Topic: News Coverage:October 2006

[Jennis]

James Cagney is Robin Hood. Well, nearly

Monday October 2, 2006
The Guardian

A new website (Notstarring.com) lists the famous film roles that might have been cast very differently.


Ben Affleck (Brokeback Mountain): One of the actors whom director Ang Lee talked to about starring in the love story between two ranch-hands.

The part went to Heath Ledger...(And we are very glad it did )

*Full Article Here*
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1885416,00.html

[Jennis]

Found this list on the same site.
It seems quite a few were considered for the part of Ennis.

J.x



Who was considered for Brokeback Mountain?


Ben Affleck

Was among the top actors director Gus Van Sant talked to about starring in the love story between to ranch hands.
Actor who got the part: Heath Ledger


Billy Crudup

One of the top actors considered for the role of the sheepherder.
Actor who got the part: Heath Ledger


Matt Damon

Talked with "Good Will Hunting" director Gus Van Sant about starring in a movie version of the great short story.
Actor who got the part: Heath Ledger


Colin Farrell

According to Variety,Colin Farrell was considered for a role.


Joseph Fiennes

Loved the project so much that he met with three different directors attached at various times to discuss starring in the film.
Actor who got the part: Heath Ledger


Josh Hartnett

According to Variety, Hartnett was considered for a role.


Sienna Miller

Anne Hathaway beat out Sienna Miller for the role of Lureen Twist in Brokeback Mountain. Miller was reportedly ill the day of her audition.
Actor who got the part: Anne Hathaway

Joaquin Phoenix

The great Phoenix had been mentioned to star in the pioneering love story.
Actor who got the part: Heath Ledger


Joel Schumacher

The director had been considered to direct the film version of E. Annie Proulx short story.
Actor who got the part: Ang Lee


Gus Van Sant

The director had wanted for years to make a film version of the E. Annie Proulx short story.
Actor who got the part: Ang Lee

[tpe]

One wonders how BBM would have turned out in alternative universes.

[tpe]

This is not directly related to BBM, but this article evokes the vanishing world:

From http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/us/02album.html?hp&ex=1159848000&en=4521e307c8ddf1ea&ei=5094&partner=homepage

---------------------------------------------------

A Farmer Fears His Way of Life Has Dwindled Down to a Final Generation



LEBANON, Kan. — The heart of the heartland, the exact geographic middle of the continental United States, is owned by a middle-aged Kansas man named Randall Warner. He exports wheat, beef and soon his second grown son to the city. He stands in his boots in his field and wonders what’s become of his way of life.

A Kansas Son “I drive through the city and I wonder what all those people do for a living,” says Mr. Warner, a sturdy, square-faced man. “I see that, and it makes me sad that my children see it too and think that there is something better there for them.”

Lebanon, the nearby town where Mr. Warner learned to read and write, has lost nearly 25 percent of its population over the last 15 years.

Large corporate farmers are taking over. Mr. Warner doesn’t understand the ins and outs of the international trade policies and government subsidies that are changing the landscape, only that to make it nowadays “you work harder — sunup past sundown.”

Next year, Mr. Warner believes, there will be even fewer farmers here, in part because of fuel costs.

And he wonders what will become of his legacy and his land.

His son Travis, 18, wants to know more people besides his dad and the salesman at the John Deere dealership. The nearest pretty girl is 20 miles away.

He wonders if there isn’t something better than stumbling out to the fields with sleep still in your eyes and working past midnight. The summer air here is as stifling as corduroy drapes. Travis hasn’t spoken about this to his father, but his father suspects it just the same.

Travis is a state wrestling and hog breeding champion. He is going off to college soon and doesn’t know if he’ll ever come back. His brother, Dustin, left for good. “I like to work with people, I guess,” Travis says. “Be around people. And we come out here every day. It’s Dad and myself; that’s not working with people.”

He says this while sitting in the cab of his blue pickup, a dirty older model, eating the sandwich his mother made him.

His father is far off in the field, unable to hear the gloomy truth of the matter.

“I told my dad he could retire and cash-rent the land to the big farmer, but then what’s he going to do with his time? This is all he knows. Come out here and work daylight to dark.

“I don’t want that.”

The father says he would have to hire an old hand from down the road to help him work his 3,000 acres. He’ll have to do that and, if that doesn’t work, then start selling off the farm in pieces to the big farmer down the way.

This is how a town like Lebanon dies. The old Lebanon bank has caved in. Main Street is a peeling veneer. It’s a common scene across the Great Plains. People are losing their optimism.

Everything about Mr. Warner speaks of work. At 52, he stands erect, with skin as weathered as cattle hide. He is frugal, does not smoke or drink coffee or liquor. His home is average, a stolid two-story ranch at the edge of a wheat field with a barn outside the door. He is hardly ever home, mostly to eat and sleep, taking a half-day off for church. His wife, Linda, complains about the isolation. Is it too much to stop home while supper’s warm? Or go to town occasionally to see a motion picture? His wife talks of throwing it in sometimes too.

“My whole life is wrapped up in this,” Mr. Warner says while baling hay. “To tell you the truth, it can get a little monotonous. I’ve had four vacations my whole life.”

Still, it is a good life, he says. “The best kind of life there is.”

No political party seems to care much about the working man’s life, Mr. Warner feels. Stick a Republican and a Democrat in a sack, shake it up, pour it out, and the same rapacious thing crawls out. Creatures from a smoke-filled room.

Mr. Warner, a Pentecostal Christian, believes in miracles. He believes in speaking in tongues. He believes that abortion is taking a life and that gay marriage is an abomination. So he voted Republican.

What crumbs do the Democrats offer him? Two men in tuxedos on the steps of City Hall with a marriage license in hand? Handouts for those who won’t work? Mr. Warner says he could be peeled away from the conservatives if the liberals would talk to him about his values:

“God. Family. Work,” he counts them on his fingertips and adds them up. “Heritage.”

Do something to stop the corporate takeover of farm country. Give his son a reason to stay and you could have his vote. “F.D.R. was the greatest president this country ever had,” Mr. Warner says. “He provided security for the farmer.”

Father and son have moved on to spraying fly repellent on the cattle. The sun is going low, the sky is growing golden. The father’s gotten to thinking. The boy will soon go away to college.

His voice shows no trace of his natural confidence.

“Do you think you’ll come back to rural America? And farm? Raise cattle? Raise pigs?”

He talks obliquely, toward his son.

The son mumbles. “Depends if I find something better in the next couple years.”

“What could be better?” the father asks. “What could be better than life on the Great Plains where the wind blows and you catch fresh air every day?”

“That’s what I’m going to look for,” the boy says.

The boy turns his back. He returns to his work. The father watches after him.

[Jennis]

Film Journal

Monday, October 2, 2006

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
Rated:R

Annie Proulx's beautiful, delicate short story "Brokeback Mountain," which first appeared to wide acclaim in The New Yorker in 1997, has been transformed into a beautiful, delicate movie under the masterly direction of Ang Lee. It's also a landmark in gay cinema, a groundbreaking picture with the power to touch a general audience the way the more didactic Philadelphia did in 1993. The film dares to posit a romantic relationship between two rugged men of the West, and the barriers that thwart their love are the very same that may prevent this excellent picture from reaching a broad demographic.

The film begins in 1963, as two taciturn young men, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), are hired by a rancher to work as sheepherders for the summer on Wyoming's Brokeback Mountain. Their routine is tedious and lonely, and the two inevitably bond just to alleviate the boredom. One chilly night, after more than a few drinks, Jack persuades Ennis to sleep inside his tent and, as if sparked by an unconscious force, the relationship turns physical. Each denies being "queer"-"This is a one-shot thing we got going on here," Ennis insists-but as the season continues, they're unable to resist their powerful attraction.

Ennis has a fiancée, Alma (Michelle Williams), waiting for him at home, and soon after the summer job ends, he marries and begins raising a family. Four years and two daughters later, Ennis receives a postcard from Jack asking if he'd like to get together. ("You bet" is Ennis' terse return reply.) Their passionate reunion, witnessed at the window by Alma, reveals just how much desire-and how much of themselves-they've been suppressing.

Jack, too, is now married, to a former Texas rodeo queen, Lureen (Anne Hathaway), and has a young son and a job with Lureen's father. The men's only chance to be alone together is a series of sporadic "fishing trips." The more idealistic Jack dreams of the two of them starting a ranch together, but Ennis can't see past the danger of that kind of setup, having witnessed the aftermath of a homophobic murder while a young child. ("If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it" is his philosophy.) Eventually, Ennis' marriage falls apart, but the demands of child support and earning a decent wage keep his rendezvous with Jack far too infrequent. Their love story ultimately reaches a heartbreaking end that is powerfully translated from Proulx's original text.

The only thing missing from the film is the pleasure of Proulx's eloquent descriptions of the Western landscapes, but it's hard to imagine a more faithful adaptation of this instant-classic short story. Director Lee (Sense and Sensibility; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) isn't afraid to take his time with the initial scenes on Brokeback Mountain, creating a vivid picture of the sheepherding life and making the unconventional relationship that develops between Ennis and Jack seem almost inevitable. Working from a screenplay by another great American author, Larry McMurtry, and his partner Diana Ossana, Lee makes every scene and character feel credible and authentic; that verisimilitude results in so much more than what some pundits are calling "the gay cowboy movie."

Following his strong performances in Monster's Ball and the underrated Ned Kelly, Brokeback Mountain makes it clear that Heath Ledger is one of the most gifted young actors in movies today. He burrows into the pain, repression and red-hot longing of Ennis with a brilliantly modulated performance that's never showy and always nakedly vulnerable. As the less complex and emotionally scarred Jack, Gyllenhaal has the secondary role, but he fully embodies the character envisioned by Proulx and, like Ledger, commits to this gay character without a trace of self-consciousness. Williams, formerly of "Dawson's Creek," is terrifically poignant as Ennis' deceived, neglected wife, and onetime Disney royal Hathaway is perfectly cast as a pampered princess of the Texas kind. Randy Quaid is also a hoot as the mercenary, none-too-friendly rancher who first hires the boys.
Will audiences support Brokeback Mountain, destined to be one of the most acclaimed movies of the year? The only thing they need to fear is a change of heart.

-Kevin Lally

Critic: Kevin Lally
http://filmjournal.com/filmjournal/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001614300&imw=Y

[Jennis]

True grit characters at home on the range
3rd October 2006,

A few words go a long way in the wide open spaces around Brokeback Mountain, writes Stephen Scourfield. Close Range was first published in 1999, the subtitle after the colon was: Wyoming Stories. Today, of course, it’s Brokeback Mountain and other stories.

Tens of millions of people have seen the movie version of Brokeback, one of Close Range’s 11 short stories.

Now for the chance to make the real transition — from the sketch of storyline shown in a film to the words on paper. And this is where Annie Proulx excels, particularly in the cowboy landscape of Wyoming.

She is the master of the sparsely written but piercingly accurate description. Her words gleam with a sparkling grit. She draws characters with a dry, faultless eye and sometimes-odd words so precisely placed together that they vibrate.

In Close Range, as her other work, she’ll take a tangent on a personality, showing one of her characters through the things that have befallen them, rather than just a bluntly drawn visual.

On Horm Tinsley: “He was lanky and inattentive, early on bitten by a rattlesnake while setting fence posts, and two months later bitten again at the same chore.”

Aladdin Touhey: “Face like a shield, curly hair springing Aladdin wore boots and a big hat but rarely mounted a horse.”

In this you also see one of Proulx’s other characteristics — a sense of humour so desert-dry that sometimes you wonder whether you’re just imagining it.

And you find another of the Proulx hallmarks and foibles.

For, as much as Proulx is a master of collecting material and portraying broad landscapes and intimate privacies, she’s also a specialist in coming up with names to match her quirky characters: Diamond Felts, Red Boots, John Wrench, Ray Seed, Horm Tinsley Como Bewd, Bob Banner, Roany Slinger.

Roughed-out ranchers, tenderised cowpokes, bruised bull riders, barroom brawlers and dessicated women.

I once asked Proulx whether she thought it was people who influenced the landscape, or the landscape that made the people. She looked shocked at any questioning of it. “The landscape,” she said. “Landscapes make people.”

Perhaps it was Proulx’s long previous career as a magazine feature writer that has given her the passion and practical skills for the extensive and hands-on research she does. For Proulx, 71, prides herself on taking to the road, meeting and interviewing people, thoroughly understanding a place and its activities.

It was Newfoundland for her Pulitzer Prize winning The Shipping News, northern New England for her first novel, Postcards, and the Texas Panhandle for That Old Ace in the Hole.

Now back in Wyoming — a place Proulx knows better than any other, for it is in this US State that she lives, having moved there in the 1990s.

For West Australians, and especially those who have been north of Joondalup and east of Mundaring, the subtext of Close Range is particularly interesting, in that Proulx’s stories and the people who populate them have distinct echoes of our own State’s remote folk and places.

We might believe we live in a picture-pretty place, but it is the vastness and remoteness of the million square kilometres of WA that is its frame.

“Rodeo night in a hot little Okie town and Diamond Felts was inside a metal chute a long way from the scratch of Wyoming dirt he named as home, sitting on the back of bull 82N, a loose-skinned brindle Brahma-cross identified in the program as Little Kiss.”

It could be the Halls Creek rodeo. Or Fitzroy Crossing. Or Kununurra.

Publishers are keen to tell us that “short fiction doesn’t sell”, but Close Range proves the beauty of big stories in a little space.

One of my favourites in the book is the four pages of The Blood Bay, about the three cowpunchers who find a corpse, and take the boots (hacked off, frozen feet, shins and all). They stay in old man Grice’s shack and one rides off early, tossing out the now thawed feet and taking the boots. Their host wakes next day to find the feet and thinks one of his guests has been eaten by his horse.

There are plenty of short stories blown into novels on the shelves, so it’s refreshing to trot through these 11 pieces and feel satisfied by each individually and the book as a whole.

The book’s title may have changed subtly, but Brokeback Mountain, the story of the physical and emotional relationship between two gay cowhands, is still where it was in the original edition, at the end. Just 35 pages of it.

For Proulx — an elderly, white, straight female, as she calls herself — it took a huge leap of imagination, and more of that exhaustive research.

“To get into those guys’ heads and actions took a lot of 16-hour days,” she said after seeing the film version. “I really needed an exorcist to get rid of those characters. And they roared back when I saw the film.”

Brokeback Mountain is a fitting round-up for Close Range, which is vintage Proulx — hot, pungent, stimulating campfire coffee, with grit in the bottom of the mug.

Close Range: Brokeback Mountain and other stories
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=28&ContentID=8573

[tpe]

“I really needed an exorcist to get rid of those characters. And they roared back when I saw the film.”  Her famous tribute to the movie.

Thanks jennis. 

[Jennis]

“I really needed an exorcist to get rid of those characters. And they roared back when I saw the film.”  Her famous tribute to the movie.

Thanks jennis. 

I wonder if that will happen to all of us to?

A few words go a long way in the wide open spaces around Brokeback Mountain So true.

J.x

[Jennis]

This was passed onto me.lol

Well they do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

J.x

ON BROADWAY'S CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR is the brand new BANGBROEK MOUNTAIN

Written & directed by Fred Abrahamse
Musical direction by Charl-Johan Lingenfelder

Starring Marcel Meyer, Grant Almirall and the 3 TONS OF FUN as The Cowletts

Bangbroek Mountain,"A Musical about Camping" presented by STOLICHNAYA VODKA, is a riotous musical comedy revue that follows the life of two men who meet, as boys, at a Voortrekker Camp in the Bangbroek Mountains of South Africa in the mid-1960's.  This hilarious musical revue follows their lives and their relationship from the ages of sixteen to their fifties, and their ultimate dream of building a bed and breakfast lodge in the Bangbroek Mountains.

A unique part of this quirky musical is that the audience gets to choose the ending they want - the HAPPY ending or the SAD one.  You'll never look at camping in the same way after seeing Bangbroek Mountain the Musical!!!
 

[ennisandjack]

Thanks for the articles Jennis  I'm especially intrigued by article about previous casting choices for BBM. I simply cannot imagine anyone else in any of the roles in the film. I think I heard somewhere that there had also initially been talk of Jake playing Ennis, and Heath playing Jack, which is also something I cannot see. I know this film was in the works for years, and in hindsight I think we can all be happy of that, and also maye suspect that it was divine intervention that this film was held up until all the (perfect) parts could fall into place. The finished film is indeed so perfect its like a miracle 

[Jennis]

Thanks for the articles Jennis  I'm especially intrigued by article about previous casting choices for BBM. I simply cannot imagine anyone else in any of the roles in the film. I think I heard somewhere that there had also initially been talk of Jake playing Ennis, and Heath playing Jack, which is also something I cannot see. I know this film was in the works for years, and in hindsight I think we can all be happy of that, and also maye suspect that it was divine intervention that this film was held up until all the (perfect) parts could fall into place. The finished film is indeed so perfect its like a miracle 

Yes,i read that too,about Jake and Heath being offered opposite roles.I think it was in The Advocate or some other magazine where it said Heath actually said he wanted to play Ennis.I don't know what is true and what it isn't,but it's hard to imagine them in the opposite parts isn't it.It's perfect casting to me the way it is.

J.x

[greenfrog]

Thank you for the articles Jennis. 

[Jennis]

Values Voter Summit 2006: The final battle

Sherry & Steven Eros
October 4, 2006

Education, Art and Culture: Turning the Demographic Tide

On the minds of many conference participants is the fact that, given current demographic trends, the remaining years of George W. Bush's term may provide the last opportunity to appoint a fifth, and deciding, socially conservative justice. That is possible only if Republicans retain the Senate.

Earlier this year, a Pew Research poll < http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/washington/24catholic.html?ex=1303531200&en=61523c627ee3d568&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss > found opposition to legalizing same-sex marriage has declined from 63 percent in February 2004 to 51 percent in March of 2006. Of greater concern, among young people aged 18 to 29, a majority in several polls favors gay marriage. < http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/melendez031204.html >

To turn the demographic tide of young voters increasingly tolerant of same-sex marriage, conference organizer Tony Perkins looks to values "education." And that means changing the culture in ways outlined by several of the participants.

Interviewed after his conference session entitled "Hollywood in the Heartland," media expert Dr. Ted Baehr saw a huge shift being effected by means of an ascendant family-oriented media, especially film. Change is afoot, he noted, since "49 percent of the movies last year had positive Christian content. 40 percent of the movies were aimed at families." Baehr was contemptuous of films catering to the politically correct, pointing-out that "Brokeback Mountain'' after six months, say, made $73 million. At $6.50, $7 per ticket that's 10 million people, in a country of 300 million people. They couldn't even get their own people to go see Brokeback Mountain. That's how bad it was. Meanwhile, Chronicles of Narnia, a Christian film with a direct Christian allegory, did $780 million, and I cannot remember any major reviewer giving one positive review to Chronicles of Narnia."

Of the market for values-related films, Baehr added, "The average film with homosexual content — even with the big Brokeback Mountain that only made $70 million — averages $600,000 at the box office. Now that must tell us something. What it tells me is that year after year after year they're unable to assemble more than one percent of the population. And what it tells me about the political process: if we cater to the 0.1 percent, we're making a big mistake, because we're ignoring the 99.99 percent."

One example of the new trend is Fox's newly created unit, FoxFaith. < http://www.foxfaithmovies.com/aboutus > The FoxFaith website explains that it is "a new branded distribution label from Twentieth Century Fox, created to house and distribute its growing portfolio of morally-driven, family-friendly programming. To be part of FoxFaith, a movie has to have overt Christian Content or be derived from the work of a Christian author."

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/eros/061004

[Jennis]

"a new list of 100 movies that have changed cinema history."

"The most recent film to make it into the guide, out yesterday, is Brokeback Mountain (2005)."[/i]

Oh how i love those two lines

Jennis.x



5 October 2006

BEATLES AND PORN IN TOP 100 MOVIES LIST

THE first film made by The Beatles and the notorious 70s porn flick Deep Throat are on a new list of 100 movies that have changed cinema history.

The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964) is described as the first pop video.

The Linda Lovelace film is in as it "took pornography out of the shadows and into the cinemas".

One of the strangest films chosen in the Radio Times Guide to Film 2007 is pop artist Andy Warhol's movie The Chelsea Girls.

The guide says: "Andy Warhol's underground film is to blame for reality television."

The most recent film to make it into the guide, out yesterday, is Brokeback Mountain (2005).

The oldest on the list is Le Voyage Dans La Lune from 1902.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_headline=beatles-and-porn-in-top-100-movies-list-&method=full&objectid=17874125&siteid=66633-name_page.html

[tpe]

Values Voter Summit 2006: The final battle

Sherry & Steven Eros
October 4, 2006

Education, Art and Culture: Turning the Demographic Tide

Philistine heretics.

[tpe]

"a new list of 100 movies that have changed cinema history."

"The most recent film to make it into the guide, out yesterday, is Brokeback Mountain (2005)."[/i]

Oh how i love those two lines

Jennis.x

This was enough to quench any residual anger from the previous article.

 

[*Froggy*]

Congratulations to Maggie Gyllenhaal and partner Peter Sarsgaard  on the birth of their daughter, Ramona. (3rd of October)

And congrats to the new uncle Jake and proud grand-parents!


http://people.aol.com/people/article/0,26334,1541965,00.html

Maggie Gyllenhaal and her fiancé, Peter Sarsgaard, have welcomed their first child, a rep for the actress confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.

The baby girl, who was born Tuesday afternoon in a New York City hospital, is named Ramona.

"Everyone is healthy and happy," Gyllenhaal's rep, Amanda Silverman, tells PEOPLE.

Gyllenhaal, 28, and Sarsgaard, 35, announced their pregnancy and engagement exclusively to PEOPLE in April.

An onlooker who spotted Gyllenhaal at the Cancún airport that month told PEOPLE, "She looked really happy. Little kids would run by and she would smile and giggle. I thought, either she's the nicest person in the world or she has major baby lust!"

The couple have been together for more than four years. They costarred in 2003's In God's Hands, a low-budget feature produced by Steven Soderbergh that was never released.

Gyllenhaal made her name in the 2002 movie Secretary, and has appeared in more than 20 films, including World Trade Center, Trust the Man and Donnie Darko, which starred her brother, Jake Gyllenhaal.

Sarsgaard has also acted with Jake, in the war movie Jarhead. His breakthrough role was in the 1999 film Boys Don't Cry and he earned a Golden Globe nomination in 2004 for Shattered Glass.

[greenfrog]

[LuvJackNasty]

Congrats Maggie & Peter!!  Congrats Jakey on your new niece. 

[tpe]

Thanks, Froggy, for the news quote. 

Together with Jennis, I think she will be a very spoiled niece. 

[Raisa]

Gongrats Maggie and Peter and uncle Jake!

[Jennis]

This whole article makes me sick.To quote but a few of the maddening things said or not said...

"(To give proper credit, Brokeback won the Golden Globe award as best drama, ahead of Crash.)"

Umm,yes there was also that little known awards show called the Baftas.Why does it never get mentioned?

The shock value of the film, moreso than the quality of the story, attracted interest...WHAT?

More than one cowboy has been angered to the point of blows over a Brokeback Mountain taunt. And, frankly, this columnist was concerned about asking the question Saturday, thinking someone might get mad enough to take a swing at me. ..I don't get any of this

"I’ll guarantee you the combination of whiskey and the cowboy hat will cause a problem,” For whom?


Brokeback’s storyline was so weak, just a series of events, to make the film no more than a blip on the screen.

Now i'm getting mad

“I’ve never heard of any gay cowboys, and you’d have to be awful ballsy, to be honest, to come out and admit that you are in this business,” said Halstead.

 ...Wasn't that the whole point of the story.Repression!

And who wrote this article....A sports editor! I have only one word for him and it starts with p and ends with k!
 


Monday, October 16, 2006


The film that tested the tolerance levels of those rough, tough rodeo cowboys


Column by JIM SWANSON, Citizen Sports Editor

The year, it was 2005, and if you believe the stereotypes, cowboys everywhere were wondering if a film-maker had lost his mind.

A cowboy movie… that had been done, thousands, maybe millions, of times. But a flick, a chick-flick at that, about gay ranch-hands?

It’s not impossible to believe there are gay rodeo competitors, or rodeo fans, but Brokeback Mountain certainly bucked the general belief.

Gay cowboys? No way, ma’am — them fellers in the 10-gallon hats, wearing chaps, boots and spurs, with frilly accents on those checkered shirts, they’re as straight as fence posts.

All of them. Right?

Don’t ask, don’t tell, pardner. There’s nothing to tell.

Since the movie earned so much notoriety, it’s a safe bet that every country-loving cowboy or cowgirl has been subjected to some sort of ridicule, fallout from the shock value of the story.

More than one cowboy has been angered to the point of blows over a Brokeback Mountain taunt. And, frankly, this columnist was concerned about asking the question Saturday, thinking someone might get mad enough to take a swing at me.

“I’m sure when if you get a bunch of cowboys in a bar drinking whiskey and some guy gives him a shot about Brokeback Mountain because they’ve got cowboy hats on, I’ll guarantee you the combination of whiskey and the cowboy hat will cause a problem,” said Dennis Halstead, the veteran rodeo clown who performed this weekend at CN Centre for the West of the Rockies finals, the first pro rodeo in Prince George in 40 years.

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard about stuff that’s happened over that, definitely.”

Brokeback, based on the short story by E. Annie Proulx and directed by Ang Lee, won three Oscars and was nominated as film of the year, losing to Crash. (To give proper credit, Brokeback won the Golden Globe award as best drama, ahead of Crash.) Brokeback starred Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as two cowboys who abruptly begin a secretive relationship while herding sheep in the rugged Wyoming backcountry. One of them is a rodeo competitor, in fact.

The shock value of the film, moreso than the quality of the story, attracted interest. Many reviewers loved it, called it bold and brave, cutting-edge. More than one reviewer slaughtered Brokeback, including Time and the Washington Post. Blog after blog stated that if the main characters had been a man and woman, in a heterosexual relationship, Brokeback’s storyline was so weak, just a series of events, to make the film no more than a blip on the screen.

Cowboys go further than that, a so-called redneck backlash that, really, had to be predictable. Some cowpokes poke holes in the tale, right to the core.

“It was filmed right outside my back door, I live in Okotoks just out of Calgary, and I know some of the cowboys who were (extras) in the movie,” said Halstead, one the best-known members of Canada’s rodeo community.

“I’ve been all through the United States, and through Wyoming, and I didn’t see a single sheep in the whole state. So I don’t know what the heck they were doing with sheep farming in Wyoming, I really don’t understand that. I don’t know why they had to be sheep farmers, they could’ve been cattle farmers, but that’s Hollywood and it makes a story, and that’s what they care about, I guess.”

Halstead also said it was pure fiction to have two cowboys in such a scenario. That’s the biggest beef, it seems – where’s the evidence of a herd of homosexual ranchers?

“I’ve never heard of any gay cowboys, and you’d have to be awful ballsy, to be honest, to come out and admit that you are in this business,” said Halstead.

“It’s a macho kind of thing, but there are gay people everywhere, so there are probably gay cowboys, too. You’d have to be brave to come out with that in this industry.”

That’s not to say Brokeback has been a blanket of bad news for the country set. Halstead has found a way to steer the uncomfortable topic into more material when he performs.

“For my end of it, being a comedian and a rodeo clown I get to play a lot of stuff off it,” said Halstead.

“I’ll tell you one thing, if John Wayne was alive he’d wear a patch over both eyes.

“I have a lot of fun with it. We just kinda go with it. It’s one of those things that’s just part of the times and you pretty much gotta go with it.

“The other night one of the girls was chasing a steer out of the arena and she almost fell off the horse. I slid underneath, and I said, ‘honey, if you’re going to fall off, you might as well fall on me.’ Just then, a bulldogger rode by me and looked at me, I looked at him, and I said, ‘hey buddy, this ain’t no Brokeback Mountain, don’t even think about it.’ I get to have fun with that kind of stuff, but you be careful not to cross the line. In my show, I might put the thought there with that, or with other things, but you never really say it.”

Halstead points out things have changed so much in the rodeo world, as in other segments of society, that the Wrangler brand found a way to get cowboys in pink clothing — it’s called the Tough Enough To Wear Pink campaign, in support of breast cancer.

“All us cowboys, we’ve raised in excess of $100,000 dollars throughout North America for that, and all we do is wear pink for a day,” said Halstead.

“Fifteen years ago, you wouldn’t have seen many cowboys wearing pink shirts.”

Or for that matter, a gay-themed, Oscar-worthy cowboy movie.

http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/news/current/n_empty.php?sid=1308162

[tpe]

There is no point arguing with philistines and barbarians.  The comments and arguments are unimpressive and immature.  To cite just one instance, one could have just read the articles published by the New York Times last December (interviewing gay ranch hands in Wyoming and elsewhere) to realize that there should be gay cowboys -- not to mention politicians, sports stars, religious leaders, etc.  But why am I wasting my breath on these savages?   Let them rot in their own dung.

[welshwitch]

He knows nothing about Wyoming history either - they did have sheep-herding quite extensively, so he's an ignorant opinionated little toad.and what was that about the plot? did this cretin see the movie?

But tpe is right; no point talking to or about people like this - I like his last sentence, too,

[greenfrog]

Thank you for sharing that article with us Welshwitch.

[welshwitch]

The Guardian has a review section each Saturday; among other things it gives a brief review of any movies coming up on TV for the next week.

This is one for a movie that's on tonight - guess which?


"A film about racial tensions in Los Angeles? What a good idea. Someone should make one, because despite its pretensions and three Oscars, this ain't it. Cutting between a supposed cross-section of the city - the DA, whire cops, black car-jackers and so on - Paul Figgis's film tries to dissect the underlying racial and socail tensions. But the result is the worst kind of sermonising, with abstract characters dutifully learning their life lessons, and a cheesy symmetry to tie it all together."

I didn't see it but the reviewer evidently did - sounds about right to me. And it's on TV already, having not made it in the cinema or on DVD, I suppose.

BBM wuz robbed!

[LuvJackNasty]

Thanks WW.  I haven't seen it and have no desire to. My friend saw it and I can't say exactly what she said  but she said it was one of the worst movies she has ever seen and she completely understands the reviews that said it hit you over the head and they should have just had a person holding a sign up to say this is racist. 

[*Froggy*]

I didn't see it but the reviewer evidently did - sounds about right to me. And it's on TV already, having not made it in the cinema or on DVD, I suppose.

BBM wuz robbed!

<OT> thankx for posting..yep BBM was robbed!!!!!

[greenfrog]

Thanks Welshwitch 

BBM Was Robbed !!!!!!

[tpe]

The Guardian has a review section each Saturday; among other things it gives a brief review of any movies coming up on TV for the next week.

This is one for a movie that's on tonight - guess which?


"A film about racial tensions in Los Angeles? What a good idea. Someone should make one, because despite its pretensions and three Oscars, this ain't it. Cutting between a supposed cross-section of the city - the DA, whire cops, black car-jackers and so on - Paul Figgis's film tries to dissect the underlying racial and socail tensions. But the result is the worst kind of sermonising, with abstract characters dutifully learning their life lessons, and a cheesy symmetry to tie it all together."

I didn't see it but the reviewer evidently did - sounds about right to me. And it's on TV already, having not made it in the cinema or on DVD, I suppose.

BBM wuz robbed!

cheesy symmetry -- well said.