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Blood on the red carpet Annie Proulx on how her Brokeback Oscar hopes were dashed by Crash The Guardian March 11, 2006

On the sidewalk stood hordes of the righteous, some leaning forward like wind-bent grasses, the better to deliver their imprecations against gays and fags to the open windows of the limos - the windows open by order of the security people - creeping toward the Kodak Theater for the 78th Academy Awards. Others held up sturdy, professionally crafted signs expressing the same hatred. The red carpet in front of the theatre was larger than the Red Sea. Inside, we climbed grand staircases designed for showing off dresses. The circular levels filled with men in black, the women mostly in pale, frothy gowns. Sequins, diamonds, glass beads, trade beads sparkled like the interior of a salt mine. More exquisite dresses appeared every moment, some made from six yards of taffeta, and many with sweeping trains that demanded vigilance from strolling attendees lest they step on a mermaid's tail. There was one man in a kilt - there is always one at award ceremonies - perhaps a professional roving Scot hired to give colour to the otherwise monotone showing of clustered males. Larry McMurtry defied the dress code by wearing his usual jeans and cowboy boots. The people connected with Brokeback Mountain, including me, hoped that, having been nominated for eight Academy awards, it would get Best Picture as it had at the funny, lively Independent Spirit awards the day before. (If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit choices.) We should have known conservative heffalump academy voters would have rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture. Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good. And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash - excuse me - Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline. Next year we can look to the awards for controversial themes on the punishment of adulterers with a branding iron in the shape of the letter A, runaway slaves, and the debate over free silver. After a good deal of standing around admiring dresses and sucking up champagne, people obeyed the stentorian countdown commands to get in their seats as "the show" was about to begin. There were orders to clap and the audience obediently clapped. From the first there was an atmosphere of insufferable self-importance emanating from "the show" which, as the audience was reminded several times, was televised and being watched by billions of people all over the world. Those lucky watchers could get up any time they wished and do something worthwhile, like go to the bathroom. As in everything related to public extravaganzas, a certain soda pop figured prominently. There were montages, artfully meshed clips of films of yesteryear, live acts by Famous Talent, smart-ass jokes by Jon Stewart who was witty and quick, too witty, too quick, too eastern perhaps for the somewhat dim LA crowd. Both beautiful and household-name movie stars announced various prizes. None of the acting awards came Brokeback's way, you betcha. The prize, as expected, went to Philip Seymour Hoff-man for his brilliant portrayal of Capote, but in the months preceding the awards thing, there has been little discussion of acting styles and various approaches to character development by this year's nominees. Hollywood loves mimicry, the conversion of a film actor into the spittin' image of a once-living celeb. But which takes more skill, acting a person who strolled the boulevard a few decades ago and who left behind tapes, film, photographs, voice recordings and friends with strong memories, or the construction of characters from imagination and a few cold words on the page? I don't know. The subject never comes up. Cheers to David Strathairn, Joaquin Phoenix and Hoffman, but what about actors who start in the dark? Everyone thanked their dear old mums, scout troop leaders, kids and consorts. More commercials, more quick wit, more clapping, beads of sweat, Stewart maybe wondering what evil star had lighted his way to this labour. Despite the technical expertise and flawlessly sleek set evocative of 1930s musicals, despite Dolly Parton whooping it up and Itzhak Perlman blending all the theme music into a single performance (he represented "culchah"), there was a kind of provincial flavour to the proceedings reminiscent of a small-town talent-show night. Clapping wildly for bad stuff enhances this. There came an atrocious act from Hustle and Flow, Three 6 Mafia's violent rendition of "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp", a favourite with the audience who knew what it knew and liked. This was a big winner, a bushel of the magic gold-coated gelded godlings going to the rap group. The hours sped by on wings of boiler plate. Brokeback's first award was to Argentinean Gustavo Santaolalla for the film's plangent and evocative score. Later came the expected award for screenplay adaptation to Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry, and only a short time later the director's award to Ang Lee. And that was it, three awards, putting it on equal footing with King Kong. When Jack Nicholson said best picture went to Crash, there was a gasp of shock, and then applause from many - the choice was a hit with the home team since the film is set in Los Angeles. It was a safe pick of "controversial film" for the heffalumps. After three-and-a-half hours of butt-numbing sitting we stumbled away, down the magnificent staircases, and across the red carpet. In the distance men were shouting out limousine numbers, "406 . . . 27 . . . 921 . . . 62" and it seemed someone should yell "Bingo!" It was now dark, or as dark as it gets in the City of Angels. As we waited for our number to be called we could see the enormous lighted marquee across the street announcing that the "2006 Academy Award for Best Picture had gone to Crash". The red carpet now had taken on a different hue, a purple tinge. The source of the colour was not far away. Down the street, spreading its baleful light everywhere, hung a gigantic, vertical, electric-blue neon sign spelling out S C I E N T O L O G Y. "Seven oh six," bawled the limo announcer's voice. Bingo. For those who call this little piece a Sour Grapes Rant, play it as it lays.

The Oscar that didn't come to the mountain My own thoughts on the loss, March 6/06. And I agree with Annie. Call it sour grapes if you wish.

Last night resulted in a few Oscars for "Brokeback Mountain" – most notably and deservedly Ang Lee for Best Director – but the film failed to take the top honour. Should we be surprised? Not really. Despite its occasional dalliance with controversy, Hollywood is, at its base, conservative, non-risk-taking. For every "Midnight Cowboy" there are a dozen winning films that are neither interesting nor thought-provoking. "Crash", while certainly not firmly in the latter category, really says nothing new. At its core – race relations in Los Angeles. Ho hum. But, it is middle-America enough to be comfortable ground for the voters. So is that the problem with "Brokeback Mountain"? Yes, and no According to Larry McMurtry, who did win an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for Brokeback, "Perhaps the truth really is, Americans don't want cowboys to be gay." Rumours circulated for a few months among insiders that the film didn't stand much of a chance. Why? Because too many of the male voters were uncomfortable with its theme. Tony Curtis's comment that, "Howard Hughes and John Wayne wouldn't like it" typifies that mindset. And some of the voters were not even planning not to see it. If true, it's not exactly an even playing field. But this speaks to something else. These same (or similar) voters were comfortable with Tom Hanks as a gay man dying of AIDS in "Philadelphia" and with Philip Seymour Hoffman as the fey "Capote". Surely then, being gay can't be the problem. Yes, it can be. Neither of these characters or films address the every day, common experience of being gay. Homosexuality is a sub-text, almost an afterthought. A man with AIDS and a stereotypically lisping fag are sufficiently far enough removed from the experience of the skittish voters so as to allow them to classify them as "others." They can distance themselves from those realities, because they can in no way become their realities. Not so with "Brokeback Mountain." What it means to be homosexual is at the core of the movie. It explores how men, caught in inescapable circumstances of their own or of others making, deal with it. Ennis and Jack are regular, masculine guys. They are married, they have kids, they have money problems, they drink too much, they brawl. Their lives are familiar. Too familiar. It is this commonplaceness that sets the hesitant voters on edge and touches too close to home Even more threatening is that the film is about love between two men – sexual, passionate, longing, at times brutal, unfulfilled but all-consuming. At first blush, that too may seem foreign to the voters, but I would question who among them hasn't experienced something similar. That two men could feel the same should make them appreciate the universality of what it means to love. But that's where the problem arises. To accept love between two men, they must accept homosexuality and the physical acts that go along with it. They must acknowledge that there really isn't any difference no matter what the gender of the person one loves and that sex is one expression of that love. For some, or perhaps for many, they cannot or will not cross that imaginary barrier. Although I have nothing to do with it, this ad that appeared in Variety on March 10, 2006 expresses the sentiments of many For more, visit The Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide at davecullen.com. Information on the ad is in the Ultimate Brokeback Forum.

Human Rights Campaign Equality Award New York, February 11/06

"The work of these individuals both on screen and off has helped reshape the debate and changed the cultural fabric of our country," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. On February 11, 2006, Ang Lee and Jake Gyllenhall were recognised by the Human Rights Campaign with Equality Awards. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend, thanks to Chris Meloni, whose site I design and maintain, who was also receiving an Equality Award. Jake couldn't be there because of scheduling conflicts, so Anne Hathaway was in attendence to introduce both Jake's video acceptance speech and Ang Lee. Among many highlights, perhaps the most surprising for me was that I was seated at the same table as Ang and his wife, Anne and her escort, Chris and his wife Sherman, Tom Fontana of "Oz" fame and Joe Solomnese, President of Human Rights Campaign. Jake's speech was heartfelt and sincere. He thanked the HRC for the award and promised that he would continue to earn the honour with his future involvement in GLBT issues. As you would expect, Ang Lee was innundated with well-wishers and people simply wanting to thank him for the film. When he took the stage to accept his award, the standing ovation lasted several minutes. And couple photos from the gala, thanks to B. Proud Photography

Sometimes Personal thoughts on the film, December 18/05 Warning - contains spoilers as do several other items on this site

I consider myself a logical, analytical person. I approach life in a reasoned manner, assuming that, no matter what happens, I can separate the wheat from the chaff, separate what's real from what my emotions want me to believe is real. But as it happens logic sometimes doesn't serve; sometimes only deeply-felt emotion will do. And that's the way it is with Brokeback Mountain. So rather than this being a film review, an analysis of themes, a comparison of strengths and weaknesses - all of those are done better by others and some follow this - it's a very personal gathering together of feelings. In the last fifty years I've probably only cried five or six times and of those, perhaps only 2 or 3 in public. Credit, or blame, my Irish-Canadian WASP heritage and maybe the era in which I grew up, but men aren't supposed to cry, so tears do not come easily. A death, a personal loss or some rare convergence of event and memory that tripped an emotional trigger – that's it. Otherwise I'm the rock that other people lean on, the person they come to when they want to share their innermost pain. I sympathise, I empathise, but they know I won't cry with them and that's what they want. And yet, today . . . Today I broke down in a movie theatre. I managed not to cry on the subway, but I cried in the car on the way home. I cried as I started to write this. It makes no sense, it's only a film. A story told by two-dimensional characters on a screen. Nothing more than moving pictures on a wall. And yet, today . . . Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal make the pain and longing, the frustration and helplessness, the brief days of joy and the unbearable months of separation, so immediate, so heartfelt that Ennis and Jack and the lives they lead take on an intense reality such as I have never experienced in a film before. They come alive only when they are with each other. In existences stifled by convention and boxed in by fear, they must always hide an essential part of who they are - except from one another. Apart, they are generally detached, almost preoccupied. Following their separated lives is like seeing them through a camera that is always slightly out of focus. When they are with each other, they become whole. And eventually they are, as Annie Proulx wrote of the two shirts Ennis found in Jack's closet, "…the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one." I cried for all kinds of reasons. I cried because of the lives that were wasted - not just of the men but of the women too, because Jack died, because all Ennis had was a couple of old shirts and a postcard, because they never got to say goodbye, because they could never be together, because neither got the one thing in life they deserved – to share every day with each other. I cried because loving someone isn't always enough, because who we are, what others require us to be, can keep us from who we should be, because sometimes all we are left with is memories we can't share with anyone. I cried because too many of us lead lives of quiet desperation, lives that we have made or that have been forced upon us, lives where we can only love in the wilderness, lives that drift and end unfulfilled, surrounded with regret. And maybe I cried a little bit for myself. Because it reminded me that I too have a Brokeback Mountain in my past. That one person of whom I can think and say, "Maybe things would have been different, if only . . ." Logically, I know this is just a story, that these are just fictional characters and, logically, I should be able to reject that it and they should have the power to do this to me. But as I said at the beginning, logic has nothing to do with it.

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Venice's Golden Lion

Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain", a tale of homosexual love in the wilds of Wyoming, won Venice's top award, the Golden Lion, on September 10, 2005. Lee describes "Brokeback Mountain" as a story of love against adversity. Lee, however, insisted the gender of his protagonists is immaterial. "When it comes to love, there is no difference for me between the love I have for my wife and the love a man has for another man."

Meet Heath's mate, the real gay cowboy Sidney Morning Herald, March 4, 2006

I've just read this script, Ledger later told his mate, Adam Sutton, and it sounds a lot like you. It was a film about a gay cowboy, and the actor was right; Sutton knew more than a bit about that. Continue

Heath Ledger Interview Sidney Star, January 13, 2006

It was a story I felt hadn’t made it to the big screen. I thought it was an opportunity to represent this form of love and to portray homosexual love – man on man or woman on woman love – as not being a disease or a plague or something that can be cured or a lifestyle choice. The level of intimacy and emotion experienced within these relationships are exactly what happens within heterosexual love. Continue

Brokeback Mountain: A beautiful and moving story The Guardian, January 6, 2006

Further than this, Brokeback Mountain is the story of how most of our lives, gay and straight, are defined by one moment in which things go gloriously and naturally right, when everything falls into place, but which is then infected by the bacilli of wrongness. Ennis and Jack, flawed as they are, do their best to resist the encroachment of that infection; they fight not just against bigotry, but dullness and mediocrity. Their story is not tragic, but heroic. Continue

Brokeback Mountain: An elegy to lovesick cowboys The Independent Online, January 6, 2006

Please do not miss a frame of these opening 45 or 50 minutes, because they are the most beautiful Lee has ever committed to film. Dreamlike and at the same time intensely realistic, they conjure an unlikely relationship - unlikely both for the time and place of its action, and unlikely for issuing from mainstream Hollywood. You may already know Brokeback Mountain as "that gay cowboy movie", but it hardly does justice to the nuance of texture and feeling that Lee has lovingly finessed. Continue

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Many Straight Guys Say 'No Thanks' to 'Brokeback Mountain' Newhouse News Service, January 5, 2006

A psychologist who coined the word "homophobic" said the revulsion is precisely that. A scientist who discovered genetic links to sexuality said he simply does not understand the response. The author of "The Sexual Brain" said there is nothing on a neurobiological basis to explain the aversion. Continue

After 'Brokeback Mountain,' the Deluge: Gay Escort Predicts a Rise in Clientele New America Media.org, January 4/06

Based on my own set of testimonials, I think a lot of the closeted men who'll dare see the movie in a theater, who in the office of their Topeka law firm can already mouth along to the trailer as it streams over their computer screens, will be unable to submerge what "Brokeback" shakes loose. Continue

Brokeback Mountain The New Yorker, December 12, 2005

There is something wired and wary in their silence, and the entire passage can be read not only as an echo of “Once Upon a Time in the West,” whose opening hummed with a similar suspense, but also as an unimaginable change of tune. Sergio Leone’s men were waiting for a train; these boys are falling in love. Continue

Brokeback Mountain Scotland on Sunday, January 1, 2006

Ang Lee's imposing, beautifully judged film has a depth of feeling all too rare in modern cinema. Slow-moving and understated, it builds into a soulful heartbreaker that rests lightly on the shoulders of two exceptional performances from Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Continue

A beautiful, doomed dream Boston Globe, December 30, 2005

Gyllenhaal is transparent and charismatic in equal measure: Every emotion not only ''reads," but is elevated, magnified in the tradition of great screen everymen like Henry Fonda. In his final monologue, after all his dashed dreams have come spilling out, watch his dry-eyed resignation as Ennis drives away. Continue

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Brokeback Mountain Farquier Times-Democrat, December 27, 2005

Ang Lee's direction is both minimalist and sweeping, perhaps his most heartfelt, emotionally compelling work. Lee gets to the heart of this complex relationship -- and the equally complex relationships surrounding it, such as Ennis's strained, loveless marriage with Alma -- with a cinematic clarity and starkness we rarely get from movies these days. Continue

"Brokeback" is everyone's mountain Gay.com, December 22, 2005

Try as some might to suppress the movie, "Brokeback Mountain" is an unstoppable force. The acting is superb, the cinematography magnificent and the message piercingly honest. But most important, it was released in a diffuse media age in which the real impact won't be felt until the movie goes from the big to little screen. Continue

Cowboys Are My Weakness New York Times, January 1, 2006 By Larry David Thanks to Giano for finding this.

Somebody had to write this, and it might as well be me. I haven't seen "Brokeback Mountain," nor do I have any intention of seeing it. In fact, cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat, and even then I would make every effort to close my eyes and cover my ears. And I love gay people. Hey, I've got gay acquaintances. Good acquaintances, who know they can call me anytime if they had my phone number. I'm for gay marriage, gay divorce, gay this and gay that. I just don't want to watch two straight men, alone on the prairie, fall in love and kiss and hug and hold hands and whatnot. That's all. Is that so terrible? Does that mean I'm homophobic? And if I am, well, then that's too bad. Because you can call me any name you want, but I'm still not going to that movie. To my surprise, I have some straight friends who've not only seen the movie but liked it. "One of the best love stories ever," one gushed. Another went on, "Oh, my God, you completely forget that it's two men. You in particular will love it." "Why me?" "You just will, trust me." But I don't trust him. If two cowboys, male icons who are 100 percent all-man, can succumb, what chance to do I have, half- to a quarter of a man, depending on whom I'm with at the time? I'm a very susceptible person, easily influenced, a natural-born follower with no sales-resistance. When I walk into a store, clerks wrestle one another trying to get to me first. My wife won't let me watch infomercials because of all the junk I've ordered that's now piled up in the garage. My medicine cabinet is filled with vitamins and bald cures. So who's to say I won't become enamored with the whole gay business? Let's face it, there is some appeal there. I know I've always gotten along great with men. I never once paced in my room rehearsing what to say before asking a guy if he wanted to go to the movies. And I generally don't pay for men, which of course is their most appealing attribute. And gay guys always seem like they're having a great time. At the Christmas party I went to, they were the only ones who sang. Boy that looked like fun. I would love to sing, but this weighty, self-conscious heterosexuality I'm saddled with won't permit it. I just know if I saw that movie, the voice inside my head that delights in torturing me would have a field day. "You like those cowboys, don't you? They're kind of cute. Go ahead, admit it, they're cute. You can't fool me, gay man. Go ahead, stop fighting it. You're gay! You're gay!" Not that there's anything wrong with it. Larry David appears in the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Beautifully done. And beneath the humour may lie the fear, irrational for many, but for others perhaps fear of a voice they can't bring themselves to listen to.

Cowboys, Just Like in the Movie New York Times, December 18/05

Yet there has always lurked a suspicion that the fastidious Eastern dude of Owen Wister's "The Virginian" harbored stronger than proper feelings for his rough Western compadres, and that the Red River crowd may have gotten up to more than yarning by the campfire whenever Joanne Dru was not around. The light Ang Lee allows into the bunkhouse closet may shock those who like their Marlboro Men straight. Continue

Mountain Men - Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger talk about their Brokeback Mountain roles, their personal investments in the film, and why it matters. Pride Source, December 15/05

His costar concurs. "The decision to do the film was pretty much made for me by the script," says Ledger in his smoky, Australian-accented voice. "It was the most beautiful screenplay I'd ever read. And after reading Annie Proulx's brilliant short story, I felt like it was definitely going to be intriguing and challenging to tell this story. Continue

Brokeback Mountain Roger Ebert, December 16/05

"Brokeback Mountain" could tell its story and not necessarily be a great movie. It could be a melodrama. It could be a "gay cowboy movie." But the filmmakers have focused so intently and with such feeling on Jack and Ennis that the movie is as observant as work by Bergman. Continue

Final Frontier CBC.ca, December 16/05

Up on the mountain, the shepherds swap miserable-upbringing stories around the fire. One is a dispossessed orphan, the other has a nasty old cuss for a father. Against a backdrop of majestic cliffs and coursing rivers, they laconically share the plain, sad facts of their childhoods: “he never came to see me ride at a rodeo;” “they repossessed the farm a year after my folks died.” Continue

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Annie Proulx discusses the origins of 'Brokeback Mountain' Associated Press, December 18/05

They are watching this movie. Of course, why wouldn't they watch it? Straight men fall in love. Not necessarily with each other or with a gay man. My son-in-law, who prides himself on being a Bud-drinking, NRA-member redneck, liked the movie so much he went to it twice. Straight men are seeing it and they're not having any problem with it. Continue

Two Gay Cowboys Hit a Home Run New York Times, December 18/05

In the packed theater where I caught "Brokeback Mountain," the trailers included a National Guard recruitment spiel, and the audience was demographically all over the map. The culture is seeking out this movie not just because it is a powerful, four-hankie account of a doomed love affair and is beautifully acted by everyone, starting with the riveting Heath Ledger. Continue

Brokeback Mountain Screen Daily, September 5/05

A moving, measured, humane love story – and only incidentally a gay one – Brokeback Mountain derives its considerable emotional charge from its eye for details, from its laconic dialogue, from its careful dosing of small but devastating revelations, and from the bravura performances elicited by Lee from his cast – including a revelatory Heath Ledger. Continue

Toronto International Film Festival September 4/05

Brokeback Mountain can be read many ways: as a chronicle of shifting attitudes towards sexuality, as the representative moment when the Old West became the New West or even as a complex marriage between Douglas Sirk and Red River. But it is ultimately and fundamentally a film about love of the most evocative kind ... Continue

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Two Skins Personal thoughts on the novella, October 22/05

It begins where it ends. Within the first few paragraphs you know that this is a story of loss and of love. "… yet he was suffused with pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream. … If he does not force his attention on it, it might stoke the day, rewarm that old, cold time on the mountain when they owned the world and nothing seemed wrong." In her novella, Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx leads us through the twenty-year relationship between Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist that is at times viscerally sexual, but always emotionally harrowing. It's a love story where no one says I love you. No one needs to because love for these two men just is. It survives their separation, their marriages, the lives they are forced, or perhaps choose, to lead. And it always takes them back figuratively to Brokeback Mountain, the one place where they can shrug off their real lives and rekindle what keeps them going. "What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger." But even in the moments of peace, there is something lurking. "Later that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much further than that. Let be, let be." The underlying truth is always there – they will never be truly together. But even that doesn't diminish the love they share. Ultimately they are doomed to tragedy, but in that tragedy they are not separated. Ennis visits Jack's parents and while rummaging through Jack's closet. "The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack's sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he'd thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one." For Ennis, who takes them, the shirts represent what he had, what he might have had and what he can still cling to. "About that time, Jack began to appear in his dreams, … And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and relief; the pillows sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets." It ends where it begins - a story of loss and of love.

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Links
Brokeback Mountain Official Site Annie Proulx Official Site Jake Gyllenhaal - Official Website Heath Baby - Fan Site The Towleroad Guide to Brokeback Mountain The Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide
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