Courting ‘Castro’

Warner Bros. has optioned the rights to “The Mayor of Castro Street,” Randy Shilts’ 1982 nonfiction account of the life and assassination of San Francisco’s openly gay supervisor Harvey Milk. Oliver Stone will co-produce and could direct, and will supervise the adaptation by a writer to be hired shortly.

“Once Oliver was attached,” says a source close to the project, “a heavy bidding situation developed. Warner Bros. wanted it in a major way. They see it as ground-breaking material.”

Stone and his associate, Janet Yang, will co-produce with partners Neil Meron and Craig Zadan. Warner Bros. confirmed the deal, but declined to comment further.

Milk, then the most visible gay public official in the country, and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were murdered in their City Hall offices on Nov. 27, 1978. When former supervisor Dan White was subsequently found guilty only of manslaughter, full-scale rioting followed. White later committed suicide.

Shilts, on leave from the San Francisco Chronicle for a year while pursuing a screenwriting career here, says his book was optioned “off and on” over the years, but that “no director would touch it.”

“Despite the huge gay presence in the entertainment industry, Hollywood has been terrified of dealing with the gay political issue,” adds Shilts. “(With Stone), this could be the first major movie that crosses over (that) deals directly with gay politics.”