"No dude, independent films are those black and white hippie movies. They're always about gay cowboys eating pudding."
Posted on 12/09/2005 4:28:35 AM PST by jjm2111
OS ANGELES (Reuters) - 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.
[snip]
...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.
[snip]
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, whose career has suffered from several recent flops, also said the role gave him the opportunity to mature. "If you just be safe about the choices you make, you don't grow," he said.
[snip]
Critics have raved. Roger Ebert told Reuters: "Brokeback will become the kind of movie that you hear about at dinner parties that you feel you have to go see. [in the liberal Northeast]"
[snip]
But many industry watchers are skeptical of its crossover potential in a country divided into conservative states mostly in mid-America and the South and liberal states on the coasts.
"(But) we should probably recognize there are some areas and some groups that will oppose this film."
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Try as they might, the lavender mafia will have an enormously difficult time overcoming the 'ick' factor.
"Critics have raved. Roger Ebert told Reuters: "Brokeback will become the kind of movie that you hear about at dinner parties that you feel you have to go see.."
Not in polite company....
I understand they're considering a "bronc busting" demonstration at the next bullriding championships to promote this garbage. (/sarcasm)
I missed this...
"..."(But) we should probably recognize there are some areas and some groups that will oppose this film.""
How about just "not see this film."
Media doing their absolute best to promote it.
NY Times and Newsday (predictably) gave it rave reviews today.
Wouldn't sheep wranglers be sheepboys?
Is this a Dismey film?
Their involvement with gay-themed cowboy films goes all the way back to The Three Caballeros (1945) and its theme song.
We're three caballeros
Three gay caballeros
Yawn, Cowboys...pudding...yadda, yadda, yadda.
"NY Times and Newsday (predictably) gave it rave reviews today."
I can see NYT review now, "Best gay cowboy lovers from the 60s movie ever made...."
Hmm. Two foriegn actors riding a dead horse into gay obscurity.
"(But) we should probably recognize there are some areas and some groups that will oppose this film."
This will play big in such garbage dumps as SF, but it's going straight to the crapper everywhere else.
My Beautiful Launderette had the same issues. Worse yet, it was a terrible movie about racism in London. Reviewers loved it of course.
"No dude, independent films are those black and white hippie movies. They're always about gay cowboys eating pudding."
No, they would be sheep herds/herders or "shepards" in the archaic.
All jeans sold in Wyoming have velcro flys. That's because sheep can hear a zipper a mile away.
"wrangling sheep"? I just got a flashback of Red Fox's the Montana Sheep Herder and nearly fell out of my chair laughing.
Which is evil. However, those opposing Mel Gibson's "Passion" were legitimate........
Lets see what happens, and if I remember correctly the gay depiction of Alexander the Great that Oliver Stone did didnt go down with the public and the film flopped. When it was released in Europe the homo-erotic scenes were omitted.
To even entertain, fleetingly, the idea that this film will survive its encounter with reality, much less make money, is a manifestation of serious mental illness.
Two cowboys riding in to starfish canyon. Watch out for the mudslides!
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