream. It tastes like real Turkish coffee with ice cream added to it, rather than a diluted shot of weak coffee added to vanilla ice cream. Each bite packs a bittersweet punch that simultaneously wakes you up and leaves you feeling happily mellow.
The brand description on the Mashti Malone’s carton reads "exotic ice creams and sorbets" and manufactures other unusual flavors such as Creamy Rosewater, Lavender, and Orange Blossom with Pistachios. Be prepared for its hefty price tag, though: each pint retails for over $5.
Sometimes animal lovers are in the mood to see kittens — lots and lots of kittens. Still photos of kittens may offer only partial satisfaction for your desire for cuteness. Fortunately, there’s plenty of video footage available, showing all the wobbling, bouncing, chasing, batting, squealing, head-tilting, cat-napping silliness you can stand.
wobbly, vulnerable first steps and mewing of early kittenhood
kittens playing with toys, boxes, a roll of toilet paper, and each other
white kittens (I’m partial to white cats, especially fluffy ones)
drinking milk, mostly from bottles — but, in one video, from a dog!
nodding off and falling asleep
If you find a kitten video that you think belongs in this YouTube playlist, please let me know. You can also find myriad kitten videos and slideshows on Kyte TV, and chat (text, audio, or video) live about them.
With visual access to so many kittens, is it possible to rank them in order of cuteness? kittenwar seeks to do just that, by encouraging users to click the cuter baby feline subject of two photos. One selection leads to another, and another, and another, and pretty soon you’ve found a new way to procrastinate with this addictive activity. After selecting the cuter of two kittens, kittenwar informs you of the percentage of how many users agreed with your assessment of the previous pair.
kittenwar compiles the stats of photos that garnered the most clicks (or "Winningest" kittens) and the least clicks ("Losingest" kittens). The collection of Winningest photos showcases those kittens — (often seen looking directly at the camera with wide-eyed expressions of innocence, sleeping in a pile of siblings and playmates, or curled up in a household object) — that have been statistically deemed cutest by kittenwar users. By contrast, the Losingest kittens tend to possess features that most people judge as unattractive in felines: hairlessness, bulging eyes, long snouts, long ears. Many of them are at least part Siamese, and some almost look like Chihuahua dogs.
Complicating matters is the battle of photo quality perception. Many of the Winningest kitten photos are of a high enough quality to be made into posters (the kind found in offices and dorm rooms with cliched captions like "Hang in there" or "Easy does it"); whereas the quality of the Losingest kitten photos are often low (over- or underexposed, "red eye" reflections, unappealing backgrounds, poor composition). So I wonder if, given a choice between two equally cute (or non-cute) kittens, Kittenwar users subconsciously choose the one in the higher quality photo? In any case, proud kitten guardians may want to upload images with only the best photographic quality.
When a big crowd amasses on the street in the Castro District of San Francisco, it’s often to protest something. But last night, instead of actually protesting, a big crowd pretended to protest. And, let me tell you, there’s nothing more fun than pretending, especially when a professional film crew is there to capture the make believe.
Because it’s so difficult to assemble and manage a large crowd of enthusiastic, costumed extras, directors and crew will often reuse the same crowd, albeit with a few position and prop changes, to create and film different scenes. Last night’s crowd was used to film a rally, a march, and a riot for the Harvey Milk biopic, currently in production.
After the documentary, Gus Van Sant introduced Cleve Jones — longtime gay activist and founder of the NAMES Project Foundation AIDS Memorial Quilt — who asked the audience, "So who was there back then?" A surprising number of middle-aged men and seniors raised their hands and cheered. Cleve led us in practicing various gay liberation slogans of the 1970s: "When they attack, we’ve got to . . . fight back!" and "Hey hey, ho ho: Anita Bryant has got to go!" Then assistant director David Webb outlined the scenes to be filmed and technical instructions for the extras.
Hundreds of extras squeezed into the mezzanine of the Castro Theatre for the catered dinner: heaping bowls of pastas and Caesar salad, gigantic pizza pies, toasted garlic bread, and, for dessert, gourmet carrot cake with thick cream cheese frosting. In the food line, I chatted with Huffington Post blogger Lane Hudson and his boyfriend Jeff — both wearing vintage ’70s outfits they’d bought for the scenes — who’d flown from their home in Washington, D.C. to participate in the movie.
One of two dozen production assistants stood on a chair and announced that filming would soon commence, so we scarfed down our meal and rushed out to Castro Street, which was lit with huge white spotlights. Hundreds of volunteer extrasamassed at the southwest corner of Castro and Market Streets where a plywood wall covered with vintage political posters had been constructed to block the view of the modern underground MUNI station, an area now known as Harvey Milk Plaza. A giant camera facing the crowd and a boom mic were positioned on top of a platform in front of the plywood wall. An unimaginably bright spotlight, right next to a second camera, shone from atop the Twin Peaks Tavern building across the intersection, and a third camera captured wide shots of the street scenes from the balcony above the Castro Theatre marquee.
I was surrounded by folks of all ages, ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations, all in a variety of ’70s garb: tan leather and suede jackets, sport coats and wide neckties, Levis and corduroy pants, plaid flannel button-downs, long cotton skirts, bandannas and wool caps. For my part, I was wearing an earthy wool sweater with a wide collar, a plain pair of brown pants, gray hiking boots, and a navy bandanna as a kerchief. Some extras were given hand-painted demonstration signs:
"Gay Rights Now"
"I’d rather fight than change"
"Human rights abroad, human rights at home"
"Save our human rights"
"We are your children"
"Gay Veteran: I defended your rights, now defend mine"
The props department had made more signs than were needed, and one of the directors announced over the loudspeaker that there were "too many signs" and instructed a production assistant to remove 35 percent of them (which seemed like an unusual, and therefore precise, number to me). One of the extras asked, "Hey, where’s Frank Chu?" Locally famous for showing up at events with big crowds, Frank Chu usually carries a sign that features the non sequitur 12 Galaxies. The number of "galaxies" displayed on the sign has inexplicably increased over the years, so another extra quipped, "Back in the ’70s, there must have only been, like, three galaxies."
After the surplus signs were collected, Cleve Jones explained over the loudspeaker that in the years between 1976 and 1978, there were antidiscrimination laws enacted in various parts of the country. This wave of progressivism inspired a massive backlash by social conservatives, who sponsored, and often passed, laws hampering the civil rights of homosexuals, especially openly gay teachers, civil servants, and adoptive parents. We, acting as our 1970s counterparts, were thus gathering in protest of these regressive laws. This particular demonstration that we were recreating was in response to the June 7, 1977, vote in Wichita, Kansas, that repealed a seven-month-old local gay rights ordinance that barred discrimination in housing and employment.
Gus Van Sant and David Webb took turns announcing instructions over the loudspeaker. Soft-spoken Van Sant provided general feedback, and Webb gave most of the actual direction. One of them announced over the loudspeaker that cameras were rolling. "Action!" Webb yelled, as we all faced the platform, eager to perform.
Well, in reality, we weren’t angry at all. We were thrilled and giddy, but what the heck? We furrowed our brows, punched our fists into the air, and yelled, "Yeah!"
"Well, I’m angry!" Penn/Milk responded, drawing another round of punched fists, punctuated by a collective Yeah!.
Penn continued, "Let’s march to City Hall and share that anger with San Francisco!" We cheered and applauded, and the extras with signs shook them. We then chanted, "Gay rights now!"
Webb yelled, "Cut!" We buzzed and congratulated ourselves on a realistic performance.
"Back to [position] One," he instructed, and P.A.s in the crowd yelled, "Back, back, back!" I found my original place in front of a long-haired guy carrying a Gay Rights sign and beside a young hippie woman wearing a crocheted poncho, beaded earrings, and a decorative headband.
After a few minutes of collaboration between the directors, consultants, and principle actors, Webb announced, "OK, we’re going to try it a different way. Instead of all of you anticipating Harvey’s speech and greeting him like a rock star," — this drew laughter from the crowd — "you’ll be milling around, waiting for something to happen and not knowing that Harvey will be giving an impromptu speech. So just mill around quietly; don’t talk, just pantomime your conversations. Remember, you’re gathering because you want to do something [in protest], but nothing is planned beforehand."
So we milled around and pretended to have conversations. "I don’t know what’s happening," I mouthed. "Want to grab something to eat?" I saw a young guy and pretended that he was a good friend I hadn’t seen in a while, and we hugged.
Then Penn/Milk jumped up again on the platform and yelled in to the bullhorn, "Are you angry?!" We stopped milling, drew closer to him, and repeated the scene. Milling around beforehand seemed to work better, so Van Sant and his assistants took several takes, with Penn flawlessly jumping onto the platform in the same manner each time.
After Van Sant got enough takes of the scene filmed in this direction, we took a break so that the crew could reposition the massive camera — removing it from the rig so that the operator could hold it on her shoulder, cords and doohickeys adangle — this time to face Penn on the platform and repeat the scene from the opposite perspective. For the wide shot, a member of the crew climbed a ladder to affix an old-style WALK/DONT WALK facade to the the pedestrian light to cover its modern icons.
Another scene involved us shouting "We have the power to . . . fight back!" in unison toward the platform, punching fists and shaking demonstration signs on the words fight back. It took us a few moments to get the rhythm of the slogan correct, but we learned it quickly and performed a few takes of that.
Between takes, a number of volunteer extras lit up large pipes of a common illegal herb. Inhaling the pungeant second-hand smoke, we joked that the atmosphere even smelled like the ’70s.
After Sean Penn’s big crowd-rousing scene, principle actor Emile Hirsch, playing a young activist Cleve Jones, took his turn performing on the platform. I couldn’t take my eyes off little Emile, so petite that he could be stashed in a coat pocket, mouthing his lines into the vintage bullhorn before his first take. He angled the bullhorn to his right side and practiced smoothly turning his head as he spoke. For those of us who have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time, this seemed vaguely impressive.
"Do you want me to be in the frame?" he quietly asked the director. I thought, Why wouldn’t you be in the frame? Why are you up on the platform if you’re not going to be in the frame? But what do I know, I’m not a filmmaker.
Hirsch was flanked by a couple of twenty-something extras dressed as mustached politicos in stiff trenchcoats. I guess such young politicos at the time grew mustaches to appear older and more professional.
When the cameras rolled, quiet Hirsch became a nervously energetic Cleve Jones and enunciated into the bullhorn, "In Nazi Germany, they took away our civil rights –"
We responded with a resounding BOO.
"– and now they’re taking away our civil rights in Wichita!" Hirsch/Jones continued. "And as we’ve been taught, when we’re attacked, we fight back!"
After the first take, though, the directors decided that the sequence of events looked too planned. We were supposed to be recreating an impromptu demonstration, after all. So, during subsequent takes, we were directed to listen for the word Wichita in Hirsch’s/Jones’s speech and use it as a cue to turn toward Market Street and start marching and chanting. A whistle was blown to make sure we’d turn en masse on cue. With each Wichita turn, I grabbed Alisa’s hand, and we pretended to be "girlfriends" marching together toward social justice.
The director asked us to mouth the word BOO silently during a couple of the takes, but most of the extras kept forgetting and yelled it out loud anyway. One extra got frustrated and accused everyone else of being too mentally challenged — (he used a less socially acceptable term) — to follow a simple direction. I laughed at the just-barely contained chaos of it all.
After repositioning the camera on the street in the intersections of Castro, Market, and 17th Streets, Webb announced that in this scene, we’d be beginning to march from the Castro down Market Street to City Hall. Since Market Street couldn’t be blocked off at this time in the evening, however, he instructed, "OK, everyone, now you’ll be marching this way and turning onto 17th Street" — so that we’d give the appearance of turning a corner, even if it wasn’t technically the correct corner.
We chanted our signature Gay Rights Now! line, again punching fists and shaking signs as we marched past the camera. The assistant director yelled "Cut! OK, good — back to ‘One’!" Production assistants and assistant directors scattered in the crowd instructed us, "Back to ‘One.’ Back, back, back." As we returned to our original positions, we joked that we were so energized that we would have actually marched all the way to City Hall if the director hadn’t yelled Cut.
In a gentle voice, Van Sant said, "You guys are doing great; you’re looking great in the monitors." He continued, with a bit of awe, "Your energy is just incredible; I can see why your movement was so successful."
"It ain’t over!" shouted someone in the crowd, garnering cheers and applause.
