General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Times of Harvey Milk

The Times of Harvey Milk is a 1984 American documentary directed by Rob Epstein that chronicles the rise of San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, his assassination in 1978, and the political and social upheaval that followed. Produced by Richard Schmiechen and narrated by Harvey Fierstein, it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 57th Academy Awards and is considered one of the first feature documentaries to address gay life in America.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Release	Premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in August 1984, followed by the New York Film Festival in September; New York theatrical opening October 26, 1984⁴^•¹
Runtime	87 minutes (AFI); listed at 88 minutes by Criterion and 90 minutes in some exhibition listings¹^•⁵
Key personnel	Director Rob Epstein; producer Richard Schmiechen; narrator Harvey Fierstein; cinematographer Frances Reid¹
Academy Award	Best Documentary Feature, 57th Academy Awards, March 25, 1985²
Other honors	1985 Peabody Award; New York Film Critics Circle Best Documentary; Sundance Special Jury Prize; National Emmy Awards for editing, interviewing, and informational special⁶^•⁴
Critical standing	96% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (27 fresh, 1 rotten, 28 reviews); 94% audience score⁷

Spoilers

Subject and structure

The film covers the life of Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 to November 27, 1978), a camera store owner in San Francisco's Castro district who lost three elections before winning a seat on the city's Board of Supervisors, making him the first openly homosexual candidate elected to public office in California.¹^•⁷ It follows his troubled working relationship with fellow supervisor Dan White, a former fireman who resigned his position, and White's assassination of both Milk and Mayor George Moscone at City Hall on November 27, 1978.⁷^•⁸

The documentary opens with news footage of Dianne Feinstein announcing the assassinations, and with the sound of Milk's tape-recorded will, recorded to be played in the event of his death by assassination.⁹^•¹⁰ It combines archival photographs, newspaper clippings, television news footage, and newly filmed interviews with Milk's associates and with both allies and adversaries of his movement.¹^•⁶ Epstein described the film as essentially eight storytellers cast within a dramatic structure, with its immediacy coming from the interplay of interviews, documentary footage, and archival footage.¹¹

The aftermath and the trial

A substantial portion of the film records the reaction of San Franciscans to the murders and the events of White's trial.⁶ Roger Ebert, the Chicago Sun-Times critic and 1975 Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, highlighted two pieces of footage: a silent candlelight parade of 45,000 people on the night of the deaths, and an angry night of rioting after White received what was perceived as a lenient sentence.¹² The riots, known as the White Night riots, followed White's conviction of manslaughter rather than murder.¹³

Ebert also raised a criticism: the film lets Milk's friends second-guess the jury and impugn the jurors' motives, while many observers of the trial attributed the light sentence to incompetent prosecution rather than anti-gay sentiment, and the filmmakers chose not to let jurors speak for themselves.¹² A title card after the end credits states that Dan White committed suicide in his home on October 21, 1985.¹

Production

Epstein began work on the film while completing Word Is Out (1977), a documentary about 26 gay men and lesbians across America. His original idea was a film about California State Senator John Briggs's Proposition 6, a 1978 ballot measure intended to ban openly gay people from working in the public school system; events in San Francisco, including the assassinations, redirected the project.⁴ Because Epstein had begun production before Milk's assassination, the film had to change trajectories dramatically as events unfolded.¹¹ In interviews, Epstein credited seeing Barbara Kopple's Harlan County U.S.A at the Castro Theatre as an inspiration for how the Milk story could reach an audience that might not otherwise seek it out.¹⁴

The film was produced by Black Sand Productions and the Harvey Milk Film Project, with funding support that included a New York State Council on the Arts grant; producer Schmiechen and Epstein wanted the documentary released while White was still in jail.¹^•¹⁵

Reception and legacy

Critics received the film warmly. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it "a story told with urgency and passion," and Ebert called it "an enormously absorbing film, for the light it sheds on a decade in the life of a great American city."⁴^•¹² Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune wrote that it was "anything but a dispassionate documentary."⁷

The Oscar win carried historical weight: TCM's Frank Miller described it as the first overtly gay film to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary and a foundational work in the history of the LGBT community on film.¹⁶ The film became required viewing for new arrivals to San Francisco, gay and straight, according to a foreword to a book on documentary filmmaking by Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.¹⁷ Epstein went on to direct a second Academy Award-winning documentary about LGBTQ life in San Francisco, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989).¹⁸

The documentary also shaped how later works approached Milk's story. When Gus Van Sant's narrative biopic Milk (2008), starring Sean Penn, was in development, critics noted that the similarity between the two films lent credibility to Van Sant's project, and the 1984 film was cited alongside Randy Shilts's 1982 biography The Mayor of Castro Street as a source of Milk's wider fame.¹⁹^•²⁰ A 2K restoration was later released to carry Milk's message to younger audiences.³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026