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 ...
"Pass the fudge."
I disagree. The left will make sure it makes money just so more films like this make it out. Remember when churches rented out entire theaters so their congregation could all go see The Passion? How much you want to bet the activists do that on the coasts, make this the "In" thing to do. I bet they even try to turn it into a cult classic for them, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show was to normal people. This is too close to the heart of their agenda to let it slip into obscurity.
I figured out a tagline for the movie;
"See a cowboy mount his buddy and not his horse."
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
Ebert gave Reacharound Mountain 4 stars, The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe 3 stars. Leftist bias?
Of course the great social commentator Eric Cartman observed this phenomenon of gay cowboy movies years ago.
My actress niece who lives in LA told me that movies need to "push the edge," "get edgy," not like the stuff for mass consumption like LOTR, or other big ones.
That's the thinking out there....
I think you're absolutely right in your analysis.
BTW, is Ang Lee gay? Why did he do this?
No it isn't (posting from L.A.).
It may be the thinking of your your relative ... and actors, but not L.A.
Ain't gonna happen. Most of "middle America" does not want to see two gay cowboys pulling each other's ropes.
I don't even watch dogs do it, so why watch "cowboys"?
Have these people no shame?
From Wikipedia:
"Many of his films have focused on the interactions between modernity and tradition. His films have also tended to have a light-hearted comic tone which marks a break from the tragic historical realism which characterized Taiwanese filmmaking after the end of the martial law period in 1987. He also created the gay genre in Asian films."
Your witness.
The sequel will be called
'"Stump Broke Back"
Cowboy leaves gay lover for his horse.
Possibly Roger has more interest in gays than we are giving him credit for. If he can't be trusted to give good reviews, maybe it's time to give him and his sponsors a thumbs down.
He's married with two children.
So was that Episcopal Bishop.
Ang Lee is married with two children.
(But, then again, so were the cowboys in his movie.)
Worse yet it was a terrible movie. By the time my wife and I figured out what it was actually about we were so bored asleep that we had to argue who was going to get up and turn it off.
Well, he is referred to as straight in an interview I just read. So, I guess he is, although he is also--for whatever reason--obsessed with gaydom. Not a usual path for a straight guy, so I for one will not be surprised if he one day comes out as a poofter.
Plummet? I didn't know their stars had already risen enough to 'plummet' an inch.
"(But) we should probably recognize there are some areas and some groups that will oppose this film." "
They wish! Who would bother with it? It's not worth the trouble, and it will be interesting to see how many theaters even bother to show it in the majority of the country.
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