Cowboy romance "Brokeback" faces challenge

Reuters ^ | 12/7/05 | Bob Tourtellotte

[Millee]

It has wowed film festivals, won rave reviews and sparked Oscar buzz, but when "Brokeback Mountain," a.k.a. the gay cowboy movie, begins playing to general audiences on Friday, it faces its toughest challenge yet -- wooing mainstream America.

Two of Hollywood's hottest leading men, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, risk alienating fans and sending their stars plummeting if, after watching the pair have sex on screen, audiences cannot see them any other way than gay.

Winning over middle America is important for the roughly $12.5 million movie because its backer, art house specialist Focus Features, wants a big box office and wider exposure for the film's themes of love, friendship and family ties.

Two other films built around gay subjects this season, "Transamerica" and "Breakfast on Pluto," have gained critical attention but they have less at stake in terms of costs and star power.

Gyllenhaal and Ledger say they are less concerned about their futures than the film's, which was directed by Ang Lee and based on Annie Proulx's story about two cowboys who meet in 1963 wrangling sheep in Wyoming and form a bond that transcends time and transforms their lives.

Ledger, 26, said he was both anxious and curious to see whether audiences will view the movie as a gay romance or, as its makers want, simply a romance.

"I have my hopes held high in terms of the level of maturity in today's society," he said. "I think people are a lot smarter than we are giving them credit for being."

Gyllenhaal, who turns 25 this month, added in a separate interview: "The issues are much bigger than sexuality."

Both said their decisions to take the roles were spurred by the desire to work with Lee, director of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,"

[Sister_T]

You should read some of the user reviews AGAINST the movie. There is one in particular that drew out about 24 responses from the homo-promo crowd and their pathetic apologists, blasting the reviewer as a "homophobe" and how they needed to "get with the times" and the usual lame "tolerant" rhetoric one comes to expect from these heterophobes.