Brownwood Texas: Midnight Cowboy and Brokeback Mountain
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Note From Steve:
I can think of no other place that would be more appropriate to show Brokeback Mountain than West Texas ! I also think the only thing that has changed in Texas since the 60's, when this story was set, is the brand of coffee found in the Cowboy's campfire coffee tins or the brand of beans being cooked in the can !
Will Brokeback Mountain play in Brownwood Texas ? * Why the Hell Not ! (* Slogan lifted from Kinky Friedman) If Brokeback does come to Brownwood/Early will it be boycotted, by the Brownwood Taliban, like the first Harry Potter Movie ? It's all about the censorship !
Brokeback Mountain, in so many ways, has TEXAS, TEXAS, TEXAS written all over it: The story line, for starters, is the same today as it was in the 60's ! One of the leading characters is from Texas. Larry McMurtry, Author & Screenwriter of Brokeback Mountain, born in Wichita Falls Texas, and bookstore owner in Archer City Texas
This Just In:
Childress theater bans ‘Brokeback Mountain’
By David Webb Staff Writer
Jan 12, 2006, 22:47
Jack Twist leaves Brokeback Mountain and while riding on the rodeo circuit winds up in Childress, Texas, where he meets a barrel racer named Lureen. Twist marries Lureen, the wealthy daughter of a farm machinery dealer, and settles down in Childress. But four years after he last saw Ennis Del Mar, Twist rekindles their relationship with a postcard asking Del Mar if he wants to go fishing. The two carry on a long-distance relationship spanning two decades.
As praise for the gay cowboy love story “Brokeback Mountain” builds momentum across the country, most residents of Childress, Texas, seem oblivious to the attention the movie is focusing on their sleepy town.
And it is likely to stay that way.
“Brokeback Mountain” will not play at Childress’ one theater, the Lone Star 4. The closest place for Childress residents to see the movie will be in Amarillo, which is about 116 miles to the north. It is also not playing in Lubbock or Wichita Falls, the two other larger cities closest to Childress.
Vince LaCario, owner of the Lone Star 4, said the movie was not scheduled for showing in Childress because of its content.
“We’re a real small community with a lot of church presence,” LaCario said. “I’m afraid it would shake up some turmoil.”
The two cowboys in the movie, Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, fall in love while working together herding sheep on a mountain in Wyoming in the early 1960s. Jack later visits Childress with the rodeo where he meets and marries a local woman. The two men carry on a long distance relationship for two decades, with Jack driving from Childress to Wyoming to visit Ennis several times a year.
Donna Ferguson, director of the Childress Chamber of Commerce, said she was unaware the town was a major setting in the movie, and she doubts many other people know about it either. Filming of the movie took place in Canada, rather than Texas and Wyoming.
“I don’t think they know it,” Ferguson said. “I haven’t heard a word about it from anyone.”
Ferguson said she is unsure what the conservative residents of Childress, which has a population of 6,874 residents, will think about a gay cowboy love story bringing attention to them. Childress is an agricultural town, and the largest employer is a prison on the outskirts of the city.
“That’s a good question,” Ferguson said.
Christopher Blackburn, editor of the Childress Index, said he had heard about Childress being featured in the movie, but he doubts many other residents are aware of it.
Blackburn said he doubts Childress residents would be offended about their city being used as a setting in movie about a gay cowboy love story, unless the town is placed in a negative light. When told the movie implies that a gay man was brutally murdered on a rural road in Childress County, Blackburn said, “Oh, wonderful. People will probably be a little more negative toward that.”
Ferguson said a few gay and lesbian people live in Childress today, and they seem to live there without any difficulties.
“I don’t think there are many, but there are some,” Ferguson said. “I don’t think they have any problems.”
Ferguson said she suspects most residents of Childress would not obsess about the subject of homosexuality.
“Some of them might, of course,” she said.
Blackburn said he also is aware of a few gay and lesbian people living in Childress.
“You could probably count them on one hand per gender,” Blackburn said. “I’ve known a couple. They didn’t seem to have any problem living here.”
Blackburn said some people in town might be homophobic, but he is unaware of any overt hostility. He describes himself as a “very tolerant individual.”
“From a tolerance aspect, who knows what goes on behind their backs, or maybe even in front of them, in regard to name calling and things like that,” Blackburn said. “I’m sure the younger population is probably more accepting. It’s the older population that is probably a little short about it.”
Perry Davidson, a gay Arkansas resident who was born in Childress, said his first reaction to hearing his hometown was a setting in the movie was to wonder if it was based on a true story.
“I thought, I wonder who they were and did we know them?” Davidson said.
Annie Proulx, the author of the short story “Brokeback Mountain,” indicates on her Web site that she traveled extensively in Texas and Wyoming before writing the work of fiction. The short story was published in The New Yorker in 1997.
Davidson said when he was growing up there were several large ranches around Childress County.
Davidson noted that he never experienced any difficulties about his sexual orientation in Childress when he returned to the town to visit family members, but he doubts the town’s residents would be very accepting of the movie.
Davidson said “Brokeback Mountain” has not yet reached the Fayetteville, Ark., area where he now lives, but he plans to see the movie as soon as it does.
“I can’t wait to see it,” Davidson said.
Ferguson said she expects the fictional movie to draw attention to Childress. The “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movie, which was released in 1974, mentioned Childress and many people think it was a true story that actually occurred near the town.
“People will call me and ask me about it, and I tell them it didn’t really happen here,” Ferguson said.
Dallas Voice staff writer David Webb was born and raised in Childress, Texas.
E-mail webb@dallasvoice.com
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition January 13, 2006.
source: http://www.dallasvoice.com/artman/publish/article_390.php
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Wednesday, June 16, 1999
‘Midnight Cowboy’ trial set (1970)
June 16, 1970 — On the eve of an obscenity trial, the manager of a theater chain says his company has scrapped plans to build a twin theater in the West Commerce Shopping Center being constructed in Brownwood. The trial is to determine whether the movie “Midnight Cowboy” is obscene. The manager notes that no complaints were filed when the movie showed in November 1969 at a downtown Brownwood theater, but after showing at the Bluffvue Drive-In, manager Floyd Allred was arrested and the film was confiscated. A jury will find the movie not obscene and Allred not guilty.
Source: Abilene Reporter-News files
source: http://www.abilene2000.com/moments/mom0616.html
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"The Hoer" is from Brenda Black White’s book “Callahan County” copyright 1988. "The setting for this book spans the time from the late 1930's to the early 1950's"
The Hoer
The day was hot and humid,
cumulus clouds boiled in the sky,
and she was hoeing cotton.
The ground was hard and dry.
And as she hoed from west to east
and then from east to west,
her eyes would scan the sky
for rain, and she would briefly rest
her weight upon the handle
and wipe her moistened brow.
She wondered what was keeping the man
who was supposed to come and plow.
The sun so hot, there was not a stir
of man or beast or bird.
The rhythmic scraping of the hoe
was all the sound she heard.
Six rows more and then the barn
for a drink, a rest, a moment's lull
to find the file and sharpen blade
that all day'd been dragging dull.
The barn provided welcome shade.
She dropped her glove and hoe.
Tied to the hitch was the man's mule
and a saddled horse she didnt know.
The brightness of the afternoon
made the barn as dark as night.
Her eyes adjusted to the dimness,
but no one was in sight.
Inside was cool and shadowed
and smelled of hay and dust,
axle grease and dried manure,
antiquity and rust.
And then she heard a muffled sound,
a throaty voice, deep and soft.
Curiosity piqued her timorous thoughts;
she catlike tiptoed to the loft.
That moment marked the beginning:
a lifetime of trying to untangle whys.
Spellbound, awed, and strangely stirred,
she viewed the scene with shocked surprise.
She quickly, quietly retraced her steps
and ran to fetch her hoe and glove.
All afternoon she hoed bemused.
She hadn't known that men make love.
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Where is Callahan County Texas ?
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What Real Cowboys Think of 'Brokeback Mountain'
Mixed Views on New Gay-Themed Hollywood Movie
Dec. 11, 2005 — The cowboy — quiet, independent and decidedly heterosexual — has endured as one of our most cherished American icons.
Now, a movie that already has generated Oscar buzz may turn that stereotypical belief on its head.
"Brokeback Mountain" is the story of two cowboys in remote Wyoming who fall in love without quite realizing that's what's happened to them. Although it's been labeled a "gay cowboy movie," it's as much about the universal theme of longing and loss.
What do real cowboys think? To find the answer, "Good Morning America Weekend Edition" traveled to the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas.
Seven-time world champion cowboy Ty Murray, who is straight, actually welcomes the movie.
"I think it's something that's now just being more understood," Murray said. "Hopefully, this movie helps people further understand it."
But gay cowboys Robert Salcedo and Brian Helander aren't so sure and worry about an increase in homophobia.
"I think it's going to give them reasons to be angry," Helander said, "not so much at the cowboy or the person, but that this exists."
"I would just say that this could set us back a little bit further," Salcedo said.
At a western trade show in Las Vegas, cowboys seemed to suggest that could be the case. One cowboy called it "a bit odd" and another said he wouldn't go see the film.
But women said they'd give it a chance because it's a love story.
Although people don't readily think of gay cowboys, one woman at the trade show said, "You have to kind of look past that and see what the whole story is about."
source: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1395158
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Sunday » December 18 » 2005
Two confused cowpokes forced to play it straight
Chris Knight
National Post Friday, December 16, 2005
In any other role, in any other movie, Jack Twist would be the taciturn one. The cowboy character played by Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain is a little too baby-faced to be a Marlboro Man (he shaves in the first scene, presumably to let us know he can), but he's got the gruff, just-the-facts cadence of the American West.
Next to Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger), though, Jack's a chatterbox. Ennis receives a four-sentence postcard from Jack and writes back "You bet." But he's also a bit of a prairie poet, telling Jack, "All the travellin' I ever done was round a coffee pot lookin' for the handle."
This and other memorable snippets of the film's sparse dialogue come directly from Annie Proulx, whose 1997 short story is the template for Ang Lee's quiet, moving film.
"The gay cowboy movie" has worn out its welcome as a descriptor, and in any case is about as telling as calling Lawrence of Arabia "the one in the desert."
The two cowpokes meet in 1963 Wyoming when they are both hired to tend a herd of sheep on Brokeback. Lee spends a lot of time capturing the mountain's dewy light, the gait and timbre of the weather and the slow rhythm of the men's work; it could as easily be 1863 up there.
Ennis and Jack spend most of their time in apostrophic pursuits -- whittlin', spittin', drinkin', bitchin' -- until one cold night
when Ennis is too tired and drunk to head out to their woolly charges and so bunks down with Jack. Their boss, played by Randy Quaid, has told them someone must "sleep with the sheep" to keep them safe. In another of Proulx's saddle-smooth lines, he later tells Jack, "You wasn't getting paid to leave the dogs baby-sit the sheep while you stemmed the rose."
The two don't talk much about it, but they do find an eviscerated sheep the next morning, bloody and portentous. Later, the flock wanders into another grazing herd during a hailstorm, and the two groups, their paint brands faded, can't be completely unknotted. It's an apt metaphor -- somehow the two men's hearts get similarly tangled that summer.
August arrives, and they soon find themselves parted and married, Ennis to his sweetheart Alma (Michelle Williams) and Jack to rodeo queen Nureen (The Princess Diaries' Anne Hathaway). When Jack's postcard arrives four yeas later, it finds Ennis balancing two mewling babes; when Jack follows, Ennis can hardly keep himself in his skin as he rushes to embrace his long-lost lover.
What follows is a same-time-next-year romance, 20 years during which Ennis and Jack go fishing together, notable only for the fact that they never bring home any catch. The wives know what's going on (Alma's sick, confused look when she sees them kiss is perfectly poignant); they deal with the knowledge through a combination of denial, icy reserve and, in Alma's case, divorce. No one in the film has anyone to whom they can unburden themselves; the characters are bottled in their own solitude.
Ledger and Gyllenhaal turn in a pair of lofty performances, all the more stand-out for their recent straight roles: Gyllenhaal as a grunt in Jarhead; Ledger in the title role in the upcoming Casanova.
Their emotions are mostly defined by absence; Ennis rarely smiles or picks up his feet unless it's for Jack. Apart, they look lost, their eyes gazing past things rather than at them. But together they remain brusque and quiet alpha males. They may be gay but they're not twee.
Something about the flat southwestern sky makes it an appealing canvas -- Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, out next year, has a similar look. Lee lets the camera's gaze linger on the landscape, but ropes his characters to the natural world, Jack with his blue jeans and blue eyes, Ennis in dusty earth tones. The sounds are also natural, unmediated except for a periodic swell of orchestral backing.
The subject matter hasn't hurt the film among critics; as awards season gets under way it's beginning to pick up nominations and well-deserved top-10 honours. Brokeback Mountain can be categorized as a love story, but that's almost as limiting as "gay cowboy film."
How do you sum up feelings that bind two people together like planet and satellite? The best way is just to sit back and let the film show you. "Ain't no reins on this one," says Ennis. You bet.
Rating four
source: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=00ab2013-4a03-4756-a9b7-94bc917cffcf&k=97530
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The Three B's: Brownwood Brokeback Background:
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More Brownwood Texas and Midnight Cowboy History :
" Of course, This same Police Chief closed down a drive-in Picture show one night and Confiscated the movie “Midnight Cowboy”. Seems a father complained when he took his family to what he thought was a WESTERN. Lol They actually had a big trial in my hometown about the movie “Midnight Cowboy”. The jury actually went to the Downtown Picture Show, which was managed at that time by Jim Tharp, who owned The Local Yamaha Shop at the time. Jim later told me, “Yeah that jury had to watch the movie a dozen times, before they found that it wasn’t obscene.” Lol Later after the trial and after several months the Movie was shown at the Drive-In Theater, it had been confiscated from in the first place, and it was so crowded, car to car, that heck we had to watch the movie. "
source: http://www.flattrack.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=113&topic_id=32&mode=full&page=
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