Brokeback Mountain: Will it play in Brownwood/Early ?

Gay-Rights Activists Elated by 'Brokeback'
By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer
NEW YORK — Gay-rights leaders are elated that a tale of same-sex love and heartbreak is reaching mainstream filmgoers in the form of acclaimed "Brokeback Mountain," while some conservatives are dismayed by the film's glowing reviews and rooting for it to fail at the box office.
The story of two Wyoming cowboys in the 1960s has drawn capacity crowds in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Its big test, though, starts Friday when — on the heels of seven Golden Globe nominations — it expands to more than 20 other cities.
"This film has tremendous potential to connect with audiences gay and straight alike," said Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
"What `Brokeback Mountain' does," Giuliano added, "is allow audiences to experience, on an intensely emotional level, how ignorance and intolerance can force people to deny their love and deny who they are."
But Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America's Culture and Family Institute, hopes the film flops.
"I can't think of a more effective way to annoy and alienate most moviegoing Americans than to show two cowboys lusting after each other," Knight said on his group's Web site. "It's a mockery of the Western genre embodied by every movie cowboy from John Wayne to Gene Autry to Kevin Costner."
Knight contrasted "Brokeback Mountain" with "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," a family-oriented film with underlying Christian themes.
"That's why it will make zillions while `Brokeback' will impress the critics and some fringe audiences in urban centers, but that's about it," Knight said.
The men in "Brokeback Mountain" are played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Another Hollywood star, Felicity Huffman of "Desperate Housewives," plays a transsexual in the new movie "Transamerica."
Susanne Salkind of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay-rights group, urged gays to take straight friends, relatives and co-workers to both movies, which she said were capable of shattering stereotypes.
"The more people who are exposed to authentic stories about our lives, the more support we'll get throughout the fabric of American culture," Salkind said.
There has been vibrant discussion in gay-oriented media about how "Brokeback Mountain" will fare in the U.S. heartland.
Ryan James Kim, writing for Advocate.com, likened the film's romantic appeal to "Titanic" and predicted young straight women will flock to it.
"Most viewers will remember `Brokeback' not as a movie in which cowboys kissed but as a love story they cannot forget — straight guys included, if they're mature enough, or at least smart enough, to follow the lead of the women they love," Kim wrote.
However, Matt Hennie of the Atlanta-based gay weekly Southern Voice predicted the film will be a box-office bust.
"Don't misunderstand, I'm a big fan of the movie," he wrote. "But America isn't ready and willing to flock to theaters to watch a two-hour film about two gay cowboys. ...a movie that will put faces on issues that silently make them shudder."
Tom Neal, former editor of a gay monthly in Tulsa, Okla., said he was pleased that a local theater operator has pledged to show "Brokeback Mountain," apparently undeterred by denunciations of the film on a Tulsa radio talk-show.
"The issues in the film would resonate in a place like Tulsa," said Neal, a descendent of Oklahoma Land Rush settlers. "That model of men who fall in love with each other but get married to women — I know a lot of people who went through that."
Seattle filmmaker Michael Culpepper, who recently completed a documentary about gay couples in a tiny Idaho farming town, believes rural audiences will be receptive to "Brokeback Mountain."
"The honesty of it — that's something these people will respect, though it's definitely a struggle for some of them to understand what a gay relationship is like," Culpepper said.
Those upset by "Brokeback Mountain" include men who say they moved away from homosexuality through prayer or therapy and are now active in what is known as the "ex-gay movement."
Alan Chambers, president of an evangelical network of former homosexuals called Exodus International, said the film portrays emotions "that I and thousands of others who have left homosexuality are well familiar with."
"We hear from thousands of individuals who are grappling with the same problems and are tired of messages, such as the ones presented in this film, that only further add to their confusion and desperation," Chambers said.
The Christian group Focus on the Family has an article about the film on its Web site — headlined "Gay Love Story Carries a High `Ick' Factor" — that summarizes opinions of several conservative critics.
One, Ted Baehr of a Web site (movieguide.org) aimed at pointing out family fare, called the film "boring neo-Marxist homosexual propaganda" and predicted its scenes of gay sex would repel audiences.
And Dick Rolfe of the Dove Foundation, which encourages production of family-friendly films, cautioned: "If Christians protest too loudly, they can end up making the mistake of calling attention to a movie that otherwise may not do very well at the box office. We have to be very careful not to use our anger strategies to a point where they boomerang on us."
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December 15, 2005 - 6:12 p.m. CST
source: http://www.austin360.com/movies/content/shared-gen/ap/Movies/Film_Brokeback_Gays.html
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INTERVIEW - Can Texas brave 'Brokeback?'

Lone Star scribe Larry McMurtry is confident that his gay cowboy movie will change the way Perry and Proposition 2 supporters think about queer issues

By Daniel A. Kusner
Life+Style Editor

A tragedy about lost opportunity, repression, finding love and the importance of never letting it go, “Brokeback Mountain” is a powerful drama. And the momentum behind the film builds on a day-to-day basis.
Critics groups in Boston, Los Angeles and New York recently named the gay cowboy drama as the year’s best film. And on Tuesday, it dominated the Golden Globes with seven nominations, including one for best screenplay, written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana.
A lifelong Texan, McMurtry is a Pulitzer Prize winner and the literary treasure who created “The Last Picture Show,” “Lonesome Dove,” “Hud” and “Terms of Endearment.” A few hours after the Golden Globe nominations were announced, McMurtry conducted phone interviews while in Austin promoting the film.
Based on Annie Proulx’s 1997 near-perfect short story, “Brokeback” is about the doomed love between two men who fall in love while herding sheep together. It’s also partially set in the Lone Star State.
And just as the film’s marketing campaign was gearing up, Texas was hit with two historical anti-gay blows: the overwhelming victory of a state amendment to ban same-sex marriages and Governor Rick Perry essentially telling gay soldiers returning from Iraq that a more “lenient” state would be a better place to live.
“If the governor wants to say foolish things, I can’t stop him. And it’s too bad about the proposition. But that’s not forever,” McMurtry says. “Five years from now, Governor Perry won’t be there. And we’ll see about the rest.”
When it comes to statements on Western culture and history, McMurtry is perhaps the most qualified authority. Even Governor Perry seems to agree — in 2003 and 2004, he declared May as Texas Writers Month and, fittingly, McMurtry’s image emblazoned the campaign’s commemorative posters for those years. But in 2005, is Texas’ image shifting toward intolerance and homophobia?
“I don’t see it that way. I’m not pessimistic. I’m from the plains of Texas — the part that connects the Midwest with the Rocky Mountains,” McMurtry says. “I think there’s more decency in the great American middle class than most homophobic legislation would indicate. Sure, right now these are hot-button issues, but these things are not permanent.”
Raised in Wichita Falls, McMurtry became familiar with gay cowboys when he was 8 years old. That’s when he was introduced to his gay cousin’s boyfriend. Coincidently, McMurtry’s cousin resembles Jack Twist, the fictitious “Brokeback Mountain” character played by Jake Gyllenhaal: Both worked the rodeo circuit and both were from the same area of Texas — near Childress, a small town not far from Wichita Falls.
His cousin came to mind while working on the screenplay. “I was supposed to say ‘gentleman friend’ when referring to my cousin’s lover,” McMurtry remembers.
McMurtry’s parents encouraged him to be nice to his cousin’s partner.
“We had no reason not to be nice to him. He was a perfectly nice man,” McMurtry says. “There might have been a little awkwardness, maybe. But my parents were never angry about my cousin. Everyone’s lives went on. And they went on for 20 years.”
That’s the attitude that shapes McMurtry’s vision of the acceptance of gays in Texas.
“Many American families, millions, have a gay member — like our vice president,” he says. “I’m not going to give up on the capacity of Texans to deal with controversy in a fair and compassionate way.”
The big challenge for the film is for people like Governor Perry and the folks who voted for Proposition 2 to actually watch “Brokeback Mountain.”
“I absolutely believe the film will challenge their views,” McMurtry says. “If they go see it, it will have to give them pause.”
Even with a truckload of film critics’ awards, McMurtry says the success of “Brokeback Mountain” depends solely on one thing: word of mouth. Already, word of mouth is spreading — and some right-wing critics have blasted the film, saying it should win an Oscar for promoting the “gay agenda.” That type of criticism fuels McMurtry’s ire.
“I know what I’m confident of, and I’m totally confident,” he says. “The right wing will not win on this issue. This movie is stronger than they are.”
Even if “Brokeback Mountain” wins an Oscar for best picture, is strong enough to play in Crawford, Texas?
“Well, the screening room is actually in the White House,” McMurtry says. “The president and his wife have gay friends. In fact, they have gay friends who stay in the White House. So I’m sure they’ll see it.”

source: http://www.dallasvoice.com/articles/dispArticle.cfm?Article_ID=7045