Franco plays Harvey Milk's long-time lover Scott Smith in Milk, a biopic which follows Harvey's journey from a small business owner to an outspoken advocate for the rights of homosexuals to his election as the first openly gay politician in America. Smith has passed away, but Franco was able to figure out how to portray him after doing a lot of research.
"I did a lot of things. There wasn't a ton of footage on Scott in Epstein's documentary. There's just like five seconds and the best book on Harvey Milk that I've found is The Mayor of Castro Street and Scott kind of comes in and out, but he doesn't play a huge role. But it seems like just based on talking to people that knew him, that he was very important in Harvey's life. You know he was, I think, in the longest relationship of Harvey's life. They were together for four years. So basically I just talked to Cleve Jones, Danny Nicoletta who worked in the camera shop with Scott and Harvey, Frank Robinson and other people that were around that knew him, and kind of took all those stories and boiled it down to some essence or a rounded character that I could play. And then finally Rob Epstein came through. It's like when he gave…it was like a goldmine. He had old footage of an interview that he'd done with Scott that didn't make it into the movie. He transferred it - it was on film, like an old reel - and he transferred it to DVD for me. I got to see what Scott really sounded like and moved like, so that was like the last kind of brick in the building thing," said Franco.
Franco's not sure why there's so little footage of Smith and so little known about Harvey's former lover. "It is weird because after Harvey was killed Scott was like the main torchbearer of Harvey's memory. He was even called 'the Widow Milk' even though they were broken up when Harvey died. [Randy] Shilts gives him the biggest acknowledgement at the beginning of his book but I guess, you know, Harvey is the story. This movie is called Milk and he's the guy, so you're not going to find a biography on Scott Smith. It's just, I think he probably just served as somebody that would gather information about Harvey but not necessarily himself and probably didn't try and infuse too much of himself in these stories. It was really about Harvey, so I guess that's why there's not a ton of it."
As far as creating sexual chemistry with Sean Penn who plays Harvey Milk, Franco said it wasn't that different from developing it with an actress. "It was unfamiliar, you know? I'd never done a scene like that with a guy. But as far as like the process, it's pretty much the same," revealed Franco.
Asked if Penn's a good kisser, Franco laughed. "He's…I don't know what to say. He's okay. What did Diego [Luna] say - that it was dry? That's what he told somebody else. It was fine. Yeah, it was fine. Top 30."
Franco admits his initial attraction to Milk was due almost entirely to the fact Gus Van Sant was set to direct the film. "I'm the biggest Gus fan. [He's] probably my favorite director. Even before I started acting I was a Gus Van Sant fan and so I would do anything with him. And then when I learned how important this movie was to him, how important the message of this movie is, I wrote Gus and just said, 'I'll do anything in the movie.' I would have played the pizza guy. I really would have. And fortunately he gave me this good role."
Next up for Gus Van Sant and Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black is The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test based on the book by Tom Wolfe. And Van Sant fan Franco's not shy about admitting he'd love to be a part of that movie, too.
"Yeah. Well [Ken] Kesey lived in La Honda, which was just above Palo Alto up in the hills. And my parents, when they went to Stanford, lived up there. And so when we were shooting Milk in San Francisco, my parents would come down to the set all the time. The first time they came was when there like a big call for a lot of people to be marchers in one of the scenes. My parents came and they met everybody and met Lance and just loved everybody so much that they just kept coming down to the set just to hang out. And when my dad heard that Lance was going to write Tom Wolfe's book, or adapt Tom Wolfe's book, he's like, 'Oh, I know the area.' So he went up to La Honda and took hundreds of photos for Lance of like everywhere and sent them to Lance. 'Whatever you need, Lance I'll help you research,' so I'm very aware of the project and I’d love to do it."
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Milk hits theaters on November 26, 2008.
