GUS Van Sant talks about directing the Bafta-nominated biopic Milk and how he came to hear about the life, political career and eventual assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in San Francisco in the ’70s.

He also gives us the lowdown on the unseen psychedelic version of Milk and why he attempted to get Tom Cruise on board during another earlier incarnation of the project.

Q. When did you first know about Harvey Milk? Had you always followed his career while he was alive?
Gus Van Sant: No, I didn’t. I was in Los Angeles at the time and I wasn’t out of the closet for one thing, and I wasn’t really politically focused. I wasn’t reading the papers every day. If I had been reading them, it would have been the LA Times, and I probably would have seen his name here and there. But I wasn’t looking that closely. So, I became aware of him when he was shot in 1978 and it was a news item that I heard on the radio as I was driving across the country. I drove around a lot because it was cheaper than flying and I would go back and forth to New York from LA.

Q. When did you know you wanted to try and make a film about him?
Gus Van Sant: Well, from 1978 and the news item I next saw the documentary about Harvey Milk in 1984 and I guess somewhere in there I probably knew a little bit more about him from being more acquainted with gay politics. Then, I had a later meeting with [director] Rob Epstein in 1992, when he said that Oliver Stone had wanted to make a movie and was dropping out as the director. So, they were looking for a replacement and I got the job and worked on it for about a year. But it never got going and it never got made.

Q. By the time Lance’s script came to you, you were probably familiar with the story. But did you wonder why no one had turned it into a story before?
Gus Vant Sant: Well, I had heard about Oliver Stone doing it in 1991 but he decided not to for some reason right after finishing JFK. He said it was because he didn’t want to do another assassination movie. But people thought that perhaps it was because of the depiction of the gay characters that were in JFK, that got the gay community angry at him. They thought maybe he was changing his mind because of that. So, I took over for about a year as a replacement. I got to know some of the characters that were in the story – mostly Cleve Jones, who eventually introduced me to Lance in 2007.

Q. Do you think Lance was the only person to have cracked the way to tell the story?
Gus Vant Sant: I thought so. I thought the script had really narrowed in on a particular part of his life that made it able to be a feature film. The other tries – including my own – were trying to take on too many subjects and too many episodes of Harvey Milk’s life.

Q. How important was it to shoot in San Francisco?
Gus Van Sant: I think that because it’s where everything took place, we always wanted to shoot there. But we also knew that the movie company was really fond of going wherever we could get a really good kickback. I wasn’t particularly against that. In some ways, I thought using a different kind of street you might breathe new life into the story. I was even in Turkey for a little bit, and I thought that some of the streets there looked like San Francisco. I didn’t know if Turkey would have been a money-saving idea, but I was willing to go elsewhere if that’s what the studio wanted. I also knew that San Francisco is a hard place to shoot. But Sean Penn didn’t want to shoot anywhere else, so he kind of made it impossible to shoot anywhere else. But it’s kind of great now that we were in the real place.

Q. Were you surprised by how much you were embraced by the community?
Gus Van Sant: Yeah, I’m impressed by San Francisco’s enthusiasm. It was a surprise to some of us that people really got excited about it – almost like a small town. They’d come and march in the crowd scenes. We had some websites announcing it and Rob Epstein showed The Times of Harvey Milk to help get a crowd for some of the marches. We were expecting a couple of hundred people to turn out, but we got a couple of thousand – 3,000 for the march to commemorate Harvey’s passing.

Q. That must be overwhelming emotionally when something like that happens? How did you feel when you saw that scene recreated, with that type of turnout?
Gus Van Sant: It was amazing. But there was other help too – just like the businesses on Castro and everybody seemed really into it, including the Mayor.

Q. Is it true that the ghost of Harvey Milk appeared on-set at one point?
Gus Van Sant: We were shooting a scene and someone apparently walked in and sat on the couch during the scene, and the left. I didn’t see the person, but people kept saying: “Did you see that guy?” I hadn’t seen any guy and I was sat right there, so I started thinking it was a ghost mostly because I didn’t see the person and when I asked them what he looked like, the description sounded quite a bit like Harvey in terms of his face and what he was wearing. It obviously wasn’t Harvey… in the sense that the people saying it would probably have recognised him. But it was just an odd occurrence.

Q. Was Sean Penn always the first choice for the role?
Gus Van Sant: Actually, I had offered him the role in 1998. It was a time when Sean had actually just decided to move to San Francisco. It was an effort, on my part, to try and jumpstart the same project that Oliver Stone was doing. I wanted Tom Cruise to play Dan White and he was here, in England, shooting Eyes Wide Shut. I wanted Sean as Harvey, even though he was 10 years younger than Harvey at the time. But I thought that if I connected those guys, I could go into a studio and say: “Look, I have these two guys…” And they’d want to do it. There was always the problem of the gay community aspect of the film, so they [the studios] needed a reason to overcome that fear that they had of making a film that wasn’t going to have a very big return money-wise. So, that was my plan and Sean read the script, which was in a different form then.

When we offered it to him this time it was more like he was part of a list and he became the one that we focused on. I called him and said we wanted to offer him the role of Harvey Milk. His one word response was: “It’s interesting.” I said: “Good, we’ll talk.” But the next step was for him to read the script, so I went and met him at his house and halfway through that meeting I realised I’d already gone through all this with him and had somehow forgot that I’d met him before!

I think it was really interesting to him and it was really easy, in a sense, because it’s irresistible. It’s a political figure, a very outspoken political figure and that was something Sean was doing at the time. He was speaking out and giving speeches in different places about various things… usually centering on the Bush administration. He was fighting back, really, because I think he felt angry that in the first months after 9/11 and leading into the Iraq war, all the press and personalities like himself were made to feel like it would be against your country to speak your mind and say what you wanted. I think there was a backlash for him, and I think he came out and just decided to start talking. He was critical of the atmosphere that was set up after 9/11. So, he was sort of a natural [for the role]. But also the perceived difficulty of him going and playing a gay leader was a challenge and something that I think as an actor you’d seek.

Q. Did you ever think about re-approaching Tom Cruise?
Gus Van Sant: Well, we did actually after Matt Damon was unable to play it. We had a date and we had to get a Dan White that people were happy about because of the financing expectations. So, we needed to get someone as big as Matt Damon and I think we asked Tom, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. We went to all the big ones. And those guys were like: “No, we can’t do it.” But Sean suggested Josh [Brolin], who I had met at Cannes. I agreed because I had seen No Country For Old Men, but it hadn’t opened.

Earlier, in ’98 there was still a weird script that we’d written in ’95 which didn’t really further the cause because it was quite weird. It’s really detailed and dense and would be really hard to shoot. I call it a Charlie Kauffman script. It’s really wacky and psychadelic. For instance, in one scene where Scott and Harvey have sex at the beginning of the movie, there’s a cross-section of his body and you can see the penis go through the rectum [laughs awkwardly]. That was sort of how that script went… there was also someone tripping and slipping on her own vomit. We loved it and thought it was great. We wanted to do it the way it should be done.

Q. The poster declares “never blend in”. Is that part of your credo for your own career?
Gus Van Sant: As a filmmaker, I guess so. But I think all filmmakers are trying to have something that sticks out so that you go and see it. So, in a different way to Harvey Milk then yes.

Q. If there’s a through line in your films, could you sum it up?
Gus Van Sant: Well, I’m still learning about that myself. As the years go by, it’s not really something that I’m trying to put in the films but without realising it, the through line is about family. Almost every film has something to do with a group of people that are put together, who aren’t necessarily related, but who are creating a family for whatever reason. Sometimes its survival, sometimes it’s to get something done and in this case, it’s a political campaign or action. So, that’s kind of a through line but not intentionally.

Q. These must have been some of the best reviews you’ve had for your work, especially from the people that knew Harvey Milk. Do you remember anything they said in particular that stuck with you?
Gus Van Sant: Mike Wong came up and hugged me, which was pretty unlike him. I think it was hard for them because they had lived the story and here they were watching a film about their story. And I think they were kind of in a daze afterwards. But they said they really liked it.

Read our review of Milk

Read our interview with writer Dustin Lance Black

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