Long article: About "Brokeback Mountain", one of the front
runners for Oscars in the category of Best Film and Best
Director..
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Homos On The Range: Is America Ready For Brokeback Mountain?
Every once in a while a film comes along that changes our
perceptions so much that cinema history thereafter has to arrange
itself around it. Think of Thelma and Louise or Chungking Express,
Blow-Up or Orlando all big films that taught us to look and think
and swagger differently. Brokeback Mountain is just such a film.
Even for audiences educated by a decade of the New Queer Cinema
phenomenon from Mala Noche and Poison to High Art and Boys Don't
Cry it's a shift in scope and tenor so profound as to signal a
new era.
In this Oscar race, no film's pedigree is more impeccable than
Brokeback Mountain. Affectionately known as "The Gay Cowboy Movie",
the film is based on Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie Proulx's moving,
nuanced short story (found here in its entirety, so a spoiler alert
is in order) from her collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories. The
screenplay was written by Proulx and her fellow Pulitzer winner,
Larry McMurtry (of Lonesome Dove fame). The production is helmed by
Ang Lee, the Oscar-winning director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon, The Ice Storm, and Sense and Sensibility. The film's
trailer showcases its hot young stars, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath
Ledger, to great effect. Even the tender, country-inflected
soundtrack (offered here) is written by critical darling Gustavo
Santaolalla. Early reviews are overwhelmingly positive; the only
real complaint appears to be that Ang Lee's direction suffers from
a surfeit of good taste. Brokeback Mountain may well be the film to
beat at this
year's Oscars.
Initially slated to be directed by Gus Van Sant, the film bounced
around Hollywood for several years, gaining a cult reputation as
the best picture no one was making, before winding up in Lee's
hands. Since then, it's been snubbed by the Cannes Film Festival,
become the darling of the Toronto Film Festival, and won the
prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. It recently
received four Independent Spirit Award nominations, which have in
the past been excellent predictors for Oscar nominations.
But can a film that's been termed "the gay Gone With the Wind" make
it in American multiplexes? This year alone, films such as Capote,
Mysterious Skin, and Transamerica have explored a panoply of gay
issues and have been rewarded with glowing critical reviews but
lackluster box office.
Few American icons are as enduring and sacrosanct as the Western
cowboy. Brokeback Mountain is set to topple a beloved ideal, and
even though gay rodeo is a fixture in middle America, many
traditionalists are uncomfortable with the idea of homosexual
cowboys. In a bid apparently calculated to alarm his red state
readers, Matt Drudge recently dug through a Casper Star-Tribune
article to ferret out an appropriately homophobic quote from
Wyoming playwright Sandy Dixon:
Kaycee playwright Sandy Dixon doesn't care to open her mind to the
story line of "Brokeback Mountain," she said. A lifelong
Wyomingite, Dixon said she has never encountered a gay cowboy, and
doesn't think it's right for Proulx and Hollywood to portray
Wyoming as a state with gay cowboys. Her message to the writers of
"Brokeback Mountain" is this: "Don't try and take what we had,
which was wonderful -- the cowboys that settled the state and made
it what it was -- don't ruin that image just to sell a book." She
added, "There's nothing better than plain old cowboys and the plain
old history without embellishing it to suit everyone." Regarding
the reaction of Wyoming people to the film, Dixon said it depends
on the viewer: "Those that want to make a queer story out of it,
they will, and those that know real cowboys will say it's all
hogwash."
It's perplexing (and not a little disheartening) to see the
polarized reactions to Brokeback Mountain. For every awed,
respectful review there's a corresponding adolescent sniggerfest:
Do they eat pudding? Why didn't they call it 'Bareback Mountin'?
One film reviewer wrote frankly about the "yuck factor" for hetero
men when confronted with the idea of two men making love on screen
("America likes her gay cowboys standing on stage with others in
costume, singing "YMCA." Beyond kitsch, beyond sentimentality, the
reality is yucky."). Another recent article appeared to be
pandering to homophobia by quoting Jake Gyllenhaal as saying that
he "(doesn't) really remember" his love scenes with Ledger.
Conversely, some critics seem to think the film's marketing is
schizophrenic. A Village Voice article muses that the film is the
"straightest movie to come out of Hollywood in years", a reference
to the marketing ploy of appealing to straight women as a
traditional love story. Still another writer slams the film for not
being gay enough: "In their attempt to market the film to women as
a generic love story, they are rewriting a beautiful story and
alienating the core audience: gay people."
And on a much more somber note, author Annie Proulx is well aware
that her home state of Wyoming, where the story and book are set,
is also the scene of Matthew Shepard's murder (Proulx was called
for jury duty on that case but did not serve). "When the story
first appeared, Proulx was bombarded with angry letters saying
there wasn't such a thing as a gay cowboy, and other letters
saying, 'Thanks for telling my story'. A year later, Matthew
Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was murdered."
The film itself is informed and haunted by protagonist Jack Twist's
childhood memory of a gay lynching, and both of the lead characters
live in fear of being found out by their wives and families.
The film opens in wide release on December 8, but sneak previews
have been shown in several cities. Have any Plasticians seen the
film yet? If not, do many of you have plans to see it next weekend?
Finally, what are your predictions about its performance in the red
states? Can Brokeback Mountain ride roughshod over ingrained
American homophobia to come out on top at the box office?
From the Chicago Tribune
MOVIES
Lee Sees His 'Brokeback Mountain' As A Unifying Force
December 4, 2005
By Robert K. Elder, Tribune staff reporter
After a recent sneak preview of Ang Lee's gay-themed western
"Brokeback Mountain," the filmmaker and his longtime producer James
Schamus took questions in the University of Chicago's dimly lit Max
Palevsky Cinema.
"Is there a film or films that set the precedent for this movie?"
one audience member asked.
"`The Bridges of Madison County,'" Schamus replied without missing
a beat.
He said this as a joke, but the audience didn't laugh immediately
-- perhaps with good reason. The two movies, after all, target
similar audiences.
"Like all great love stories, our first, but not our only, audience
is women," Schamus elaborated later. "For upscale movies, it is
often women who are the arbiters of what to see -- which doesn't
mean men don't like movies like `Titanic' and `Casablanca,' just
that they initially watch them often at the behest of their wives
and girlfriends."
In a time when pundits are telling us the Red State politics and
morality rule the land -- and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
vetoes legislation allowing same-sex couples to marry -- "Brokeback
Mountain" is an unlikely movie released in a tense cultural
climate. Yet Lee, Schamus and Focus Features are banking on the
interest -- and emotions -- of a wider audience, following the
precedent of "Philadelphia" and the comedy "In & Out."
Based on the Annie Proulx short story, "Brokeback Mountain"
(opening Dec. 16) stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as Ennis
Del Mar and Jack Twist, Wyoming cowboys who fall in love during a
1963 summer job herding sheep at isolated altitudes. Despite
separate lives, wives and temperaments, the two maintain a
clandestine, decades-long romance.
With few screenings since it took top honors at the Venice Film
Festival in September, the $13 million film is already generating
Oscar buzz, particularly in the best picture, director and actor
categories. Ledger, in particular, is drawing attention for his
tortured, tight-lipped performance as Ennis.
"Heath says this is the most macho roll he's ever taken," Lee said
the next day over breakfast. "But think about it, and he's right.
Right after this, he went to play Casanova, where he put on makeup
every day. It's not a very macho role."
Like his producer Schamus, Lee lives in New York state with his
family. Both middle-aged, both married with children, they seem
like an unlikely duo to produce what one writer has called the "Gay
`Gone W ith the Wind.'" Lee said he never even heard homosexuality
talked about openly until he attended the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign in 1976.
But when Lee read Proulx's short story after filming "Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon," it haunted him.
"I cried at the end. When it comes to crying, I'm a tough
customer," Lee said. "I had to get it off my chest somehow."
Lee, the quieter of the two, is graying at the temples and defers
to Schamus' enthusiasm. Professorial and bespectacled, Schamus
proves that you can wear a bow tie, swear charmingly and still be a
respected academic. (Schamus teaches film theory and history at
Columbia University, in addition to his duties as co-president of
Focus Features.)
Themes of alienation
The pair's ninth feature together covers familiar thematic ground.
Though the Taiwan native's chameleon-like style and outsider's eye
allowed him to genre-hop among Jane Austen ("Sense and
Sensibility"), family drama ("The Ice Storm") and comic book movies
("Hulk"), each carries themes of alienation and repressed
emotion.
But "Brokeback" is as much about the characters' own homophobia as
it is about any social condemnation.
In town recently to speak at the Chicago Humanities Festival,
author Proulx said of the film, "For once gay people are not shown
as comic characters. . . . [They are] two ordinary human beings
wrestling with problems they simply don't have the experience or
the education to control or understand."
It's a polarizing time in American culture. While a slate of
anti-gay referendums work their way through state governments, TV's
"Will & Grace," "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and "Queer As
Folk" remain popular entertainment.
In the past, mainstream gay features on the big screen have been
scarce. But this year alone, both Bennett Miller's "Capote" and
Neil Jordan's "Breakfast on Pluto" center themselves on lead
homosexual characters.
Yet "Brokeback" signifies something different, a test of the
country's acceptance of an alternative take on a beloved western
icon: the cowboy.
Screenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry ("The Last Picture
Show," "Lonesome Dove") saw promise in Proulx's story, which first
appeared in the New Yorker in 1997. They optioned it and wrote a
screenplay, though it took years to get the movie off the ground.
Film rights changed hands. Scott Rudin tried to produce it with
director Gus Van Sant ("Good Will Hunting"). Joel Schumacher ("The
Phantom of the Opera") was attached briefly.
The film became somewhat of a "hot potato," Proulx said. Her tragic
short story seemed prescient when, in 1998, 21-year-old gay college
student Matthew Shepard was tortured and murdered outside Laramie,
Wyo., near Proulx's home in Centennial. (Proulx was called for jury
duty in the trial but did not serve.)
More time passed. Lee emerged from the mammoth production of "Hulk"
and was looking for a smaller, more intimate project. Was
"Brokeback Mountain" still available? Schamus, who co-wrote almost
all of Lee's previous features before being named co-president of
Focus Features, found himself in the position to green light a
picture he couldn't make as an independent producer.
"I didn't feel a resistance, I didn't feel a change . . . some kind
of `Now is the time to make it; the world is ready!'" Schamus said.
"I was kind of like, `OK, we'll make it for a low budget, we'll be
very conservative and have a very specific marketing plan.'"
Integral to that plan was targeting the "fourth quadrant," also
known as the "women 35 and older" demographic -- the "Pride &
Prejudice" audience. But initially, Lee and Schamus were concerned
with the reaction of just one person: Proulx herself.
"Here's this guy, born in Taiwan, who just came from doing `The
Hulk,'" remembered Proulx, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel
"The Shipping News." "I was terrified. I was sure it would be
watered down and made acceptable to the general public."
`It's a seamless join'
Even Lee said, "What do I know about gay ranch hands in
Wyoming?"
But after meetings in New York and a dinner of Rocky Mountain
Oysters (bull testicles) with Lee in Wyoming, Proulx's fears were
assuaged.
"The story is intact, the language and characters are intact. . . .
It's a seamless join," Proulx said of McMurtry and Ossana's
adaptation. As for Lee, she added: "The fact that he got that
essence of the rural West is still amazing to me."
But Lee's vision of the West has met with some resistance.
Wyoming playwright Sandy Dixon told The Casper Star-Tribune last
month she never met a gay cowboy and thought the movie was damaging
to the cowboy image. "[T]hose that know real cowboys will say it's
all hogwash," she said.
Schamus' response: "That woman has met more gay people than she is
capable of counting; she just has no idea."
For background, Proulx interviewed a gay rancher for the story,
although at the time, she had no idea of his sexual orientation.
Proulx said she continues to get letters saying, "You've told my
story."
Several states have gay rodeo associations, and "Brokeback" is
receiving support from a pair of country music icons. Willie Nelson
and Steve Earle provide new recordings for the soundtrack. "It
legitimizes us a little bit," Lee said.
The backlash thus far has been minimal, though pointed.
Conservative news blogger Matt Drudge posted a story titled
"Hollywood Rocked: `Gay Cowboy' Movie Becomes an Oscar Frontrunner"
and refers to "explicit gay sex scenes" in the film.
"I don't know why people say that," Lee said. "For the gay
community, it's not explicit. It's suggested. But I think we devote
a lot of realism to it. I don't think I'm even close to
explicit."
But for Lee, focusing on sexual relationships misses the
point.
"To me, it's a story about the illusion of love. That transcends
being gay and being a cowboy and all that," Lee said. "Because they
don't know what love is, they spend the next 20 years trying to
catch it."
Lee is aware that he has made a controversial film, even though he
usually shies away from conflict.
"My character is very afraid of offending or hurting anyone. It's
my first nature, probably, to avoid confrontation," he said. "But I
do like to challenge, to examine conflict. Inner conflict,
particularly. You have to go there to examine humanity. Otherwise,
we cover ourselves up."
In other words, Lee sees his movie as a unifying -- rather than
dividing -- force. "It helps us understand, brings us together," he
said. "I hope this movie has that kind of effect."
