Harvey Milk Argumentative Essay On Robert Epstein

“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country” (Shilts 184). This quote shows how passionate Harvey Milk was. Milk campaigned two times (1973 and 1975) for the position of Supervisor on the San Francisco Board. He lost both times. He tried it again one last time in 1977 and won “with 30 percent of the vote over 16 candidates” (NYTimes Harvey Milk). Robert Epstein portrayed Harvey Milk accurately in the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk. Epstein depicted Milk’s early life to his political career to his and Mayor George Moscone’s assassination.

A New Jersey born, nineteen year old, Rob Epstein took a bus from New Jersey to San Francisco to start his filming career. Not long after his big move

across the country he became one of the youngest members in Mariposa Film Group. He and six others shared the director title in Word is out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977). It’s considered to be the first documentary to show what its like to be homosexual in America. His other work includes The AIDS Show (1986), We the People (1987), Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989), and The Celluloid Closet (1995) which interviewed men and women that are connected to Hollywood and talked about their personal experience and how they were treated when they played LGBT roles in movies (NYTimes The Celluloid Closet). But his biggest hit was The Times of Harvey Milk when it was released in 1984
When Milk became supervisor it was very controversial.

Even before, when he was campaigning.The issue was that he was homosexual. The people of San Francisco didn’t think he was capable of helping people. “If a gay can win, it means there is hope that the system can work for all minorities if we fight. We've given them hope.” (Shilts 183). Milk worked hard to represent minorities when no one else would. “As supervisor Harvey Milk has the political skills to advance the issues that neighborhood people cared about. Rent control, limiting high rise development, public transportation and the right of senior citizens” (Time of Harvey Milk,

The).
Milk was “really quite vocal at the time” (Times of Harvey Milk, The) when it came to the decision on choosing a voting machine to purchase for the city of San Francisco both him and Mayor George Moscone favored votomatic. “He locked heads Quentin L. Kopp and Dianne Feinstein” (Times of Harvey Milk, The) because he strongly believed it was the right machine “Particularly for the elderly that had experienced discrimination” (Times of Harvey Milk, The).
Another controversial issue, was the Gay Rights Bill.

“Main purpose was to prevent people, who are already employed, who are gay...prevents them from being fired” (Times of Harvey Milk, The). “The legislation won by a vote of 10-1” (White House Comments on Medal of Freedom Winners). The only person that was opposing the bill was Supervisor Dan White. Senator John Briggs was strongly against this bill to. He created proposition 6, also commonly known as the Briggs Initiative. It was ballot that would have “ banned gays and lesbians from working in California's public schools” (Ballotpedia). The proposition failed with 58.4 percent against

it.
Dan White's sentence was the talk of the town during this time. He “was a conservative Vietnam veteran and former fireman who served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors” (On This Day). He served with Milk. Out of nowhere White resigned. His reasoning behind this was because he left a nice paying job as a firefighter to become an elected supervisor. Saying that “couldn’t support his family on a City Supervisor salary” (On This Day). He later wanted his job back because he “didn't run for election to resign 10 months later” (Times of Harvey Milk, The). Moscone Found out that White isn't allowed to take back his resignation. It was up to Moscone to decided who become supervisor. Once word got out that White wasn’t going to be reappointed, he took matter into his own hands. White killed both Moscone and Milk. The same day Moscone was going to announce the new supervisor. White turned himself in. When the trials began many people thought White would be sentenced to death. But was found guilty of manslaughter instead of murder and was sentenced to “sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison” (On This Day)
From the research, Robert Epstein did a great job documenting Harvey Milk’s life and so did the narrator, Harvey Forbes Fierstein. There isn’t much to disagree with. The documentary was done quite well. It had the highlights of Harvey Milk's life to the not so highlighted moments. The thing about Epstein is that he didn't make the entire film about how Milk died. Although, he did open up the documentary with Milk’s tape recorder will. Epstein made it beautiful by saying everything that Milk did. The good, the bad and the ugly. The good being everything that Milk accomplished. The bad, for some, that hes gay and the ugly is the horrible way he left this world.