Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a story that's the talk of the trades this morning.

Bryan Singer and Gus Van Sant have competing Harvey Milk projects. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected official in America, the supervisor of San Francisco. He was assassinated, along with Mayor George Moscone, by another supervisor, Daniel White.

Singer is collaborating with Chris McQuarrie once more on his project. McQuarrie has a WW2 script that Singer is going to direct with Tom Cruise in the lead, the first time they've worked closely on a project since THE USUAL SUSPECTS.

Van Sant had been toying with this project for years, having even gone so far as to write a script a few years back. Now he's hired Dustin Lance Black (BIG LOVE) to script this one.

Singer's is called THE MAYOR OF CASTRO STREET and is at Warner Independent. Van Sant's is untitled.

The plan is for Singer to squeeze the drama in between the WW2 flick and the SUPERMAN RETURNS sequel.

Obviously, both men have a passion for this particular story, which is incredibly dramatic, tragic and, sadly, still not too far removed from modern politics. I guess it's a good thing that the bullets aren't really flying anymore, but the thoughts haven't progressed much.