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[AlohaDawg]

I haven't seen Brokeback mountain and probably won't but is anyone else just waiting for someone who can actually make a big budget movie in hollywood to have a gay romance and have that not be the whole point?

So why does it need to be either a Hollywood film or a big budget film? I really enjoyed "The Wedding Feast", "Touch of Pink", "Kissing Jessica Stein", etc.

It seems to me that there is some special value applied to this movie because of the actors in it and the director behind it. And possibly the supposedly groundbreaking challenge to the archetypical male American stereotype, the cowboy.

Was there a cowboy in the village people? Definitely lots of gay guys wore chaps when I lived just off Halsted Street in Chicago.

[V-Adore]

Gay cowboys? I don't know what the fuss is all about, in Brazil we've had this cute little cartoon about gay cowboys for about 15 years now...

"Rocky & Hudson" is the best possible title for a comic strip about gay cowboys. This wins.

[Roger]

"Rocky & Hudson" is the best possible title for a comic strip about gay cowboys. This wins.

'zzzackly! And here's the perpetrator.

[Doc]

I specified big budget and hollywood because there have been intelligent multilayered gay movies in the past but they are generally small budget and don't really break through the public consciousness. I just want a big budget thing to hammer into everyone's head that yes, we've dealt with that one now, we're moving on as a society.

[AlohaDawg]

I don't think that is going to happen soon, especially with Hollywood currently finding itself in a situation. For intelligent adult-oriented movies, I think you are going to have to look to indies and foreign films for awhile. The big movie houses are going to have to concentrate on franchises, blockbusters and 'family movies' to make enough money to subsidize more erudite fare.

[jough]

Hey, up until recently gay characters were used as comic relief in mainstream Hollywood films, so Bareback Mountmen is a step in the right direction.

Someday maybe they'll even have a gay character whose gaiety isn't a major plot point.

[side_show]

Now, I haven't seen the movie.  But aren't you marginalizing homosexuals by emphasizing this too much?  I mean, sure, it's not the first time a male homosexual relationship has been the focus of a storyline, but does that automatically make it a load of crap?  Can a story about two men in love only be good if it's the first one out there?  It almost seems that you mean to say that the only possible purpose of such a story is to push the envelope.  Perhaps we've reached a point in our culture where a story like that can be told for the story's sake.

Okay, okay, I don't want a thread about cartoon cats to turn into an ethical debate, but since I've been misunderstood, I need to reply:

Just to clarify, I didn't intend to marginalizing anyone.  I think you misunderstood my comment.  I mentioned in another post in some other thread that I was annoyed specifically by the casting.  See first off, as I have dated both the boys and the girls, I am a part of said group, not someone who is outside it, but even if that weren't the case, I think it's appropriate to be critical.  As someone who works almost solely in the realm of minority theatre, I get really annoyed that none of my plays get reviewed because everyones too damn scared.  There are plenty of queer-centric films where queer actors are cast, and the reason I'm deeply annoyed by Broke Back Mountain is because the movie itself is just such an obvious ploy for Oscar attention.  Why cast two overtly heterosexual actors in the lead roles of a romantic film about two gay men when there are millions of painfully gorgeous gay actors in the world?  Because it must have been really hard for those two strait men who aren't attracted to each other to pretend that they are gay men who are attracted to each other.  I can understand the need for box office draw, and how a mainstream film like this partially banks on known faces, but why not at least cast one of the roles with a queer actor. but look at the beautiful TV adaptation of Tony Kushner's play, "Angels in America" - at least some of the lead roles there were cast with queer actors, and the love and conflict in that film is all the more beautiful and believable.  It's just like casting Renee Zellwiger as Bridget Jones - there are plenty of beautiful women of a matching body type to that character,  plenty of beautiful women who don't get as much work as they deserve, just because they happen to be outside the standard, polished image.  I'm annoyed at the lack of diversity in casting, in film as well as on stage - it's something I work against almost daily in my field.  Actors from marginalized groups don't get many opportunities, and it is so much safer to cast someone who's bankable instead of someone who might actually come from a background that gives them special insight into their role.  I have recently written a play in which two male characters are in love - this romance is based in part upon two friends of mine, one of whom has since died of AIDS, so it's very personal to me, and I see no reason why, when there is a wealth of gay actors to choose from, that we would cast anyone but two gay men.  All the characters save one are Aboriginal in my play, and again, I don't see why I would cast non-Aboriginal actors in these roles, especially when there was only one Aboriginal play in this year's theatre season, and it was a play on tour from another Provence.  I look at a theatre season where 98% of the roles are those of heterosexual white characters, and it seems justified to push for diversity casting in the one or two plays (or in this case films) that don't fit that mold.

[AlohaDawg]

I'm not sure theatre and mainstream cinema are fair to compare because I think mainstream cinema has to play to and respond to a much broader market in order to recoup costs. People who love theater will go and in my short experience in theater it's more-or-less 75% a core group of 'theatre people' which consists of other people in theater, patrons who generously support the theater through participaing in fundraising/membership, friends and relatives of the cast and crew, and a small number of people from the community who don't fall into the other categories but have a proclivity to become a patron or participant. The rest are more-or-less walk-ins looking for entertainment. Theatre has a built in core of support that's significant.

Mainstream cinema can't count on this because their target audience and community is so vast. It's all business to them, which why the avant-garde takes forever to make to the cineplex in most cases.

[side_show]

Very true AD.  I suppose I was attempting to speak to the process of casting, which at least in my experience involves the same casting agents for both film and stage, hence the same bias.  You are right, there is a huge difference between the mainstream and the art house in each genre. 

What I ask myself is this: if Jake Gyllenhaal & Heath Ledger were both gay in real life, and that were the only difference, would this film still be getting this much acclaim?

Both of the roles themselves don't seem all that challenging or well executed to me.  The buzz is that Heath Ledger deserves an Oscar nomination, and I don't understand why.  For being a heterosexual who can kiss another man without wincing?  I don't see anything particularly meritus about that, and apart from pulling this off, I felt like it was just a somewhat drawn out love story with some fairly cardboard acting.  I suppose I don't tend to care for love stories in general though, and I tend to think Ang Lee's only skill is directing a beautifully choreographed fight seen, but I really felt like in this case "yearning" was actually "scrunching up face in a way that is hopefully convincing."   I think both of these actors are fairly mediocre in everything they do and are coasting on their pretty faces.  Meh.

[V-Adore]

To play devil's advocate on the casting: I can see wanting to use heterosexual actors to emphasize the awkwardness in the premise, that of two men who believed themselves to be straight falling into passionate, nigh-on uncontrollable love. While I'm not sure I agree with it, I can see an argument that queer actors would make the love affair seem too easy or "smooth."

That said, having seen the film last night, I think a little more smoothness would have been a good idea. For all the hype of this film as a great romance story, I was never quite able to buy that the guys were actually in love. In lust, sure; they certainly had a lot of violent, Academy-shocking sex, and even some gentler physical intimacy. Yet they never seemed to actually like each other all that much, and the relationship came off as extremely troubled: violent, angry, emotionally unsatisfying. And yet we're supposed to accept that their love is true and pure and beautiful enough to be worth hurting all the people it does? (It didn't help that the film was trying to set up the Obstacles in the Way of True But Forbidden Love, and yet they were all obstacles like "working for a living" or "not being totally neglectful of your family." After a certain point the guys just came off as bastards with no self-control.) Now, there's nothing wrong with depicting angry, dysfunctional sexual/romantic relationships, but selling one as True and Perfect Love seems a little disingenuous. I have to wonder if an otherwise-identical-but-heterosexual relationship would have been sold the same way.

The acting was also a problem, although I think some of that was the Lingering Glance Problem so common in literary adaptations. The actors just weren't able to convey whatever they were supposed to be conveying in those long glances. The heterosexual vignettes didn't help, either, since it made clear how much more naturally and comfortably the actors could act in romantic scenes with women, which results in ludicrousness like Jack's most easy-to-believe love scene being with the woman we're later supposed to believe is just a beard. (The fact that this is an alleged gay romance with no serious male nudity and two breast shots also weirds me the hell out.) Of course, this raises the whole "wait, aren't they actually bisexual cowboys?" thing, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of giraffe...

[wombat]

Okay, okay, I don't want a thread about cartoon cats to turn into an ethical debate

Why not??

[pmcd9]

The buzz is that Heath Ledger deserves an Oscar nomination, and I don't understand why.  For being a heterosexual who can kiss another man without wincing?

Well when you put it that way I can totally understand the hype.  Give that man a statuette.

~Paul

[wombat]

What I ask myself is this: if Jake Gyllenhaal & Heath Ledger were both gay in real life, and that were the only difference, would this film still be getting this much acclaim?

This reminds me that what I always ask myself is, why are people so interested in the private lives of actors in the first place?  They're not interesting people.  They don't do anything, they just pretend to do things.  Why are we so obsessed with them?  Why should we care if these two guys are gay or straight or have sex with rodents?   It's weird to me that we are even having this discussion, in a way.  We don't care if they are cowboys in real life, right?

[miles]

I think the two were probably cast as opposed to, say, Rocky and Hudson, becase both are pretty big box office draws.

[pmcd9]

I think they were cast because if they cast gay actors it would just be seen as a gay movie and the general public would have turned away.  But Wombat is right, why do we care about the actors personal preference.  Gay actors have been playing straight roles for years.  What's the difference?

~Paul