Eleven Gay Historical Figures Worthy of the "Milk" Treatment

Dream director: Wong Kar-Wai, whose many films with Cheung include the poignant gay romance Happy Together (1997).

Dream actor: Japanese superstar Tadanobu Asano (pictured below right).

Harveys: 2.5. Would probably have its strongest shot in the Best Foreign Film category, since Cheung is relatively unknown in the U.S.

Federico García Lorca

Who he was: The legendary Spanish poet and playwright went to college with Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí — Lorca’s affair with Dalí is the subject of the upcoming film Little Ashes — and, like them, became one of the nation’s leading artists. He was “disappeared” during the Spanish Civil War, but not before writing several plays (Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba, among others) that are considered literary classics. Lorca suffered severe depression over his homosexuality — living in a Catholic country can do that to you — but his work lives on.

Potential film plot points: His affair with Dalí and his parting of ways with Buñuel and Dalí over perceived slights from the pair’s surrealist collaboration Un Chien Andalou . . . The split between his public success and his private suffering over being a gay man in 1930s Spain . . . His years abroad in New York City, where he studied at Columbia University . . . His execution at the hands of Nationalist militia, a murder that is still being investigated … (one biographer suggests his assailants made reference to Lorca’s homosexuality before killing him).

Dream director: Gay Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar (The Others [2001], The Sea Inside [2004])

Dream actor: Rodrigo Santoro

Harveys: 2. Lorca’s a much bigger deal in Spain than in the States, but the 1930s outfits and music would no doubt make this one a biggie in the technical categories.