Delivering Milk

Milk is on the way, and longtime fan Earl Kemp says be sure to notice — “I’m part of the wallpaper in many scenes. Please applaud loudly when you see the guy in the very loud, 1979 three piece plaid suit.”

Kemp also points fans to the Chicago Reader’s article publicizing the movie — it focuses on sf writer Frank Robinson and is subtitled “How local sci-fi writer Frank Robinson went from The Towering Inferno to the ‘hope speech’.”

Robinson, a Chicago native, was Milk’s speechwriter and one of his closest advisers. A writing job took him to San Francisco in 1973, just as Milk, a New York transplant with a Castro Street camera shop, was gearing up for his second bid for city supervisor. “I used to walk down to the Castro every morning for breakfast and pass the camera store,” Robinson recalls. “One day I fell into conversation with Harvey, and it came up that I was a writer. He said, ‘Hey, why don’t you be my speechwriter?'”

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]