Brokeback Mountain Snubbed - Homophobia or the same old nonsense?

Uh, not from Crash?

Hollywood trying to remain relevant to middle America, blahblahblah

xpost yeah that is teh good point also

My favorite part of the show, especially when one of the cutaways was reserved for ancient Mickey Rooney, looking horrified.

To modify the natural expression of (a primitive, instinctual impulse) in a socially acceptable manner.
b. To divert the energy associated with (an unacceptable impulse or drive) into a personally and socially acceptable activity.

xp

really? the clips make it look so bad. and they make the two leads look bad too. bad/funny though. but maybe clips don't do it justice. or maybe i was just really stoned last nite.

I quite liked it.

WELCOME TO THE CLUB

Ever? No.

xp

Yeah, I'm pissed that Munich didn't win! Hollywood always be snubbing the Jews!

haven't seen it, but seeing as how most herzog "documentaries" run loose with the facts and interject many fictions (to get to the heart of the matter, but still) it could be messy if one wins best doc, no?

(/snob)

Moral to the gays = don't go on and on about Brokeback losing the Oscar and we won't have to suffer a gay-themed movie as awful as Crash winning 20 years from now.

It will be called South Beach, starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Marc Anthony, with Salma Hayek as the long-suffering wife.

brokeback mountain was only the "frontrunner" because of the hype, a subject more conducive to column-inches, not necessarily because it was that much "better" than the other nominees. these award are always a crap shoot.

And because, you know, it won every other award on the planet..

Gays brokenhearted over 'Brokeback' loss
S.F. crowd gets quiet, some cry as 'Crash' wins Oscar"

This was supposed to have been the big "gay" year at the Oscars

San Franciscans feel more 'continental' and old world than the LA heathans, and this is usually manifested as an unattractive snobby superiority.

Indeed.

Crash:

Chicago Film Critics Association
Image Awards
SAG (best ensemble)

Brokeback Mountain:

BAFTA Film Award
Boston Society of Film Critics
Broadcast Film Critics Association
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association
Golden Globes
Independent Spirit Awards
London Critics Circle Film
Los Angeles Film Critics Association
New York Film Critics Circle
PGA Golden Laurel Awards
San Francisco Film Critics Circle
Satellite Awards
Southeastern Film Critics Association
Vancouver Film Critics Circle
Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival

Swap that about and you've got it right.

if you weren't defending yr home turf I might give this silly statement some credence - as it is, I'm curious what a more *cough* objective observer would say about our Bay Areans' "well-known" loathing of our
southland leeches.

so, uh, what's your big excuse for LA dislike then? I mean it is pretty fucking well known that SF hates LA, dude. If yr gonna call a man out for having the wrong explanation you should have an explanation of yr own.

Incidentally, Oakland is forever in SF's shadow (probably rightly so) just as St. Paul will always darkened by Minneapolis's might: the dreaded second city status.

"I'm speaking of is natural, LA is bigger,"

haha - this is not "natural"! Its an after-effect of unbelievably shitty urban planning.

"has lovely weather"

so does SF

"Hollywood"

eh.

"models running around everywhere"

never seen any in LA - tho I have seen plenty of fat, spoiled acne-scarred blonde bitches in giant SUVs. I hate models anyway.

"SF is smaller, seen as provincial by some, etc."

hooray!

THE CALM BEFORE JACK'S DARK ANNOUNCEMENT....

Anyway, LA over SF, of course. Warmer weather.

a) the movie was set in the flyover
b) the presence of sexual content that is both same and opposite gendered, meant that it was difficult to process using tools that are already fairly common
c) the movie refused a standard vicitm naarratology
d )the rural folks were not enemies, the honest portyral w/o exoticism of the west,
e) i dont think that the left liberal elite understand themes like sacrifice for others, honour, the abjection of ego, and dereliction of duty.

also: anthony your point e) is bullshit and I'm wondering about b) too

-- Alex in SF (clobberthesauru...), March 7th, 2006.

wOOt!

b might be

No doubt all the photos of Jake Gyllenhaal I posted confused them.

-- andy -- (and...), Today 5:24 PM.

Is it sad that I know these people... ?

Yes Steve Shasta, yes it is.

i think that moving to large, costal, urban centers, for many people, esp. those in "the arts" is a concious desicion against the duties, communities, requiements and pressures of a small town.

i think, also, that brokeback is a movie that makes problematic the moving and the not moving, the negotions b/w city life and farm life--and i think that a text that discussses issues larger coastal audiences have spent a life time ignoring or mythologizing in a more pleasent way (cf capra) meant that they were not willing to handle what was really happening.

I just saw it today! with my very conservative mother! we both loved it!

The main taboo was for actors to get out of the closet, as this was (with reason) thought to adversely affect their box office appeal. Being gay was not a problem, being known as gay was. Writers, costumers, set designers, lighting designers, and many others could be fairly open and still prosper in Hollywood, so long as they did good work. Good work == money and money washes all things clean.

-- andy -- (and...), Today 6:44 PM. (later)

hahaha welcome ot montreal.

Partial point well taken. I think it could also be a conscious decision against the bigotries, taboos, voyeurism, and moral-code-masquerading-as-mythology of a small town. At least it was in my case. I pissed off exactly one person by moving out of a small town in the West: my mother, who grew up in the San Francisco projects in the 1950s and taught me everything I ever knew about tolerance. After three decades in that small Oregon town, she has now become completely conservative in both politics and worldview, and we barely talk. I bear shame for the failure of our relationship, but I am proud to have broken the cycle of narrow-mindedness and Jesus-tells-me-who-to-love-ism I saw in many of my grade school and jr. high and high school friends. Of course, circumstance and choice mean that I now live in the Midwest where the game is not grunts-standing-for-real-feelings but smiling-passive-aggression, and now all I want to do is move to Arizona, but that might be the snow talking.

But every story is different, and I know just enough about you, Anthony, to know you are not talking shit but speaking from the heart.

Crash seemed like a film class exercise. "You will make a film with intersecting story-lines, and each story-line will deal with racism, and by the end of the film each character will have had an EPIPHANY!

Now that's realistic!

Sometimes, I think "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" is the truest (if cartooniest) vision of American small-town life.

It took some work in the beginning to understand him, after which I had no trouble. I've been lamenting for years how most young film actors don't know how to move in character. If there's one thing I love about Brokeback, it's the unabashed manner in which Ledger and Gyllenhaal both understand how to telegraph pain and desire with their bodies. The opening scene with Gyllenhaal leaning against the truck is the best thing he's ever done; ditto the crab-like scuttle with which Ennis moves into that fourth-rate trailer at the conclusion, done without those pseudo-Brando/Method touches Sean Penn does at his most tedious.

I haven't seen the film, but this is what's been told to me. Also that it was fucking boring. Not seen this Crash either.

What kept people from seeing Brokeback Mountain was not its homosexuality but its overall mawkish tone. It'd be only a little bit easier to get the same people to view The Notebook last year. (And unlike Brokeback, you don't get to be pretentious about what watching The Notebook. At least I hope not.)

Sure Hollywood is more accepting than the right, but movies like Philedelphia hardly count as radical. The Academy hides behind this facade of liberalism, but when it comes down to it.. they aren't as accepting as they lead on. Just because they throw a bones every few years, doesn't mean they're not wthout their prejudices.

And can I just say how much it annoyed the shit out of me that whenever any talking head on the red carpet asked Gyllenhaal and Ledger about the novie, they have to go out of their way to point out that it's just acting, it's just acting! And that they have to just ignore that it's another guy and realize it's just acting! Whereas nobody ever asks (to use your example) Rupert Everett what it's like to have to kiss a woman in a movie, and if it's hard to do. Nor -- usually -- does anyone ask women who have to kiss other women in movies if it's particularly difficult.

In every case someone blames a mythical Hollywood agenda (Token Black Man Award! They hate gays! They hate blacks! They love Jews! etc) and everyone talks about it and complains about and confirms to the Academy that they are important and that it still matters to have "Academy Award" stamped on a DVD box.

*'right' and 'good' are entirely subjective and usually interchangeable depending on your agenda.

How about...

right = movie with a message, something worthy that goes beyond "entertain the punter"

good = an enjoyable/rewarding/interesting movie regardless of the agenda/moral message/worthiness which may or may not be there

right movies can be good and good movies can be right and deciding which is which is dependent on who's making them, who's watching them and how many conflicting agendas there are.

'owzat?

My point is that BM losing isn't necessarily anti-gay, any more than BM winning would have been pro-gay. Either scenario would have someone high-fiving and someone else complaining about injustice. Either way the Academy is validated as actually meaning something.

Boy, I can think of a half-dozen adjectives to characterize my reluctance to fully embrace the film, but "mawkish" sure sounds incorrect.

" 'Crash' was far more representative of the our industry, of where we work and live," said David Cohen, one among hundreds of Hollywood players joining in the festivities. " 'Brokeback' took on a fairly sacred Hollywood icon, the cowboy, and I don't think the older members of the academy wanted to see the image of the American cowboy diminished."

see that reel of "hot" cowboy clips really was a double-edged sword

was clint eastwood in the audience?

Capote: Faggy NY intellectual demographic
Brokeback Mountain: Soccer Mom demographic
Munich: Reformed right-moderates with enlisted offspring
Good Night, and Good Luck: Smoking drinking closet liberal demographic
Crash: Black Ppl.

No movies this year representing the dweeb with the ukelele who wrote a Free Mumia/No Blood For Oil medley all by himself (Grizzly Man?) but I think you get the point. This is Bulworth and Do The Right Thing getting posthumous revenge on palefaces.

And trying to make ANY kind of qualitative point regarding which selection should win something as stupid as Best Picture was already covered by Jon Stewart during the fucking show. 3-6 Mafia 1, Scorsese 0.

As the Sunday NY Times pointed out, the Academy already voted for a gay cowboy movie 36 years ago.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0792833287.01._PE44_.Midnight-Cowboy._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Lionel Richie 1, Scorsese 0.

Everyone upthread is otm about the body language acting. Large landscape shots aside, there's a lot that goes on in the film that's communicated without dialog.

Dan, I am with you on The Hulk, I liked it.

If I can find the USA Today's story, I'll post it. Nicholson was apparently as surprised as most of us. When asked backstage, he said, "It was a surprise since Brokeback had the momentum. And I voted for it."

"snub" in relation to mega-awards show is a weird concept. 2046 and Munich were snubbed a helluva lot more than Brokeback.

Academy voters picking Crash were giving sympathy votes and also interested in seeing a film that DIDN'T get as much attention (but was also "important") get some more looks. The whole thing reminded me of the year the Do The Right Thing didn't even get nominated so practically every other announcer gave a shout-out to Spike and his movie. Made my family rent it.

BBM I haven't seen but the Oscar clips made me want to, though I likely never will because my family will make a big bloody deal about it.

dan i was the world's #1 heath ledger non-fan but i thought he was awesome in this

Since the bar TV on which I watched the Oscars had subtitles, Ledger automatically seemed better in the BBM clip.

"This story is a narration from an Australian man who falls in love with two kinds of Candy: a woman of the same name and heroin. The narrator changes from a smart-aleck to someone trying to find a vein to inject, while Candy changes from an actress, call girl, streetwalker, and then a madwoman. Starting in Sydney, the two eventually end up in Melbourne to go clean, but they fail. This leads them to turn to finding money and heroin, while other posessions and attachments become unimportant."

ya mean "burn hollywood burn," dude.

i dunno why anyone gives a fuck.

wrong

xpost

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060306/OSCARS/603070301

LOS ANGELES -- One of the mysteries of the 2006 Oscar season is the virulence with which lovers of "Brokeback Mountain" savaged "Crash." When the film about racism actually won the Oscar for best picture Sunday, there was no grace in their response. As someone who felt "Brokeback" was a great film but "Crash" a greater one, I would have been pleased if either had won.

But here is Ken Turan in the Los Angeles Times, writing on the morning after: "So for people who were discomfited by 'Brokeback Mountain' but wanted to be able to look themselves in the mirror and feel like they were good, productive liberals, 'Crash' provided the perfect safe harbor. They could vote for it in good conscience, vote for it and feel they had made a progressive move, vote for it and not feel that there was any stain on their liberal credentials for shunning what 'Brokeback' had to offer. And that's exactly what they did."

And Nikki Finke, in the LA Weekly: "Way back on Jan. 17, I decided to nominate the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Best Bunch of Hypocrites. That's because I felt this year's dirty little Oscar secret was the anecdotal evidence pouring in to me about hetero members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences being unwilling to screen 'Brokeback Mountain.' For a community that takes pride in progressive values, it seemed shameful to me that Hollywood's homophobia could be on a par with Pat Robertson's."

Yes, and more than one critic described "Crash" as "the worst film of the year," which is as extreme as saying John Kerry was a coward in Vietnam. It means you'll say anything to help your campaign.

What is intriguing about these writers is that they never mention the other three best picture nominees: "Capote," "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "Munich." Their silence on these films reveals their agenda: They wanted "Brokeback Mountain" to win, saw "Crash" as the spoiler, and attacked "Crash." If "Munich" had been the spoiler, they might not have focused on "Crash." When they said those who voted for "Crash" were homophobes who were using a liberal movie to mask their hatred of homosexuals, they might have said the same thing about "Munich."

This seems simply wrong. Consider Finke's "anecdotal evidence" that puts Hollywood's homophobia on a par with Pat Robertson's. Pat Robertson? This is certainly the most extreme statement she could make on the subject, but can it be true? How many anecdotes add up to evidence? Did anyone actually tell her they didn't want to see the movie because it was about two gay men?

My impression, also based on anecdotal evidence, is that the usual number of academy voters saw the usual number of academy nominees, and voted for the ones they admired the most. In a year without "Brokeback Mountain," Finke, Turan and many others might have admired "Crash." Or maybe not. But it's a matter of opinion, not sexual politics.

It is not a "safe harbor," but a film that takes the discussion of racism in America in a direction it has not gone before in the movies, directing attention at those who congratulate themselves on not being racist, including liberals and/or minority group members. It is a movie of raw confrontation about the complexity of our motives, about how racism works not only top down but sideways, and how in different situations, we are all capable of behaving shamefully.

"Good Night, and Good Luck," "Capote" and "Munich" were also risky pictures -- none more so, from a personal point of view, than "Munich," which afforded Steven Spielberg the unique experience of being denounced as anti-Semitic. "Good Night, and Good Luck" was surely a "safe harbor" for liberals, with its attack at a safe distance on McCarthyism -- although it carried an inescapable reference to McCarthyism as practiced by the Bush administration, which equates its critics with supporters of terrorism.

"Capote" was a brilliant character study of a writer who was gay, and who used his sexuality, as we all use our sexuality, as a part of his personal armory in daily battle.

It is noticeable how many writers on "Hollywood's homophobia" were able to sidestep "Capote," which was a hard subject to miss, being right there on the same list of best picture nominees. Were supporters of "Brokeback" homophobic in championing the cowboys over what Oscarcast host Jon Stewart called the "effete New York intellectual"?

Of course not. "Brokeback Mountain" was simply a better movie than "Capote." And "Crash" was better than "Brokeback Mountain," although they were both among the best films of the year. That is a matter of opinion. But I was not "discomfited" by "Brokeback Mountain." Read my original review. I chose "Crash" as the best film of the year not because it promoted one agenda and not another, but because it was a better film.

The nature of the attacks on "Crash" by the supporters of "Brokeback Mountain" seem to proceed from the other position: "Brokeback" is better not only because of its artistry but because of its subject matter, and those who disagree hate homosexuals. Its supporters could vote for it in good conscience, vote for it and feel they had made a progressive move, vote for it and not feel that there was any stain on their liberal credentials for shunning what "Crash" had to offer.

they didn't win!!

Shit Movies. Now, More Than Ever.

You guys did see that TONY CURTIS expressed his unhappiness with BBM and said "John Wayne wouldn't like it," right?

xpost

I think there are plenty of albums every year that cost more than Battle in Heaven.

Granted, "Cowboy" showed a very sleazy, dirty side of gay sex, and was not so much a love story as a buddy film, but I think people were just a little more free back then in the swinging age of aquarius. Now were have to start all over again. But I'll vote for Hillary.

Oh hang on...

Also: Dustin Hoffman's post-Brando tics didn't distract me as much as they did the first time. It's probably the best actor-slumming-as-repellent-lowlife I've seen.

"Are you callin' John Wayne a fag?!?!?"

I don't like Midnight Cowboy all that much besides the two leads ... the dream, flashback and nightclub sequences esp haven't aged well.

What I should have made clearer: Lee was better at evoking a long hot multiracial summer than in filming the violence.

It's really too bad that it was even nominated for an oscar. Putting this much weight behind a movie like this pretty much guarantees that anyone who sees it for the first time is going to be let down by the things which made it such an enjoyable experience for me. Kind of like how I was never able to enjoy The Crying Game for what it was, because the first time I watched it I was waiting for the infamous moment that had been joked about and parodied to death for a year after the movie came out.

All this juvenile joking about the movie, while sometimes funny, does a disservice to a good movie. It's too bad. It's also too bad that certain obnoxious people in the gay community feel like this movie is supposed to do anything to advance their cause. Aside from breaking from the stereotypical Hollywood portrayals of gay men as humourously effeminate, I don't really understand how this movie does any favors for gay activism. I thought it was a depressing movie. It was a story about two average guys in a fairly bleak environment who got a taste of something beautiful, but didn't have the vision or guts to pursue it. If you take the gay or even romantic aspect of it out of the movie, I think most people can relate to that.

And seriously, what the fuck is the deal with the association with westerns and cowboys? They were ranch hands in the fucking 60s for Christ's sake. Who started the whole 'gay cowboy' meme? The movie's own PR team? People who wanted so badly for this movie to be a re-examination of hyper-masculine Hollywood western archetypes that before they even saw the movie they spread that meme to everyone within earshot? I just don't understand it. It seems like everything surrounding this movie is a huge misunderstanding.

Josh –

Your unforced, quite lowkey enjoyment of the movie is the most refreshing thing I've read about BBM for weeks.

still wanna see brokeback mtn but have had trouble finding people who want to go see it w/me.. what's weird is that it's hard to find a showing outside the metropole; knoxville and dallas, for instance, each had maayyybe 1 cinema showing it.

As I think Manohla Dargis pointed out in the Times Sunday, all tehBest Picture nominees will scaledown to TV agreeably -- except Munich. Which is why you should get your ass to it in a theater.

i will keep saying this.

"discus"

Unless we're generalizing.

that's so middlebrow

Hmmm? At the peak, it was playing in a good dozen theaters - six in Dallas, one in each of the major suburbs/minor cities (Plano, Hurst, Arlington) and a few in Ft. Worth.

The area was surprisingly open to the movie, and the night I went (right after the Golden Globes, I think) was fairly packed with middle-aged and younger women. And me. Trying to look macho and straight.

There's some kick left in that old shoe yet.