Brokeback Mountain

Speaking of parts, I heard that Anne Hathaway's boobs were in it. Well, that and the popcorn should be some consolation when the wife drags me off to go see it.

Oh, and for the record, I have absolutely no desire to go see this movie... or to rent it when it comes out. Now, I prefer my movies with a little more fighting, shooting, blood and gory, and/or people getting their arms and legs getting chopped off in battle. Either that or zombie movies.

haha. damned right.

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In fact, the only problem with remembering that it’s a western is having to ignore the fact that most westerns are about 1000 percent gay.

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what did i tell you before about cowboys?totally gay. assless-chaps-gay, even. leather-gay. cattle-prod-gay. think about it.

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6. Anne Hathaway, who plays AJ’s wife, gets topless. The End

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wanna go see a movie later?

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אָרַח

did you see the masters of horror tonight? the dead came back to life to vote bush out of office. it was hillarious.also, as per brenna's unwritten thesis, zombie movies are still about communism.

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אָרַח

berberry writes:

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So yeah, my statement was inaccurate, but I think it's still true that nothing even close to this has been done before.

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Hie thee to a library and look up The Celluloid Closet. Or watch the documentary based upon the book. There have been plenty of movies that are gay-themed. Just off the top of my head:Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Brick is gay.
The Children's Hour: Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn play two women who fall in love with each other.
Making Love: Harry Hamlin of LA Law fame is the other man as the husband in a straight marriage (wife is Kate Jackson) discovers he's gay.
Cruising: Al Pacino goes undercover to find a serial killer of gay men.
La Cage Aux Folles/The Birdcage: Nathan Lane being his gay old self as Robin Williams tries to keep up.
The Boys in the Band: A bunch of gay men having a party with a lot of self-loathing.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show: OK...Frankie is pan-sexual, but it actually has a shot of Tim Curry going down on Barry Bostwick.And, of course, Jeffrey: Patrick Stewart taking a red sweater, throwing it over his shoulders, sweeping the sleeve around his neck and saying, "Can I do this, or will I look like some sort of gay superhero?" Very funny film. Highly recommended. When the scene finally happens where Jeffrey and Steve finally kiss, the film cuts to a shot of two boy-girl couples in the audience watching the film. The boys immediately screw up their faces in disgust while the girls look at each and go, "Awwwww!" A recurring joke is the Sexaholics Anonymous encounter group. For one scenelet, the actor who played Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager gets up and says, "Hi, my name is Dave and I'm a sexual compulsive." Group responds, "Hi, Dave!" Dave continues, "I have sex about three times a day and I have a 12 inch penis." Slight pause. Group: "Ooh! Hi, Dave!"

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Yep, R, I've seen most of those, but I still don't think there's anything that compares to Brokeback.

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The Celluloid Closet

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Absolutely, I've read and seen it - albeit some years ago.

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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Brick is gay.

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Yes, but most people don't get that from the movie because of the script changes (speaking of the Paul Newman; in spite of the changes that version is still superior to the Tommy Lee Jones in my opinion). I have yet to see this on the stage.

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The Children's Hour

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Never saw the film, but I did see the play about 15 years ago. I should take your advice and check this one out; I'm curious to see if they hide the lesbianism in it. I don't see how the picture could make sense without it. Wasn't there an early talkie version of it too?

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Making Love

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Ewww, I hate that one. It's been too long since I've seen it for me to cite all the faults, but I remember that the only thing I really liked about it was the Roberta Flack song.

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Cruising

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Vaguely remember it; is this the one that had John Hurt? No, no, that one had Ryan O'Neal too, but it was somehow related to this. I've forgotten.Speaking of Al Pacino, you forgot about Dog Day Afternoon.

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La Cage Aux Folles / Birdcage

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Wonderful comedies both but I give a slight edge to the original. Speaking of which, LCAF is one of the rare cases of a foreign film where I prefer the dubbed version to the subtitled. The French have such a gift for visual humor, and in watching this you'll miss a lot of the best jokes if you're reading subtitles.

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The Boys in the Band

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Love it! Absolutely love it!

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The Rocky Horror Picture Show: OK...Frankie is pan-sexual, but it actually has a shot of Tim Curry going down on Barry Bostwick.

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Oh yeah, I remember. That film led to one of the best nights of sex I ever had during high school.I haven't seen Jeffrey and had in fact forgotten about it until you mentioned it. It's another I need to see.But I stand by my statement that none of these are in any way like Brokeback Mountain. I can't remember a drama where the audience's sympathy is thrown to two young gay male leads. Making Love may have come close, but I just didn't like it.Another picture that hasn't been mentioned is A Different Story, but I didn't much like it either because the main characters go straight at the end, which is totally unrealistic.AbE: There's another we both forgot but which definitely should be mentioned - Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. It's not without faults, and one can imagine that in 1948 most people didn't have a clue that the lead characters were gay (unless of course they knew that the story was based on the Leopold-Loeb murder case), but watching it today there can be no question about it.YAE (yet another edit): On further reflection, a few more films come to mind, including one which is perhaps a bit closer to the theme of Brokeback. First, there are two more cinematic versions of the Leopold-Loeb case: Compulsion, which is mostly a courtroom drama, and Swoon, which is really a lot of fun to watch. Of the three I think I prefer the Hitchcock, which is odd in a way since I love black-and-white and this is very much a black-and-white kind of story. But Rope was Hitch's first Technicolor feature and is interesting in that respect as well as in the performance of the two leads, Farley Granger and John Dall who, aware that the script didn't make the sexuality explicit, seem to do what they can to convey it through gestures.Coming closer than anything else I can remember to being a good gay love story is the Merchant-Ivory Maurice, featuring a young Hugh Grant in a sexually ambiguous role. In this picture, Hugh Grant and James Wilby carry off the first passionate male-to-male kiss I can remember seeing in a movie.This message has been edited by berberry, 12-10-2005 02:11 PM

of all the people who ever loved mango, garth brooks loved him the most.

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i'm worldwide bitch, act like ya'll don't know.

Sorry, I was too drunk to notice anything. When I wrote that post, I was sobering up... but was still a little drunk. Damn cops keep busting my parties.Anyway, zombies rule!

berberryr responds to me:

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I can't remember a drama where the audience's sympathy is thrown to two young gay male leads.

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You keep changing your criteria! First you said, "big budget movie made on a gay theme." Now it's a drama. You seem to be denying Jeffery because it's a romantic comedy. Jeffery, scared because of the threat of HIV, has sworn off all men...only to meet the perfect man who happens to be HIV+. The movie is about Jeffery getting over himself and the two of them getting together.I'd say Making Love, even though you don't like it, is designed to invoke sympathy in all of the characters: The husband for coming to terms with his sexuality, the wife for having to deal with that fact, and the other man for being caught in the ordeal. You may not think it handled it effectively, but that was the point of the movie. Nobody died in the end and neither of the two gay men were portrayed as villains.If you don't think you're supposed to identify with Frankie in RHPS, just who are you supposed to identify with? Columbia? Or does the fact that it's a musical somehow make it less legitimate?There's also Will and Grace from TV where Will and Jack are definitely played sympathetically (and for which they FINALLY got around to giving Will a sex life and won an Emmy in the process). Or is it not worthy because it's a comedy? There's always Queer as Folk or does TV not count?What about Longtime Companion? Or Love! Valour! Compassion!? Or the HBO version of Angels in America? Or Bent? Or But I'm a Cheerleader? Or Hedwig and the Angry Inch? Or My Beautiful Laundrette? Or My Own Private Idaho?If The Boys in the Band is not a big budget drama based on a gay theme where you're supposed to have sympathy for the characters, what is?What is it that Brokeback Mountain has that these movies don't that makes you call BM the "first"?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

omg i loved that movie. my brother and i dressed up like that one year for halloween i completely forgot.

Rrhain writes me:

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You keep changing your criteria! First you said, "big budget movie made on a gay theme." Now it's a drama.

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Well, yeah, I know. I changed it more than once, and quite openly. The point wasn't so much to defend any particular statement as it was to figure out just what statement would be true. Based on my reading of the short story and what I've heard about this picture, there's definitely something new about it and I'm trying to figure out just what it is.Making Love seems to be fresher in your memory than it is in mine, so I'd like to ask you a question about it (I may have it confused with something else): isn't the film very sympathetic to the wife (wasn't it Kate Jackson?)? I seem to recall that it placed considerable blame for her situation on the Ontkean (sp?) character, rather than on society at large. Am I correct in remembering it this way?

berberry responds to me:

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isn't the film very sympathetic to the wife (wasn't it Kate Jackson?)?

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Yes and yes. The movie was sympathetic to all the characters. The three characters find themselves in an impossible position. Nobody is going to come out of it unscathed.

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I seem to recall that it placed considerable blame for her situation on the Ontkean (sp?) character, rather than on society at large.

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I haven't seen the movie in years, so I am not sure, however I don't recall there being "blame" on the husband. I mean, obviously the situation demands some sort of "explanation" as to why he entered into the marriage and the wife is perfectly justified in feeling betrayed, but we shouldn't confuse any individual scene with the complete story arc.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Rrhain writes me:

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I haven't seen the movie in years, so I am not sure, however I don't recall there being "blame" on the husband.

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I remember coming away from Making Love disappointed in the way it portrayed the Ontkean character. As I recall the film didn't do much to make the point that Ontkean should never have been forced into a situation where he needed a wife in order to hide his sexuality; that in a better world he would never have married Jackson to begin with. It seems to me that Ontkean was shown as indifferent toward his wife's suffering.Again, it's been years so I could well be wrong (not to mention that my attitudes were a bit different all those years ago), so I will concede that I might have a very different reaction if I were to see the movie again. Perhaps the LOGO channel will run it one day soon; I don't think my local video store has it.

Making Love was on tonight on the Fox Movie Channel.Roberta Flack is amazing.

Of course I've been very happy to hear all the Oscar buzz about this picture, but I'm absolutely stunned by a couple Christian reviews: one from Christianity Today and another from Catholic News Service. Hard to believe, but aside from a few phrases like "the actions taken by Ennis and Jack cannot be endorsed" the reviews are surprisingly positive and even somewhat sympathetic to the two cowboys. In fact, especially in the case of the Catholic review, the reviewers may be pushing the envelope with their respective church authorities.We've still got a long way to go with these people, but I'm surprised to see that some of them aren't too bigoted to ever reform. I just wish more Christians of this type would speak up when their brethren are demonizing us.