In movies, Miami gets a bad rap. It's always cocaine smuggler this, and mafia murderer that. It's like come on, Hollywood. You're making us look bad.
So when Riptide heard Dade County got a cameo in Gus Van Sant's new film Milk, we bought some trans fat-soaked popcorn and got comfortable
next to two cute, twinkish, super-excited gay dudes this past weekend.
The flick, which tells the story of the martyred gay San Francisco
Supervisor Harvey Milk, was spliced with actual footage from the gay
rights movement in the Seventies.
But as it turns out, the 3-0-5 got a pretty embarrassing historical
shout-out. Second in line for the film's most loathed antagonist was
smug-faced, orange-plucking bigot Anita Bryant, who lead Dade on a
moral crusade to prevent gay equality in the late Seventies. The
goody two-shoes pop singer/actress normalized the motto "no special
rights" and convinced voters that homo perverts aimed to recruit our
children. Our innocent children!
In the film, a map of Dade flickered, followed by a few clips from
Bryant's vomit-inducing speeches. In them, she lobbied against
legislation that would have prevented gay people from being fired based
on sexual orientation. (The cute couple next to Riptide scoffed
loudly.)Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn, then rallied the hippies and
the queers in the the Haight and the Castro against the "Anita Bryants
everywhere." Check out New Times' movie review here.
Just one question: Thirty years from now, who's gonna
direct the flick about how gay people couldn't adopt in Florida?
