This is terrific news. I just got an email from Focus Features announcing that "My Private Idaho" director Gus Van Sant will begin production in January on the biographical drama "Milk" which will star the great Sean Penn, so good in everything but never better than in "21 Grams," "Dead Man Walking" and "Mystic River." The movie tells the story of gay-rights icon Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in America; in 1977, he was voted to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors but the next year, he and Mayor George Moscone were shot to death by another city supervisor, Dan White. This marks the first non-documentary film about Milk's life. He was the subject of the 1984 Academy Award-winning documentary feature "The Times of Harvey Milk."