On Monday night, The Hollywood Reporter published a story questioning Focus Features’ marketing plan for Milk, Gus Van Sant’s biopic on the country’s first openly gay elected official who was famously assassinated by a colleague in the late 70s. The story suggested that by “keeping its awards contender out of fall fests and heavily restricting media screenings,” the studio is deliberately trying to avoid any kind of partisan publicity (positive or negative) that could damage the film from reaching a mainstream audience.

Focus chief James Schamus was, apparently, pretty upset by the story, particularly considering that it was timed to hit the web just under 24 hours before Milk’s premiere, a benefit screening at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. He’s written a letter to the editor of THR, which Eugene Hernandez posted on his blog last night before the Milk screening. The gist: Milk wasn’t ready in time for fall festivals, they don’t have enough prints yet to do widespread screening but they will, the entire internet has been going batshit crazy for the trailer (”probably the most inspiring piece of movie marketing about genuine (as well as out) politics ever created”) for over a month, and not only has Focus not avoided political attention but they’ve bought tons of ad space on The Huffington Post and NPR.

If the issue was whether or not Focus is actively trying to create “noise” around Milk, then Schamus’ defense seems solid enough to lead to the conclusion that THR got that part of the story wrong. But the issue might not be the quantity of noise, but the brand of noise.

When I went back and read the Reporter story after seeing Eugene’s blog post, one section popped out at me:

“The best way to help this film win over a mainstream audience is to avoid partisanship, and the best way to avoid partisanship is to let people find out about the film from the film itself,” one person involved with the Sean Penn starrer described the gambit. Giving up word-of-mouth to avoid hot air is not a typical trade-off — notice how Lionsgate effectively flogged politically charged movies like W. and Religulous — but it’s one Focus is willing to make.

There’s nothing in Schamus’ response that would suggest that the company is looking to milk controversy from the reactions of natural opponents to Milk, the way the story suggests Lionsgate has. But how effective has that “flogging” really been? Religulous is certified hit, but with Bill Maher, Lionsgate couldn’t have put together a non-partisan campaign if they tried. Meanwhile, W. is a financial disappointment in spite of a massive ad campaign that wedged Josh Brolin’s mugging impersonation into every primetime MSNBC break. And yet, the only controversy surrounding its release was the lack of controversy; more than one critic noted the film’s lack of bite, and even the Rush Limbaughs and Bill O’Reillys of the world complained, but weren’t sufficiently threatened to issue a boycott. Oddly, no one on the right seems to be as angry about the movie as one of it’s famously lefty stars. Check out this clip of Richard Dreyfuss (W.’s Cheney) on The View, in which he calls Oliver Stone “a fascist,” compares working with him to working with Sean Hannity, and complains about W.’s ending. Is Dreyfuss really using the ladies’ morning talk show to air his nagging grievances, or is Lionsgate going the last-ditch, reverse psychology route, creating a controversy around a film that wasn’t controversial enough on its own?

If just positioning a film as potentially politically controversial isn’t enough –– to the point where controversy has to be manufactured –– wouldn’t Focus be better off keeping their noise as NPR friendly as possible? But in speaking to their base (ie: opening in San Francisco where Harvey Milk is a local hero, advertising to highbrow liberal media consumers) rather than trying to rile reaction from the other side, maybe Focus actually knows what they’re doing?