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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.

Over the past couple of months, the production crew transformed the modern trendy neighborhood of the Castro into its 1970s incarnation — which, back then, had more resembled a small town.

• production crew begins work to change storefronts, re-create interior of Milk’s camera shop
• San Francisco Chronicle: "Harvey’s Castro" slide show
• CBS5: "On the Set of ‘Milk’" video
• Shae’s video tour
• NBC11: "Harvey Milk Film Sets in San Francisco" slide show, "Castro District Goes Hollywood with Sean Penn Movie," "Castro Merchants Are Sour Over Harvey Milk Movie:
  Business Owners Say They Are Losing Money"
• Bay Area Reporter: "Castro Set for Movie Makeover, " "Film Crew Descends on Castro," "Harvey County, USA," "How He Got Milk: Castro Couch-Surfing with ‘Milk’ Screenwriter Dustin Lance," "Castro Merchants Bank on Movie Magic"
• Bay Times: "Milk Film Rules the Castro"
• Flickr group photo pool: "Castro vintage makeover"
• Steve Rhodes’s Castro set photos
• Boing Boing: Castro Street transformed for Harvey Milk movie
• Castro Shopper: "A Film on Your Milk," "Increased Milk Production," "Linkin’ Blogs," "This Little Movie Goes to Market" (all Harvey Milk-tagged articles)
• Bay Area Video Coalition: "Harvey Milk (the movie) Returns to the Castro"
• PBS P.O.V. blog: "San Francisco Happening: Remembering Harvey Milk"
• Screenwriting for Hollywood: "MORAL MILK for Gus Van Sant and Sean Penn"
• Castro Courier: "Movie about Harvey Milk to be Shot in Castro"
• SFist tags: Gus Van Sant, Harvey Milk, Milk
• Retro the Castro
• /Film: closeups of Aquarius Records storefront
• bulletin boards, storefronts
• vintage window flyers and cars
• Milk movie vintage car photo collection
• re-creating Toad Hall (the gay hippie hangout) and Castro Camera
• 1970s trash can

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.

• Harvey Milk and Sean Penn: one side-by-side comparison, another juxtaposition
• /Film: "First Look: Sean Penn as Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant’s Milk"
• Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, early ’70s
• Penn/Milk, early ’70s: multiple snapshots, more
• Penn/Milk with James Franco (as Milk’s lover Scott Smith), early ’70s Castro
• Penn/Milk with Emile Hirsch (as young activist Cleve Jones), early ’70s Castro
• Eric Nielson’s entire Flickr photo set
• Penn with Gus Van Sant on the set
• other principle actors
• Josh Brolin (as the notorious assassin Dan White) video interview (starts at 1 minute, 5 seconds)
• supporting cast
• IMDb: full cast and crew
• About.com: interviews and info
• Tom Ammiano plays himself (Will no one notice that he’s thirty years older?)
• speculation as to who will play Dianne Feinstein
• actors at work video 1, 2, 3
• Day One of production (scene at Station 43, San Francisco Fire Department) video

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.

[next: being an extra in the crowd scenes]

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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.

Safe riding.

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For a look back at past elections, the Museum of the Moving Image presents Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952–2008. Some of the campaign ads in the ’50s up through 1960 were cartoon jingles, but the cartoons stopped in 1964 when the famous “Daisy Girl” ad scared voters into supporting Democratic incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson. Witness the entire range of tactics from blatant fear-mongering to pastoral appeal. Here are some other notable ads:

• Twilight Zonesque
• silly cartoon narrated by Alan “Fred Flintstone” Reed
• laughably ineffective
• vintage high school education film
• straightforward
• artistic
• ripe for parody
• actor who could inspire
• irrelevant bigot
• spoiler
• derisive
• patriotic
• groovy
• nausea-inducing
• off-putting
• ironic

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.)

International wonks may appreciate the Angus Reid Global Monitor, which tracks recent and upcoming elections around the world, or the Table of Electoral Systems Worldwide from International IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance). In addition, the ACE Project: The Electoral Knowledge Network provides election-related information from the world, including electoral processes, ballot papers, and candidate vetting. You can even take quizzes on topics like vote counting and media and elections.

In the U.S., Project Vote Smart provides citizens with comprehensive information about the electoral process, including voter registration, biographies of elected and appointed officials, records of candidates from each state, and state ballot measures. You may also request the 2008 Voter’s Self Defense Manual. The League of Women Voters offers Vote411.org, which allows you to view your ballot and find your polling location, as well as Smart Voter, which provides the same service in a lower-tech text format. For assistance away from the internet, you can call the nonpartisan Election Protection service toll-free at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683).

Whatever you do, make sure to vote. There’s no good reason not to.

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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.

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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.

Bon appétit.

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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.

kittenwar’s popularity has expanded into the book kittenwar: May the Cutest Kitten Win!, as well as the card game kittenwar, the Card Game: May the Cutest Kitten Win!.

More cuteness is available at Cute Overload, which has specific sections for kittens and other cuddly, furry creatures. If you’re in the mood for a laugh, check out Bonsai Kitten (it’s a joke, really!) and LOLcats ("I Can Has Cheezburger?"). Two of my favorite LOLcats are literary homages to Edgar Allen Poe and William Shakespeare.

If the sad truth about why there are so many kittens has inspired you to consider adopting a pet, you may find a loving addition to your family through any of these resources:

• Petfinder
• PetSmart Adoptions
• Pets 911
• 1-800-Save-A-Pet
• World Animal Net
• Green People list of Humane Societies, animal shelters, and pet adoption organizations, listed by state
• Pet Guardian Angels of America rescues and adoptions, national and state listings
• Google "pet rescue adoption" search results
• Best Friends Animal Society adoptables
• Humane Society of the United States adoption information
• American Humane Association adoption information
• craigslist pet listings

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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 extras amassed 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"
• "Freakin Fag Revolution"
• "Separate Church and State"
• "Love who you want"
• "Have a Gay Day" (with a yellow smiley face)
• various anti-Anita Bryant signs

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.

[next: Sean Penn as Harvey Milk]

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"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.

[next: Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones]

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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!"

At this point, we’d been instructed to turn northwestward toward Market Street, chanting, "Civil rights or civil war: gay rights now!"

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.

[next: laughing while acting]

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"But you!" I said to the other extra, "You keep cracking up! That’s not right!"

He replied, "Well, you guys are like, ‘Gay! Rights! Nee-ow-ooh!‘!" He danced to emphasize our silly version of chanting. "You guys can’t be smiling! You’re supposed to be angry. I can’t do my job if you’re smiling. Don’t be smiling, don’t be smiling!" he joked.

After that, during every filmed march in that direction, I thought of the cop dancing to Gay! Rights! Nee-ow-ooh! and felt the urge to laugh. A funny extra named Walter was no help. Carrying a No Hate sign, he chanted, "Smoke some dope! Shut your trap!" How could someone not laugh at that? Laughing in such a situation was natural; after all, in the classic science fiction film The Blob, teenage extras could be seen smiling and laughing as they were fleeing, supposedly terrified and hysterical, an alien menace in a movie theatre.

I reminded myself that telling the story of Harvey Milk was serious business, even if I didn’t feel very serious, and I squelched my natural response. It wasn’t easy. When you watch these scenes in the movie, you may be riled, or even moved to tears. You will have no idea that we were laughing hysterically and enjoying a uniquely sublime night in modern-day San Francisco, at what is now known as Harvey Milk Plaza.

[next: friends, Anita Bryant, Carrie Fisher]

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One extra, a former member of the National Religious Broadcasters during the ’70s, told me the deliciously juicy story of trying to fulfill a request to play Anita Bryant’s "Thou Art." When he went to retrieve the LP, the entire Anita Bryant section was missing from the shelf. Bryant’s songs were thus quietly removed from playlists across the country after she’d become such a vocal opponent of gay rights. The NRB (and broadcasting in general) comprised many gay men, and most of the religious community wasn’t focused on homosexuality before 1980 or so. Hate just wasn’t a "moral value" among mainstream churchgoers back then.

The next shot was a continuation of Penn’s first crowd scene, this time taken from a different angle, involving a closeup of Penn, other principle actors, and paid extras (i.e., extras in professional wardrobe). The shot required us to chant Gay Rights Now! three times to "get the energy," and then continue to march while quietly mouthing the words. I could hear men behind me whispering the chant while, at the front of the crowd, Penn and the other actors yelled the slogan aloud.

After that, the directors would jump ahead in time to continue Hirsch’s crowd scene, which was the near-riot associated with the Wichita protest. Demonstration signs were collected from extras, and production assistants changed the posters on the plywood backdrop — (which was designed to hide the current Diesel storefront) — behind the speaker’s platform. (My guess is that there wasn’t a platform at the original events in the ’70s — Harvey Milk and Cleve Jones just showed up with a bullhorn and started speaking in the middle of the crowd — but principle actors look much more dramatic on film when elevated above a crowd.) Apparently small prop and set changes like these, viewed through the frame of film, are enough to create the movie-magic time shift.

Before Van Sant shot this scene, producer Bruce Cohen introduced actress Carrie Fisher from the platform, who was in town for her one-woman show Wishful Drinking, which had debuted in Los Angeles to mixed reviews:

• NPR
• New York Times
• Blogcritics Magazine

Fisher recited some of her famous lines from Star Wars, humorously adjusted for the LGBT-friendly crowd. After her appearance, one extra remarked, "This really is 1977!"

As the night wore on, hundreds of extras — most of whom were ordinary working people with non-acting-related day jobs — peeled off due to tiredness and the increasingly biting night chill. Walter, an extra who’d entertained us with his silly witticisms, told me that he was so tired he was getting "loopy." But the crew dealt effectively with the crowd attrition.

[next: make-believe riot, talking shop with actors]

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We marched up to a vintage streetcar — (the kind that the San Francisco transit system only started running again several years ago after its long absence) — where protesters tore down the electrical cables connected to the trolley. Fortunately, I wasn’t even close enough to see the flare (and conspicuously look away from it).

The next scene required the dwindling number of extras to line up against the store windows along Castro Street. The camera would be shooting us from inside Twin Peaks Tavern, and, again, the assistant director instructed us not to look at the camera. "I know it’s hard," he acknowledged.

One no-nonsense P.A. ordered women and older men — (some of whom had participated in the original Gay Rights movement in the Castro during the ’70s) — to position themselves away from glass, at least four people deep into the crowd. We were thus reminded that the Gay Rights movement of the 1970s was comprised predominantly of young gay men. Ironically, because of the severe gentrification of the Castro over the past three decades, such a sociopolitical movement may not have been possible in today’s Castro:

• Bay Area Reporter: "Priced out of the Castro, LGBTs seek housing elsewhere"
• San Francisco Bay Guardian: "Milked: Some gay people are so anxious to participate in their own cultural erasure"
• San Francisco Bay Guardian: "Is San Francisco still a gay mecca? Yeah, pretty much . . . but if someday it wasn’t, would that be so terrible?"
• GLBTQ: Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture: demographics

While the extras were trading places, the no-nonsense P.A. stared at my eyeglasses for a long time, deliberating over whether the frames were acceptably "retro" enough to pass as authentic ’70s-style. Making her decision, she nodded and commanded, "Take them off." Well, then.

Dismantling a rig and setting it up somewhere else, as well as getting all the equipment and key crew members into place, takes a while — sometimes even longer than the filming itself. It’s during these times when actors and extras hang out and get to know each other. While waiting, I chatted with some of the professional extras, secretly envying their custom-made ensembles. One sweet-faced young extra was transformed into a perfect gay hippie/flower child, sporting a purple shirt, long hair, and a headband. He hung around with a couple of young hippie women who snacked on candy bars stashed in their fringed prop handbags.

Ryan, a professional extra with a few acting classes and movie gigs under his belt, told us the story of working in the coffeeshop scenes when Milk was running for supervisor. To convey Milk’s frustration with losing one of his earlier races, Penn took off his hat and threw it. During one of the takes, the hat hit Ryan in the face. Another extra boasted about ad libbing with Sean Penn, pretending to be a potential constituent. [Update: After seeing the movie, it appears that neither of these scenes made it into the final print, alas — but I believe that both actors played "friends" of the young Cleve Jones, walking with him when he first met Harvey Milk. They waited patiently on the sidewalk while Jones rebuffed Milk’s flirty encouragement to get involved in local politics.] The extras compared their impressions of Penn: "He’s definitely intense," said one of them. The other described Penn’s "evil eye."

Because we were standing next to the storefront windows, we marveled at the window display props for the businesses that had been there in the late ’70s: a hair salon, replete with hair net, shower caps, and big pastel hair curlers; a real estate office that featured listings with shockingly low prices; the famous Double Rainbow ice cream parlor.

When the directors eventually commenced shooting, a few of the young P.A.s and crew members joined the crowd of extras, perhaps to add more bodies to the crowd scene. They were dressed in all black — so they wouldn’t have been noticed on screen — but, despite not being dressed in ’70s wardrobe, they added marginally to the overall body of motion.

The crowd, now noticeably more sparse than it had been several hours earlier, comprised professional actors and only the most dedicated extras. I found myself milling around with Steve Rhodes and three beautiful professional extras, one of whom advised, "Trust me, just walk around in circles. That’s all you do." Another noticed me shivering in the cold — (we weren’t allowed to wear jackets with modern textiles like Polarfleece or Gore-Tex) — and hugged me, trying to keep me warm. The pros talked shop with me about the acting classes they’d taken, San Francisco casting agencies, and working on other locally shot films like the upcoming Four Christmases (which, compared to Milk, seems lame and forgettable). Professional acting, especially in small, insignificant roles, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, they told me, with its fourteen-hour days of waiting and walking around in circles.

Finally, at 11:30 PM, after a long evening of take after Sisyphean take, the director yelled, "That’s a wrap!" Gus Van Sant, sounding even more tired than we were, thanked us for our volunteer work. I was amazed to see that he would continue to work well into the night with the professional extras and P.A.s, who were all exhausted. As I left to walk home, I was grateful not to be a professional actor.

If my visage makes it even briefly onto the big screen — (instead of more likely onto the cutting room floor) — you won’t notice me, and you won’t want to: the big crowd scenes will be emotionally charged and moving. But it doesn’t matter. I am proud to have even a tiny part in making what will no doubt be a very important film.

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U2 3D is a masterful cinematographic tour de force — the first of its kind in the realm of music concert films — combining cutting-edge 3D video recording technology with clever, larger-than-life post-production graphics. We, the movie audience, have a far better perspective of the concert than anyone in the actual live audience, as we omnisciently fly through the arena like a ghost with perfect hearing, hovering above and around the musicians, following them as they strut onto curved catwalks extended from the main stage. We suddenly find ourselves amid the concert audience, hands in front of us thrusting high into the air as we, too, yearn to throw our hands skyward, would that we weren’t in a movie theatre. I’ve never been to an actual U2 concert, and I was convinced that this experience must be even superior — but Kyte founder and CEO Daniel Graff (a hardcore U2 fan who’s attended five concerts and seen U2 3D twice) later assured me that there still was "no comparison" to seeing U2 live and in person, even if occupying just one small spot in the audience.

The state-of-the-art video equipment coupled with the IMAX theatre brought the images so close and clear that we could see every wrinkle in Bono’s face, every strand of hair on The Edge’s arms (these dudes are hairy), the wedding bands on their ring fingers, every pockmark on the surfaces of Larry Mullen Jr.’s rack and floor toms, the coiled cords of their musician’s ear plugs, the scuff marks on the stage, glimpses of video captured on mobile phones from the audience. I found myself becoming obsessed with spotting quotidian details, trying to sneak a peak at the set list taped to the stage, recognizing the major chords Bono was playing during one of his few guitar performances: Hey, that’s a C! And a D! Wow, he plays a G like that? He’s got big hands. The more access they gave us, the more I wanted to know. (Boo was instead busy paying attention to the actual musicianship, The Edge’s sublime arpeggios and harmonics and Mullen’s comfortable triple-stroke rolls.)

I peered inside the vertical receptacle for Mullen’s spare drum sticks and stared at the big box of tissues he kept within easy reach of the drum set (did he have a cold? wouldn’t a towel work better for sweat management?) and the large glass of pale yellow liquid (ginger ale? Orangina? Gatorade?) in ice. I looked for the camera operators: at one point it became obvious that the movie was spliced together from footage of different concerts, as in one moment w