Comments on: On Oscar Eve, We Throw a Brokeback Party!

By: i got issues

i got issues — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 23:06:35 +0000

A movie made by … gasp! … capitalists! When everyone knows that all the great movies, like Citizen Kane, Vertigo and the Lord of the Ring trilogy were non-profit operations.

I just can’t get over this!

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 18:06:13 +0000

You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s a MOVIE…and not a very good one at that. It was made by capitalists to make money.

Any attempt to assign social significance to it should be met with unmitigated scorn.

By: Jorge Alves

Jorge Alves — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 12:39:30 +0000

Brokeback Moutain is a story mainly about LOSS and POVERTY. And why not about LOVE and DESIRE?
Just like so much in life the most important will never be said, done or seen. When at the end Ennis says “Jack I swear you…” what does he swear? That he’ll never forget him? That he didn’t know how much Jack loved him? That if he had known how important he’d been for him whe would’ve left everything? Did he swear him that he had always loved him? What then?
Well, the answer, I guess, was in the shot: the two shirts together, skin to skin, hanging on the closet door next to a postcard of Brokebackmountain; Ennis says “Jack, I swear you…and closes the door; outside the window we see the big plains. Nothing was going to happen ever again. Hope was there in the moutains, and it was gone forever. Life was there along the plains, it was empty, it was poor, as poor as Ennis financial situation, he had nothing there in the lost and desert plain.
But not everything was lost, there still remained the dream and Ennis, we know that, dreamed of Jack often as his hair grew grey.
And wheather for the best or the worst, love had happened far among the moutains.

Oh, I almost forgot, the actors were great: the pain in Ennis’ voice everytime he had to express his feelings, the sadness in Jack’s eyes when dancing with Lureen in Texas, what could he do, wasn’t the song about being lonely?
Yes it hurted like love between two men who were taught that the ugliest thing on earth was getting your ass fucked by a man!

All the rest are just words, and Jack really washed his ass when he was up the mountain, didn’t he?
Jorge Alves – Lisbon, Portugal

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 01 May 2006 14:11:53 +0000

It struck me today (5/1/06) (for some reason, as I read Annie Proulx’s essay “Getting Movied”) that one reason that Ennis’ and Jack’s love burned so brightly and for so long a time was that it never became domestic. Their relationship never really moved beyond dating. Every encounter was something to be treasured–magical, exhilarating. It’s easy to be caught up in a heady love like that; it’s much more difficult to sustain a caring, sustainable relationship when you have to live with your partner every day, especially if there are mewling brats and poverty with which to contend.

I’m not faulting the story; at this point, that would be nigh on impossible for me since I’ve seen the film 9 times and completely and utterly internalized it. I guess that it just dawned on me (finally) that B’back is really more romance than reality.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 23:18:52 +0000

I was very aroused by this flick. It felt good to actually be able to watch in public what I desire to do in my heart.

By: CK

CK — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 04:50:07 +0000

Here is something I posted on my blog:

I suppose I ought to be upset that Brokeback Mountain didn’t win Hollywood’s best picture award, but it’s hard to get too cranky. After all, it’s just an award and the “Academy” has a terrible record when it comes to picking the best.

Besides, let’s be honest: Is there anything more pathetic than a homo whining about the outcome of the Academy Awards, fer chrissakes? Holy stereotypes, Batman, he’s crying because his favorite picture didn’t get all the Oscars!

Nope, don’t want to go there, especially seeing as how this might be the first year in the last 20 that I paid the slightest bit of attention to the Academy Awards. When I lived in Washington, D.C. in the mid-’80s I had a roommate who treated it like some sort of gay Super Bowl. I retaliated by watching the real Super Bowl, even though I didn’t care about that, either.

Beyond that, while I liked Brokeback Mountain quite a bit (see overwrought commentary following this posting, if you can stand it), I’ve had some second thoughts.

This was a Johnny One-Note of a picture. It delivered so well on the Sad Tragedy theme that it took me quite a while to realize that, even by Hollywood standards, it lacked subtlety, intrigue or insight. Alas, I might have been taken in. Oh well, it happens. I bought into the cheesy justifications for the Iraq War, too. I think I might need to get my deflector shields repaired. Lord knows how much I hate being one of the herd.

Heath and Jake, you guys were good. Especially you, Heath. You had that strong ‘n silent thing nailed down tight. That said, I watched Brokeback Mountain and I don’t think you guys liked each other “that” way. Problem is, your characters were supposed to. When two guys who want to kiss each other actually go ahead and do so, trust me, the result doesn’t look like an Ultimate Fighting contest. Really.

And there’s this little matter of the plot. The movie was based on a short story by Annie Proulx. About three-quarters of the way through Brokeback Mountain, I realized how short that story had been. Head ‘em up, move me out is what I was thinkin’. The bad-news letter about Jack’s death saved the day and the shirts were a nice touch — genuinely moving, actually — but, still, there wasn’t enough there there.

Now, did Brokeback Mountain not get the best picture award because of its flaws? Heck no. It wasn’t a great movie but it was still the best of 2005, and it was noticeably better than Crash, the winner. Brokeback Mountain lost out because Hollywood is afraid of what Fox News would say if it gave its top honors to the gay cowboy movie. It’s the same reason they went along with the Hays Code in the 1920s and the blacklist in the 1950s, and it’s why they made Top Gun and the rest of those chest-thumpers in the 1980s. They’re scared of being thought immoral and/or politically unreliable.

And here we think Wyoming in 1963 was a whole other country. Not hardly, pardner.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 03:59:23 +0000

The fact that there’s so much intelligent and insightful conversation going on here (and everywhere) about Brokeback makes it pretty clear that this is a film that can’t be easily dismissed. I thought Latter Days, Big Eden and Beautiful Thing were all wonderful gay-themed films but not one of the three of them came close to generating the kind of commentary and conversation that Brokeback has. Or for that matter the kind of revenue it has.

Criticisms and praises aside, Brokeback has got people thinking and talking and I see that as having some real benefit. But at the end of the day what I still keep coming back to is how this film made me feel; each time I’ve seen it or read the story I’ve felt filled up and even a little validated.

I don’t need my gay stories to be written by gay writers, I don’t need my gay films to be made by gay filmmakers and I don’t need my gay characters to be played by gay actors. All I really need is for the story to be told well and told honestly. Brokeback gave me that and the rest is just details.

By: CK

CK — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 01:30:08 +0000

One other question: What’s “TM?”