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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Director Ang Lee is set to cast Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in "Brokeback Mountain," a story of two cowboys in love. But are studios -- and audiences -- ready for a passionate big-screen kiss between men?
Jan 14, 2004 | Welcome to Gay New 2004. It follows Gay Old 2003, when sodomy became legal in all 50 states, gay marriage or "civil unions" became a possibility in three, and the media pulled a muscle patting itself on the back for accepting a fistful of swish television characters. Now, for the first time in as long as most of us can remember, a sweeping gay romance is about to get the imprimatur of mainstream -- or at least prestigious -- Hollywood stamped all over it. ("Making Love," from 1982, with Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean? Anyone?)
The casting call is out for "Brokeback Mountain," the Ang Lee-directed adaptation of Annie Proulx's short story, replete with sunsets, horses, howling windstorms and a heartbreaking love story between two young cowboys. Although the casting isn't yet official, Hollywood sources say that heartthrobs Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger are in negotiations to star.
Should the contracts not get signed, though, there will be no shortage of well-groomed actors with representation who could be candidates to don the Stetsons and chaps. In the months since Lee announced that he would direct the movie, fans have taken to Internet chat rooms with a vengeance, begging the unhearing movie gods to cast everyone from Viggo Mortensen and Brad Pitt, or Jude Law and Benicio Del Toro, or Joaquin Phoenix and Johnny Depp (all of whom are a bit ripe to play characters whose stories begin at age 19).
"He's always been Hollywood's trembling-lipped sensitive boy," pointed out one hopeful fan about Depp. Another opined that Jude Law's "good looks and intense charm would make even a straight cowboy swoon." Both Depp and Law have played gay before (in "Before Night Falls" and "Wilde," respectively).
Some computer-savvy cinephiles have gone so far as to create a beefcakey "Brokeback Mountain" poster featuring Josh Hartnett and Colin Farrell, who will reportedly play bi-curious in his upcoming role as Alexander the Great in "Alexander."
The story by Proulx ("The Shipping News"), which originally appeared in the New Yorker, has been adapted by Larry McMurtry ("Terms of Endearment," "The Last Picture Show") and his partner, Diana Ossana. Director Lee ("The Ice Storm," Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon") has chosen to make it his follow-up to last summer's "The Hulk," which was viewed as a commercial and critical disappointment. Lee's longtime co-writer, James Schamus, who runs Focus Features, a division of Universal Pictures, will produce the picture with Ossana. Shooting is set to begin this summer.
Schamus, also a Columbia University film professor and co-founder of the now-defunct independent film bastion Good Machine, said via e-mail that he could not comment on casting decisions before anything has been made official, since it would "inevitably result in injured feelings and misunderstandings." But, he wrote, "it's still in process, and it's been remarkably hassle free -- no one has raised even an eyebrow and people across the board are responding in a really passionate way to the story and the characters."
That not an eyebrow would be raised at the casting of two tadpole heartthrobs to play young men who get it on in a pup tent, share a passionate kiss on a windblown night and get gruffly teary-eyed as they talk about their unutterable feelings for each other is almost too Pollyanna-ish to be believed. But Scott Rudin ("The Hours," "The Stepford Wives") -- who planned to make "Brokeback Mountain" in the late 1990s with Gus Van Sant ("Good Will Hunting") directing, but now has no connection to the movie -- agreed.
"It's an amazing project; I'm incredibly jealous. And I don't get jealous," Rudin says. As for the process of signing up willing actors, he laughed at the notion that it would be difficult. "You've got a great filmmaker and parts for two movie stars. I can't imagine why any actor would not want to play one of those roles. Anyone who gets in that movie is lucky to be there; it's an absolutely beautiful script. Who would want to turn that down?"
But not everyone is confident that bona fide movie stars would risk their straight cred by mounting steeds and locking lips. One Hollywood executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says, "Realistically, let's talk about the giggle factor. I mean, it is a story about gay cowboys! That is the most daring thing you can do." If the I's do get dotted on Gyllenhaal and Ledger's contracts, it's worth noting that both will run less of a risk of being "taken for gay" than many of their colleagues; Gyllenhaal dates supercute wunderkind Kirsten Dunst, while Ledger squires Naomi Watts, 11 years his senior, to lots of events covered by Us Weekly.
Sean Griffin, an assistant professor of cinema and television at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, was even skeptical that the film could actually get produced as advertised. He says, "When studio money [from Focus Features' parent company Universal] is involved, you never know how far things are actually going to go. You never know who's going to actually show up for this thing. I'll withhold judgment until I actually see a major on-screen kiss."
Griffin is alluding to Hollywood's habit of bleaching movies about homosexuals of their sensuality and romance. Films like "54" and "Fried Green Tomatoes" were, in the words of one producer, "totally de-lezzed" or "de-gayed." "A Beautiful Mind," Ron Howard's multiple-Oscar winner about mathematician John Nash, glossed over his reported homosexual relationships. Even "Philadelphia," a Columbia TriStar movie hailed as Hollywood's first gay love story, showed little sign that Tom Hanks, in an Oscar-garnering performance as a man in the late stages of AIDS, had ever met, much less made love to, his partner, played by Antonio Banderas.
