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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Of course, predicting how a film like "Brokeback Mountain" will affect the national consciousness before it comes out is a dicey game at best.
"There may well be a sort of forlorn hope on the part of the movie's producers and promoters that conservatives will make a huge issue of it, and thereby generate a certain amount of box-office heat," he adds. "And my very strong guess is that most conservatives will refuse to oblige them."
But there may also be a much simpler explanation for the right's hands-off approach to the film. "Imagine protesting 'Titanic' or 'Gone With the Wind,' " says Dave DeCicco, communications director at the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. "It's a really bad idea, because you're going to have broad appeal with the movie. One of the things people in this country enjoy is a love story. The right-wing lunatics are maybe smart enough to back off."
Damon Romine, entertainment media director for GLAAD, points out that critics are already "overwhelmingly embracing" the movie, and that a campaign against it might ultimately backfire. "If people think that publicly attacking this film is a good use of their time, it says far more about them and their agenda than it does about 'Brokeback Mountain.'"
"At its most basic level, this is a story about relationships," he says. "The love that these characters experience in many ways transcends categories of gay and straight; this is a universal love story."
The focus on the movie's love story has been central to the planning of the movie from the very beginning. According to Newsweek, the movie's producer, James Schamus, told director Ang Lee early on that the film would be marketed directly to one audience. "Yes, of course," said Lee, "the gay audience." No," Schamus replied, "women."
Schamus says he, too, hasn't heard rumors of a brewing outcry against the movie. "We're not really getting a sense there's much to talk about on that front, or that there ever will be," he told Salon by e-mail. He has previously made it clear he's not interested in taking on people who object to the film's content. "If you have a problem with the subject matter, that's your problem, not mine," Schamus told Newsweek. "It would be great if you got over your problem, but I'm not sitting here trying to figure out how to help you with it."
They may be backing off from a coordinated attack, but when pressed, they certainly can't hide their disdain for it. "I don't think it's going to be another 'Philadelphia,' because it's one thing to garner sympathy for a man dying of AIDS; it's another to tell America that they should accept two cowboys lusting after each other," says the Culture & Family Institute's Knight. He also brushes off the potential effect of an Oscar nomination or win -- which helped catapult "Philadelphia" into mainstream consciousness -- by citing a canard about the failure of Oliver Stone's biopic on Alexander the Great. "I don't think it will matter. I mean, look, 'Alexander' was doomed when word got around that it had a bisexual aspect to it. People don't want to see that. They don't want to see two guys going at it. It's that simple."
While Stone was among those blaming the rumors of bisexuality for his film's dismal box-office showing, it has to be said that the critical reaction to "Alexander" was almost universally negative, a fact that probably had more to do with its financial failure than did its hero's implied bisexuality. "Brokeback," on the other hand, was generating Oscar buzz as soon as it premiered, and Heath Ledger is already heavily favored for a best actor nomination.
