The Hinterland
Rants from the hinterland. Denver writer and pretend anthropologist Dave Cullen's take on the world.

  Brokeback Mountain

My Obsessive Little Guide to the Heartbreaking Yet Oddly Universal Story of Two Gay Cowboys In Love

 

THIS SITE HAS MOVED!

The Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide

 

 

And the new Brokeback Mountain Discussion board is going like crazy.

 

(This page won't auto-redirect. Old technology, hence the move.)

 

 

 

I will leave the old content here for awhile, but it will not be updated here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Latest Additions (to this site): 

  • Scorecard of Awards, from MCN. Brokeback cleaning up.
  • Variety: Brokeback tries red-state breakout. (Really great piece on the accelerated expansion.)
  • Boxoffice mojo on second weekend.
  • NY Times story on Casper's gay mayor.
  • French site with lots of great film clips.
  • LA Times story: "The so-called gay cowboy movie finds broad appeal outside the major cities." "The closely watched debut in Plano, Texas, "was a revelation about the accessibility of this movie," said Focus head of distribution Jack Foley. "This is not gay-dependent. Attendance at those theaters indicates the film has the attention of suburban moviegoers.""
  • Variety on Brokeback's second record-breaking weekend. "per-play average for "Brokeback" was $34,194. That's the best ever for a non-Imax film on more than 50 playdates. . . . Indie is pushing up a planned expansion to take advantage of pic's momentum. Previously set to stay flat until January, "Brokeback" will now likely expand to more than 100 playdates next weekend, primarily in the same 21 markets it's in." It was also the first film in ten years to crack the top ten with fewer than 100 theaters.
  • Piece on the slash phenom.
  • Frank Rich op-ed on Brokebrack in NY Times: "Two Gay Cowboys Hit a Home Run." (Posted in the comments.)
  • NY Times piece on gay cowboys in Wyoming.
  • Newsweek story on Michelle Williams.
  • Scoreboard of critics' Top 10 lists for 2005.
  • Great pix from the film, (new link) including lots of shots of Jake and Heath kissing and holding each other while half-naked. (Scroll down the comments, near the top.) More pix, including the landing kiss here. Or very long slide show here. 
  • Detailed release schedule from Focus Features. The official Brokeback site finally lists all theaters playing it. (The link is to the direct page. It still says for Dec 16, but says it will be updated there.)
  • Note: The Selected Reviews section and Links for the actors, director and writers are down near the bottom, because they take up so much space. I have lengthy excerpts from the best early reviews: Rolling Stone, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, The Guardian (UK).

Join the Obsession! -- Discussion Board

Key Sites:

My Key Posts:

Release Dates / Rollout Schedule

  • Dec 9, 2005: NY/LA/SF
  • Dec 16, 2005: expands to 21 large cities & 3 small ones
  • Jan 2006: expands wide
  • Feb 2006: final expansion
  • Release dates around the world 
  • National Wide Release Schedule (from LA Daily News):
    • Focus is limiting the first week to five theaters totaling about a dozen screens... On Dec. 16, "Brokeback" will face its real box office test when it opens in 21 more big cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Miami, San Diego, Seattle and Washington, D.C. and a trio of smaller markets where the film is expected to be well-received: Austin, Texas; Palm Springs; and Santa Barbara... In all, the film will be booked into about 60 theaters by its second week. But Focus will stay at that level until Jan. 6, 2006, before expanding to 20 additional markets... By Jan. 13, "Brokeback" will be playing in just over 100 markets.
  • Explanation/overview of a platform release here.
  • Detailed release schedule from Focus Features. The official Brokeback site finally lists all theaters playing it. (The link is to the direct page. It still says for Dec 16, but says it will be updated there.)

Box Office Results:

  • Weekly Box office history for Brokeback from IMDB (once it exists) 
  • My guide to gauging early Brokeback box office. Comparisons to recent platform releases, like Good Night Good Luck and Syriana.
  • Results from Opening Weekend:

    • Weekend results, from boxofficeguru: "Exploding in platform release with one of the most spectacular grosses ever seen for a limited release bow was Ang Lee's cowboy love story Brokeback Mountain which debuted in only five cinemas but grossed an estimated $545,000 for a jaw-dropping $108,910 average per theater. The Heath Ledger-Jake Gyllenhaal drama has been showered with praise by critics and is already one of the top contenders for the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and other prestigious prizes. This weekend, it was selected by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association as the best picture of the year with Lee also winning the director's trophy. ."

    • Scored the biggest weekend ever for platform opening of a live-action film. Continued torrid pace Monday. 

  • Link for day-by-day data on Brokeback from boxofficemojo here, but you have to register (free), to get to it.
  • Boxoffice mojo on second weekend.
  • LA Times story: "The so-called gay cowboy movie finds broad appeal outside the major cities." "The closely watched debut in Plano, Texas, "was a revelation about the accessibility of this movie," said Focus head of distribution Jack Foley. "This is not gay-dependent. Attendance at those theaters indicates the film has the attention of suburban moviegoers.""
  • Variety on Brokeback's second record-breaking weekend. "per-play average for "Brokeback" was $34,194. That's the best ever for a non-Imax film on more than 50 playdates. . . . Indie is pushing up a planned expansion to take advantage of pic's momentum. Previously set to stay flat until January, "Brokeback" will now likely expand to more than 100 playdates next weekend, primarily in the same 21 markets it's in." It was also the first film in ten years to crack the top ten with fewer than 100 theaters.

Will It Sell? / Will It Change the Culture? -- Tales from Mainstream Media:

"The film, written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, is a near-perfect adaptation of Proulx's work. It has already earned the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and is almost certain to be an Oscar contender. More than that, though, "Brokeback" feels like a landmark film. No American film before has portrayed love between two men as something this pure and sacred. As such, it has the potential to change the national conversation and to challenge people's ideas about the value and validity of same-sex relationships. In the meantime, it's already upended decades of Hollywood conventional wisdom."

"The question is, how broad will it go?

No one knows that answer, because no one has ventured into this territory before. The movie is a groundbreaker. There's never been a homosexual cowboy movie, and while the indies have been supplying gay romances to the art house circuit for years, and gay series like "Queer as Folk" and "Will & Grace" have been pulling big numbers on TV, there hasn't been a mainstream gay love story since 1982's "Making Love," which bombed and was blamed by many for damaging Harry Hamlin's career. "It's the one last frontier," says Lee."

"Director Ang Lee is set to cast Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in "Brokeback Mountain," a story of two cowboys in love. But are studios -- and audiences -- ready for a passionate big-screen kiss between men?"

Interviews:

Other Significant News Stories:

". . . probably the most anticipated gay film of all time. . . . Here's a fact many gay film fans know that most straight people probably don't: Most gay films are awful."

Awards & Nominations:

  • Scorecard of Awards, from MCN. Brokeback cleaning up.
  • Scoreboard of critics' Top 10 lists for 2005.
  • Brokeback dominates Golden Globe noms. (Takes most w/ 7, next most gets 4. Noms for everybody but Jake. Ouch. Most of the big contender films snubbed.) Interesting piece, "Interpreting the Globes." And a good quickie analysis from Entertainment Weekly.
  • LA Film Critics: Winner, Best Picture, Best Director; runner-up, Best Actor
  • AFI Top Ten films of 2005 (no winner selected)
  • Boston Film Critics: Winner, Best Picture, Best Director
  • Broadcast Film Critics: 8 nominations, most of any film
  • Venice Film Festival -- Winner, Gold Lion (best film)
  • Independent Spirit Awards:
    • Four nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Ang Lee), Best Actor (Heath Ledger), Best Supporting Actress (Michelle Williams). (Sorry Jake.) Nomination list. Press release.
    • Brokeback was tied for second with four noms. This will help get this film to a broader audience--every bit of cred helps. And it will also help in the Oscar race, as the only film with more noms, "The Squid & The Whale," is out of serious contention.
    • Awards to be announced Mar 4, 2006
  • IFC Gotham Awards:
  • Golden Satellites: 8 nominations, all the big categories

Oscar Race:

  • The Gurus o' Gold--Oscar rankings from roughly a dozen of leading "experts," from Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, etc. Sort of the rottentomatoes of Oscar predictions. Brokeback is in first place! And gaining.
  • A wonderful piece on why Brokeback is the Oscar contender to beat. And just a wonderful piece on why Brokeback is so great. By Emanuel Levy.
  • Calendar to the 2005 Film Awards season. Oscar dates in red, major announcements in bold, ballot deadlines in italics. All on one page.
    • Three key weeks in the race:
      • Second week in Dec: Major critics awards and Globe noms
      • First two weeks in Jan: SAG and guilds announce noms, followed by Globe awards
      • Last few days of Jan, first few of Feb: Guild and SAG awards, Oscar noms announced
    • Note that Brokeback is launching right in the heart of that first big window of heavy activity/publicity, platforming in 3 cities Dec 9, and expanding in the wake of the first round on Dec 16. It continues to expand in Jan and Feb, as the Oscar race revs into full gear, providing maximum credibility and publicity as it tries to crack the Red States.
  • The latest from David Poland at MovieCityNews: 20 Weeks To Oscar
    • Brokeback leapt from 8th to 3rd last week, stayed there Thanksgiving week! All the Brokeback contenders moved way up, too. His column and picks are updated every Thursday.
  • Jack Matthews of NY Daily News ranks the top ten Oscar favorites, and puts Brokeback at #2 (after Munich, which no one has seen, because it isn't finished yet):
  • Gold Derby, by Tom O'Neil (now part of LA Times--new address)
  • Oscar Beat, at LA Times site
  • The Awards Blog at MCN
  • Newsweek's Sean Smith on the Best Actor race (Nov. 28): "Nominations for [Hoffman, Ledger and Phoenix] are considered guaranteed, according to the Academy voters, strategists and industry insiders interviewed for this story."
  • Brokeback's SAG For Your Consideration Ad. (With Jake Gyllenhaal slotted for supporting actor.)

Related -- Gay Marriage (Jack's dream, Ennis' fear):

  • My Gay Marriage site: The Struggle to End This Immoral Ban.
  • Missing out on my American dream. My very personal 2003 essay on why marrying a man means so much to me. (If I only had one to marry. Heeheehee.)
  • The Media Needs to Lead. My 2003 essay on why I believe pop culture needs to be out front on gay marriage. At the time, I was afraid of the courts moving too fast. In retrospect, I'm glad they did, but I still believe the mass media is crucial--and lagging. Eventually, I think straight people will embrace gay marriage because they get it: they get why it is so important to homos like me, and they understand how we're just like them. This film could not be more central to that idea of gay love being exactly like straight love.
  • My recent posts on gayguys (or do you prefer homos?)

The Book:

  • Read the entire New Yoker version of the short story by Annie Proulx. (It's about 30 pages in the original Scribner print edition. Note: The New Yorker omitted the crucial first two paragraphs. You can read them below, under the section "The Amazing Opening Passage . . ." They appeared in italics in the book. From there, imagine an extra line break and then picking up reading from the first line of the NYer version.)
  • Read my favorite passages from Annie Proulx's short story (scroll to the bottom of this page).
  • Buy Annie Proulx's book containing Brokeback Mountain from Amazon: Close Range: Wyoming Stories.
  • Buy the new movie-tie-in version of the book by Annie Proulx--just the short story Brokeback Mountain (stretched to 64 pages, but only $10). From Amazon. From A Different Light.
  • Official Annie Proulx site (yes, annieproulx.com)
  • Address to write Annie Proulx: c/o Liz Darhansoff Darhansoff, Verrill, Feldman Agency 236 W. 26th St, Ste 802 New York, NY 10001 email:liz@dvagency.com
  • Listen to it read at Audible.com

Video Feeds:

Find ALL the latest news and blog posts:

Plot Summary:

The new film from Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee. An epic love story set against the sweeping vistas of Wyoming and Texas, Brokeback Mountain tells the story of two young men – a ranch-hand and a rodeo cowboy – who meet in the summer of 1963, and unexpectedly forge a lifelong connection, one whose complications, joys and tragedies provide a testament to the endurance and power of love. {From Rotten Tomatoes}

Tragic Quotes:

  • Ennis Del Mar: "If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it."
  • Jack Twist: "It could be like this--just like this--always."
  • Jack Twist: "You have no idea how bad it gets."

Box Office:

  • Weekly Box office history for Brokeback from IMDB (once it exists) 
  • My guide to gauging early Brokeback box office. Comparisons to recent platform releases, like Good Night Good Luck and Syriana.
  • Results from Day #1:

    • Saturday Update from boxofficeguru: "Opening to muscular results in platform release on Friday were a pair of awards contenders sure to post sensational averages this weekend. Focus Features debuted Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain in five theaters and grossed an estimated $192,000 for a jaw-dropping $38,000 average in just one day. Meanwhile, Sony premiered its Japan-set drama Memoirs of a Geisha in eight sites with an estimated $226,000 for a strong $28,000 average. Despite playing in only a handful of theaters, both pictures should pop into the North American Top 20."

Soundtrack:

Pix, filmography, etc. for actors, director, writers:

  • Great pix from the film, (new link) including lots of shots of Jake and Heath kissing and holding each other while half-naked. (Scroll down the comments, near the top.) More pix, including the landing kiss here. Or very long slide show here. 
  • The best slide show of stills from the film I have seen. The first pic is as good as it gets, should have been on the poster. (And was apparently not in circulation earlier.)
  • Various photo galleries for Brokeback
  • Links for Heath Ledger
    • Pics of Heath Ledger: Google images
    • Rotten Tomatoes listing of Heath Ledger's films
    • Those notorious pictures of Heath Ledger nude, filming the scene running to the cliff. (Sorry, Jake used a stunt double. But pics of Jake nude below, from Jarhead.) I feel bad about posting a link to a nude picture taken without permission, but email me if you want it and I'll send it. Is that just hypocritical? Seemed like a reasonable compromise.
    • More Heath pix here (all pretty boyish, unfortunately. I prefer both of these guys grown up.)
    • IMDB listing for Heath Ledger
    • (see news story on his baby with Michelle Williams above.)
    • (more coming)
  • Links for Jake Gyllenhaal:
  • Links for Ang Lee
  • Books by Annie Proulx
  • Links for Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana
  • Links for Anne Hathaway
  • Links for Michelle Williams
    • Rotten Tomatoes listing of Michelle Williams' films (Best known for Dawson's Creek)
    • IMDB listing for Michelle
    • (see news story on baby above. Michelle Williams is not-quite-married to Heath Ledger in real life, too.)

Misc:

Selected Reviews:

"If I’m making it sound as though Brokeback Mountain is a downer, it’s actually a serious piece of art in which great joy can be taken in witnessing the small-miracle performances of Ledger (so eloquent in his mute despair) and Gyllenhaal (so meticulously agonized by his daily compromises). Ang Lee conveys maddening delirium rendered in the way one man’s eyes gaze at another’s, and then look away, and the looking-away amounts to the murder of two souls as surely as if they’d drawn guns and hit each other in the heart."

"This slow and stoic movie, hailed as a gay Western, feels neither gay nor especially Western: it is a study of love under siege."

 

Rolling Stone -- by Peter Travers: 4 stars out of 4

Ang Lee's unmissable and unforgettable Brokeback Mountain hits you like a shot in the heart. It's a landmark film and a triumph for Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, who bring deep reserves of feeling to this defiantly erotic love story about two Wyoming ranch hands and the external and internal forces that drive them from desire to denial. Directed with piercing intelligence and delicacy by Lee, the film of Annie Proulx's 1997 short story -- the unerring script by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana is a model of literary adaptation -- wears its emotions on its sleeve.

 

That leaves the film vulnerable. The media keep tagging it as the gay cowboy movie, the queer Gone With the Wind, the Western that puts the poke in cowpoke. Coupled with the rise of homophobia as church and state shout down gay marriage, the film is up against it.

 

Do me a favor: See the movie first and make your judgments later. It's an eye-opener.

 

---

 

Lee's filmmaking mastery has never been more evident. Watch the skill with which the Taiwanese director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Sense and Sensibility walks the volatile ground of this reunion scene. Ennis can't contain his excitement. Running down the steps to greet his friend, he collides with Jack's body, kissing him fiercely and Jack returning the heat. Alma sees it too, from the window, finding reinforcement for something she's always felt. Without dialogue, Lee creates a whole world that can be read eloquently and movingly on the faces of the actors.

 

And what actors. Though the characters must age twenty years, Lee has cast the film young, a risk that pays major dividends.

 

 

---

 

Ledger's magnificent performance is an acting miracle. He seems to tear it from his insides. Ledger doesn't just know how Ennis moves, speaks and listens; he knows how he breathes. To see him inhale the scent of a shirt hanging in Jack's closet is to take measure of the pain of love lost. As Jack told him once, "That ol' Brokeback got us good." That's the key reason -- besides its daring, its bravery, its dead-on relevance to right now -- that this classic in the making ranks high on the list of the year's best movies. It gets you good.

 

"Brokeback Mountain is that rare thing, a big Hollywood weeper with a beautiful ache at its center."

 

          VENICE, Italy -- Everything you ever imagined about the characters of John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in "Red River" or Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott in "Ride the High Country" is revealed candidly in Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," an epic Western about forbidden love.

          Anne Proulx's 1997 short story in the New Yorker has been masterfully expanded by screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana to provide director Lee with his best movie since "Sense and Sensibility" in 1995.

          Featuring scenes filmed in the fabulous Canadian Rockies of Alberta and boasting a fine cast topped by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, "Brokeback Mountain" will appeal to moviegoers who enjoy grand filmmaking and poignant love stories, whether gay, hetero or otherwise.

          That most chameleonlike of directors, Ang Lee, pulls off yet another surprising left turn in "Brokeback Mountain." An achingly sad tale of two damaged souls whose intimate connection across many years cannot ever be properly resolved, this ostensible gay Western is marked by a heightened degree of sensitivity and tact, as well as an outstanding performance from Heath Ledger. With critical support, Focus should have little trouble stirring interest among older, sophisticated viewers in urban markets, but trying to cross this risky venture over into wider release reps a marketing challenge for the ages; paradoxically, young women may well constitute the group that will like the film best. ... 

          Annie Proulx's 1997 short story movingly compressed the long-arc love story of two loner ranch hands into 30 tight pages. Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana have faithfully and perceptively retained the tone and the particulars of the tale in their screenplay, elaborating mainly in the areas of the separate family lives the men pursue during their long separations....

          Both young thesps are game, credible as cowboys and unselfconscious with the verbal and physical intimacy. But while Gyllenhaal is engaging as the more free-wheeling of the two, Ledger is powerfully impressive as a frightened, limited man ill-equipped to deal with what life throws at him. Mumbling, looking down, internalizing everything, Ledger's Ennis at times looks as though he's going to explode from his inchoate feelings. Perf could scarcely be more different from his terrific work in the otherwise negligible "Lords of Dogtown," and the combo makes it a dazzling year for Ledger.

          Williams gives Alma a quality of slow-burn devastation that is touching, and Hathaway provides an entertaining contrast in wifely disappointment. The numerous small supporting roles are sharply etched, a sign of Lee's sure hand with the material.

          The beautiful, rugged locations, which would have roused Anthony Mann, are majestically captured by lenser Rodrigo Prieto. The passing years, from the early '60s to the late '70s, are subtly indicated in the production and costume design, hair styles and gingerly aging makeup, while Gustavo Santaolalla's conventionally supportive score is nicely abetted by a host of period and setting-appropriate tunes.

Every once in a while a film comes along that changes our perceptions so much that cinema history thereafter has to arrange itself around it. Think of Thelma and Louise or Chungking Express, Blow-Up or Orlando - all big films that taught us to look and think and swagger differently. Brokeback Mountain is just such a film. Even for audiences educated by a decade of the New Queer Cinema phenomenon - from Mala Noche and Poison to High Art and Boys Don't Cry - it's a shift in scope and tenor so profound as to signal a new era.

A fortnight ago, Ang Lee flew to Venice to accept the Golden Lion grand prize at the Venice film festival. Last week, Ledger and Gyllenhaal flew to Canada to accept the wild ovations of the crowds at the Toronto International film festival. Quite simply, despite the long careers of Derek Jarman, Gus Van Sant, John Waters, Gregg Araki, Todd Haynes, Patricia Rozema, or Ulrike Ottinger, there has never been a film by a brand-name director, packed with A-list Hollywood stars at the peak of their careers, that has taken an established conventional genre by the horns and wrestled it into a tale of homosexual love emotionally positioned to ensnare a general audience. With Brokeback Mountain, all bets are off.

Empire -- (bestselling film mag in UK): five stars

Roger Ebert video review (film summary portion only)

  • Slate: Is Brokeback Mountain a Gay Film? (Lame answer to that.) Lame review from David Edelstein.
  • Rex Reed gushing review in NY Observer.

    • Your Comments:  

    See links under Discussion Board, near the top of this page.

     

    The Amazing Opening Passage of the Brokeback Mountain short story:

    Ennis Del Mar wakes before five, wind rocking the trailer, hissing in around the aluminum door and window frames. The shirts hanging on a nail shudder slightly in the draft. He gets up, scratching the grey wedge of belly and pubic hair, shuffles to the gas burner, pours leftover coffee in a chipped enamel pan; the flame swathes it in blue. He turns on the tap and urinates in the sink, pulls on his shirt and jeans, his worn boots, stamping the heels against the floor to get them full on. The wind booms down the curved length of the trailer and under its roaring passage he can hear the scratching of fine gravel and sand. It could be bad on the highway with the horse trailer. He has to be packed and away from the place that morning. Again the ranch is on the market and they've shipped out the last of the horses, paid everybody off the day before, the owner saying, "Give em to the real estate shark, I'm out a here," dropping the keys in Ennis's hand. He might have to stay with his married daughter until he picks up another job, yet he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream.

    The stale coffee is boiling up but he catches it before it goes over the side, pours it into a stained cup and blows on the black liquid, lets a panel of the dream slide forward. If he does not force his attention on it, it might stoke the day, rewarm that old, cold time on the mountain when they owned the world and nothing seemed wrong. The wind strikes the trailer like a load of dirt coming off a dump truck, eases, dies, leaves a temporary silence.

    {Note: Those first two paragraphs appear in italics in the story, for a reason.}

     

    My Favorite Scene from the book (partial): mountain

    The day was hot and clear in the morning, but by noon the clouds had pushed up out of the west rolling a little sultry air before them. Ennis, wearing his best shirt, white with wide black stripes, didn't know what time Jack would get there and so had taken the day off, paced back and forth, looking down into a street pale with dust. Alma was saying somet