Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk using politician and activist Harvey Milk’s timed birth chart. Themes that emerged were the power of community organizing to make a difference, sometimes well beyond your own community. They also discuss the danger inherent in doing this kind of work when you stand for things that go against social mores and what kind of person is called to that sort of service. Astrological significations explored were the 11th House, strongly dignified Saturn in the 11th, Mars conjunct Uranus and squaring Pluto and Saturn.
Distribution: Streaming on Max, also on Video on Demand
Director: Rob Epstein
Run Time: 88 minutes
Astrological Data: Harvey Milk, 22 May 1930 at 01:30a, Woodmere, New York, Rodden Rating: A, Source: Astro.com
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.459] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All The Way Down podcast, where we're breaking down the archetypal dynamics of documentaries from Sundance 2024. Today's episode, we're going to be diving into The Times of Harvey Milk, which is actually a part of the 40th edition celebration screenings events at Sundance 2024. It was directed by Rob Epstein and actually picked up a special jury award at the very first Sundance back in 1985. And it's a part of a section that we're calling the power of the collective movements and friends. It's distributed so you can actually go watch it on HBO Max or you can do video on demand. So, Wonder, if you'd be willing to read the synopsis.
[00:00:57.082] Wonder Bright: The Times of Harvey Milk. Set in San Francisco in the 1970s, The Times of Harvey Milk tells of the extraordinary rise to power of a long-haired, gay camera store owner from the Castor District who becomes one of the city's most colorful and influential elected officials. as well as one of the decade's most prominent leaders of the LGBTQ plus rights movement. That is, until he was shot and killed at City Hall by former police officer and fellow supervisor, Dan White. Harvey Milk's journey to that fateful day is recounted brilliantly through the course of the film. A riveting, volatile, dynamic, and impassioned documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk's stranger-than-fiction story is immensely moving, combining real emotional urgency with a compelling grasp of filmmaking craft. A moving affirmation and revelation of how one man can make a difference, it is a quintessential work about American values and conflict, which highlights a courageous and charismatic individual while exposing an incredible miscarriage of justice. As political renegades go, Milk wasn't afforded the time to become a household name. By memorializing the remarkable life and political career of LGBTQ plus advocate Milk, The Times of Harvey Milk played a pivotal role in influencing public opinion and discourse on gay rights. The documentary received widespread acclaim, indicated by its 1985 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It also received the Special Jury Prize for Documentary at Sundance's very first festival in 1985, where it screened in the U.S. Documentary Competition. The film's digital restoration, which will screen at the upcoming festival, was completed by Janus Films and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Back in 1985, when The Times of Harvey Milk screened at the first Sundance Film Festival, Frederick Wiseman, D.A. Pennebaker, and Barbara Koppel were on the jury, said director and producer Robert Epstein. Being in the festival was a reward in itself, but receiving a special jury award from these legends was a young filmmaker's dream come true. Sundance has been an important part of my life and career ever since. How great to be returning with the Times of Harvey Milk as part of the 40th edition celebration. And we don't unfortunately have the initials or name of the Sundance programmer that wrote that synopsis.
[00:03:21.764] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, I remember I've watched this film before, but it's been a while, so it was great to watch it again because it's really remarkable how well this film stands up. Just showing the liberation movements to bring about equal rights and the challenges that were shown back then, especially back in the 80s, but even back in the late 70s, but especially still today, is how much of what was being covered back then in 1978 is still pressing issues in terms of the violence that LGBTQ plus communities face. So when I think about this film, I think about how much Harvey Milk was this consummate community organizer, how much he was able to bring together so many different factions from like ethnic minorities and feminists and all working together on different issues from like rent control, transportation, rights of senior citizens, the pooper scooper ordinance to keep people from leaving their dog shit on the sidewalks. So lots of ways that he was not only fighting for LGBTQ plus rights, but also trying to bring about more equity to the workers and just a lot of voices that were spread throughout this film from a diverse range of backgrounds of people like speaking on behalf of the honor and character of Harvey Milk, which was really nice to see that Harvey Milk was able to build these types of alliances that go beyond what was normal at that time and just the tragedy of his assassination and just how at the end the killer, Dan White, ends up only serving around 5.5 years in prison because of this twinkie defense that comes up. But, you know, we'll get to that at some point, but it's kind of infuriating to see how much that he kind of got away with murder in a way that this is a grave injustice to the community, but yet somehow he got off with a very lenient sentence. But overall, I'm really left with how amazing Harvey Milk was in terms of just bringing the community together, but also fighting and advocating for equal rights.
[00:05:21.747] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I first saw this film probably 91, 92. I was in San Francisco at the time and I was a nanny to a lesbian couple. I nannied their twins for a few years. I remember watching this film on video after walking down to the outer sunset and picking up my video tape from the local video store and then getting home and watching it one weekend. And that was in a period of time, you know, where I marched in the gay pride parade in San Francisco with my twins and their moms and their lesbian parenting group. I just had this experience of feeling like I was a part of something new and special in the world that was unique to San Francisco, but you know, just, like, we could see the future somehow. So I remember this documentary vividly because It's one of those artifacts from that time that means that even though I only spent three and a half years living in San Francisco, it's a part of how I think of myself and how I place myself in America. You know, like, I left San Francisco and moved to England and people would ask me if America was the way that they'd seen it on the TV. I mean, how could I answer that? Like, I was like from San Francisco. But to me, that was a very American thing. That was a very American place to be from. And when I watched that film at the time, I felt like that's where I'm from. I'm from this place. And Harvey Milk speaks to a possible future that I was living into in that time. And it still fills me with this feeling of pride and joy despite the ending, you know, but mostly because of who Harvey Milk was and the way that he spoke about the danger that he knew that he was probably in, but the way in which he just stepped into his destiny regardless because he knew that he could and he saw the difference that he could make and he didn't shy away from it and he understood his time and he understood his place inside of it in a way that is just remarkable. I'm not even sure if it's possible in today's fractured world to have somebody run for politics who we can all believe the way that we could believe Harvey Milk then and even a decade after his death when I saw the film. I remember the film Gus Van Sant made, starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk in the mid-aughts sometime, and watching it and just thinking, this is not anywhere near as good as the documentary, people should just watch the documentary. Because Sean Penn, no matter how passionately he embodied the character that he played, he is just sort of essentially a very serious, incredibly earnest, sometimes almost dour personality. And although Harvey Milk was certainly serious, the overriding experience that you have when you're watching this film is just this joy that runs through him and this compassion and ability to just be with people and to laugh. Like he's really funny. He's really, really funny. And I just don't think of Sean Penn as being able to capture that. The Times of Harvey Milk, the documentary, is remarkable for how well it captures Harvey, not just because it has interviews and clips of him, but because you hear from his friends who bring him to life with so much love and just deep joy, however sad they are that he's gone. Like, it's just so obvious that he changed their lives and their city forever.
[00:09:37.049] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's a lot of themes around friends that you just mentioned. And this whole section that we're starting off and kicking off here is around the Power of the Collective, and Movements and Friendships. And this is really a 11th house topic that Harvey starts off with doing a lot of community organizing, but it's not in a political context up until there's a change in the board of supervisors within the city of San Francisco that starts to elect people based upon their district rather than citywide. Once it goes to districts, then that means that someone like Harvey Milk, someone who's a gay man, could actually be elected to represent the interest of the community that he comes from. And so it ends up being this big political shift that is allowing much more diversity and to have people that are much closer to the issues of concern of the constituents that he's representing. So I'm just going to read some passages from Demetra George's Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice, A Manual of Traditional Techniques, Volume 2, which I can't recommend highly enough for diving into all these things. I've been citing her this whole podcast. But she says, from the traditional perspective, the essence of the 11th house is our aspirations, hopes, and dreams for future prosperity and well-being. In the modern era, the topics of friends and groups have gained more emphasis. So Demetra talks about how this is the joy of Jupiter, which is translated as good spirit. So it's in that good spirit that there's a number of different associations that come from that. She says the good daimon has been variously envisioned as the Roman genie, the fairy godmother, the guardian angel, In the Spirit Guide, it is the companion on the path of life and bestower of riches, blessings, and protection, helping to make a person's dreams come true. Here we see the derivation of the core meanings of the 11th house in terms of friends, hopes, and dreams. So there's certainly a lot of aspirations that are coming through throughout the course of this film, which is a dream and a hope for a better future, all these aspirations. And she says, this sector holds the space for friends and friendships based upon a sympathy of the soul. which I think you hear that throughout the course of this film, because you're hearing from a lot of the friends that are directly connected to Harvey, but also other people who are trying to help bring this vision that he has about.
[00:11:52.350] Wonder Bright: Some people who were opposed to him initially or just didn't want to have anything to do with a gay man, but were really won over by him in the end and were very happy to be interviewed about him because they just thought so highly of him as a political organizer.
[00:12:09.571] Kent Bye: Yeah, specifically the man who's representing the unions and the workers and the workers' interests. And he really saw how Harvey was really fighting for the worker. So the last two quotes that I'll read here. “Updated to contemporary times, this house, which is the 11th house, includes social acquaintances and peer interactions in clubs, groups, organizations, or religious affiliations based upon shared interests, leisure activities, beliefs, or profitable outcomes from the cultivation of social connections". And then finally, “when the notions of aspirations for a better future are combined with the group identity and participation, this sector can show the propensity to participate in collective endeavors with those who share your visions, aspirations, and ideals to bring about social change for the betterment of society. The 11th house is the sector of political, social, and spiritual activism”. So I think this is actually a really perfect place to start when we're talking about the collective, these social movements and friendships, because there's a lot of sympathy there within the 11th house context.
[00:13:11.092] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I mean, this is why I chose this film to start, because Harvey is at the nexus of all the definitions that you could have for the 11th house. He has a wide and loving circle of friends, a wide and joyful community that embraces him at the heart of it. And then he also becomes somebody who is working for this collective movement and is a grassroots community organizer who works politically with other communities and other groups to make things happen. And then in addition to that, there's another meaning that the 11th house often has, which is it's the court of the king. So the king would be represented in a mundane chart by the 10th house and the 11th house would be the king's court. And it's notable that Harvey Milk was elected, as you were explaining, because San Francisco had changed the laws whereby city supervisors would be elected. And that's how Harvey got in. But part of that change was brought about because there was a new mayor named George Moscone who made these changes possible and really worked hard to make sure that the city was much more diverse than it had been in the past. And so if in San Francisco's chart at the time, George Moscone is the king, then Harvey Milk ends up being in the court of the king as a member of the board of supervisors. So there's a number of areas around which Harvey's life really is emblematic of those things and shouldn't be a surprise. And, you know, it isn't really that surprising that his chart reflects that. We do have a timed birth for him. It's an A rating, not a double A rating, meaning that it isn't from Harvey's birth certificate, but Harvey spoke to somebody and told him his birth time, and that man gave that information to Astrodata Bank, to Lois Rodden. So that is considered an A rating. It's a 1.30 a.m. birth time, and any time a birth time ends in a zero or a five or a ten, you know, somebody rounded up somewhere and it's just not 100% or for sure. But I will say that this chart really works for Harvey and works to describe and illustrate the things that we're talking about here. It gives an Aquarius rising with Saturn in Capricorn in the 11th house. And that's whether you're using whole signs or quadrant systems for you astronerds keeping score at home. So that means that Saturn rules the 11th, 12th and 1st houses and it's placed in the 11th house. So Saturn in Capricorn is in its own sign. It's very strong. It's highly dignified. It's a very serious placement for it. But Saturn is also quite like we've talked before about Bob's Funeral. We talked a lot about how Saturn can be an indication of humor. You can see that in the way that people describe people as being dry. Well, Saturn is dry. So this is like that dryness lends itself to humor. And Harvey Milk's whole campaign that he originally won on was about dog poop. And he was very funny about the way that he went about doing that. and how he was able to garner political capital by making jokes on TV that in the mid to late 1970s, this is like the equivalent of going viral, is he's like making a joke on local television that was garnering attention and good humor. So, you know, he had that capacity to understand that he was going to win people over better with humor than almost anything else. So he was a very serious person, but he used humor to make his points and to ingratiate himself with people who might otherwise not have been able to deal with him as a gay man, who otherwise might not have wanted to have anything to do with him because he was a gay man. But he was able to find the commonality between himself and other people. And he understood that everybody would be aligned about wanting to get rid of the dog poop. It was like, it seems like such a small thing, but it's a quality of life issue. And he was very funny about making it happen. So you can see that like deft strategy, his dry humor, and his real clarity about what needs to happen and how it needs to be implemented and the ability to work within a structure, within the already existing structure as evidenced by Saturn in the sign of Capricorn.
[00:18:04.546] Kent Bye: Just to pick up on some of the themes of the 11th House Saturn, he's got Saturn in 11th House. It's also squaring his natal Uranus. He's got a Saturn at 11 degrees Capricorn and Uranus at 13 degrees Aries. And so a lot of what he was doing had that sort of tension between trying to give this disruptive liberatory force to the existing structures of society. You know, a big thing that he was trying to pass and that actually did pass in the end a resolution that would make it illegal for employers to fire someone based upon their sexual identity. So if they came out as gay, that's something that could have been a fireable offense back in the late 70s. And so with this resolution that was voted upon by the public, it ended up passing, which made it such that people would be able to come out and express their identity. So this is very much a 1st house expression of your own sexual preferences would not put your 10th house career in danger. And this was done through a mechanism of the 9th house of a law that's being passed through an 11th house expression of community organizing to be able to gather enough support to be able to actually pass this. So after that passes, then we get to kind of more of a interpersonal conflict that happens with one of his co-supervisors, his colleagues, also considered to be in the 11th house, one of his co-workers, a grievance where the co-worker, Dan White, resigned after this resolution passed. Then he regretted it and wanted to come back but then wasn't honored to be able to come back and then that was basically the catalyst for why he ended up killing both the mayor, Mayor Moscone, as well as Harvey Milk. And so you have this ending that, for me, one of the images that's going to really stick with me is on the day of that assassination. On November 27th, 1978, people just flooded downtown and had this really moving candlelight ceremony, which felt like a collective grief ritual, but also masses of the community coming together to really honor his life. And so at the very end, he has this incredible turnout to honor both Mayor Moscone as well as Harvey Milk with this candlelight vigil that goes for miles and miles of just a beautiful honoring of all of the community work that both of these men had done throughout the course of their lives.
[00:20:31.496] Wonder Bright: Tearing up just thinking about it, honestly. I'm tearing up because it's gratifying to know how many people showed up for Harvey Milk in that moment. And it shores me up inside and makes me feel like a part of something, you know, like that's a city that I come from. A part of me still identifies with that place and that idea that we can all live together as one. And I think I'm also tearing up because it's just so hard to see that future in the world right now writ large and so many of the rights and ideals that Harvey Milk was working towards feel farther away than ever right now with all the laws against transgender people especially in the South that are coming into effect and the ways in which we are really demonizing queer people in our culture here and abroad. It's scary. And it also just makes me think now about how Harvey understood that his life was in danger because of the stand that he was taking by going on record as believing and fighting for the things that he did. You know he was very clear that he knew that he could very easily die from being an out gay man and being a public official. And he was very fatalistic, I think, about it. He said something to the effect to a friend that, you know, when it's your time to go, it's your time to go. And he just wasn't going to worry about it. So he would be out at parades and sitting in the back of a car, driving through the crowd, waving and smiling with all the joy in the world because he just accepted that that was a possibility for him and it wasn't going to turn him away.
[00:22:50.271] Kent Bye: Yeah, I just want to jump in and say at the very beginning of the film, you hear a recording of Harvey Milk saying, if I'm assassinated, that I want this to happen. And you hear this message that he had recorded, knowing that there was a good chance that he was going to get killed.
[00:23:07.882] Wonder Bright: Yeah. And if we look to the chart to try to understand how could someone accept that in their life, we do see that that Saturn in that 11th house that's really quite well placed for all that it rules, the 1st and the 12th and the 11th. So it rules the 1st house of self, the 12th house of hidden enemy, and the 11th house of colleagues. So you can see right there that there's the possibility that he has a hidden enemy amongst his colleagues who will see how he presents his identity as a potential threat. But added on to that, he also has Mars widely conjunct that Uranus, which you described as squaring his Saturn. and Saturn widely opposing Pluto, which the Mars squares more closely. So there's this cardinal T square in that chart with Mars and Uranus operating as a focal planetary conjunction. That, you know, Saturn and Pluto, we've talked before about the recent conjunction in 2020, that Saturn and Pluto both have to do with power, have to do with issues of control and authority and who has it. In Harvey Milk's chart, Saturn is widely opposed that Pluto, which normally we wouldn't give too much credence to, but that Mars Uranus with a fairly wide trine squaring both those planets unifies them and brings them together in a way that is pretty potent. You know, the classic instruction if you have Uranus transiting your Mars is to be careful with sharp objects. Don't operate heavy machinery because Mars and Uranus have this capacity to be quite explosive and to cause accidents or violent ends. And so to have those two planets squaring that Saturn and the Pluto, it creates this very volatile mix, which, you know, I think Harvey has this like, this kind of like potent virility to him. It's extremely charismatic and sexy and striking and strong in a way that speaks to that strong Saturn with this kind of like control like all the things that we want a man to be able to do in our culture to be strategic and be smart about things and cool-headed and yet we also want them to be able to fight for things and that's Mars's domain and here Mars is in Aries and it's widely squaring that Saturn and closely squaring the Pluto which is widely opposing the Saturn and we get this real potent heady mix there where this is just not somebody who's going to back down from a fight. He's going to bring the fight to you. He's just not going to back down. And when he's in the fight, he's going to stay cool and collected, but he's just not going to back down. And, um, honestly, like one of the most irritating things to me is that it's, I mean, of course it is someone who is, you know, a former police officer who, who is frustrated and feeling impotent and then like has a temper tantrum and basically quits the board. And then he comes for Harvey later, like Dan White runs on this campaign. I’m, you know, I'm so mad now. I am no Harvey Milk, I can tell you that I can't stay cool when I get angry. So that cardinal T-square of Harvey's, I think just really speaks to the powerhouse that he was and to the fact that he knew he was walking into a lion's den and he knew that you can't do that without risk of life and limb. But he was born to walk in a lion's den. He has to do it and he does.
[00:27:48.972] Kent Bye: Boom. There was a sort of fearlessness within Harvey where he recognized the threat of his death, but he continued anyway, despite that. And there was a couple of really amazing sections where he's talking about the moral imperative to come out of the closet because there had been so much misinformation around what it meant to be gay that he said if people saw that they actually know people in their lives that are gay, that that would help to dispel some of these myths that are driving a lot of these larger policy decisions against LGBTQIA plus folks. So yeah, there's just a larger imperative because the more that people saw other people in their lives, then they'd be discriminated against less because people would dispel a lot of these myths just based upon their own people in their lives and who they're connected to. And as I look at the transits of the day of his death on November 27th, 1978, what strikes me is that there is this Pluto that is opposite his natal Mars and squaring his natal Pluto. So he's going through a Pluto, square Pluto here. And so there's a way in which that there's some really deep transformative impact that really impacted the community. You see that with how many people came out to really honor him and the film being made about him to honor his legacy because there was so much around him. standing up to fight against those powers that be and the biases in the community and the culture at the time. And the film is a real testament to capturing this moment in time and to help to share it with this new film festival at Sundance in 1985 and then going on to win the Academy Award.
[00:29:44.764] Wonder Bright: Yeah, it's a really, really beautiful documentary. And as you said at the top, it has aged really, really well. And despite the fact that it came out 40 years ago, and it wasn't part of the current crop of Sundance films, it felt like the right one to start this section because it really speaks into what is possible in terms of creating community, but also all the things that we've lost in terms of our ability to create community because our public mistrust of the news and who's telling what facts and the way that we're so splintered socially now makes it really hard to imagine someone organizing the way that Harvey was able to organize. So it's an interesting film to frame the next selections that we'll be looking at because it's starting from a period of time that's really not that long ago in human history. But it's actually illustrating like how little we've moved on from there and also how hard it would be to do the same things that were accomplished in this film.
[00:31:03.575] Kent Bye: Yeah, and when you start to look at this film as a remedial measure, then who would you prescribe The Times of Harvey Milk to?
[00:31:14.761] Wonder Bright: Well, I mean, first of all, just on a purely human level, I would prescribe it for anyone who wants to remember what we're fighting for when we're fighting for LGBTQIA plus rights and what it might take to do that effectively and to just get grounded in the experience of knowing that you're a part of a larger community in the world. That there are people who believe in that future with you. And that it's possible to build those collectives and those communities. So this is a film for people who want to get in touch with what it takes to create an 11th house collective movement and understanding and community in the world.
[00:32:10.076] Kent Bye: Hmm. I guess what I want to bear witness to in The Times of Harvey Milk is just Harvey's dedication to these political actions and how much change he was able to bring about. I did an interview with a philosopher named Lewis Gordon back at the American Philosophical Association back in 2019. And he was making this differentiation between a moral act and a political act. And I want to just like read this little quote from him because I think it really encapsulates what I think about when I think about the political acts that Harvey Milk was able to accomplish. He says that “moral responsibility is not anonymous. You could say you're being a bad person if you do X, Y, and Z”. But he says that “political responsibility is anonymous, because when you do a political act, even though in the room you may sign a document, a political action goes out to people you'll never meet, you'll never know, and many of them will never know you, but the anonymity of the impact goes across generations. And these are the elements of political power”. So when I think about some of these acts, when you take these types of political actions, as we're talking about these 11th house activities, sometimes when you accomplish something, it can ripple out through many generations to come, impacting people's lives without being able to always identify an individual that was solely responsible. Even though Harvey was a catalyst for a lot of these bills being passed, it was a community effort that took a lot of people sacrificing a lot of time and energy going out into the street canvassing. And so I think this film really encapsulates what it means to have this movement to bring about these political changes within a society.
[00:33:56.683] Wonder Bright: Yeah. It's not called Harvey Milk. It's called The Times of Harvey Milk. He was a man of his time and he was able to motivate people of his time in a way that was able to capitalize on their time together. And while we may mourn his loss, he was able to, in his brief time here, he was actually able to galvanize a lot of people into action. And because of this film, many more people know about him and his life and his work than would otherwise have done. So I also just want to bear witness to the filmmakers for bringing this to life because I wouldn't know Harvey Milk in the absence of this film. And I feel a much stronger connection to the queer community and what's at stake and what's possible than I might otherwise have.
[00:35:06.116] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, that's all that we have for today. I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Story All the Way Down podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider signing up for the newsletter at storyallthewaydown.com. Thanks for listening. Wonder Bright: Thank you.
