- 0:02:56 Harvey’s signature opening line
- Harvey Milk: Hello, I’m Harvey Milk, and I’m here to recruit you.
- 0:03:50 Report of Harvey Milk’s Assassination
- Dianne Feinstein: As President of the Board of Supervisors, it’s my duty to make this announcement. Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed.
- 0:07:18 Harvey wants a new scene
- Scott Smith: I think you need to find a new scene. Some new friends.
Harvey Milk: I need a change.
Scott Smith: You’re forty now.
Harvey Milk: Forty years old, and I haven’t done a thing that I’m proud of.
- 0:12:07 Harvey wants equal protection
- Harvey Milk: I'm a businessman, Scott. And businesses should be good to their
customers. Even if their gay customers are gay. For God's sake, this is San Francisco!
Scott Smith: Yeah, It's just like every other city in this country. They hate us. Big surprise.
Harvey Milk: We should have at least one block in one city right? Start there and then
we’ll take over the neighborhood.
- 0:17:13 Politics is theatre
- Harvey Milk: Politics is theatre. It doesn’t matter so much about winning. You make a statement. You say, ‘I’m here,†and get their attention.
- 0:19:21 Harvey runs for SF City Supervisor
- Harvey Milk: My fellow degenerates, I would like to announce my candidacy for San Francisco City Supervisor!
- 0:23:28 Harvey’s death threat
- Harvey Milk: If you put it away, hide it in a drawer, it’ll just get bigger and scarier. Now it’s there. We’ll see it every day. It can’t get us.
Scott Smith: Your gonna spend all this energy to make yourself a target for something
you’re not even gonna win?
Harvey Milk: I keep telling you, it’s not just about winning.
- 0:24:52 Harvey faces opposition from the gay establishment
- David Goodstein: Harvey, we’re like the Catholic Church. We welcome converts, but we don’t make them Pope the same day.
- 0:28:31 Advice from Art Agnos
- Art Agnos: You talk a lot about what you’re against. What are you for? In this town, you gotta give ‘em a reason for optimism or you’re cooked.
- 0:38:41 The beginning of Proposition Six
- Anita Bryant: Tonight the laws of God and the cultural values of man have been vindicated. The people of Dade County, the normal majority, have said enough, enough, enough.
- 0:42:46 Harvey wants to give people hope
- Harvey Milk: My name is Harvey Milk... And I want to recruit you. I am here tonight to say, that we will no longer sit quietly in the closet. We must fight. And not only in the Castro, not only in San Francisco, but everywhere the Anitas go. Anita Bryant did not win tonight. Anita Bryant brought us together . . . She is going to create a national gay force! And the young people in Jackson, Mississippi, in Minnesota, in Richmond, or Woodmere, New York . . . who are hearing her on television, hearing Anita Bryant on television telling them that they are sick, they’re wrong, that there is no place for them in this great country for them, No place in this world. . . . They are looking to us for something tonight . . . . And I say, we have got to give them hope!
- 0:45:26 Dan White arrives on the scene
- Dan White: See, I’m not going to be forced out of San Francisco by splinter groups of social radicals, social deviants, and incorrigibles. You must realize that there are thousands upon thousands of frustrated, angry people such as yourselves waiting to unleash a fury that will eradicate the malignancies which blight our beautiful city.
- 0:54:18 Harvey wins elected office
- Harvey Milk: And for the first time ever, it all came together . . . the union boys, the women, the seniors, the gays, the minorities. . . . All of the us’s showed up.
- 0:59:28 Harvey takes on Anita Bryant
- Harvey Milk: The first order of business that will come out of this office is a city wide Gay Rights Ordinance. Just like the one Anita shot down in Dade County. What do you think, Lotus Blossom?
Michael Wong: I think it's good. It’s not great.
Harvey Milk: Then make it brilliant. I want Anita's attention here. In San Francisco. I want her to bring her fight to us . . . We need a unanimous vote. We need headlines.
Jim Rivaldo: Dan White won't vote for this.
Harvey Milk: Dan White will be fine. Dan White is just uneducated. We can teach him.
- 1:05:43 Briggs & the test for homosexuality
- John Briggs: My proposition promises to protect our children from these gay perverts and pedophiles who recruit our children to participate in their deviant lifestyles, including the ones who do it in our public schools. The time has come for us to root them out.
Tom Ammiano: How are you going to determine who’s a homosexual?
John Briggs: Sir, my bill has procedures for identifying homosexuals.
- 1:10:24 Harvey advocates outing
- Harvey Milk: If we’re gonna beat Prop Six we tell all of them to come out. Every gay lawyer, teacher, doctor, dog catcher . . . We have to leave the ghetto, we have to let all those people out there know that they do know one of us. And if people won't step out of the closet, we open the door for them. Anne Kronenberg: Jesus.
Scott Smith: The whole state isn’t San Francisco, Harvey.
Harvey Milk: Clearly, Scott.
Jim Rivaldo: It could be really, really dangerous. There is such a thing as a right to privacy.
Harvey Milk: Privacy . . . In this movement at this time, and I’m not saying this as Supervisor, privacy is the enemy. And if you want real political power? If that’s what you want, try telling tell the truth for a change.
- 1:14:23 Fallout with Dan White
- Dan White: Why are you turning on me like this at the last minute? What did I do?
Harvey Milk: I never got the details. Dan, if you want me to help you draft another version of it that doesn’t shanghai every troubled kid in your area, I’d be happy too.
Dan White: Harvey, I can't go back to my family and to my folks and to my district without this. Don't do this.
Harvey Milk: I’m getting a lot of pressure on me.
Dan White: So you’re just stringing me along. And now you’re throwing me to the wolves, is that it?
Harvey Milk: You only need one more vote, Dan. There are 5 other Supervisors you could convince besides me.
Dan White: I’m gonna vote against your Queer Law. And I’m going to get Quentin against it too.
Harvey Milk: It’s gonna pass anyway. You can’t keep alienating yourself here, Dan.
Dan White: I gave you a chance, Harvey. I really did. You blew it.
- 1:21:13 Gay Rights becomes San Francisco law
- Mayor Moscone: I can’t get my stories on page ten, you’re getting page one?
Harvey Milk: Doggy-doo’s a real problem, George. Powder blue pen to sign the city’s first Gay Rights Law.
Mayor Moscone: I don’t do this enough, taking swift and ambiguous action on a substantive move for civil rights.
Harvey Milk: George, we need your help with Briggs . . . the gay community will have your back on all issues from now on. We hope you’ll have ours.
- 1:28:26 Dan White has an issue
- Dan White: (drunk)I’ve learned a lot from you, Harvey. I’m going to get my picture in the papers, too. Why are you even here? Where did you just show up from somewhere? You’ll see. I’ve got my own issue. Okay? I’ve got my own issues. That’s right. Dan White’s got an issue!
- 1:30:29 Harvey advocates coming out
- Harvey Milk: My name is Harvey Milk, and I’m here to recruit you. I want to recruit you for the fight to preserve your democracy. Brothers and sisters, you must come out. Come out to your parents. Come out to your friends, if they indeed are your friends. Come out to your neighbors, come out to your fellow workers. Once and for all, break down the myths, and destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who have been scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene. On the Statue of Liberty it says "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free." In the Declaration of Independence it is written "All men are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights." So, for Mr. Briggs and Mrs. Bryant and all the bigots out there, no matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words from the Declaration of Independence. No matter how hard you try, you cannot chip those words from off the base of the Statue of Liberty. That is what America is. Love it or leave it.
- 1:34:32 Harvey debates John Briggs
- John Briggs: Mr. Milk, we don't allow people who practice bestiality to teach our children, excuse me, and the reason we don't is because it is illegal. It's not illegal to be a homosexual in California.
Harvey Milk: And your law goes even further. Any school employee who even supports a gay person will be fired--
John Briggs: Well, that’s true. But, gay people don't have children of their own. If they don't recruit our children, they'd all just die away. And that's why they’re all so interested in becoming teachers, want to be teachers. They want to encourage our children to join them.
Harvey Milk: How do you teach homosexuality? Like French? I was born of heterosexual parents, taught by heterosexual teachers in a fiercely heterosexual society. So then why am I homosexual? And no offense meant, but if it were true that children mimicked their teachers, you'd have a helluva lot more nuns running around.
- 1:38:42 Dan & Harvey are at crossroads
- Dan White: I don’t trade votes . . . unlike you, the way I was raised, we believe in right and wrong. Moral and immoral.
Harvey Milk: Black skin and white in your police department? . . . Dan, even Ronald Reagan’s opposed to Proposition Six. You’re looking more and more out of touch.
Dan White: If I com out against Prop Six it’s only because of the state’s rights issue.
Harvey Milk: And the potential witch hunts against you “straight people,†right?
Dan White: You can’t humiliate me. And you will not demean me.
- 1:42:29 Harvey urges Cleve to fight back if Prop Six is passed
- Harvey Milk: I can’t say it because I’m a public official, but if this thing passes, fight the hell back.
- 1:45:24 Harvey’s Victory over Prop Six Speech
- Harvey Milk: Tonight it is clear to everyone out there that they do know one of us. And now that they do, they can see that we are not sick. They can that feel we are not wrong. And they know that there should be, there must be a place in this great country and in this world. . . . A message of hope has been to sent to all the young people out there . . . to all those afraid of this wave of hate . . . to all those who have lost their homes and their hometowns. Tonight we are clear there is a place for us! My brothers and sisters . . . we can come home again!
- 1:47:26 Harvey Pressures Mayor Moscone
- Harvey Milk: He gets dragged into this closed door meeting with the Police Association, and suddenly he wants his job back? Who knows what they may have said to him in there. Or what they may have promised him. Worse yet, if they threatened him.
Mayor Moscone: A man has the right to change his mind. Give me some peace.
Harvey Milk: Dan White has been the vote on the board that has stood in our way. THE vote!
Mayor Moscone: I get it, Harvey. I've been lobbied all week. Enough.
Harvey Milk: Let me remind you of something. You’re up for re-election. If you reappoint Dan White, you will lose the gay vote. They listen to me. You won't get elected dog catcher.
Mayor Moscone: I'll make my decision on Monday. . . . You know what you sounded like just now? Boss Tweed or Mayor Daly.
Harvey Milk: I like that. A "homosexual" with power . . . that’s scary.
- 1:59:00 Harvey’s Final Words
- Harvey Milk: If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door. I ask for the movement to continue. Because it's not about personal gain, it’s not about ego, it’s not about power . . . it's about the "us's" out there. And not just the gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the seniors, the disabled, the us's. Without hope, the us's give up--I know you can’t live on hope alone, but without hope, life is not worth living. So you, and you, and you . . . You gotta give em' hope . . . you gotta give em' hope.
