Brokeback Mountain

[matt35mm]

The three-hour film

That's in reference to Les Amants Reguliers, not Brokeback Mountain, which is like 2:15 or so.

Oh thank God.

[cowboykurtis]

Ang Lee Wins Golden Lion at Venice

Taiwanese director Ang Lee was honored with the coveted Golden Lion award for his latest movie Brokeback Mountain at the climax of the 62nd Venice Film Festival in Italy on Saturday. The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon movie-maker's adaptation of an E. Annie Proulx's novella, which tells the story of a gay love affair between two cowboys, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, was chosen by the jury as best film. Accepting the golden lion at the Veneto canal city, Lee enthused, "(My film is) a great American love story. I'm so glad it's prevailed here and was received so warmly here." This year's festival was triumphant for the French, with Paris-born director Philippe Garrel picking up the Silver Lion prize for directing Les Amants Reguliers (The Regular Lovers), which also won in the Outstanding Technical Contribution category. Isabelle Huppert was given a Special Lion for her career, which has spanned four decades. Meanwhile, George Clooney's second outing as a director - Good Night, And Good Luck, was named Best Screenplay and Best Actor for leading man David Strathairn.

[MacGuffin]

Yep, that's exactly what Page 2 says.

[cowboykurtis]

Ill never step on your toes again.

[SHAFTR]

I kind of wish this film would be marketed as simply a Cowboy film, so I can see some of the reactions to people when they realize that there is homosexuality involved.

[Pubrick]

Yep, that's exactly what POZER did.

[MacGuffin]

Love, nervousness, commitment
"People call it a gay western…. For me, it's a love story...," says Ang Lee, the director of "Brokeback Mountain."
By Rachel Abramowitz, Times Staff Writer

"People call it a gay western…. For me, it's a love story. It has very little to do with the movie genre, the western," says Ang Lee, the director of "Brokeback Mountain." This certainly isn't a film in which the good guys ride off and trounce the villains à la John Wayne. Rather, it's the tale of the dying West of the late 20th century, where the cowboy life has grown increasingly obsolete while the traditions of machismo nonetheless linger. The film is a portrait of love denied, of two impoverished cowboys who hide their love for decades, leading lives of increasing desperation.

Taut, desolate, heart-wrenching, the film (which opens Dec. 9) is generating awards buzz. It has already won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Based on a short story by Annie Proulx, it stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist and Heath Ledger, in a career-making role, as Ennis Del Mar.
 
"He's always battling his genetic structure," Ledger says of Del Mar. "He was battling the traditions and morals and fears and beliefs that had been passed down to him, and they've been embedded in him so deeply, he couldn't get past them."

Lee decided to cast up-and-comers in the film, which spans 20 years. "Instead of taking middle-aged or older actors, I choose the young, the innocent. Their fresh faces will carry the audiences a long way and will make the movie a lot more poignant at the end."

In preproduction, both Gyllenhaal and Ledger went to cowboy camp to practice their riding — though this was more for Gyllenhaal's benefit, because Ledger grew up riding in western Australia. They holed up with Lee to rehearse, meticulously going through the scenes, line by line.

"We'll do exercises until we have the feeling or taste of that person, the way he speaks, pauses, poses," Ledger said. Yet once filming started, the director — as is his way — barely spoke to the actors. "They're all supposed to know what they're doing. If I talk to them too much it loses the freshness," Lee said. "It should remain fresh for me to photograph."

Lee says that neither Gyllenhaal nor Ledger seemed anxious about playing explicitly gay characters, though they did seem concerned about the film's potential impact on their burgeoning careers. "They care very much what the movie will do for them," says Lee, noting their respective faces as they finally walked in to see the finished film. "It looked like they're nervous."

[pumba]

My theatre went into hysterics after they screened the trailer.
People started to really laugh when two guys got up in front of the theatre and started having sex.
It was a great night.

[ono]

I kind of wish this film would be marketed as simply a homosexuality film, so I can see some of the reactions to people when they realize that there are Cowboys involved.

[grand theft sparrow]

I kind of wish this film would be marketed as simply a homosexuality film, so I can see some of the reactions to people when they realize that there are Cowboys involved.

Personally, I think it'll be more satisfying to see people's faces after they've paid ten bucks to see a movie about cowboys and find out halfway through that there's gay involved.

It'll be the biggest "what the fuck?" since Salma Hayek turned into a vampire.

[ono]

Can I brush your hair?

[MacGuffin]

Ang Lee's 'Brokeback' explores 'last frontier'

There's no doubt that a $13 million quality movie like Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," which has wowed festivalgoers and reviewers in Telluride, Venice and Toronto, will play well in big movie markets around the country. The question is, how broad will it go?

No one knows that answer, because no one has ventured into this territory before. The movie is a groundbreaker. There's never been a homosexual cowboy movie, and while the indies have been supplying gay romances to the art house circuit for years, and gay series like "Queer as Folk" and "Will & Grace" have been pulling big numbers on TV, there hasn't been a mainstream gay love story since 1982's "Making Love," which bombed and was blamed by many for damaging Harry Hamlin's career. "It's the one last frontier," says Lee.

So what took Hollywood so long to make a gay love story?

It's been 12 years since Jonathan Demme's "Philadelphia," which starred Denzel Washington as a homophobic lawyer defending AIDS patient Tom Hanks, who won the Oscar; the movie grossed $77 million in North America. But "Philadelphia" was less a romance (the gay couple didn't kiss) than a courtroom drama about fighting for justice. Last year's "Alexander" was an epic adventure with a gay subplot, but Oliver Stone's movie didn't disappoint at the box office just because of its candid depiction of a bisexual conqueror. It was a badly reviewed muddle of a movie.

In an industry that happily explores the outer limits of gore and violence, movies that smack of realistic intimacy are taboo -- especially between men. Gallup polls have shown Americans as growing increasingly tolerant of homosexuals, but movie audiences have never been confronted with a gay western. Conservative blogger Matt Drudge has already weighed in on "Brokeback Mountain," asking, "Will a movie even Madonna calls shocking sit with the heartland?"

"Brokeback Mountain" could be the mainstream gay romance that many people have been waiting for. One Toronto wag called it "the gay 'Gone with the Wind'."

"Of all the gay-themed films I've watched," says Damon Romine of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), "this is the first one I've seen about two men in love, told in a way that straight people can relate to. People don't have to be gay to understand loss and longing and unrequited love. Hollywood churns out endless variations on the theme of forbidden love. This is a new take on that genre, a film that has tremendous potential to reach and transform mainstream audiences."

In the end, a Hollywood studio didn't greenlight "Brokeback Mountain." It took a studio specialty division, Universal's Focus Features, to back the movie. New York veteran indie producers James Schamus and David Linde, accustomed to setbacks in making challenging material, had been trying to make "Brokeback" for years. When they took over Focus in 2002, they brought along the script, which had been adapted by Western author Larry McMurtry ("Lonesome Dove") and screenwriter Diana Osana from Annie Proulx's 1997 short story.

As soon as Lee, who has collaborated with writer-producer Schamus on many of his movies ("The Hulk," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon") agreed to direct the movie, Focus went ahead with the production, which was filmed near Calgary, Alberta. It helped that ever since 1997's "The Ice Storm" Lee's strong support from foreign markets has given him "more creative freedom," he says.

"Brokeback" got made because of the emotional power of the material. A tragic romance set in the '60s and '70s, "Brokeback" is about two lovers who can't overcome the obstacles to achieving a permanent union. The two rough-hewn ranch hands can express themselves physically, in secret, but they have no words for their feelings. They both suffer. And they ruin their lives. "The cultural obstacles to this kind of romance," says Osana, "are within each one of us."

Osana and McMurtry's script became known in the film community as one of the great unproduced screenplays. "It's a story of doomed love that is clearly about two homosexual men," says Osana. "It's also a story about the women who marry homosexual men," adds McMurtry.

Director Gus Van Sant ("Elephant") and producer Scott Rudin ("The Hours") tried to make "Brokeback Mountain" at Columbia Pictures, but they couldn't get any actors "to commit," says McMurtry. "They'd say it was the best thing they'd ever read, and then they'd waver and anguish. Their agents were afraid and steered them away from it." Eventually, says Osana, "Gus had to take a paying job."

Schamus and Linde took it over, and finally Lee decided to go forward with "Brokeback" in 2004 with young actors who are "innocent in the beginning." This time, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger jumped at the chance.

"Actors want to have juicy parts," says Lee. "Heath is the brooding, macho, shy man whose temper holds a lot of fear. There is a lot of self-denial, guilt and twisted psychology in that character, a bit like the Hulk. Heath carries the elegiac mood, that sense of loss you read in cowboy poetry. Jake is a good counterpart. He is the more brave one who comes to accept the romance."

When the time came to shoot the first love scene, Lee was moved by the "exposed private feelings" shown by the two actors. "It's rare to see," he says.

For his part, Lee has always refused to play by the rules of any culture, be it his native Taiwan or Hollywood. His breakthrough movie, 1993's "The Wedding Banquet" a touching story about a gay man coming out to his family, broke box office records in his native country. In 1995, Lee directed Emma Thompson's script of Jane Austen's romantic comedy of manners, "Sense and Sensibility," which earned seven Oscar nominations and won for best screenplay. "Repression is a main element of my movies," says Lee. "It's easier to work against something than along with something."

2000's Chinese action adventure "Crouching Tiger" mixed Western and Eastern movie aesthetics, grossed more than $213 million worldwide, scored 10 Oscar nominations, including best picture, and won the best foreign-language Oscar.

"People say I bend or twist genres," Lee says. "I think I'm twisted. It's a tricky thing for foreigners. You're not molded to cultural convention. You can do it as authentic as you want. That's the advantage of the outsider."

Talk about genre bending. The movie Western has long defined iconic American masculinity, from Gene Autry and John Wayne to Clint Eastwood.

"You have Montgomery Clift. It's always there," says Lee, who insists that "Brokeback" is "not a Western. No gunslingers. I don't want to undermine the sanctified image of the American Western man. It's a love story of real people in the West."

Lee leaned on documentaries about rodeos, the photography of Richard Avedon and Western experts Proulx and McMurtry, who took the director around their haunts in Wyoming and Texas. The only Westerns Lee cared about were the ones based on McMurtry's books: "Hud" and "The Last Picture Show" "Everything he needed to know about the West," says McMurtry, "was in the screenplay."

Schamus is on a mission to prove that there is pent-up demand for this material. "We have never made an apology from the beginning for making this movie," he says, "which we believe will deliver an emotional experience to a larger audience than the art house. The movie gives us the tools to create that appeal. We're saying, 'Here's the movie, here's what it looks like, come join us."'

Focus will release "Brokeback" in limited situations through the holidays -- as the big studio guns play themselves out -- and widen it in January. Since the trailer went out, Focus has placed a registration page for advance sales on the "Brokeback" Web site. The initial marketing push is to women and younger moviegoers. "You're looking for people who are empathetic," says Schamus, "and able to reach their emotions. And younger folks are way out ahead on this stuff. Overall, they are not worked up about gay issues." Becoming an Oscar contender should push "Brokeback" into must-see territory, as it did "Philadelphia."

Middle America will have plenty of gender-bending diversity to choose from this holiday season, from the big-budget studio musical "Rent" to Neil Jordan's "Breakfast on Pluto," starring Cillian Murphy as an Irish cross-dresser. "These are the movies with all the buzz," says GLAAD's Romine, "which should send a clear message to Hollywood that gays and lesbians are interesting people with interesting stories to tell. Films like 'Capote' and 'Brokeback' and 'Transamerica' show that the time has come for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters to come out on the big screen and take center stage."

Moviegoer response to these movies will finally give Hollywood the wealth of market data it so sorely needs.

[matt35mm]

What?  There's never been a gay cowboy movie before?  So it just existed in Eric Cartman's statement that all independent movies are just about gay cowboys eating pudding?

South Park is even more ahead of its time than I thought.  It looked into the future and saw Brokeback Mountain.  And added the pudding part.

[Gold Trumpet]

What?  There's never been a gay cowboy movie before?  So it just existed in Eric Cartman's statement that all independent movies are just about gay cowboys eating pudding?

South Park is even more ahead of its time than I thought.  It looked into the future and saw Brokeback Mountain.  And added the pudding part.

Its also the reason to even watch TV these days. Including, of course, Pardon the Interruption.

OK, my off topic-ness is over.

[pete]

I kind of wish this film would be marketed as simply a homosexuality film, so I can see some of the reactions to people when they realize that there are Cowboys involved.

Personally, I think it'll be more satisfying to see people's faces after they've paid ten bucks to see a movie about cowboys and find out halfway through that there's gay involved.

It'll be the biggest "what the fuck?" since Salma Hayek turned into a vampire.

personally, did you ruin the joke?