By Iain Blair

There is a lot of Oscar buzz building around director Gus Van Sant’s Milk, his heartfelt homage to assassinated gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, starring Sean Penn. I chatted with Van Sant about the film and asked him if there were any surprises working with Sean Penn – who, famously, now directs more than acts. “No, not really,” he told me. “It was pretty businesslike and we had a pretty mutual idea of what we wanted to get done – or enough that we were able to forge ahead fairly easily. And he’s great to collaborate with. It also helped that as he lives in the Bay Area, he didn’t want to shoot leave town and shoot anywhere else, so that forced us to use a lot of the real locations.” Gus told me that Milk was filmed entirely on location in San Francisco – where DP Harris Savides had worked extensively a couple of years prior as the cinematographer of Zodiac – with a home base at Treasure Island. So how does he rate his Oscar chances? After all, Van Sant – whose credits include Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues – is no stranger to Oscar attention. His acclaimed feature Good Will Hunting brought him a Best Director Academy Award nomination. The film was nominated for eight other Oscars including Best Picture, and won for Best Supporting Actor (Robin Williams) and Best Original Screenplay (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon). “I feel good about my chances – but we’ll see,” he says.

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