Brokeback Mountain Forum @ ennisjack.com
The Movie & Story => News Coverage, Reviews & Awards => Topic started by: ennisandjack on Jan 23, 2006, 02:26 PM
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Please post all BBM related news for the coming week in this thread. You are welcome to post any comments related to the news in the topic as well.
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Another Annie Proulx interview. I am noticing more and more, including the one Frog
posted the audio for, she must just be blown away by all of this.
Annie Proulx figured no magazine would touch her short story "Brokeback Mountain," the tale of two Wyoming cowboys whose romance is so intense it sometimes leaves them black and blue.
But The New Yorker published it in 1997, and it went on to win an O. Henry prize and a National Magazine Award. Now the movie version is a leading Oscar contender, with starring performances from Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist.
In a telephone conversation with The Associated Press from her home in Wyoming, Proulx, a 70-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner, declined to discuss the origins of her two roughneck lovers, citing an upcoming book written with screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. Instead, she spoke about homophobia, her fascination with rural life and the process of making Twist and Del Mar live and breathe.
AP: You've said 'Brokeback Mountain' began as an examination of homophobia in the land of the pure, noble cowboy.
Proulx: Everything I write has a rural situation and the Wyoming stories, in the collection 'Close Range,' which includes 'Brokeback Mountain,' did contain a number of those social-observation stories, what things are like for people there. It's my subject matter, what can I say.
AP: Were you trying to accomplish something specific with this story?
Proulx: No. It was just another story when I started writing it. I had no idea it was going to even end up on the screen. I didn't even think it was going to be published when I was first working on it because the subject matter was not in the usual ruts in the literary road.
AP: You've said this story took twice as long to write as a novel. Why?
Proulx: Because I had to imagine my way into the minds of two uneducated, rough-spoken, uninformed young men, and that takes some doing if you happen to be an elderly female person. I spent a great deal of time thinking about each character and the balance of the story, working it out, trying to do it in a fair kind of way.
AP: How did you feel about seeing it on the big screen?
Proulx: It was really quite a shock because I had had nothing to do with the film. So for 18 months, I had no idea what was happening. I had no idea if it was going to be good or frightful or scary, if it was going to be terribly lost or sentimentalized or what. When I saw it in September, I was astonished. The thing that happened while I was writing the story eight years ago is that from thinking so much about the characters and putting so much time into them, they became embedded in my consciousness. They became as real to me as real, walk-around, breathe-oxygen people. It took a long time to get these characters out of my head so I could get on with work. Then when I saw the film, they came rushing back. It was extraordinary, just wham, they were with me again.
AP: What did you think of the performances by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall?
Proulx: I thought they were magnificent, both of them. Jake Gyllenhall's Jack Twist ... wasn't the Jack Twist that I had in mind when I wrote this story. The Jack that I saw was jumpier, homely. But Gyllenhall's sensitivity and subtleness in this role is just huge. The scenes he's in have a kind of quicksilver feel to them. Heath Ledger is just almost really beyond description as far as I'm concerned. He got inside the story more deeply than I did. All that thinking about the character of Ennis that was so hard for me to get, Ledger just was there. He did indeed move inside the skin of the character, not just in the shirt but inside the person. It was remarkable.
AP: Would you characterize the story as groundbreaking?
Proulx: I hope that it is going to start conversations and discussions, that it's going to awaken in people an empathy for diversity, for each other and the larger world. I'm really hoping that the idea of tolerance will come through discussions about the film. People tend to walk out of the theater with a sense of compassion, which I think is very fine. It is a love story. It has been called both universal and specific and I think that's true. It's an old, old story. We've heard this story a million times, we just haven't heard it quite with this cast.
AP: Have you gotten any response from gay organizations?
Proulx: No. When the story was first published eight years ago, I did expect that. But there was a deafening silence. What I had instead were letters from individuals, gay people, some of them absolutely heartbreaking. And over the years, those letters have continued and certainly are continuing now. Some of them are extremely fine, people who write and say, 'This is my story. This is why I left Idaho, Wyoming, Iowa.' Perhaps the most touching ones are from fathers, who say, 'Now I understand the kind of hell my son went through.' It's enormously wonderful to know that you've touched people, that you've truly moved them.
AP: Is that why you write?
Proulx: It's not why I write. I had no idea I was going to get any response of this sort. I wrote it from my long-term stance of trying to describe sections of rural life, individuals in particular rural situations and places, well, first the places. That it came out this way it just happened to touch certain nerves in people. I think this country is hungry for this story.
AP: Why?
Proulx: Because it's a love story and there's hardly much love around these days. I think people are sick of divisiveness, hate-mongering, disasters, war, loss and need and want a reminder that sometimes love comes along that is strong and permanent, and that it can happen to anyone.
AP: Do you think straight men will watch this movie?
Proulx: 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. The only people who would have problems with it are people who are very insecure about themselves and their own sexuality and who would be putting up a defense, and that's usually young men who haven't figured things out yet. Jack and Ennis would probably have trouble with this movie.
AP: Do you think Jack and Ennis will come back?
Proulx: They're not coming back. There's no way. They're going to stay where they are. I've got other things to write.
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Time Magazine Article from January 30 2006 edition
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1151805-1,00.html
How the West Was Won Over
It's a love story (sigh) between men (yikes!) and a western (yawn). So why is everybody talking about Brokeback Mountain?
By RICHARD CORLISS
Posted Sunday, Jan. 22, 2006
In certain events that leave their mark on pop culture, there comes a flashpoint when everyone's talking about the same thing. Call it the Bennifer blitz, the Monica moment, the Janet Jackson distraction. Ground down and fed up by news that matters, Americans lock their vision on a movie-star romance, a sex scandal, a Super Bowl oops as tabloid headlines and talk-show hosts exploit and orchestrate the public's evanescent fervor.
In a more benign and constructive way, America is now experiencing the Brokeback breakthrough.
Brokeback Mountain, a western about two cowboys, Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal), and the convulsive, frustrating, 20-year love affair they endure, has quickly become the favorite topic of every late-night TV host. Jay Leno imagined Clint Eastwood and John Wayne as gay caballeros. Jon Stewart displayed a doctored Brokeback poster with Senators Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd. Letterman's website invited fans to submit their own "Top 10 Rejected Titles for Brokeback Mountain." (Among the winners: Oklahomo, Little Bathhouse on the Prairie and The Good, the Bad and the Fabulous!) Jack's plaintive cry to Ennis, "I wish I knew how to quit you!", is already on T shirts.
Critics' groups had heaped awards on the stars, director Ang Lee, producers Diana Ossana and James Schamus and screenwriters Ossana and Larry McMurtry. The scrolls gave way to statuettes, handed out at the Golden Globes in front of almost 19 million TV viewers. Brokeback won for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay. The film is the front runner for the Oscars. No film is even second. Brokeback has sucked all the helium out of the balloons.
The next step is to turn buzz into bucks, cachet into cash, and Brokeback has been doing just that. Opened in a mere six theaters Dec. 9, the film has expanded its screens each week, to 683 last week--still fewer than one-third of the number for Glory Road. Yet Brokeback outgrossed that movie and all others for three nights after the Golden Globes. Late last week, it had amassed $34 million--a take that could easily reach $100 million between the announcement of the Academy Award nominations (Jan. 31) and Oscar night (Mar. 5). It has now expanded to 1,190 screens, but theater owners are impatient. "They want us on 2,000 screens right away," says Schamus, sounding like the chef of a family restaurant that just got a four-star rave in a national newspaper. Schamus is double lucky. Besides producing the film, he is a co-president of the film's distributor, Focus Features, a Universal subsidiary.
The film has managed to carry the luster of its daring, as one of the rare Hollywood movies that are frank about gay sexuality, without provoking the sustained ire of social and political conservatives. Says Jack Foley, Focus' chief of distribution: "America didn't resist the film for a second." Well, maybe for a second: the other night on CNN's Larry King when conservative radio host Janet Parshall said, "What we're witnessing, Larry, is the homosexualizing of America." And there are plenty of liberal straight guys like Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, who wrote a puckish Op-Ed in the New York Times, confessing, "Cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat" for him to see it. But most of those who disapprove of Brokeback--or think they would if they saw it--have curbed their outrage. They believe it's a serious, sensitive movie.
All that for a gay western art film--a triple whammy of unfashionable genres. Brokeback is slow and studied. Jack and Ennis, who come together on the range one cold night in 1963, are neither heroes nor villains--and never masters of their fates. They cannot articulate to each other or themselves the love and need they feel. They express their passion as often through roughhousing as with caresses and incursions. "I ain't queer," Ennis insists, and he weds the doelike Alma (Michelle Williams). "Me neither," Jack affirms, and he marries a take-charge Texas gal, Lureen (Anne Hathaway). But during the '60s and '70s, the men keep their furtive rendezvous, betraying their wives and kids. The movie doesn't judge any of that. It observes, compassionately, and that's the secret of its hold on audiences of all social and political persuasions. The movie is heartbreaking because it shows the hearts of two strong men--and their women--in the long process of breaking.
The process of making a movie of Brokeback was long as well. McMurtry and Ossana bought the rights to Annie Proulx's 11-page story soon after it appeared in the New Yorker in 1997 and have nursed it ever since. But for years it seemed one of those Hollywood dreams doomed to eternal turnaround. Directors Gus Van Sant and Joel Schumacher were attached to it, then cut loose. Finally Lee shook off his grief over his first Hollywood epic, the massive, leaden Hulk, and signed on. The Brokeback story is set in Wyoming and Texas, but it was shot, reportedly for a thrifty $14 million or so, in Alberta. Lee and Schamus submitted the film to the Cannes festival--where their martial-arts collaboration, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, began its stellar career--but were rejected. Not until the fests at Venice (where it won the Golden Lion for best film), Toronto and Telluride, Colo., did the Brokeback team get its first sniff of roses.
Focus had a marketing strategy that may be called a modified limited rollout. It released the film at a pace as measured as Lee's direction. The studio purposefully sent the movie first to urban cinemas, but not necessarily the gay neighborhoods, and relied on word of mouth. But it also spent big, more than the movie cost to make, on marketing, especially to women. It figured the men would go along if they "do not want to look like a complete troglodyte to [their] girlfriends," says Schamus.
The Focus folks didn't conceal the subject matter (as, for instance, Miramax did with The Crying Game). "We never tried to hide what it was, so we never had to play defense," says Schamus. Still, in some cities the ads showed the married couples rather than the two men, implying that the sexual action is mostly hetero. Not everyone is fooled. "Some straight friends said they want to see it, but it's not the type of movie you can go see with the guys," said G.P. Theriot, 31, after seeing the film with his girlfriend in Dallas. "And you can't go alone because people will think you're weird."
And, of course, the movie's stars are all hetero. "No one paying attention will fail to know that Heath Ledger just had a child by the woman who plays his wife," says Larry Gross, director of the U.S.C. Annenberg School for Communication, "and that Jake has been dating Kirsten Dunst." But then, every macho Hollywood star is straight--or must pretend to be. "The film says it's terrible that you couldn't be openly gay as a sheepherder in Montana in the '60s, but you can't be openly gay as a successful young actor in Hollywood in 2006," says Gross. "When an A-list romantic action lead comes out, that will be a Jackie Robinson moment."
So how much of a cultural shift does Brokeback represent? "This is the first sort of red-state gay movie," says producer Craig Zadan, who won a Best Picture Oscar for Chicago three years ago. "It's a movie with macho, masculine, acting-straight guys on horses, and it turns out to be a gay love story."
Schamus disputes that a chasm exists between big cities and God's country. "This whole red-state-- blue-state thing is absurd," he says. "The film has performed amazingly in Little Rock, Birmingham and Fort Worth, Texas. The fact is, Americans are Americans. There may be places where their politics in the aggregate tilt one way or the other, but do you cross a state boundary and turn into some other kind of animal? No. Americans talk to each other. Americans are listening to each other. And Brokeback is proving it."
Add it all up: Shock value. Curiosity value. Armfuls of awards. A lovely lead performance or two. A film that makes you think, lets you cry. It's no wonder Brokeback broke through.
With reporting by Adam Pitluk/ Dallas, Reported by Amy Lennard Goehner/ New York, Desa Philadelphia/ Los Angeles
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From FoxNews.com today (here's a big surprise):
Bush Balks at 'Brokeback'
Monday, January 23, 2006
MANHATTAN, Kan. Asked his opinion of the movie "Brokeback Mountain, President Bush hemmed and hawed.
"You would love it. You should check it out," a man in the audience told Bush Monday during a question and answer session at Kansas State University.
After some hesitation and laughter in the audience Bush said, "I'd be glad to talk about ranching, but I haven't seen the movie." The audience laughed some more, and Bush, who owns a ranch in Texas, allowed that, "I've heard about it."
"Brokeback Mountain" is a cowboy romance about two ranch-hand buddies who conceal a long homosexual affair from their families. The movie has won four Golden Globe prizes, including best picture honors in the drama category.
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Wow. Great review. Thanks for sharing.
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Conservatives quick to opine on Brokeback Mountain's "agenda," slow to actually see film
http://mediamatters.org/items/200601200005
Fri, Jan 20, 2006
Summary: Several television and radio commentators have either hosted debates or openly questioned what they claim are the insidiously progressive goals of the award-winning film Brokeback Mountain, yet many of the same commentators openly admit they have not seen it.
Several commentators on television and radio have either hosted debates or openly questioned what they have claimed are the insidiously progressive goals of director Ang Lee's award-winning film Brokeback Mountain (Focus Features, 2005). But how many of them have actual seen the film? Some media personalities and conservative guests feel free to opine on the film's purported "agenda" to "mainstream homosexuality," while openly admitting they have not seen it.
More than one panel discussing both the merits and cultural implications of the film has featured conservative guests whose knowledge of the film extended merely to what they had read or seen about it. While it is not clear whether MSNBC's Joe Scarborough has seen the film, he has twice featured debates on his show, Scarborough Country, about whether the film advanced Hollywood's "radical agenda." On the December 15 edition of his program, for example, he hosted Catholic League president William A. Donohue, who admitted he had not seen it, opposite US Weekly senior editor Bradley Jacobs, who said he had. On the show, Donohue said he planned to see King Kong (Universal Studios, 2005) instead, asserting, "I suspect the people who make these kind of movies, though -- like gay cowboy -- would go to see a movie called 'The Gay Gorilla,' " explaining: "[T]hat's the difference between Hollywood and mainstream."
Other networks have displayed a similar pattern. CNN's Larry King Live dedicated the entire January 17 edition of its show to "the debate over gay love and gay marriage" thanks to "Brokeback Mountain's big night at the Golden Globes." Of the four guests, the two social conservatives -- radio host Janet Parshall and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president R. Albert Mohler Jr. -- admitted to not having seen the film. Mohler said that he had read the screenplay and "know" the original short story. Parshall imputed the "chatter" surrounding the film to "the homosexualizing of America."
Fox News constitutes no exception to the trend. On a December 17 Fox News Watch panel that included Fox News host Eric Burns, media writer Neal Gabler, Fox News contributor Jane Hall, Fox News political analyst Jim Pinkerton, and nationally syndicated columnist and Fox News host Cal Thomas, only Pinkerton had seen the film -- still in limited release at the time -- because he "was ordered to see it by Fox News." Yet, Burns felt qualified to ask, "houldn't this movie be more controversial than it is?" and Thomas called it "a wet kiss ... to the gay community." In an appearance on the January 2 edition of Special Report with Brit Hume, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer apparently felt the film -- along with Cuban President Fidel Castro and Iran -- merited one of his three 2006 predictions, prognosticating: "Brokeback Mountain will have been seen in the theaters by 18 people -- but the right 18 -- and will win the Academy Award." He did not specify who the "right 18" were, nor did he clarify which Academy Award the film would receive.
Some news hosts have also voiced concerns over the film's message and purpose while acknowledging that they haven't actually seen it. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly has discussed the film at least eight times on his nationally syndicated radio show, The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, and his cable news show, The O'Reilly Factor. He repeatedly insists that has no plans to see it -- "I want to watch the highlights of the game, not the pup tent" -- but remains adamant that the film wins critical praise because the media "want to mainstream homosexual conduct." John Gibson has joined in on the act, asking a guest on the December 9 edition of his Fox News show, The Big Story with John Gibson, "Which is harder to watch, the pulling out the fingernails of Syriana (Warner Bros, 2005) or [actors] Heath [Ledger] and Jake [Gyllenhaal] enamorada in this?" After he said he received criticism for the remark, Gibson defended his comparison between same-sex relations and torture, stating:
click here for rest of article: http://mediamatters.org/items/200601200005
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:) glad to see that mainstream mags are finally noticing that this is no ordinary Hollywood film - that it has taken a hold of viewers like no film before it.
Just seeing the movie more than once does not say what many of us feel regarding the story and its tragic characters - it is a film to be digested, discussed, dissected, and finally, understood and loved. There are many viewers who have a "connection" to this movie and are willing to bare soul and psyche trying to make sense of it all (myself included).
thanks for setting up this website for people like me! :D
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Please post all BBM related news for the coming week in this thread. You are welcome to post any comments related to the news in the topic as well.
Checkedout OPRAH and it seemsa BBM was taped on January 19TH so I am SURE we will be seeing it soon. I will keep you posted if I find out anything in the near future.
J
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Thanks J for the info. If you hear anything else about the show you can also post it in the TV alerts thread :)
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I looked on Oprah and no sign of it scheduled yet. But she also hasn't announced the rest of this week so who knows!
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Thanks J for the info. If you hear anything else about the show you can also post it in the TV alerts thread :)
I have to say it is wicked hard for me to find all the right boards. I thought I was doing good to put it on this one. ;)
J
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There's more iincluded in the Unscripted Brokeback Moment with Bush.
I think the Bill Handley quote at the end of story is excellent!
[url]http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-brokeback24jan24,1,219944.story
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/24/DDG5PGQTL51.DTL
"On Saturday, Gus Van Sant -- one of the industry's first openly gay directors, whose credits include "Good Will Hunting" and "To Die For'' -- spoke at the Queer Lounge about his efforts to get "Brokeback Mountain" made five years ago.
"That's the one that got away," he acknowledged. "I dropped the ball. I didn't get the cast I wanted. I wanted big-name actors so I could make a political statement." Van Sant generously called Ang Lee's film "everything I wanted mine to be. I'm not sure it would have happened like that five years ago. It's all come true, and I'm really happy it worked out."
I am glad that Ang Lee is the director of BBM. Making a political statement? Oh no. It would have been a disaster.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/24/DDG5PGQTL51.DTL
"On Saturday, Gus Van Sant -- one of the industry's first openly gay directors, whose credits include "Good Will Hunting" and "To Die For'' -- spoke at the Queer Lounge about his efforts to get "Brokeback Mountain" made five years ago.
"That's the one that got away," he acknowledged. "I dropped the ball. I didn't get the cast I wanted. I wanted big-name actors so I could make a political statement." Van Sant generously called Ang Lee's film "everything I wanted mine to be. I'm not sure it would have happened like that five years ago. It's all come true, and I'm really happy it worked out."
I am glad that Ang Lee is the director of BBM. Making a political statement? Oh no. It would have been a disaster.
I hate to say it but Gus saying that does not surprise me one bit, and I can see why Jake G said no at first. Ugh.
Well it was all meant to be, Ang Lee was meant to do it, and we are all blessed.
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From FoxNews.com today (here's a big surprise):
Bush Balks at 'Brokeback'
Monday, January 23, 2006
MANHATTAN, Kan. Asked his opinion of the movie "Brokeback Mountain, President Bush hemmed and hawed.
"You would love it. You should check it out," a man in the audience told Bush Monday during a question and answer session at Kansas State University.
After some hesitation and laughter in the audience Bush said, "I'd be glad to talk about ranching, but I haven't seen the movie." The audience laughed some more, and Bush, who owns a ranch in Texas, allowed that, "I've heard about it."
"Brokeback Mountain" is a cowboy romance about two ranch-hand buddies who conceal a long homosexual affair from their families. The movie has won four Golden Globe prizes, including best picture honors in the drama category.
Here is a video clip for this.
http://bradblog.com/video/flvplayer/FlvPlayer.html?file=http://www.ameratsu.com/media/vid/cnn/cnn_pl_bush_brokeback_spying_speech_060123a_464x260.flv&width=464&height=260
sorry that I laughed so hard.
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Andy Towle interviews James Shamus on his blog
http://towleroad.typepad.com/towleroad/2006/01/interview_with_.html
Behind Brokeback
An Interview with Producer James Schamus
I had the opportunity yesterday to speak with Brokeback Mountain producer James Schamus, who is also co-president of Focus Features with David Linde. Schamus spoke candidly with me about Brokeback's success, its marketing strategy, and some of the controversy that has arisen since its release.
I obviously don't need to speak to this audience about its success (if you've been on Towleroad and you haven't noticed the Brokeback coverage, you haven't been on Towleroad), so let's get straight to the Q&A.
I’ve heard there is going to be a Brokeback Oprah show? When is it airing and which cast members are participating?
Heath and Jake and the entire gang. We don't know the air date yet but it should be sometime in the next ten days. They're juggling the schedule.
Were there any surprises on that show?
I have to say that the mere fact that we were on that show was a surprise to us. I'm still a bit stunned. I don't think there were any revelations, but there was an absolute embrace on the part of Oprah and the audience of the movie of the boys which was just amazing. When you see them come out on stage and you see the audience respond to them together, you'll just be blown away.
Is this the first time that Jake and Heath have done publicity together? I can imagine folks would be very interested to see their chemistry.
They were together in Toronto and have done [magazine] covers together. I agree it's great to see their dynamic as people as well as actors. It's so warm. I've distributed and made a lot of movies and oftentimes [at] the awards and the press junkets the dynamic can be less than pleasant. [This cast's dynamic] really has a kind of family feeling to it. Oprah is really such a gigantic cultural moment for this movie, so it was great to have those guys do it together.
It was hard scheduling because Jake is in the middle of shooting another movie. Jake has literally been working seven days a week on the Fincher film (Zodiac). We got him out of a day of shooting to make sure they were together.
A lot of people have been wondering why Jake didn't show up for the Golden Globes.
Well, he wasn't nominated and the Globes made a decision on their own not to include him in the Supporting Actor category which we felt was a real disservice to Jake. Of course, he's been nominated in that category by the SAG awards, the BAFTA awards, and — knocking on wood here for you know what. So, it's been great. But he came to our pre-Globes party. He's been a good sport.
for the rest of the interview click here: http://towleroad.typepad.com/towleroad/2006/01/interview_with_.html
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Now I gotta see Oprah, did you read the part about the audience and her embrace of them cast. I am getting misty thinking of it.
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http://towleroad.typepad.com/towleroad/2006/01/interview_with_.html
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http://towleroad.typepad.com/towleroad/2006/01/interview_with_.html
Thanks for the more direct link. The comments are quite interesting too :)
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:) for those who do not know it - the cast willl be on Oprah this Friday, January 27 (Heath, Jake, Michelle and Anne) - I am going to have to leave work early to get home in time to watch it, since I haven't figured out how to make the vcr work - lol ;D
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http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0126gns-brokeback26-ON.html
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http://towleroad.typepad.com/towleroad/2006/01/interview_with_.html link to whole interview
Q. Were there discussions during filming about how much sex to show, or was that a decision that was left completely up to Ang Lee?
A. There certainly were, and at the very beginning what Ang and I agreed on was very simple. That it was always going to be however much sex was needed to tell this story the way it deserved to be told. And we would never pull back in terms of the representation of it to apply some kind of double standard. If this were a straight romance, what would you see in this genre in this context? That was always a touchpoint. We said let's not treat this sex any differently.
And not just the sex by the way. I really think the fixation on the sex part is kind of silly. For me, what is just as moving about the representation is the tenderness, you know, when they're cuddling in bed naked, and it's not even the sex, it's their physical comfort with each other. It's a lot easier to simulate sex than to have actors be in love and physically comfortable together. I know that I'm off the cultural radar in this way nobody focuses on that but to me when they're in the motel together and Jake's got his arm around Heath and they're just hanging out, I think that's a much more radical image than any kind of sexual situation.
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Very interesting article from Wall Street Journal about the marketing of BBM, and its performance in the heartland.
It is cross poted in "Box Office & Release" board
http://www.ennisjack.com/index.php?topic=882.0
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Film spurs culture of gay cowboy jokes
By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY
"I wish I knew how to quit you" is the new "Show me the money."
Gay cowboys are now the new penguins.
Movie poster spoofs featuring every male couple from cartoon hero He-Man and foe Skeletor (Grayskull Mountain) to lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Rep. Tom DeLay (in Kickback Mountain) litter the Internet.
Against all odds, a Western romance about two men, Brokeback Mountain, has corralled the cultural zeitgeist, making it safe for our national funny bone to come out of the closet. (Related story: A sampling of Brokeback humor (http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-01-25-brokeback-side_x.htm))
Just as Ennis can't forsake secret squeeze Jack in the critically praised love story, the avalanche of jokes, parodies and quips inspired by the winner of four Golden Globes shows no signs of abating almost seven weeks after opening in theaters.
As the film about an on-and-off affair over two decades between a pair of sheep wranglers continues its cross-country drive (the number of screens almost doubled last weekend to 1,190) on the way to predicted Oscar glory, mirth meisters at Late Showwith David Letterman, highbrow magazine The New Yorker and even American Idol just can't quit the Brokeback wisecrack habit.
On the Dec. 13 edition of CBS' Late Show, Letterman's "Top 10 Signs You Are a Gay Cowboy" listed this chuckle at No. 5: "Native Americans refer to you as Dances With Men."
In an issue early this month, a New Yorker cartoon showed a pajamas-clad man working on a laptop in bed, testily responding to his male partner, in long johns and cowboy hat, as he offers him a similar chapeau: "And what if I don't want to be Jack or Ennis?"
Last week, when TV writers inquired about any Idol rule changes in light of Paula Abdul's alleged fraternizing with a contestant, Randy Jackson joked he could no longer touch fellow judge Simon Cowell, imploring, "How do I quit you, Simon?"
Midway through designer Valentino's fashion show last week in Milan, two cowboy models decked out in denim, cowboy hats and leather jackets strolled down the runway, hand in hand.
This past Sunday, hip comic strip The Boondocks, which dedicated a week's worth of panels to the movie in December, inaugurated a bold new adjective: brokeback. As in, your man-bag is so brokeback.
Even President Bush drew titters, perhaps unintentionally, on Monday while at the campus of Kansas State University when a student asked his opinion of Brokeback Mountain.
"I haven't seen it," replied the owner of a Texas ranch. "I'd be glad to talk about ranching, but I haven't seen the movie." The audience laughed before he added, "I've heard about it."
So what's so funny?
"It's irresistible," says Bruce Vilanch, gay actor (Broadway's Hairspray) and veteran comedy writer for the annual Oscar telecast who will be supplying host Jon Stewart with some choice Brokeback comebacks. "Not only is it the first mainstream gay love story in a long time, it's between two cowboys. What greater American icons are there than gay men and cowboys? When you mix the two, it's a stereotype too good to pass by."
The fact that late-night TV chatters can't help but rib the low-budget art film (last week, the Brokeback-obsessed Jay Leno dragged out a boa-draped equine mannequin modeling a "gay cowboy saddle," complete with hair-dryer holster) has pushed Brokeback from art-house enclaves into the mid-America mainstream.
"At first, the reaction was, 'Oh, they messed around with John Wayne,' " Vilanch says. "Now we are comfortable with it."
Lesbian comic Kate Clinton, who claims homosexuals are mandated to see Brokeback ("We get our gay card punched on the way out"), understands the temptation to mock a tragic tale of forbidden passion that moves audiences to torrents of tears but rarely giggle fits.
"It's such a primal American archetype. It's the westward ho and we all know her. To go against such an icon makes it funnier and more transgressive."
Now it's a must-see for curious hetero audiences, too, and not just coastal city slickers, but folks in Little Rock and Fort Worth. "They want to be homo-hip and know what is going on," Clinton says. "As Mae West said, 'It's better to be looked over than overlooked.' "
No one is laughing harder than Brokeback director Ang Lee and producer James Schamus, who have been hearing the jokes ever since production on the film was announced.
"It's essentially flattering," Schamus says. As for gags that cross the line, "it says more about those making the jokes than about the movie."
Their favorite spoof is a winking New York Times op-ed piece by Larry David, the comic curmudgeon of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, inspired by the likes of Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and his admission that he was "afraid" to see Brokeback Mountain.
David took potshots at straight-guy jitters by explaining why he had no intention of watching Marlboro men fall in love. "If two cowboys, male icons who are 100% all man, can succumb," he wrote, "what chance do I have, half- to a quarter of a man, depending on whom I'm with at that time?"
Says Schamus, "The highlight of the Golden Globes was bumping into Larry David. We worship that guy. I attempted to kiss his hand, but I had to maintain my dignity."
Beyond the box-office boost, such attention also bodes well for Brokeback's Oscar chances in a year where heavy issue-centric contenders reign. Heard any good Munich jokes lately? Didn't think so.
As Vilanch says of Brokeback, "It's not the highest grosser, but it has tremendous visibility."
Not everyone is amused, however, especially conservative commentators and groups. After the Golden Globes, where Capote, a biopic about a gay author, and Transamerica, about a man undergoing a gender change, also took major honors, the Concerned Women for America expressed outrage over Hollywood spreading its sexual agenda.
Then there's Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller, who refused to show Brokeback Mountain at his theater complex in a Salt Lake City suburb. "When Larry Miller pulled it, he won the Oscar for it," Vilanch says. "It didn't have any effect on the film and only made it stronger."
Time magazine predicts that Brokeback, which has taken in $42 million as of this week, could easily hit $100 million between Tuesday's Academy Awards nominations and the ceremony March 5.
Some of the humor also reeks of an anti-gay sentiment that otherwise would be verboten. San Antonio TV anchor Chris Marrou learned that the hard way when he followed a report on Reese Witherspoon's win at the People's Choice Awards with this offhand quip: "Why didn't they just give one of those guys from Brokeback Mountain best actress?"
Complaints were registered and apologies made.
Yet, for the most part, Brokeback's rise as a rich source of hilarity has been a positive sign, according to Neil Guiliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. "When a person or a piece of artistic work reaches a certain level of acceptability, it's OK to joke about it. The whole buzz is this is a great movie."
Besides, as Clinton observes, "I don't think gays are so precious that a few homophobic jokes can take us down."
And, on the plus side, "I see great drag shows coming this year. Just imagine 'Climb Every Brokeback Mountain.' "
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CBS News has posted a feature and accompanying video titled "Brokeback Goes Mainstream" at the link below.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/27/earlyshow/leisure/boxoffice/main1245324.shtml
Once there, you'll see the video option at the right of the page. Apologies if I've screwed up the url link.
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Thank you all for patient work you do... thats the only wey to found some information here!!
coguaro
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glacier1, thank you so much for posting this link. I added the article also appeared on the page.
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(CBS) When "Brokeback Mountain" opened last month, it was universally praised by critics, though the public seemed to think of it as "the gay cowboy movie."
But that label seems to be falling by the wayside as the film piles on awards and heads for the top of the box office, according to The Early Show entertainment contributor and People magazine Editor at Large Jess Cagle.
He says "Brokeback" was considered a major financial risk, but has raked in close to $45 million dollars so far, more than triple its modest budget.
And what's most surprising, Cagle observes, is who's driving the film's ever-growing popularity.
"Brokeback" is the story of a doomed love affair between two Wyoming cowboys.
Star Heath Ledger was drawn to the role despite the film's sensitive subject matter because "the story was so heavy and beautiful, and (because of) the opportunity to investigate this character, this incredibly complex figure."
After winning four Golden Globes last week, including best drama, "Brokeback Mountain" ticket sales soared.
You might think big cities are driving the film's success, but it goes much deeper than that, Cagle notes.
"What's driving the astonishing grosses for this movie," says Focus Features Co-President James Schamus, "is the numbers coming out of places like Little Rock (Ark.) and Billings, Mont. and Salt Lake City and Columbus (Ohio) and Pittsburgh. The film is doing business in every corner of America."
City slickers and country dwellers alike are lining up for "Brokeback," despite concerns that some moviegoers would shun the film because of its untraditional theme.
Now, it's arguably become the country's hottest date movie, Cagle says.
"It has become," Schamus says, "officially uncool as a guy to say 'No' to your girlfriend to this movie. It's something that you're now in a zone where, if you say 'No,' you just don't look that cool anymore."
Cagle concurs: "It's being driven by women. Men will not seek out a love story," whether heterosexual or homosexual, "but they will go with their wives and girlfriends, and that's what's happening here."
Moviegoers questioned by The Early Show also agree.
(CBS) "I wouldn't have seen it without my wife taking me to see it, but after I saw it, it was a great love story. Fantastic," says one.
"The film is a love story. I thought it was a great movie," says another.
"If you ask me, it could've been a girl versus a guy. To me, it was just a love story. It didn't matter that it was two guys," added another.
Filmmakers believe the "Brokeback" craze is being fueled by the need for such a good love story on the big screen.
Says Schamus, "I don't think there's been a screen romance of this scope and scale coming out of Hollywood in years and years. It just hasn't happened. I think people are just responding first and foremost to the emotion and the honesty and intensity of the experience."
Cagle adds that the producers "were very smart. They marketed the film as a love story. You look at the poster it looks like the 'Titanic' poster.
To cement its place on Main Street, the film has become a favorite topic on the late night comedy circuit.
On "The Late Show with David Letterman," the comedian quipped that the movie "sure brings new meaning to the word 'cowpoke.' "
Also, a line from the movie is making its way into popular lexicon: "I wish I could quit you."
"Brokeback Mountain" gallops into awards season a heavy Oscar favorite, Cagle says.
In addition to the Golden Globes it grabbed, "Brokeback" recently received four Screen Actors Guild Award nominations and nine nods for BAFTAs, England's version of the Academy Awards.
But Cagle says Ledger is up against tough competition in the best actor category he's expected to become part of.
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Blue Magazine - January 2006
SINCE beautifying Australian tv screens in 1997 as a young gay cyclist in the good-but-short-lived soap opera Sweat, Heath Ledger has been known for two things:his willingness to take on challenging roles, and the sometimes questionable quality of his judgment. There's been some good stuff, to be sure - Two Hands and Monster's Ball were both widely acclaimed - but he's also said yes to some sheer dreck, like The Order [aka The Sin Eater] and The Brothers Grimm.
He needs a hit, and badly.
The good news is that there's every indication that Brokeback Mountain will be it. Since taking the top prize at the Venice Film Festival last September, director Ang Lee's deft interpretation of E Annie Proulx's novella has been lauded by critics. Opening in 1960s Wyoming, the story centres on Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), two cowboys who unexpectedly find love in each others arms, and who continue their love affair intermittently over the next two decades. Featuring scenes of sexual intimacy between the two leads, the film has allayed the fears of many fans of the novella who were concerned the story might be "de-gayed" for the screen.
"Brokeback Mountain is apparently heading right toward the homo hall of fame;' wrote columnist Michael Musto in The Village Voice, before quipping, "When the movie strikes box office and Oscar gold, I bet Oliver Stone frantically puts the humping right back in Alexander."
Ledger told a press conference at the Toronto International Film Festival that the film "was a story of love which hadn't been told;' but in later interviews he has admitted that the shoot was difficult.
"It was kinda like signing up for boot camp for - I don't even know how many weeks I was out there - 15 weeks or something. It was tough. It was a lonely experience, but it was definitely a real sense of accomplishment once I finished. It scared me shitless. I had so much fear for the project and the story and, you know, had to be brave. I definitely came out thinking,'f***, I can do anything', you know? It was a beautiful story, a beautiful script:'
Ledger has no trouble playing gay (having done so before in Sweat), but admits that simulating sex with Jake Gyllenhaal "just wasn't the easiest thing to do".
The chemistry was on the page;' he explains. "We just had to play it. I think we have a chemistry as friends, and we just dove into the love scenes ... and dove out again as fast as we could:'
But getting down with Jake wasn't the only demanding aspect of the script, Ledger explains.
"I had to age from 18 to 40, and do that subtly" he says. "And there's not a lot of change between the age of 18 and 40 really. So I decided to do it in my accent. I staged my accent in pitches, so it was higher when I was younger and deeper when I was older and I tried to make it subtle:'
Perfecting Ennis's voice - a strangled Southern drawl which some viewers have compared to George W Bush's -was a critical part of Ledgers preparation for the role.
"It became a short cut to discovering my character. The words had to punch their way out;' he says. "My character was extremely lonely, and I think that I carried that through the whole experience [of filming]. But Ang Lee is a wonderful director and he definitely has a great level of attention to detail. Sometimes Ang would be like,'Okay, drag cigarette. Okay. Blow out. Okay. Look at mountain. Okay. Look at feet. Okay. Look back at mountain. Okay. Cut: I'm trying to take this in and make it look natural.
Fortunately, by most accounts, Ledger succeeded in doing so, and there is already speculation that his turn as Ennis could earn him an Oscar nomination. The New York Times, film reviewer Manohla Dargis even went so far as to claim that his "wrenching performance is the stuff of Hollywood history". It's good news for Ledger, whose early claims to the Tinseltown A-list (he made the cover of Vanity Fair back in 2000) have been sullied in recent years by some lacklustre projects and performances.This downward slide reached its nadir with Terry Gilliam's fractured and fractious fairy tale, The Brothers Grimm, which was universally panned.
"I've done four or five films in the last 18 months including this, I guess - but I guess that after The Brothers Grimm it was hard to kind of find things;' Ledger admits. "I was heading down a path where it was starting to get difficult to find good material and good people to work with. So I was like,'Screw this: I just wanted to show what I could do and many different colours of myself. So I really picked four different stories and four really diverse characters to try Brokeback Mountain might be the most [out-there] of the lot:"
Next up, Ledger will be seen in Disney's light-hearted re-telling of Casanova as well as Neil Armfield's gritty heroin love story, Candy, which teamed him up with Abbie Cornish and Geoffrey Rush and brought him back to home soil.
"It was such a relief to act in my own accent;' he says. "It was the first time that I'd done that in eight years and it was just amazing. I forgot how easy it is. it's just like being able to breathe. It's a freedom that I hadn't had in a long time"
But whether Ledger will be appearing in any more home-grown films in the near future remains to be seen. The relentless attention of the paparazzi. he says is a good reason not to spend much time in Sydney.
"It's particularly bad in Australia;' he says. "I think that they're just bored down there, too. Someone comes back and they're slightly famous and they just bombard you. They're quite malicious and vocal and they're really rude. They just live outside your house, they're camped outside. It's unfortunate, because at the end of the day they'll win and they'll push me out of Sydney. I won't live there I mean, they have. I've moved to Brooklyn actually."
The move to Brooklyn is not the only recent change in Ledger's life; at the time of going to press his Brokeback co-star Michelle Williams was expecting their child. It could all be the start of a promising new phase for Ledger - and an Oscar nomination happening at the same time would see him make a rightful claim to the leading-man-of-Hollywood league that was staked out for him all those years ago.
But Ledger isn't buying into the glowing reviews and Oscar buzz just yet. "I've seen the film and I'm not sure whether it's the most brilliant film I've seen or just the worst film I've seen;' he says. "I've just come to terms with the fact that I cannot transport myself when I watch myself in movies any more. I just think I'm crap in anything I do'
Brokeback Mountain screens nationally from January 26
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byCW Nevius\Sf Chronicle story about the release plan by Focus (note Pleasant Hill, their burbs test market is where I saw it, first day out, I feel proud my area had an impact on the fact the rest of the country got to see it)
'Brokeback' broke out in the 'burbs
My wife and I recently saw "Brokeback Mountain,'' the critically acclaimed story of romance between two cowboys. Being moviegoing veterans, we decided to see a noontime matinee in a Pleasant Hill movie theater on an NFL playoff Sunday. Given those factors, and the film's subject matter, we joked that we might have the entire theater to ourselves.
Not at all. There was a line at the box office, and the film started 15 minutes late so everyone could be seated. Even more striking was the crowd -- largely seniors and middle-aged women. So not only was a movie about gay romance selling out in the heart of suburbia, the audience appeared to be older, straighter and more conservative than anyone would have expected.
And that is what Jack Foley, president of distribution for Focus Features, which is distributing "Brokeback,'' calls the "unspoken truth" about a movie that has succeeded in markets where few would have expected it to.
"This movie is playing to heartland America," he said.
"Brokeback'' -- an odds-on favorite to clean up in Academy Award nominations, including best picture, on Tuesday -- is not just an art-house favorite or a cultural statement or a milestone in filmmaking. It is a bona fide hit making money in places, and with audiences, that make an East Bay movie house look like the Cannes Film Festival.
As of Sunday, the latest day for which figures were available, "Brokeback Mountain" had appeared in 1,196 theaters and earned $42.1 million in seven weeks. For a movie that cost just $14 million to make, that's already some serious profit.
Terrell Falk, vice president of marketing and communication for the huge theater chain Cinemark, notes that the film has done well in red-state strongholds like Pearl, Miss.; Lubbock, Texas; Ames, Iowa; and Ogden, Utah.
But here's the funny part. It all got rolling in Pleasant Hill.
Foley, who is winning acclaim among industry insiders for his inspired rollout of the film, had a plan for "Brokeback Mountain" and stuck to it. It began with a modest opening in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.
The result? Excellent ticket sales.
The reaction? Duh.
"Frankly,'' says Foley, "if it didn't do well there, you'd be in trouble.''
So for its second week of release, Foley sent "Brokeback'' in an unlikely direction.
"We said, 'Let's check out what is going on in the suburbs,' '' Foley says.
That weekend, Dec. 16, Foley picked a few markets, including Pleasant Hill, to see how the film might do. A serious student of demographics, Foley says Pleasant Hill is an excellent indicator of how a film might do nationwide. The theaters there do a huge business, and he can track the demographics of the audience to see how a film is playing. He was pretty sure "Brokeback" would do well in Pleasant Hill, and thus the rest of suburbia.
"It is Boomer U.S.A.,'' Foley says. "And the Boomer male is not worried about his sexuality.''
The reaction when "Brokeback'' opened in Pleasant Hill?
"Holy mackerel!'' Foley says. "It was consistently performing better than expected.''
And that's when everyone realized that they were onto something.
"It was obvious that we'd struck a chord,'' says Falk, whose company, Cinemark, owns 309 theaters -- with 3,353 screens -- throughout the Western Hemisphere. "The word of mouth was just fantastic.''
At that point it was just a matter of expanding into other markets and convincing theater owners to book the film. Even with the hard numbers to prove the film's popularity, it was an uphill prospect.
"I had a lot of exhibitors says, 'I'll play it, but I ain't going to see it,' '' Foley said. "And you had some male resistance. Men would say to their wives, 'You go see it. I am going to watch the football game.' ''
But whether the exhibitors were seeing it or not, it was soon clear that others were. And a key crowd was the senior matinee audience like we ran into on that Sunday afternoon.
"The thing about the senior crowd is that they go to a lot of movies, and they like good movies,'' says Foley. "By the third weekend, we were in Scottsdale (Ariz.), West Palm Beach (Fla.) and La Jolla (San Diego County) -- urban, well-to-do and a tremendous senior crowd.''
The film opened in Plano, Texas -- an upscale suburb of Dallas -- and did great business there, too. Falk says for the first week in Jacksonville, Fla., "we did double anything else we did that week.'' Even in Utah, where there was a brief flap when one Salt Lake City exhibitor pulled the movie, "Brokeback'' is doing very well.
At this point, Foley can just sit back and ride the wave. Jay Leno and David Letterman are doing "Brokeback'' jokes nightly, there are cartoons, and this week President Bush fielded a "Brokeback Mountain'' question at a news conference.
The movie, Foley says, has become one of those cultural landmarks like "The Graduate'' or "Pulp Fiction,'' movies that everyone uses as a reference to a specific time period.
In fact, Foley is still adding theaters nationally. After starting with those few screens in L.A., New York and San Francisco, he now thinks that if the Oscar buzz is as strong as expected, "Brokeback'' may reach 2,000 screens next week. When the film first came out, he says he was hoping it might appear on 800 to 1,200 at most.
And to think, none of it would have been possible without Pleasant Hill.
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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11077661/site/newsweek/
Interesting interview with Ang Lee and other directors
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11009818/
Someone just sent me this. Not certain if it is posted, or of interest.
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There was a link somewhere, thankx for posting it again.