Sean Penn As Harvey Milk: First Set-Gawking YouTube Video

Thanks to some intrepid, DV-equipped pedestrians in San Francisco’s Castro district, the YouTubes now provide some tantalising glimpses of what Sean Penn looks and sounds like as Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant’s biopic. (His face is obstructed in the clip above, but you can get a better look at him here.)

In the scene, Penn cheerfully offers flyers to passersby, saying, “We’ll have smiles around the city. A healthy mouth is a happy mouth!” (a milk-related campaign slogan?), in a Professor Frink-ish voice at least one observer thinks is true to Milk’s own. Not long after, Emile Hirsch saunters by in a math club getup, throws his arms around dramatically (we hear the camera takes ten pounds off wild gesticulation), then delivers a line in which he calls Penn’s character an “old man.” We realise this may be a hastily drawn conclusion, but we smell 2009 Oscar.

• Making Milk [YouTube via GoodAsYou]