Monday, December 26, 2005

How's it playing Wyoming? In the state where 'Brokeback Mountain' is set, the film draws raves from some, anger & surprise from others.

By GIL BRADY
Special to The LA TIMES, Calendar Section

Filed 12.26.05

JACKSON, Wyo. -- Near the snowy plains of writer E. Annie Proulx's imagining, many filmgoers are having a love affair with "Brokeback Mountain."

The so-called gay cowboy movie that has become this season's critical darling opened at one playhouse here Friday. While business was slower than expected, the film earned rave reviews from those in attendance. But not everyone has fallen for Ang Lee's awards-sweeping vision.

As a gas, coal and oil boom here gives birth to satellite towns that are slowly eating away at ranches and open prairies, many cowboys had already been left to wonder whether America has any love left for them. And that was before one small movie redefined their remaining dignity, they say.

One 23-year-old ranch hand, who spends his summers wrangling horses for tourists on this side of the Tetons, explained his surprise when he heard that someone had made a movie about two Wyoming cowboys in love.
"We was drinking coffee around a broken cattle chute waiting to get fixed when someone broke the news," he said, making clear that he had no intention of seeing it for himself.

"You've taken the last thing we had," said the ranch hand, who declined to provide his name. "We don't get any money, you work us like dogs — then you take our image … and then gay it up."

Frank Londy, who owns the movie theaters here where "Brokeback" premiered and then opened Friday, said he took a gamble by placing the unconventional love story in the larger of his playhouses. More people are passing it up in favor of "Walk the Line," leaving him screening "Brokeback" to a theater that is barely 20% full.
But he said he has no regrets: "I loved the movie."

Ashley Robbins' two-hour drive from Pinedale to make the first matinee along with three friends underscores "Brokeback's" struggle for mass appeal in the state of its fictional setting.
"I pick all the movies for the Pinedale Entertainment Center," said Robbins, 21, "and we'll never get ["Brokeback Mountain"] there because it's about gay cowboys in Wyoming. People come in and request that we do not get the movie."

Despite the film's near-religious devotion to portraying the hardscrabble details of the life, the Stetson class' response to the movie that is prodding the heartland to examine itself has been anything but cool indifference.

A recent letter to the editor of Planet Jackson Hole, the local alternative weekly, headlined, "Broken-backed community," denounced same-sex love as "perverted" for producing "death and disease," concluding that homosexual acceptance was a symptom of moral decay.

But others have been more philosophical about all the hoopla. "So why is two cowboys' relationship with each other anyone else's issue? Aren't cowboys citizens too?" asked local livestock breeder Terry Amrein, 60. "Don't they have the right to do whatever they want in their private lives?"

Amrein, who has not seen the movie, added that openly gay cowboys, while rare, have been known to exist.

Many in this blue patch of semi-tolerance bounded by red-state conservatism expressed hope that the movie might help humanize a culture that just seven years earlier produced one of the nation's most shocking crimes: After leaving a gay bar in Laramie, 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was tied to a fence and beaten so badly that he died of his injuries several days later.


"Matthew Shepard's murder was a terrible thing," said Steve Adamson, manager of Corral West, a store that sells ranch clothing and other goods, adding that he plans on taking in the movie to see if its seven Golden Globe nominations are deserved.

One 35-year-old gay man, who asked not to be identified for fear of losing his job over his sexual orientation, was not entirely taken by "Brokeback."

"I'd give it an '8,' " he said, adding, "The story was classic. I feel Ang Lee was bold to make this film. And the actors were fantastic in bringing this story to life. But it's just not Oscar material." The slow pacing, he said, was its only flaw.

Others said that perhaps Wyoming's biggest fear of this picture lies in its power to broaden the horizons of the young beyond what the old can bear.

After leaving the screening Friday, moviegoer Samantha Kirby, 18, stood outside the clapboard theater and said the movie made her more sensitive to how others are treated. "Watching the movie," Kirby said, "it changed my perception, because people are people."

Another fan of the movie, Keith Shradar, 35, lamented that at the end of the day, few people in this state are likely to see "Brokeback Mountain." And that means the real-life Ennis Del Mars who are out there fixing fences, pulling calves or working the oil fields and enduring stoic lives for weeks on end bunking with men, and "the uncharted impulses this lonely intimacy brings," are likely to miss a perspective that might otherwise liberate them.

Regardless of how widely the movie plays here, state tourism officials are seizing upon its awards season popularity. There are promotions for "gay-friendly" adventures such as wagon-train rides, outings at dude ranches and, reported tourism official Michell Howard, overnights in a tepee, all to tap the lucrative gay and lesbian market.


(Photo Credits: "Snowy Tetons," Wyoming tourist board on-line stock photo; "Brokeback Boys," Mirimax Pictures promotional photo; "Two Lonely Cowboys," K.Shradar & A.Ellis

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Brokeback Premieres on Glam-lite, Cold Nite

By GIL BRADY
Planet Jackson Hole

Filed 12.10.05

JACKSON, Wyo. -- "This is what love is about," parka-clad director Ang Lee declared on Saturday night as he politely described his controversial new movie about two love-struck Wyoming ranch hands to a handful of paparazzi and reporters moments before Brokeback Mountain's premiere at Jackson Hole's Teton Theatre.

Despite an aggressive ad campaign in the local press promising the attendance of "Brokeback" star Heath Ledger and more, the 51 year-old Lee was the only semi-recognizable celebrity on hand, outside or inside the 64 year-old playhouse. Around 300 shivering locals, tourists and invited guests - some paying $100 for the screening and wor
ld famous Cowboy Bar after party - streamed by the Taiwanese born director as they entered the klieg-lit theater. Many sighed with relief upon escaping the subzero December evening setting in just after sundown.

Brokeback Mountain's back-to-back Jackson Hole screenings, which drew over 500 ticket holders, left more than a few weeping fans in the lobby as it continued to win converts of every stripe and build Oscar buzz over the weekend.

"It broke my heart," a teary-eyed Christy Sing remarked, dabbing her cheeks with a napkin in the small, carpeted lobby after watching the movie. "It really affected me."

Replete with graphic love scenes between two cowboys, Lee and Universal/Focus Film's new release had already pocketed the Venice Film Festival's Gold Lion top prize earlier this fall before winning the L.A. Film Critics Association's "Best Picture of 2005" honor on Saturday, making Brokeback Mountain this award season's film to beat.

"I know the story and I enjoyed it," Jackson resident Elizabeth Moore said, adding that she anticipated the movie's success would help Wyoming's tourist industry. Regarding whether Brokeback Mountain would inspire a national debate on gay issues, Moore said, "My wild guess would be yes. What [that debate] will contain, I do not even begin to imagine."

Some on-line conservative groups and bloggers have denounced the film's unconventional gay love story; while many gay and lesbian groups are hailing Brokeback Mountain as a transcendental piece of groundbreaking cinema.

"I thought it was very true. Very beautifully done. More so than any movie I've ever seen," Mark Houser, a local organizer with Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, said following the six o'clock showing. "It's very exciting to see this film premiere in Jackson," he added. "The film itself goes beyond the gay themes. It's such a tragic, heart-wrenching love story. Nevertheless, to have issues of orientation and identity brought up in Wyoming is very exciting for the community."

Lee said the movie's theme of social prejudice differed from The Wedding Banquet, his 1993 film about a gay Chinese man living in New York with his white lover, because Brokeback Mountain was not an "Asian family drama" but a "romantic love story." He did admit, however, that both films "use America" as a way for him to "escape" his Taiwanese upbringing.

"Most of all it's the genre," Lee explained, "I think the content and the heart of [Brokeback Mountain] is very different to me. [The Wedding Banquet] is obligation to society, a feeling of duty. But Brokeback Mountain is what love is about. Which I think is really profound in me."

Ever the humble director, Lee heaped praise on his cast and crew, crediting Pulitzer winner Annie Proulx's short-story by the same name, which inspired his film, and legendary author/screenwriter Larry McMurtry with giving him a critical tour of Wyoming culture and a solid tutorial on the American west before filming began. The director also singled-out the research of his art department and his production designer's talent for capturing elusive period details.

"She did a fantastic job," Lee said, praising Brokeback Mountain's production designer, Judy Becker. "This was tricky because [Brokeback Mountain] was kind of timeless place, and we're doing period piece in a timeless place. The time-marker can be deceptive, so you have to go along with it. Sometime you're right on, like certain TV programs. Sometimes, the sound you hear, outside of here, we're aware of it in the 80s. But in the 70s, the locals don't even hear it: the sort of beat-up trucks they drive in the 60's & 70s that are from the 40s. So, it's a little disorienting."

Lee said he hoped conservatives would come to see his new picture and discover how they feel afterward, predicting that, regardless of one's politics or values, all moviegoers would relate to Brokeback Mountain's pure love story.

Brokeback Mountain opened last week in San Francisco and New York and is arriving at select cities nationwide.

Photo Caption & Credit: "Ang Lee & Friend" By Andrew Wyatt for Planet JH