When word got around among gays that Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, hunky Hollywood hotties du jour, were set to play ranch hands who fall in love in the idyllic mountains of Wyoming, there was a certain giddiness: Tight Levi's galore! The homoerotic Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue writ large! A mainstream, romantic, holi gay cowboy movie!
Then a herd mentality started to sink in, like a gay church praying at the altar of "Brokeback Mountain." There's a countdown on Gay.com ("It's finally here!"), E-vites are landing in in-boxes ("Let's watch it together!"), and blogs are keeping tabs on the film's awards, including yesterday's seven Golden Globe nominations -- the most of any film this year. The message is: If you're a self-respecting homosexual, you had better get in line -- as so many did this past weekend in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, where the movie opened in five sold-out theaters -- and see this film, pronto. It opens in Washington, and 13 other cities, Friday.
"This is our gay 'Gone With the Wind,' " says Neil G. Giuliano, the former Republican mayor of Tempe, Ariz., and current president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, a national organization that tracks the representation of gay men and lesbians in the media. Early Sunday night, GLAAD sent out a press release touting the film's three-day box office take of $544,549 in five theaters -- "the highest per-screen average ever for an adult drama, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc." Adds Giuliano: "This is a monumental gay film."
Yet what's most surprising about "Brokeback" is that it's not a gay film. Not in the way gay films, especially those about gay men, usually are.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121302012.html
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