First Look: Sean Penn As Harvey Milk In Gus Van Sant’s Milk

Check out the first photo of Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to any substantial political office in the history of the planet (according to Time Magazine). Gus Van Sant is filming the biopic in San Francisco, where parts of the Castro District have been retrofitted back to the 1970's (check back to our posting from last week for more storefront photos). Tinobear (Valentin Aguirre) snapped the photo above from a sign outside the retrofitted set of Harvey Milk's campaign headquarters (seen below). Click to enlarge.

Harvey Milk (1930-1978) was an activist and politician, and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in America; in 1977, he was voted to the city supervisors' board of San Francisco. The following year, both he and the city's mayor George Moscone were shot to death by another city supervisor, Dan White. Mr. Milk was previously the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary feature The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), directed by Rob Epstein and produced by Richard Schmiechen. Milk is the first non-documentary feature to explore the man's life and career.