Andre + Annabelle

Barely halfway into The Shoe, the 20-minute debut film from nightlife curator Andre Saraiva and fellow Frenchman Olivier Zahm, a young man meets a pretty girl in a Paris park scribbling in a notebook and they lock eyes and begin kissing as the music shuts off, the only sounds the clicks of teeth on teeth, and seconds later they're at her apartment -- clothes fly off and they go at it, the camera catching all. He wakes the next morning, steals the titular footwear, and we never see her again.

Who was she, that girl with the notebook? She was, of course, the director's girlfriend, Annabelle Dexter-Jones, and she watched the X-rated dirty deed with her mother sitting beside her.

"She liked it!" Ms. Dexter-Jones told The Observer much, much later in the night.

We told her we liked it, too.

"It was tasteful, no?" Ms. Dexter-Jones responded, and curled back her hair onto the big collar on her orange sherbet-colored dress.

"For sure," we said.

We had ended up at Kenmare --yes, yes, but where else? -- and so did the director and his starlet, so we stayed until after closing time and sat down to talk about the stacked levels of awkward that struck her during the screening. An edited version had been scheduled especially for Ann Dexter-Jones, but mom insisted on seeing her daughter's risque scene. And things couldn't have been all peachy for Mr. Saravia -- he had to watch Leo Fitzpatrick, the kid from Kids, get hot and heavy with Ms. Dexter-Jones.

But it seems all is well.

"In the scene," Ms. Dexter-Jones said after a sip of her drink. "I was writing a love letter to Andre."

The film may have been Mr. Saraiva's own mash note to his muse, too, but it was also infatuated with the contraband loafers, made by J.M. Weston. It was a particularly convincing ad for the shoes -- it's perfectly clear why Mr. Fitzpatrick steals them, has them stolen from him in kind and, when he finds the thieves, beats them to a bloody pulp to get them back. The guy cares about loafers!

The crowd skipped the first showing, the edited version, in favor of vodka drinks on the third-floor stone balcony, and then filed into the screening room for the film. Paris, pretty people, sex, loafers, cafes, etc. And yes, as Annabelle would reiterate later, her mother had no problem whatsoever witnessing the spectacle.

"I was very comfortable!" the elder Ms. Dexter-Jones told The Observer. "She was acting. It's not like I'm a peeping Tom! I had to appreciate --"

"Can I get one photo for Women's Wear Daily?" said a woman with a Polaroid camera. Apparently the rag has gone retro with its fashion slideshows.

She snapped it and the hazy undeveloped image puttered out of the clunky machine.

"But yes," Ms. Dexter-Jones continued. "I think she's a great actress."

The party migrated to Le Bain, where it's finally warm enough for the hot tub to be open, but The Observer chased the party downtown and split for to the pop-up Madame Wong's (which got the full Thursday Styles treatment in today's Times). Before seeing The Shoe we had run into Simonez Wolf, impresario behind the traveling hush-hush infrequent club, and he told us it was on tonight. But when we arrived at Jobee, the nondescript place the party occupies, there was only Nico, a waiter, and he said it had been quiet.

"Just went to wong's at jobee, is it somewhere else?" The Observer texted Mr. Wolf. "Nico was cleaning up."

"idk," Mr. Wolf responded.

Oh well. Luckily enough Kenmare had on display a wobbly Josh Brolin who rolled through with his bros, Paul Sevigny hauling his DJ rig brought over from Le Bain, and eventually Mr. Saraiva and Ms. Dexter-Jones. It got late and after discussing The Shoe Ms. Dexter-Jones changed the subject. She wanted a book recommendation.

"Have you read The Day of the Locust?" we asked.

She hadn't. But later we realized that, given the film we had watched her in earlier that night, a much more appropriate choice would have been the book stuffed in our jacket pocket: Dylan Thomas' Adventures in the Skin Trade.

Then the couple left, driven away by one of the bouncers as dawn started to hit the rooftops, and as we walked away we realized we had two lighters in our pocket. If you want yours back, Annabelle, let us know.

An hour after the weekly 3:30 a.m. text message spread like spitfire across New York, interns and set crew and assistants arrived at Professor Thom's, a sports bar in the East Village, with outfits assembled and the password for the door on the tips of their tongues. They had heard stories, of the cast members and guest hosts and the rockers who played the stage at 30 Rockefeller Center, and their assorted flashy pals, basking in drug cornucopia and cigarette smoke, a haze that lingered long after last call anywhere else in the city. It was the after-party for last week's Saturday Night Live, but the wild past seems no longer the norm.

These things end earlier now. By the time the creative underclass showed up to that corner of Second Avenue and barked out the password--"Mr. Cluck's Chuckle Shack"--The Observer had already endured the backstage antics of the show's fleet of bedheaded writers, the encore Paul Simon performances, the madhouse that is 30 Rock as guests scramble around the labyrinthine studios, and a massive all-show dinner that took over McCormick & Schmick's midtown digs.

A writer had invited us along, knowing that trying to get in as press would be impossible.

The narrow halls of 30 Rock's ninth floor are such that The Observer had to physically dodge every person they had ever laughed at in their lives. Seth Meyers, pacing and going over lines. Kristen Wiig, her elastic gumby face stone-cold as make-up artists caked on the powder. Lorne Michaels, shifting his paunch from soundboards to dressing rooms, which stretch down the hall from the viewing parties and reek conspicuously of cigarettes and weed.

And also: Josh Brolin, why are you thumbs-over-lips making out with Zach Galifianakis? Maya Rudolph, bride in this weekend's titular Bridesmaids, who knew you were very, very much expecting? And Morgan Spurlock, why are you here?

"I'm going to tap your leg," said the SNL writer who ushered us in to the city's most press-embargoed area, "whenever one of my jokes is coming up."

The show began and those who write the jokes sat on beat-up couches with clutter wedged between the cushions, the screen airing the show they had written--or rather were still writing; they cut and revise skits as they air. The temperament is that of calibrated frenzy, a free-for-all of creative modes smashing against each other.

Fred Armisen ducked out of a room and into a corner, emerging in the green vest, ready to pop up on Weekend Update.

Snatching a beer from the well-stocked coolers required navigating through the cast of The Office. And naturally, when The Observer ran into Jack McBrayer, we came close to asking him which way to the writers room--was he not Kenneth, an NBC page?

Then the host, Ed Helms, called the cast back on stage for the final bow, saxophones wailing behind them, as The Observer took a spot downstairs between indie darling Greta Gerwig and the guy who played Hurley on Lost, to snag a spot to see Mr. Simon close his set with "Kodachrome." iPhones went aloft, snapping pictures, and everyone decamped for the first of the parties.

"It's kind of a corporate thing," the writer announced as we walked into McCormick & Schmick's with Aziz Ansari and Jason Sudeikis.

"Great story everybody--John Mayer's here," the writer's agent said.

"We were at dinner, but we're gonna watch it later. I'm a late cat," Mr. Mayer told The Observer at the bar in the basement.

The singer has been maligned for his over-sharing habits with reporters, and for a while he zipped it up, but tonight his head was almost swallowing the recorder, lest he not be heard.

"I'm a big fan of everyone! I love everybody!" he said.

"They wanted to give me a line and I was like 'No! Don't!' It's funnier if I don't have a line!" said Chris Colfer, the Glee star.

"It's a little distracting in the writers room," said Mr. Galifinakis, whom had been watching the show with The Observer. He had foam-padding, outdated headphones strung around his neck. "I'm sure it translated well."

"I was actually leaving," said Andy Samberg, with his harp-plucking girlfriend Joanna Newsom.

To Professor Thom's, for the after party?

Mr. Samberg paused.

"Thinking about it."

He didn't show up, leaving the eye-batting interns to chain smoke in a corner, but by that time it was well into Sunday anyway.

nfreeman@observer.com

Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Palestinian journalist and Schnabel squeeze Rula Jebreal, the film focuses on the title character’s coming of age, her rebellion against her father and her infatuation with dreamy but violent revolutionaries.

For Monday’s screening, the first in the U.S., the Weinstein Company booked the General Assembly Hall, where, in 1947, the state of Israel was signed into existence.

The American Jewish Federation was not pleased with the location, and had fired off a letter urging U.N. officials to block the event.

“Obviously, they’re showing the movie, and the AJF can’t do a damn thing about it!” Mr. Schnabel told The Observer. “I’d love it if they would see it.” He and his producer, Harvey Weinstein, had extended an invitation. “No response,” Mr. Schnabel said.

“I’m used to it,” Mr. Weinstein said of the protests. “Trust me. That’s not the first letter. It’s the first letter to go super-public. And it won’t be the last letter.”

Attendee Josh Brolin was asked what he thought of the controversy. “I don’t know much about it!” he said.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

What the second Wall Street wants to do, to the surprise of moviegoers expecting a rollicking pinstriped adventure, is tell the sludgy story of the financial crisis. But it doesn't know how. Oliver Stone's opus is a strangely fictionalized version of the death of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, but also the rise of short sellers and Goldman Sachs. That makes it, two years after the climax of the subprime debacle, the first big pop-culture meditation on Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon and Ace Greenberg, with some Steve Eisman, Maria Bartiromo and Matt Taibbi thrown in, too. Figuring out what is supposed to be what, and who is really who, should be one of the fall's great parlor games.

But the real surprise is that the Oliver Stone film, as it's called on the beautiful poster, is gentle and forgiving. Greed is bad, and then--consider this a spoiler alert--it isn't. Our heroes are Shia LaBeouf's trader, Jake Moore, more or less a conniving liar, and Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko, introduced as a sage, revealed to be a cackling supervillain, and then given a chance to make good at midnight. The movie doesn't seem to mind that the men win because of theft, irresponsibility, avarice and old-fashioned treachery.

The new Wall Street is a love song to 21st-century traders, disguised as a diatribe.

"WE DIDN'T MAKE it too complex," Oliver Stone said last week, during an interview at noon on Rosh Hashanah. "It's just so fucking difficult." But there are a lot of details packed into the film that ring true. In its best speech, Gekko warns a college audience about the upcoming mortgage collapse. "You don't know it yet, but you're the NINJA generation--no income, no job, no assets," he says, using the nickname for the subprime loans that brokers pushed on unemployed homeowners, which became securities that were traded back and forth.

"Like cancer, it's a disease, and we have to fight back," he says, growing more furious when he describes how his bartender bought three houses he couldn't afford. That's a reference to Steve Eisman, one hedge fund manager who railed against the subprime mortgage bubble, and who realized that his nanny had bought up five townhouses in Queens. (His housekeeper was even going to buy a townhouse with an adjustable rate mortgage and a low down payment, until he convinced her otherwise.)

The film's smart connections to the real-life story of the bubble are as subtle as the high-thread Bowery Hotel sheets that Jake wakes up in when we meet him, nuzzled by Carey Mulligan's Winnie, his girlfriend and Gekko's estranged daughter. But there are bigger links. "We did have scenes with AIG, by the way," Mr. Stone said. "We had the chairman, [Maurice] Greenberg, but I ended up cutting it out because, frankly, it was too complex for the average viewer."

Others made it in. Keller-Zabel, the doomed firm Jake works for, is Bear Stearns, complete with a "bald guy wearing a bow tie," as Bear chairman Ace Greenberg once called himself, at the helm. It's Frank Langella's kindly Lew Zabel, a father figure to Jake, who gets a warm kiss on his pate after awarding him an early million-dollar bonus. There's even a reference to the resentment that lingered on Wall Street ten years after Bear Stearns refused to participate in the 1998 bailout of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.

Bear ended up needing the kind of help it had refused to give, which, of course, is Zabel's fate, too. "Two bucks? Jesus, you're out of your mind," he spits when Churchill Schwartz's Brolin makes an offer to save the firm, the same as JPMorgan's bid for Bear Stearns. The sum goes up after haggling, which is what happened in 2008, sort of, although reality was more sinister. JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon actually wanted to pay more so that Bear Stearns' shareholders wouldn't get in the way, but Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson reportedly asked him to keep the price low, so the government-backed deal wouldn't look like a bailout.

SEE ALSO: 10 WALL STREET SUPERSTITIONS

Indeed, Mr. Brolin looks like Mr. Dimon, only without the gray hair. But Churchill Schwartz doesn't look like JPMorgan for long. By the time we see a black helicopter with its CS logo, just a line of paint away from GS, the firm has morphed into the great Goldman. "Talk about an evil empire," one character sighs. In the interview last week, Mr. Stone even claimed that Eliot Spitzer was the one who told him that Goldman Sachs was betting against the housing market at the same time it was creating mortgage deals. "This was before it made the news!" he said. "That woke me up, and I said, 'My God, that's some story.'"

By the finale, there isn't any doubt about the firm's inspiration. "The first thing you need to know about Churchill Schwartz is that it's everywhere," the opening line of a bombshell exposé posted to Winnie's Web site says. Her site is called Frozen Truth, which will be a boon to the real-life Canadian named Apollo Lemmon who writes a blog with that name. But her article, of course, is Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone classic, which begins, "The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere."

"THE ARTICLE CAME out after the movie was shot," Mr. Stone protested. "Come on! Please." In fact, he's been strange about most of the film's inspirations. Telling The Hollywood Reporter about one bank they shot in, he said it "gave us the right feeling that we needed for Goldman--I don't want to say Goldman, I want to say 'from The Bank' in the film." Mr. LaBeouf is less self-conscious. "I was able to get into the Goldman Sachs office, which is like the Illuminati. Nobody gets to go in there," he recently bragged on camera. "Basically the trade-off was you get me in there, I'll introduce you to Gekko."

Asked in May by Reuters whether the material would be a lightening rod, Mr. Stone sidestepped the question by saying the film was really based on the "solid relationships" between the characters. "We didn't make it about 2008, that was background for me," he said last week. "And it is a serious background, but it's not the movie. It could have been done in another era."

It's not that he's afraid of a lawsuit: At a lunch that The Times wrote about recently, the filmmaker even tried to say there was "a little bit" of Robert Rubin, the former Citigroup chairman, in Brolin's executive.

So is Lew Zabel Ace Greenberg? "I would say he's a combination of tough, hardened Jewish traders who have been in Wall Street over the years," Mr. Stone said last week. Is the shot of the Lipstick Building outside of Zabel's headquarters a nod to Madoff, who ran his scheme there? "It was a happy coincidence," he said. Does Mr. Brolin's banker resemble Jamie Dimon in the first half of the film? "Don't do that to me! You can say there's an archetype of handsome, slick and relatively unscathed by time," Mr. Stone said.

Maybe there's so much slipperiness because his movie's mixed message about its characters and their dishonesty is not what its director would want to say about the real people behind the financial crisis. The sweet Zabel turns out to be psychotically negligent; Gekko gets evil not long after his inspiring speech; and even his daughter is hiding something awfully large. One character complains that CNBC's stars sell fear and panic, but a gaggle of them get cameos. And it's our young hero who spreads a false rumor through a network of short sellers (which earns him a great new job), lies to his fiancé, scares her into doing something awful with Swiss money and is even slightly dishonest when he comes clean at the end.

Even Jake's abiding passion for green technology investments can't help but seem suspect by the end. "I'm doing it to make money," the playboy Vincent Tchenguiz once told a reporter who asked about the conflict between his environmental investments and six SUVs. "The numbers are colossal." The producers talked to him for inspiration.

TWO YEARS AFTER the death of Lehman, and 30 months since Bear's demise, we've had a few great books about the crisis, a nine-volume autopsy of Lehman from its bankruptcy court, a half-billion-dollar Goldman fine with no admission of guilt, Congressional hearings featuring calm non-apologies and now a huge Hollywood film. What we don't have is a way to talk seriously or consistently about the people and companies responsible for the worst financial collapse in a century.

The best the second Wall Street does is present powerful people who are, mostly, good but bad. "That's what it's about," Mr. Stone said. "How money makes you compromised these days. How money taints all our behavior."

If money corrupts, then maybe it's unfair to expect too much from a $70 million Hollywood thriller that features Bvlgari rings (Jake wants to know about the extra-special private Bvlgari collection in the back); the original Wall Street's Charlie Sheen, who had his own makeup artist on set for his brief cameo; and a beer advertisement. "Heineken?" Gekko asks his future son-in-law at a Shun Lee dinner. "Yeah," he answers, before we got a shot of him with the bottle, like Mike Myers jokingly smiling with a Pepsi can in Wayne's World.

They're at Shun Lee for a dinner with Winnie, who, after her father interrupts their conversation to sweet-talk Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter, gets up and leaves. She's back by the end of the film, where the credits roll over a happy outdoor party for a 1-year-old, featuring a live band. "Guys like that, having birthday parties," Mr. Stone told The Times in the Four Seasons, nodding at Steve Schwarzman, "it's not my deal."

mabelson@observer.com

SEE ALSO: THE CAREY-MULLIGAN-MATT TAIBBI HYBRID SPEAKS!

Then Lyons backtracked for a second. "And that's not a bad thing-it's about rediscovering yourself."

The celluloid version of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir may be all about rediscovery, but last night was about promotion-as if any more were needed. The book, after all, has been selling at an astounding clip since its release, and the posters greet you at every street corner.

Maybe that's why the stars were slow to come. At first, Julia was nowhere in sight, Javier would be a while, and James Franco wouldn't even bother showing up.

The evening's real guest of honor, however, may have been Elizabeth Gilbert, the writer who fashioned herself as the central figure of her astoundingly popular book. Not only did she conceive of the project, but she also had the honor of walking into a theater where lucky ticket holders would spend two hours watching the wish-fulfillment of her tri-pronged globetrotting fantasy-all of which is now re-enacted by Julia Roberts. We can only hope a sequel will depict her being fêted by Oprah, seeing her paperback clutched by disillusioned women the world over, and attending the premiere of a summer blockbuster that features herself as the protagonist-in New York, the city that drove her abroad in the first place.

Eventually there were screams and shuffling at the front of the red carpet, so everyone followed suit and slipped their Blackberrys back into their pockets and paid attention again. James Brolin emerged with a shaggy goatee, and gave featured Eat Pray Love actor Mike O'Malley a fierce bro hug.

"We did a project together, The People Speak-he's a real inspiration to me," O'Malley, who just scored an Emmy nomination for his guest spot on Glee, told me, as if a simple hug between two ruggedly attractive men needed any explanation. "He said the same things about me, I'm sure."
Javier Bardem-who plays love interest Felipe in the film-strolled by, doing his best to avoid any sort of human contact, and soon after came Julia Roberts, her eyes locked firmly toward the ground as she walked, flanked by a squad of guards.

The third in line was Gilbert herself, and the real Liz attracted nearly as much attention as the actress playing her. She was beaming-it was hard to imagine this woman desperately in need of sustenance, scripture, and/or sex. She left the onlookers with little more than a smirk and made her way into the theater.

Luckily, guest Russell Simmons was not in as much of a hurry. He stood unfazed amid an onslaught of cameras and recorders and rattled off his new favorite rap albums. So, he was asked, have you ever had an Eat Pray Love experience of your own?

"I don't know," he said as he walked up to the end of the red carpet, his white Yankees cap turning away. "I haven't seen the movie yet!"

In the “whatever were they thinking of” genre, a new entry: Women in Trouble. It’s a movie in trouble, about … nothing, really, except a day in the lives of a screenful of trashy women: a pregnant porno star called Elektra Luxx, playing an oversexed nun; her idiot sister, called Holly Rocket, who throws up on her co-star during her first lesbian wallow after eating bad Mexican food; a therapist whose husband is sleeping with one of her patients; a flight attendant who services a doped-out rock star, who drops dead in the lavatory in the middle of both a storm and an orgasm; a horny masseuse; a woman pretending to be the mother of her sister’s child (all of them patients of the shrink); and … but how much is enough? The rock star (Josh Brolin, with a variety of accents, all ridiculous) is the father of the unborn baby inside the porno star (gorgeous Carla Gugino, who deserves better material). Elektra is a veteran of 62 porno flicks, with her own Web site and a copyright for the No. 1 best-selling fake vagina on the market. Her idiot sister (poor Adrianne Palicki) has a long scene describing sex with a golden retriever. Their lives are tangentially conjoined by meetings in emergency rooms, dyke bars and stalled elevators. The point, I guess, is that women who have the most sex enjoy it the least. I think it’s supposed to be a comedy, but it isn’t. It’s just dumb, dirty and disgusting. How do they think up this stuff, and where do they go to find the fools to finance it? The hack writer-director is Sebastian Gutierrez, who made the Grade Z horror flick Snakes on a Plane. What can I say, dear, after I say I’m sorry?

rreed@observer.com

Wall-E director Andrew Stanton, the Best Animated Film honoree, was far chattier.

"I'm not dating J.Lo or anything!" he crowed to an Us Weekly reporter.

"What do I think is the best film or what do I think will win?" he said, when asked for his Oscar predictions. "I think Slumdog [Millionaire] will probably win. I'm allowed to change my mind every week. I think the best film now as far as all the ones I've seen is The Wrestler."

As for his own film, he said, "It's exciting. It's exciting to be included in this sort of elite club."

Nearby, Jenny Lumet, daughter of Sidney and NYFCC Best Screenplay winner for Rachel Getting Married, was wearing J. Crew (as her publicist pointed out). Ms. Lumet teaches drama at her son's private school on 96^th Street when not writing screenplays.

The Transom asked Ms. Lumet what she thought of New York critics. She proceeded to hold forth on her New York credentials: "Born on 77^th Street in Lenox Hill Hospital, lived my entire life on 91^st Street, then 19^th Street, then 82^nd, now I'm on 95^th, with a brief stint on Broome. This is my town. I went to Dalton from the time I was 2 ½, until I barely graduated-barely graduated. I went to NYU for a semester but I got seven incompletes. And a B. It was really bad.

"New Yorkers know their movies," she continued. "That's what we do. Wanna go to the movies? Let's go to the movies. It's raining, it's snowing, it's cold. So we don't fuck around. I'm sorry, where are you from?" she asked.

The Observer, said the Transom.  

"We don't fuck around," she said again. "So to have any kind of acknowledgement from his bunch of people is pretty intense."

An ebullient Mr. Brolin, best supporting actor honoree for Milk, proclaimed that "L.A. is my town, and I love Los Angeles, but New York critics have been very sweet to me. In the last few years they've been unbelievably sweet. I can't say that for Los Angeles, but that's okay."

He refused to speculate on Milk's Oscar chances. "It's not the awards necessarily, it's just the content," he said, flashing a magnanimous, W-esque smile. "I think it's a wonderful movie, I think it's an important movie, I think it's an inspiring movie, because of Prop 8 and everything that's happening with that. So I'm very, very happy it's getting the recognition it deserves."

Penelope Cruz, sublime in an avian Oscar de la Renta number, arrived shortly before dinner and gave several TV interviews before being whisked away by her publicist. She flashed a sad, sympathetic smile at the press line.

Gus Van Sant’s Milk, from a screenplay by Dustin Lance Black, is certainly as timely as ever, inasmuch as amid all the euphoria over the election of Barack Obama, the passage of anti-gay-marriage propositions in three states has struck a sour note, particularly in California, a state that Senator Obama carried easily, which means that many Obama voters, and probably a fair number of churchgoing Hispanics and African-Americans, voted for Proposition 8. Ironically, one of the high points of Milk is Harvey Milk’s exultation over the defeat in California on Nov. 7, 1978, of Proposition 6, seeking to ban gays from teaching in California public schools, and to remove homosexuals and their supporters from their jobs. Sean Penn and an exemplary ensemble bring Milk’s political and sexual adventures to vibrant life on the screen. Mr. Van Sant has virtually pioneered the insertion of gay themes into the movie mainstream with grace and sophistication. Hence, even though Rob Epstein’s excellent documentary The Times of Harvey Milk won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1984, there is still almost a generation of young people who are completely unfamiliar with the Harvey Milk (1930-1978) story.

I assume that young people, straight and gay alike, are committed to the civil rights of gays, as they reportedly were for the candidacy of Barack Obama. Perhaps I am wrong. Mr. Black’s screenplay, on which he labored for years, picks up Harvey Milk’s life at the point eight years before his assassination when he has finally decided at the age of 40 to come out of the closet to take up the struggle for gay rights. Previously, when he was 16, Milk played junior varsity football at the Bay Shore (N.Y.) high school from which he graduated in 1947. After graduating from State University (SUNY) at Albany with a degree in mathematics, he joined the U.S. Navy, from which he was honorably discharged in 1955. He taught high school from 1958 to 1963, after which he began a new career with the Wall Street firm of Bache and Co. Then came a period of drifting from one career to another in both New York and San Francisco. The movie gets going when he meets a new lover, Scott Smith (James Franco), who is reluctant at first to start a relationship with the fortyish Milk. This bit of gay street wisdom is unobtrusively introduced, and then discreetly dropped during the rest of the film.

Milk and Smith return to San Francisco to open the Castro Camera Shop, which quickly becomes a gay hangout and a locus for political agitation. Milk begins organizing gay boycotts in support of other groups, starting with the Teamsters and their campaign against Coors Beer. In 1973 Milk runs in his district for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and loses. He loses again in 1975, but contributes to the winning mayoral election of the gay-friendly George Moscone.

In 1976 he loses a State Assembly election, but then in 1977, with a new district election system in play, Milk finally wins a supervisor seat for District 5, which takes in the Castro. He thus becomes the first openly gay man ever elected to public office in America. He owes his victory in large part to a new campaign manager, Anne Kronenberg (Alison Pill), an avowed lesbian. There is a delicious scene in which Kronenberg stares down a phalanx of Milk’s disapproving gay supporters by asking them sweetly if they are afraid of a girl.

Meanwhile, Milk has broken with his lover, Scott Smith, and taken up with a new nonpolitical lover, Jack Lira (Diego Luna), who later hangs himself because Milk has neglected him in order to fulfill his campaign obligations. Along the way in his political dealings, Milk incurs the enmity of Dan White, an Irish-Catholic ex-fireman supervisor from another district. On Nov. 27, 1978, White shoots Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk to death. This prompts 30,000 Milk supporters to march to City Hall in a peaceful candlelight demonstration.

As it happens, Milk died a few years before the AIDS epidemic would take the lives of many of his most fervent supporters. On Aug. 5, the California Senate split along party lines in approving the Harvey Milk Day bill, which is due to be considered by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. So Milk’s crusade continues, and the eloquent film bearing his name leads the charge.

asarris@observer.com

Mr. Franco said that he had watched Gay Sex in the 70s (the documentary) to prepare for his role as Scott, Harvey Milk's boyfriend. Mr. Brolin joked that he'd been thinking he was to play Milk and so "being a straight guy, I had tons of sex. Lots of orgies."

Mr. Hirsch (sitting next to Mr. Brolin) interrupted him. "Our research was actually coordinated, right?"

Mr. Brolin looked at Mr. Hirsch quickly. He seemed confused and continued: "So I think that's where the sensitivity to my role came from."

The Q&A continued with smatterings of awkward moments from the moderator; at one point he mentioned Mr. Brolin's character's "70's porn-star hair" in relationship to Mr. Hirsch's "gay fro". Also questioned was Mr. Franco's capacity as a mate. Toward the end of the evening the moderator noted excitedly: "You're obviously going to be on everyone's No. 1 favorite boyfriend list after this."

Mr. Franco took the mic from his lap lazily. "Yeah. I was a pretty good boyfriend."

In real life, Harvey Milk was an unexceptional Jewish boy, as plain as a matzo, but with extraordinary courage, as challenging to homophobic society as a pierced nipple. Without much public egotism or personal glory, he was a late bloomer who, at 48, made history, first when he became the first gay-rights advocate elected to public office on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, and the next year, when he was assassinated for it. On the 30th anniversary of his death, Gus Van Sant has made a sobering, reflective, respectful and responsible film about his turbulent life, titled Milk, with another chameleonlike performance by Sean Penn in the title role. It’s a lengthy, engaging, information-packed tribute to an early activist who dedicated the last years of his life to gay rights before it was fashionable, and paid the ultimate price for his passion. Now the question is, how many people will care enough about that life and untimely death to make an impact at the box office?

The film begins with the Stonewall riots in June of 1969, when a strong odor of anarchy was blowing in the wind. The smell of adrenalin reached Milk, a bored, 40-year-old insurance salesman, amid actual newsreel footage of police crackdowns, dragging men out of gay bars in handcuffs. That was the year he got fired after burning his BankAmericard, and took a younger lover named Scott Smith (James Franco, in his best role since James Dean); they ran away together to California in search of new lives, new friends and new goals. By 1972, they had opened a camera shop, which doubled as headquarters for their own gay political organization that drew so many followers in San Francisco’s six-block Castro District that even the cops were forced to acknowledge their power. Milk kept running for public office, losing every time while building a reputation that disenfranchised gays finally took seriously. Then along came the hatemongering, no-talent singer Anita Bryant, who inadvertently did more than anyone dreamed possible to galvanize the gay liberation movement. The film revisits the Dade County controversy that pitted human rights against legalized bigotry; Milk’s alliance with the Teamsters; the replacement of Scott Smith, who deserted him as both a lover and a campaign manager; Scott’s replacement by a lesbian (played by terrific New York stage sensation Alison Pill), who took Milk into bold new directions, like the endorsement that got a former senator, George Moscone (Victor Garber), elected the first gay-friendly mayor of San Francisco; and the groundswell that finally led to Milk’s own election to the Board of Supervisors, along with an ex-fireman named Dan White (Josh Brolin), who first supported gay rights, then felt betrayed when his own initiatives failed. White turned from friend to opponent, his rage fueled by Anita Bryant and the California family-values senator, John Briggs (a colorful, supercilious performance etched in acid by the excellent Denis O’Hare). The political chronicle is so vast and chock-full of dates, agendas and newspaper headlines that the film is hard to keep up with. You long for more scenes like the occasional private moments when Sean Penn kisses James Franco. But they are few and far between. Even the dual murder of Milk and Mayor Moscone inside City Hall by the tortured Dan White comes after such an overcrowded dossier of politics that its potential shock value is curiously blunted and bloodless. The assassination of the Huey P. Long character in All the King’s Men was more percussive.

In a slavish effort to get the facts straight about Milk the Messiah, director Van Sant loses his grip on Milk the Man. His goals were honorable—to ensure all men with inalienable rights and invest gays with pride, dignity and freedom. But while his public life, fighting marginalization and exclusion, was admirable, his private life lacked the dramatic edge necessary to make a viable, interesting movie. (Or at least the meticulously researched screenplay by Dustin Lance Black eschews the personal struggle for the architecture of gay politics.) Devoting his brief time in office to defeating Proposition 6 while simultaneously trying to placate a new neurotic, suicidal boyfriend (Diego Luna, from Y tu mamá también), Milk was undeniably stressed and obsessed. It would be interesting to see how he dealt with life in the quieter moments. I guess if I have one caveat, it is simply that while Harvey Milk (according to this movie) did a lot of good helping lost boys discover their own flagging sense of worth, his own life was not crowded with much breadth or quality of experience. Without a great personal story to reveal, the film relies too much on external details and not enough on personal conflicts. It’s a life with no arc, and it doesn’t play out with much drama. Don’t misunderstand. From the liberalism of a deserving martyr to the 30,000 mourners of all persuasions who filled the streets, peacefully carrying lighted candles to honor him, Van Sant paints a huge canvas of a time and place that changed the way we see the world we live in, and films it all on actual locations. It’s very impressive, and so much inspired work must not go unrewarded. You won’t see more superior ensemble acting this year. Sean Penn is soft and feathery as swan’s-down. Milk is an undeniable don’t-miss; it’s still uncertain if it’s also a can’t-forget.

rreed@observer.com

An earlier version of this article misstated the date of Judy Garland's death and the year of the Stonewall riots.