Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black first heard about Harvey Milk (who became the first openly gay elected official) from a mentor while working in theater in the early 1990s. A few years later, Black watched the Academy Award-winning 1984 documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk. He remembers a speech Milk gave at the end of the film that specifically cited as an example, a young gay person 'Somewhere in Des Moines or San Antonio,' who might read a news account of Milk's election to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco and see hope for a better world. Black was raised in San Antonio, and recalls that resonant moment the first step on the journey that lead him to write Milk.

"I just broke down crying because I was very much that kid and he was giving me hope. He was saying, not only are you okay, but you can do great things. This was during a really difficult time for the gay community, with the AIDS crisis. And that's the moment I thought, we have to get that story back out there, we've got to continue the message."

A few years later, Black was a successful writer for HBO’s Big Love, and also a producer and director. He felt he could tell the story of Milk in an intriguing way.  However, he didn’t have the rights to a book or other source of information, so he had to do research on his own. Although he was doubted, he was determined and used his own money to pursue what he felt was a worthy cause.

The first person Black met with was Cleve Jones, one of Milk's protégés and among his closest confidants. An activist on the front lines with Milk, Jones had (and has) led many marches, protests and rallies. He is the founder of the Names Project and the designer and creator of the Project's AIDS Quilt, the internationally recognized symbol of the AIDS pandemic.

When Black told Jones he wanted to pen the story of Milk for the big screen, Jones was immediately on board; he would ultimately remain with the project all through filming, as a historical consultant, on the set every day. Jones introduced him to other colleagues of Milk’s (Danny Nicoletta, Anne Kronenberg, Allan Baird, Carol Ruth Silver, Frank Robinson, Tom Ammiano, Jim Rivaldo, Art Agnos, and Michael Wong) who helped him gain a personal view of what kind of person Milk truly was.

Black worked to convince Harvey’s friends that he was not someone who would waste their time, and would be able to portray Milk accurately, although there were times when Black wasn’t sure he could pull it off. He admits there were times he was worried about letting them down.

"Harvey was personally connected to why he was doing what he did," Black recalls. Milk's drive to succeed wasn't just about gay rights or electoral politics, it was about the fact that he was in love with the men in his life, "and he wanted that to be okay." He didn't want to be judged for it. He wanted to have the right to be himself, because when he was a young man, Black adds, noting that even when Milk first came to San Francisco, gay bars were against the law, and it was against the law to be in a gay relationship or for two men to dance with each other. "His is an intensely personal story, even when it is a political one," Black says. "As a screenwriter, this was one of those rare chances to tell a story where the two are absolutely connected. It was politics for the sake of love."

Black went through numerous screenplay drafts over a nearly four-year period. Once he was done, he didn't have any money to make the movie by himself, and had to ask friends and producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, who won an Academy Award for American Beauty to help turn his dream into reality.

"We felt that the film could be moving and entertaining, whether you know Harvey's story or not," says Cohen. "This man was not your average politician; he came out to San Francisco with Scott Smith with the goal of expressing himself and living his life and being out and creating this new world for himself there. He didn't have a plan to go into politics, but he felt he could make a difference. And here we are, in a presidential election year where the theme is change. ..."

When Jinks, Cohen, Black and director Van Sant put their plan into action, Van Sant used archival news footage at certain points in the movie, not merely before or during the end credits as many biographical motion pictures do, adding to the uniqueness of Milk’s story and keeping certain events true to historical events.

For instance, the actual announcement by Dianne Feinstein (then the president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, now a U.S. Senator) on the steps of City Hall of the assassinations of Milk and Mayor Moscone "is such an iconic image that we didn't want to attempt recreating it," says Jinks. Actress Ashlee Temple was cast as Feinstein for newly filmed narrative/linking scenes, but that 1978 announcement to the press was, says Cohen, "such a powerful moment in history that we decided the best way to convey the shock and horror of that moment was to let it speak for itself."

Oscar-winner Sean Penn, who plays Milk in the film, leapt to the forefront of everyone's minds as the project began to take off due to Penn’s remarkable reputation.

"Milk lifts and soars on Sean Penn's performance as Harvey Milk, whom he embodies. There were moments where it was important to Sean that he delivers a certain line or speech exactly as Harvey did it. On the set, I had goose bumps watching that happen," Cohen said.