COWBOYS TO ROAM WIDE
Focus going for broke in expansion
By IAN MOHR

Focus Features will accelerate expansion plans for 'Brokeback Mountain'

After its gay cowboy love story "Brokeback Mountain" rode roughshod over more mainstream competition in Texas, Arizona and Florida, Universal specialty film arm Focus Features is accelerating expansion plans. Focus brass said Monday that it will roll out "Brokeback" on between 300 and 400 screens by Jan. 6, altering its original agenda of putting the film on 250 screens by Jan. 13.

That decision, by Focus co-heads James Schamus and David Linde, came after the Ang Lee-helmed pic -- starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as cowboys who spark a taboo romance while ranching together the early '60s -- lassoed the No. 8 spot in the top 10 over the weekend from a scant 69 theaters.

Total cume is just under $3.5 million to date, and "Brokeback's" final gross for its second frame was $2.5 million, with a per screen average of $36,455. That's even higher than Sunday morning estimates that not only impressed industryites, but drew national attention. 

Move to broaden the pic's presence comes as "Brokeback" is riding a wave of crix honors and media attention without its distributor having paid a single dollar in TV advertising for the $14 million budgeted pic.

Beyond any urban strongholds for gay auds, Focus is currently zeroing in on the very states where the pic takes place, Texas and Wyoming, as well as other turf where pundits might assume a gay-themed project would have a bumpy ride. But Schamus said that the pic is playing to both male and female auds, proving it has branched out beyond purely gay demos in the fly-over states.

"The key for us is very specific," he said. "We know that once we get beyond the stereotype with this movie, there's an explosion of interest in the emotional experience because you've witnessed a great American love story."

He added that the decision to expand more quickly was based on audience reaction setting the pace, and not the studio's desire to simply capture lightning in a bottle. "We are going very delicately and subtly," he said. "So many people get out ahead of themselves because they get excited and worry about leaving money on the table. But the expansion is a response to the avidity of the audience. We are taking a completely organic approach that's fundamentally likened to the emotional (experience) of the movie. We will never sell a phenomenon, or sell a piece of the zeitgeist."

On Sunday, the New York Times ran a piece in its Styles section on real-life gay cowboys in Wyoming, mentioning that no exhibs are showing the pic in that state. But any insinuation that was because the pic has been shunned by exhibs is wrong -- Focus hadn't gotten the pic wide enough to include Wyoming yet, but always planned to. The pic has played well so far in unexpected places -- like Plano, Texas, where it's showing on two screens, Phoenix, Ariz., and Voorhees, Penn., outside of Philadelphia -- without any resistance from exhibs.

"It's too soon for us, but we are following it closely," said Michael Patrick, CEO of Georgia-based regional exhibexhib chain Carmike, of the "Brokeback" phenomenon so far. "If it continues to gross anywhere near what it has, it will play with us."

A Fandango exec said that the ticket-ordering Web site is getting a significant amount of emails from fans wondering why the pic isn't playing in their town, a phenomenon he said rarely happens. 

In order to break into markets with populations under 50,000, the typical profile for Carmike's theaters, "Brokeback" would have to hit around 2,000 playdates. That's a heady goal for an indie pic, not to mention that screens can become scarce come this time of year.

With its early Jan. expansion, Focus will aim to penetrate suburban markets surrounding Seattle, San Diego, Dallas and Portland, before moving into more remote places like Nashville and Columbus, Ohio, by Jan. 30.

Focus has so far been testing the waters carefully with the film, not knowing what the climate might be like for such a project at the moment and is realizing the timing is right.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Variety.Com
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DIVERSE AUDS STOKED FOR BROKE
By Ben Fritz

"Proving a potent mix of strong reviews, good buzz and kudos noms are trumping any cultural resistance, "Brokeback Mountain" continued to set records in its second frame.
Focus' gay cowboy love story roped the No. 8 spot with $2.4 million despite playing in just 69 theaters.

As expected, best perfs came in more liberal cities, including Toronto, New York and L.A., where the film's best per play takes reached over $70,000.

However, "Brokeback"'s best per play takes in other cities included an estimated $56,000 at a theater in Atlanta, $50,000 in Phoenix, $49,000 in Houston, $35,000 in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., and $33,000 in St. Louis. In some of those cities, it was playing on only one screen.

Pic had lower, but still solid takes in suburban markets in Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California.

However, it has yet to reach more staunchly conservative areas in the deep South, mountain states and the heartland.

"You can't do what we're doing with just one demographic," Focus distribdistrib toppertopper Jack Foley said. "The notion that this is a gay film is proving to be mistaken."

Expanding from five theaters last weekend, per-play average for "Brokeback" was $34,194. That's the best ever for a non-Imax film on more than 50 playdates.

Ang LeeAng Lee-helmed short story adaptation is the first film since 1995 to break into the top 10 while in fewer than 100 locations. Cume is $3.3 million.

Indie is pushing up a planned expansion to take advantage of pic's momentum. Previously set to stay flat until January, "Brokeback" will now likely expand to more than 100 playdates next weekend, primarily in the same 21 markets it's in.

Focus is also expecting to broaden planned expansions for Jan. 6 and 13."

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Variety.Com
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Jake Gyllenhaal contemplates the big stuff
BY CHRIS HEWITT
St. Paul Pioneer Press

TORONTO - Now that Jake Gyllenhaal has made a movie in which he falls for Heath Ledger, he's ready to come out of the closet. No, not that closet.

Gyllenhaal is talking about the idea that everyone - gay, straight or Andy Dick - reaches a point in life when he must come to grips with who he is and then get ready to reveal himself to the rest of the world.

"I'm at a period in my life when I'm figuring out my idea of who I am and what I want and how to hold onto love - all that big stuff," says Gyllenhaal, whose "Brokeback Mountain," about a romance between two cowboys, opens Friday. "And I'm starting to realize that it can happen at any age. I know people who are in their 50s who are figuring out what they want and who they are, and I think it's great. It's like you're always approaching life as a beginner."

Gyllenhaal may be only 24, but he's no beginner when it comes to acting. He has starred in 15 movies, and it's hard to think of a young actor who has more consistently chosen interesting projects, including "October Sky," "Donnie Darko," "Jarhead," "Lovely and Amazing" and "The Good Girl."

Movies are the family business for Gyllenhaal, whose dad is director Stephen Gyllenhaal, mom is Oscar-nominated screenwriter Naomi Foner, sister is actress Maggie Gyllenhaal and godmother is Jamie Lee Curtis (and ex-girlfriend is Kirsten Dunst). Gyllenhaal has worked with some top directors - including "Brokeback's" Ang Lee ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Sense and Sensibility") - but he says the main thing those experiences taught him is that the only person he can rely on when he's acting is himself.

"I've learned to expect very little from directors," says Gyllenhaal, leaning his lanky frame into an uncomfortable chair and asking if it's OK to light up the last cigarette in a banged-up pack of American Spirits. "What I say now is, `Trust yourself,' because you can't count on your relationship with a director. Ang was great, though, because he would set up situations and then let me and Heath decide what to do within the space Ang created. He put the camera wherever he wanted, but then he gave us a lot of power to create something, so we didn't leave with any regrets."

That includes no regrets about playing a man who engages in frank - although not graphic - love scenes with another man. Gyllenhaal, who comes off as thoughtful and a little shy in person, says he dived into those scenes: "I've done movies where there was supposed to be nudity and I'd realize there was really no reason for it, but, this time, there was a reason."

But the actor admits he was nervous about taking the part in the first place. In fact, when he first heard about "that gay cowboy movie" several years ago, he turned down the role.

"I said, `Absolutely not. I don't even want to read it,'" admits Gyllenhaal, who's being touted for a best-supporting-actor Oscar nomination for "Brokeback Mountain." "I was 17, and I was scared about tackling the subject. But then, years later, when Ang called me, I read the script and it was beautiful, and I thought, `I ought to call those people who called it "the gay cowboy movie" and scold them.' It's so much more than that."

Despite his concerns about the sex scenes, Gyllenhaal says the most intimidating part of making "Brokeback Mountain" involved baring his soul, not his butt. "That was so scary, the last scene Heath and I shot together," he recalls. "We finally get to say to each other what we want to say, and I was really nervous because there were so many emotions and both men have been holding so much back. Luckily, the dialogue is so great that it worked out."

Early response to "Brokeback" has been good, and Gyllenhaal, who says he's a harsh critic of his own work, concurs: "It's great to have bragging rights on a movie like this, where everyone is so good that you kind of forget you're in it."

JAKE ON THE MAKE

Jake Gyllenhaal's career is relatively young, but he has developed a specialty: the guy with the unrequited crush. A partial list of his beloveds:

"Brokeback Mountain": Heath Ledger, who has misgivings about their relationship

"Jarhead": The girl back home who sends him a Dear John letter

"Proof": Gwyneth Paltrow, who spurns his advances

"The Good Girl": Jennifer Aniston, who toys with him

"Lovely and Amazing": Catherine Keener, who ignores his crush

"Bubble Boy": Marley Shelton, the childhood crush who's about to be married in Niagara Falls

- posted by Ally 
- credits: sanluisobispo.com
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Mountain Men - Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger talk about their Brokeback Mountain roles, their personal investments in the film, and why it matters
By John Polly

Originally printed 12/15/2005 (Issue 1350 - Between The Lines News)

Believe the buzz. "Brokeback Mountain," the acclaimed short story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx, which drew raves when it first appeared in 1997, is now a film and is heading your way. And yes, it's good. Very, very good. Think an epic love story on a Titanic-scale, gorgeously filmed against a stark and stunning Western landscape. From start to finish, the film is carefully made and well-acted, not to mention respectful, heartbreaking and powerful.

Led by career-making performances by its two stars, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger (the Oscar buzz has already begun), "Brokeback Mountain" delivers, more than any other gay-themed film that has preceded it, a humane, visceral love story that may just have even the sternest movie critics among us sobbing into their Stetson.

Boasting a screenplay by the always brilliant Larry McMurtry ("Terms of Endearment," "Lonesome Dove") and Diana Ossana, "Brokeback Mountain" is gently and lovingly directed by Ang Lee, known for telling humane stories ("Sense & Sensibility," "The Ice Storm") as well as crafting films of rousing action or heartfelt laughs ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "The Wedding Banquet"). Even Gustavo Santaolalla's haunting and delicately mesmerizing score finely supplements the onscreen desire and tension. And the film stars two handsome, gifted, up-and-coming actor in the roles of two star-crossed cowhands. It all works beautifully.

The basic story? Jack (Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Ledger) meet while working together one summer herding sheep in Wyoming, the two of them sequestered way up in the hills on Brokeback Mountain. They become friends, and then more. And they fall in love.

The summer ends and they part, resigned to the fact that in 1963 Wyoming, guys like them don't have a chance of making a go of any kind of real relationship thanks to society's bigotry and their own fear. A few years later they reunite, and then proceed to meet up for "fishing trips" - same time, next year-style. Both men get married and start families, but they still hanker for the kind of love, sex and intimacy they were able to find on Brokeback Mountain. Ennis is strong, stubborn, tight-lipped and fearful; Jack, perhaps more open and eager to seek real comfort, still wants more.

All of this is told in measured scenes, with eloquently written and pointed, if often brief, exchanges. The scenery is gorgeous and harsh, much like the story.

And it's the power of Brokeback's story that roped in Gyllenhaal and Ledger to the project. "When I read the script, I thought the story was amazing," says Gyllenhaal of his initial take on this epic tale. "I just fell in love with it and realized that I had to do this film."

His costar concurs. "The decision to do the film was pretty much made for me by the script," says Ledger in his smoky, Australian-accented voice. "It was the most beautiful screenplay I'd ever read. And after reading Annie Proulx's brilliant short story, I felt like it was definitely going to be intriguing and challenging to tell this story. Particularly, because Ennis has very few words to express his battle and his issues. Ang Lee was attached to direct, and I felt he was perfect to tell this story. I didn't want to walk away from something so perfect; that would have been crazy."

Crazy, indeed. And while Hollywood has gotten decidedly more gay-friendly thematically in recent years, some showbiz types still get squeamish when it comes to playing gay. "I understood that it was a fear for quite a lot of other people in this industry," offers Ledger, regarding whether or not he had doubts about playing a man-loving ranch-hand. "But I never felt like I had anything at stake; there was no risk. The only anxiety I had was that the project was so perfect, I didn't want to be responsible for fucking it up," he says, laughing.

"The question of sexuality and these characters' issues with it wasn't was pushed me to do this, or scared me about it," explains Gyllenhaal. "I'm in the business of helping stories get told, and I love this story. People don't say to me, When you were in 'Proof,' were you afraid to play a mathematician? Or, Was it scary to play a Marine in 'Jarhead?' Why is that?"

Not surprisingly, both actors are also happy to speak out the importance of this story, and the message it sends. "There's no doubt that this is a gay love story," says Gyllenhaal. "But I don't think that these two characters even know what gay is. Before we started shooting, Ang Lee and James [Schamus, the film's producer] gave us books about first-hand accounts of guys growing up in the Midwest and their encounters with men and their attraction to men, and what that was, and even they didn't understand what it was, or what they were feeling. So to me, there are a lot of things that this movie is deconstructing that I think are really fascinating."

Ledger agrees, and also sees the film's scope as ultimately universal. "Sure, they're two men in love with each other, but the film's point is that two men in love with each is just as universal as man and a woman, or two women - it's the same thing," he says. "In many ways, it's much bigger than a story about two gay men. It's a story for everyone. We put our hearts and souls into telling this story, and we're trying to broaden people's opinions and people's interest in coming to see the film-because it's a story of beauty."

Strengthening their commitment to "Brokeback Mountain" is the fact that both Gyllenhaal and Ledger have very personal connections to gay people, whose lives they hope to honor with this film. Gyllenhaal grew up with gay godparents - a male couple who were very close to his family.

"I do feel like there is a part of me who did this movie for them," he admits. "Maybe, almost naively, I don't really worry about how other people will respond to this, because I know I've done it for people I love."

Similarly, Ledger had an uncle in mind as he slipped on his boots to play Ennis. "My uncle's gay and he went through a hard time coming out to his dad in the 70s. His dad told him, 'You've got to go to a hospital and get fixed, or you've got to leave the family.' So he stood up and walked out and moved to L.A. and never came back. He's always found it hard to accept his sexuality, and maybe as a backlash to this and his father making him feel less masculine, he became more masculine. He's the head of an arm-wrestling federation and loves pit fighting! He's into bodybuilding and is the toughest, most masculine guy I know. That's why it was important to me to create Ennis as the most masculine character that I've ever played, to make that point."

And as it was for both Gyllenhaal and Ledger, the impact of a monumental and yet bracingly intimate story like "Brokeback Mountain" will be a very personal one for audiences. This is the kind of movie which prompts discussions, and that gay viewers can proudly claim. Best of all, the film has the capacity reach people in a very important way. "If anything, I think this movie might be able to tell younger people who are struggling with issue of their own sexuality and how they're feeling that it's okay," says Gyllenhaal. "That's what I have the most faith in."

And certainly, what's likely to remain with viewers is the central story of Jack and Ennis' quest for love, and the heroic struggle they face.

"What I feel is that we're all looking for intimacy, wherever we can find it," Gyllenhaal offers. "And when you find it with someone, you hold on to it as hard as you can. And that's all that matters."

- posted by Ally 
- credits: PrideSource.Com
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'Mountain' Men
Critics are raving, but will American moviegoers give gay cowboys the boot?
By ROBERT W. WELKOS and ELAINE DUTKA
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

HOLLYWOOD — "Brokeback Mountain" seems to have everything going for it: great reviews, a remarkable opening weekend and dominance in the first wave of the Hollywood awards season, underscored Tuesday by seven Golden Globe nominations, the most of any film.

But there's one important landmark the film has yet to reach — roping in a mass audience.

Over the next several weeks, the movie about two handsome young cowboys falling in love with each other — dubbed by some wags the gay "Gone With the Wind" — will be released across the United States in cities where its themes of repressed sexuality and cultural intolerance may prove a tougher sell than they have in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with their concentrations of cineastes and gay and lesbian populations.

"Brokeback Mountain's" future in the heartland will offer a classic test of whether what the movie business considers its best work will be embraced by audiences whose values may be more conservative than Hollywood's. In some ways, "Brokeback" could prove a counterpoint to the phenomenal success of last year's "The Passion of the Christ," a film disparaged by Hollywood power brokers and many film critics that still emerged as a blockbuster.

The controversial cowboy movie, which is rated R in part for its sexuality, also is hitting theaters at a time when filmmakers and studio executives are worried they are losing touch with audiences, as reflected by a nearly yearlong box-office slump.

At least one national exhibitor believes "Brokeback Mountain's" appeal will not be limited to major metropolitan cities.

"Between the controversy and the reviews, 'Brokeback Mountain' is becoming a 'must-see' movie of the year," said Jerry Pokorski, executive vice president and chief film buyer for Pacific Theatres and ArcLight Cinemas, which has about 400 theaters across the country.

"Maybe in Wichita Falls it will be a different story, but I still believe that good reviews — and good films — drive the business."

But outside of big cities, movies that generate great reviews don't always play strongly.

Just this year, "Capote" attracted consistently good reviews, but so far has grossed just $10.4 million in more than 200 theaters.

Within movies that have gay themes, the stronger the sexuality the weaker the films tend to perform. Although toned-down gay-themed movies such as "The Birdcage" and "Philadelphia" were hits, the far more explicit (and Oscar-winning) transgender drama "Boys Don't Cry" sold only $11.5 million in tickets.

"I really don't think America is ready for a homosexual love story like this," said Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the conservative Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. "I'm sure it has a great deal of appeal within the Hollywood community itself, which is already committed to a pro-homosexual ideology, but I can't see it as a big box-office success."

Added Dave Bossie, who was the executive producer of the anti-Michael Moore documentary "Celsius 41.11" and heads the conservative grass roots organization Citizens United: "'Brokeback' will not only encounter resistance, but empty theaters. My wife and I watched the trailer in a theater a few days ago and sensed an audible revulsion to two men passionately embracing and kissing on the big screen.

"Blue-collar workers (and) predominantly heterosexual women are not going to pay to see this story in large numbers. The conservative audience that made 'The Passion of the Christ' so successful will be the death knell for 'Brokeback Mountain.'"

But one theater owner in Tennessee says early interest has been running high.

"E-mails are running 50 to 1 in favor of the film — and not just from (gay and lesbian organizations)," said Jeff Kaufman, vice president of film for Memphis, Tenn.-based Malco Theatres, a family-owned chain of about 300 screens in small towns such as Blytheville, Ark.; Owensboro, Ky.; and Oxford, Miss.

"'Brokeback' is a high-quality film, a terrific picture and there seems to be broad-based interest. A gay theme certainly didn't hurt 'The Birdcage,' which had great commercial success," Kaufman said.

On Friday, the film will open on two screens in a theater in Plano, Texas, a Dallas suburb.

"We've sold about 40 tickets over the Internet for the Friday screening, more than for any other movie we are showing, including 'King Kong,'" said Terrell Falk, vice president of marketing and communications for Cinemark USA Inc., which has more than 2,000 screens in 200 theaters, primarily in Utah, Ohio, California and Texas.

But interest in acclaimed titles typically fades once a town's core film fanatics have come and gone.

Still, novelist Larry McMurtry, who with co-screenwriter Diana Ossana adapted E. Annie Proulx's short story into "Brokeback Mountain," says the film's examination of secret love in the wilds of Wyoming should hold universal appeal.

"People seem to like it — it's striking them in their hearts and in their gut," said McMurtry, the author of "Lonesome Dove."

Robin Glasscock, a bartender at the Proud Cut Saloon in Cody, Wyo., said she plans to go see the movie with her friends.

"I don't know how this community would respond to it," she said. "It's a pretty conservative type of place. I certainly hope they wouldn't be (offended by the movie). I think it's something they should see regardless."\]

"Brokeback Mountain" will need to get those kind of intrepid moviegoers if it is to become a breakout hit.

The film's producer and distributor, Focus Features, says it is encouraged that among the ticket buyers in the opening weekend were a significant (but unspecified) number of straight men who came with their girlfriends or wives.

James Schamus, a Focus co-president, said the stereotype of the "Middle American who votes Republican and runs screaming from the theater at the thought of this movie is being exploded as we speak."

- posted by Ally 
- credits: ModBee.Com
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Jake Gyllenhaal
Jake Gyllenhaal and Brokeback Mountain lead the pack in NOW's roundup of this season's hottest films
By GLENN SUMI / NOW Toronto Magazine

It's day three of Brokeback Mountain's publicity blitz at the film festival, and he's already become a crowd favourite, smiling for photographers, pausing to sign autographs, taking it all in with those big baby blues.

After asking whether I mind if he smokes, he takes a drag. Not in a guilty, "I know I shouldn't be doing this" kind of way, but in a pleasurable after-dinner manner.

He's got a lot to be pleased about. Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee, has just won the top prize at Venice, and there's lots of good buzz in and around the sold-out screenings.

Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger play Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, two dirt-poor Wyoming cowboys. They meet one summer in the 1960s to tend a flock of sheep on the top of the titular mountain. After a lot of bonding, some surreptitious looks and a bout or two of drinking, their friendship takes a sharp turn one cold night as they unbuckle those chunky belts, shuck those well-worn denims and wordlessly get it on.

Over the ensuing months on their mountaintop paradise, and then years later when they move apart, get married and raise families but still meet for occasional "fishing trips," they genuinely experience a love that dare not speak its name.

"I'm not no queer," says Ennis early on, followed by Jack's "Me neither."

Funny, then, that the media have jumped on the "gay cowboy" phrase, something neither character would ever identify with.

"I think that comes from people who haven't seen the movie," says Gyllenhaal, with his head-on gaze.

"After you see it, you don't really think in those terms. In a way, all this fuss is a perfect example of why it's such a struggle for these two to be together. They have nothing to do with labels. What draws them together is love."

Albeit a kind of love that hasn't been captured much on film outside of the independent scene, and never with such up-and-coming big-name stars and a major director like Lee.

The originality of Annie Proulx's 1997 short story, on which the film is based, was one of the reasons why both actors signed on.

"It was like Annie was walking through the forest and came across some myth that had never been heard or seen before," says Gyllenhaal, who recently added a terrifying performance as a bulked up U.S. Marine in Jarhead to his growing resumé, which includes the cult classic Donnie Darko.

"It was a story that you couldn't not say or tell. I like things that are alive and fresh, things that haven't been done before."

He's quick to say that he's less interested in the film's political potential than its emotional charge.

"Movies are very powerful, and they can change people they've done that to me," says the actor. "But this wasn't about politics. I don't think I could play a part with a political agenda. I work in the world of emotions, not politics."

It seems like a pat phrase, but one look at his puppy-dog eyes and you believe it. Think of Gyllenhaal's most memorable roles and you don't remember his one attempt at a big blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow but the smaller, wrenching performances, like his tortured teen who carries on an affair with Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl and the boy who loses his girlfriend in Moonlight Mile. He's like a more emotionally available Tobey Maguire.

Brokeback Mountain wrestles your feelings to the ground because of Jack's touching vulnerability mixed with Ennis's deep-rooted fears of exposure.

That openness comes naturally. Gyllenhaal grew up in an enviously glamorous and liberal milieu. Both his parents are filmmakers, and his sister Maggie is an actor. Growing up, the idea of same-sex love was never a big deal.

"The fact that I have two godfathers who are a gay couple and a lot of my friends came out when they were 15 or 16 probably helped it all seem not that foreign," he smiles.

"But I'm not naive. I'm totally aware that there are people out there who hate gays. The thing is, sexuality isn't about left or right, conservative or liberal. It affects everyone. A lot of people, no matter what their political stance, are dealing with this issue."

Despite one explosive scene in which Ledger inadvertently bashed Gyllenhaal's nose in during a kiss, the dark-haired actor says the emotional scenes were harder to film.

"The intimate scenes and the fight scenes are related," he points out. "These are two guys who deal with animals, and their instinct is to treat each other and themselves like animals.

"But that emotional territory is way more complicated. I think that's why everybody is so fascinated with the physical aspect, because it seems easier to talk about. Emotions are scarier."

The elegiac tone of doomed love hovers over each gorgeous frame of the film. And while a tragic turning point near the end is ambiguous, Gyllenhaal points out something that no one else has mentioned in any analysis of the film. Proulx published the piece exactly a year before Matthew Shepard's gay-bashing. Shepard, ironically, was also from Wyoming.

"When the story came out in the New Yorker, there were very real fears about gay-bashing. It was a reality. Maybe in another eight or 10 years it won't even be a fear."

And what if he, movie star Jake Gyllenhaal, could talk to a real life Jack Twist today?

Gyllenhaal's big eyes get even bigger and that grin curls up.

"I'd tell him, 'Gosh, I wish I could find a love that was so deep in my life. Oh, and don't worry, man. I've got your back.'"

- posted by Ally 
- credits: NowToronto.Com
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Jake Gyllenhaal sometimes likes to speculate about what he might do in the future. He flirts with the idea of becoming a gardener, opening a restaurant, or better still, making furniture, just like the 10ft-long mahogany table he crafted for his mother recently, which now takes pride of place in the kitchen at the family’s holiday home in Martha’s Vineyard. "Nothing makes me happier than knowing that my mum and dad sit down at that table every night when they’re there," he says. "I just rang my dad and asked him to give it another coat of linseed oil. It gives me a tremendous amount of joy to do things like that."

The irony is, of course, that while most young men of Gyllenhaal’s age fantasise about being a movie star, here’s a movie star who daydreams about being a carpenter. "I’m in a funny profession. I’m just 24 years old, and I should be able to question what I want to do with my life," he says, rather defensively. "Right now, I’m doing what I always wanted to do, but that might change and maybe I’ll end up doing something else if it makes me feel better."

In truth, of course, Gyllenhaal’s future is mapped out more clearly than a giant atlas. Acting may indeed be a funny profession, and he may have doubts about it, but he’s good at it, that’s for sure – quite possibly the best of his generation. We’re meeting at dusk in a hotel garden at the height of the Venice Film Festival. It’s been a day of heat (temperatures in the 80s) and hype – Gyllenhaal’s face is everywhere on posters for Brokeback Mountain, which has been given a rapturous reception by public and critics alike. He’s run the gauntlet of press conferences and jousted with the junketeers, international film journalists, all after their pound of flesh. Now, as the sun sets, it’s swarming mosquitoes that turn up for his blood instead.

He swats distractedly at tanned arms made muscular from the rigours of training for his role in Jarhead, Sam Mendes’s surreal film about the first Gulf War. But as we’re here to talk about Brokeback Mountain, it’s love, in all its forms, not war, engaging us – the love for a parent, a sibling, a girlfriend, and the love between two men.

Gyllenhaal’s emotions are close to the surface, flickering across that handsome, open face like pages turning on a book. It’s an essential asset for an actor, the ability to draw upon such feelings, and he laughs and even cries easily. He comes from a close, loving family, and at one point, I ask if his parents’ enduring marriage is an inspiration to him, which leads to a reflection on the nature of lasting relationships. "I recognise that if you love somebody you should stay with them, but that doesn’t mean it was that way with them always. My dad said that was what he liked so much about Brokeback, that it was a story of how complicated it is to love someone over a long period of time, what a struggle it can be. It was their 25th anniversary party and some guy asked my dad what it was like to be with the same woman for so long, and my dad said, ‘She’s not the same woman.’"

He pauses here, welling up, and turns his head away to dab at his eyes. "I’m sorry, it’s so weird that makes me cry. I think it’s because I’m a little tired."

His point is that relationships change and evolve and go through tough times, but you have to stick with them. Having a little weep obviously runs in the family. Gyllenhaal arranged a special screening of Brokeback for his parents recently, and by the end of it they were in a heap, like a collapsed scrum. "They were both in tears," he says, looking decidedly glum again, before immediately brightening up. "Hey, maybe they were crying out of embarrassment."

Gyllenhaal first heard about the screenplay of E. Annie Proulx’s short story several years ago. "It was introduced to me the same way as it was introduced to everybody else – as the gay cowboy story. I was 17 and I was terrified of it at that time. It sounded like the farthest thing from anything I’d want to have anything to do with. I didn’t even read it."

Gyllenhaal’s reaction wasn’t unique. There were plenty of A-list stars who read the script, appreciated that it’s a beautifully written piece, and promptly turned it down, presumably because playing gay for hetero stars was considered too risky. Why was he so scared? "I just didn’t think I’d be able to do it. And I was too young."

A few years later, an older, bolder Gyllenhaal heard that Oscar-winner Ang Lee was going to direct it. "I read it and it was beautiful, just beautiful. I knew that I wanted to do it. I didn’t even think about the intimate scenes or who I would be doing it with, I just wanted to do it. It was just the idea of these two people struggling to love each other, and that really moved me."

Brokeback Mountain is a classic American love story where the lovers happen to be men, and quite how that will play in the US multiplexes we’ve yet to see. But for the critics on both sides of the Atlantic, it is undoubtedly one of the best films of the year. It won the main prize in Venice and should receive a hatful of Oscar nominations, including one for Gyllenhaal, who could also be in contention for his role as a young soldier in Jarhead. In fact, it’s hard to avoid Gyllenhaal right now – he also pops up as a maths student in John Madden’s screen version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play, Proof, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins.

It’s to be hoped that Gyllenhaal doesn’t really quit while he’s ahead. "No, I guess not," he says. "I love it." And the camera loves him. Take a look at any of the films mentioned above – or his breakout performance in the excellent Donnie Darko – and you’ll see a gifted big-screen actor coming of age before our eyes.

Set to the epic backdrop of the West, Brokeback Mountain is a sweeping story of longing and regret, of forbidden love and desire, and thoroughly deserves the plaudits it has received. Gyllenhaal plays Jack Twist, a young drifter who meets another ranch hand, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger), when they are hired to protect thousands of sheep that graze on Wyoming’s majestic Brokeback Mountain through the summer, before they’re driven down into town for winter shearing. As the pair swap life stories and talk of their hopes for the future – marrying, raising a family and buying land – they are drawn together, first as friends, and eventually as lovers, which, initially, is a shock to them both. Over the years, they continue to meet for a few snatched, stolen days, and Twist is the one who urges that they should set up a home together. But it’s Del Mar who backs away, frightened of the backlash such a move might provoke in such a deeply conservative land.

That same conservative land – or huge swaths of it – might just find Brokeback Mountain a little too unconventional. "People can respond however they want to," says Gyllenhaal. "You can look at it as an issue of sexuality, but it’s really about how hard it is when you fall in love with somebody, whether you’re gay or straight."

Gyllenhaal admits that both he and Ledger were anxious about filming the love scenes. "It was nerve-racking. But, you know, you take a deep breath and dive in the water, and it’s freezing cold and you want to get the hell out. You know what I mean? And then they want you to do it again. But ultimately, we both knew we had to trust Ang. And we also knew we’d do whatever was needed, because the story is really beautiful and the consummation of that relationship was completely valid. If you don’t see that stuff, the story doesn’t have the same poignancy."

Two good-looking straight actors playing such roles was bound to generate plenty of nudge-nudge publicity, and Gyllenhaal’s already tiring of it. "Hopefully, people will see beyond the whole ‘Oh, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal have love scenes’ thing."

Gyllenhaal grew up in the film community – his father Stephen is a director (of Waterland among many others) and his mother, Naomi Foner, is a screenwriter. His sister Maggie, older by some two years, is also an actress. He spent much of his childhood visiting one film set or another and mixing with actors and directors and writers – Jamie Lee Curtis is his godmother – and made his first film appearance in City Slickers, aged just ten. It’s no wonder that by the time he was in his early teens, he was already set on acting. "We grew up around a lot of famous artists, but at the time they were just friends. Then I woke up one morning and it was like, ‘Whoa! Look who’s here!’"

Growing up in LA’s artistic community made it easier for him to play a gay man, he believes, than it was for Ledger, who comes from a rural Australian background. "We went to cowboy boot camp to prepare for the film," says Gyllenhaal. "Heath didn’t need to do that. I’m unable to put a saddle on without falling on my arse, and he’s galloping off into the sunset. I was surprised when Heath said he would do the film. I think he was hesitant about it. But the idea of a same-sex relationship is hardly foreign to me. I mean, I grew up in LA."

In fact, Gyllenhaal long ago asked questions about his own sexuality. "I’ve grown up among a lot of people who have different sexual preferences. And I definitely don’t think you’ve grown up until you’ve thought about those things. It’s not necessarily about experimenting with those things, but thinking about them. You meet someone who is hiding their sexuality and you question it yourself. That happened a long time before I did this movie. Making this film didn’t make me question it. It made me want to tell a story of the love I’ve had in my life. That’s what I really thought about. There was a time when I was going through a really hard time in my life, breaking up with a girlfriend, and it just resonated with me in so many ways, and actually, it helped."

He frets that his private life is becoming a soap opera for the tabloids, especially in the States where his on-off relationship with the actress Kirsten Dunst is meat and drink to the celeb mags, and paparazzi follow their every move, providing long-lens "evidence" of every tiff.

"It’s crazy," he agrees. "They choose to photograph young couples like us, and young couples are precarious. So there’s going to be drama; I mean, you’re in your mid-twenties, and that’s how it’s going to be. If they photographed two 45-year-olds who’ve been married for 15 years, they’re not going to get much drama."

Gyllenhaal is still young – he’ll be 25 on December 19 – and wants the freedom to make mistakes, just like everybody else, without a long lens there to snap it. "I should be doing what I want to do and screwing up and that should be OK. Learning things."

He’s at turns affronted by the intrusion, and then pragmatic. "It’s the life I chose, and I knew that was how it was. I know people deal with worse things in their life."

In Jarhead, based on Anthony Swofford’s best-selling memoir of his time in the marines during the first Gulf conflict, Gyllenhaal got to act alongside Peter Sarsgaard, who happens to be his sister’s boyfriend. The shoot was intense – a cast made up entirely of men, and a crew almost all male, stuck in the Californian desert making a movie about soldiers waiting in the Saudi desert to go to war.

With testosterone running riot, there was plenty of aggression spilling over. At one point, Gyllenhaal was knocked in the mouth with a rifle butt and lost half a front tooth. He refused to speak to the actor responsible until Mendes wrote an extra scene in which his character, Swoff, apologises to the other man.

His relationship with Sarsgaard, who plays a hard-ass marine called Troy, was difficult. "I considered that it was him trying out for my sister’s hand," says Gyllenhaal, deadpan. "I’m not saying whether he succeeded, but that’s what it was. I think Maggie revelled in it – I think she was excited for both of us. And you know, we came out of it closer, that’s for sure. There’s that saying that to be somebody’s friend you have to recognise they are an equal mind. I think he left that experience feeling that about me, and I know I did about him."

His relationship with his sister is intense and, he says, often fractious and painful. "It’s been hard at times. I remember one of the first movies she did, which will go un-named, and when I watched it, I said to her, ‘I can’t tell you any other way, but you were really bad.’ And she started crying, she was so hurt. And then, with Secretary, it was just like, ‘You were extraordinary!’ And she was. But she knows I’m honest, and she knows that I love her."

His family provide the best refuge, the safest haven. "I found where my heart really lies and what makes me feel good is being with my friends and my family; growing with them, sharing with them and being intimate with them – that’s what makes me happiest."

For a moment I’m expecting more tears, but Gyllenhaal is contemplating carpentry again. "Maybe I’ll make some chairs next," he muses. "To go with the table." He’ll be making plenty more films, too. Despite flirting with alternatives to acting, he’s a natural. You might even say that he was born into it.

Brokeback Mountain is released on January 6, Jarhead is released on January 13, and Proof is released on February 10

- posted by Ally 
- credits: TimesOnline.Co.Uk
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- posted by Ally 
- credits: AFI.Com
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'Brokeback Mountain' Leads Golden Globe Pack

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Forbes.Com
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"Brokeback" builds Oscar buzz with NY award
Monday December 12 2:30 PM ET

Gay cowboy love story "Brokeback Mountain" won three of the top four awards from the New York Film Critics Circle on Monday, building momentum as the critics' favorite for Hollywood's top honors, the Oscars.

Earlier the National Board of Review, a New York group of 150 film professionals, academics and students, announced its annual awards, naming George Clooney's McCarthy-era drama "Good Night, and Good Luck" as best film of 2005.

The awards presented by the New York Film Critics Circle are among a string of second-tier awards leading up to the March 5 Academy Awards. The slew of awards announced in December traditionally helps narrow the field for the Oscars.

Director Ang Lee's film "Brokeback Mountain" is shaping up as the critics' favorite, despite concerns that its depiction of a love affair between two men may have trouble winning over audiences in more conservative parts of the country.

The New York Film Critics Circle gave the film its awards for best film, best director and best actor, for Heath Ledger.

"Brokeback Mountain" already won best film from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association on Saturday, and it earned eight nominations for the Critics Choice Awards on Sunday.

The National Board of Review's prize for directing went to Lee for "Brokeback Mountain." Lee's resume boasts a varied string of hits from the Jane Austen adaptation "Sense and Sensibility" in 1995 to martial arts epic "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in 2000.

"A lot of people among critics are responding to it because it is so daring," said Gene Seymour, chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle.

"It has all the sweep of what we have come to know as a major Hollywood romance, but it carries within it such a grand departure," he said.

The New York Film Critics named Reese Witherspoon best actress for her role in the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line."

Their awards for best supporting actor and best supporting actress went to William Hurt and Maria Bello for their roles in "A History of Violence."

Critically acclaimed "Capote," directed by Bennett Miller, won an award for best first film, while Werner Herzog will be honored for two non-fiction films "Grizzly Man" and "White Diamond," the group said.

Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai's "2046" was named best foreign language film and Japanese film-maker Hayao Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle" won best animated film.

NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW AWARDS

The National Board of Review, which has sometimes raised eyebrows for its esoteric picks, appeared not to have gone too far out on a limb this year. It picked Philip Seymour Hoffman as best actor for "Capote" and "Desperate Housewives" star Felicity Huffman as best actress for "Transamerica."

The National Board of Review also listed its 10 best films of the year in a selection that included many of those named by the Critics Choice Awards on Sunday.

The list, which was not ranked in order, included independents such as "Brokeback Mountain," "Crash" and "Capote" as well as "A History of Violence," the political thriller "Syriana" and big studio productions "Walk the Line" and "Memoirs of a Geisha." Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen made the list for "Munich" and "Match Point," respectively.

"Paradise Now," about Palestinian suicide bombers, was named best foreign-language film and "March of the Penguins" was given best documentary by the National Board of Review.

The National Board of Review's picks have traditionally been closely watched because it has been the first to announce its awards, but its announcement was delayed this year amid controversy over its voting procedures.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Yahoo.Com
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Fire on the Mountain
Can ‘Brokeback Mountain’ become a phenomenon that somehow transcends its considerable hype?
By TRAY BUTLER
Friday, December 09, 2005

In the weeks before filming began on “Brokeback Mountain,” director Ang Lee met individually with his lead actors to impart guidance about handling their roles.

With Heath Ledger, the advice was simple.

“The main thing I remember Ang telling me was, ‘stillness,’” Ledger says.

It’s an appropriately Zen imperative from the Taiwanese director, whose 2000 masterpiece “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” earned him a reputation for squeezing soulful, intimate performances out of actors in grandiose settings. And Lee’s advice cuts to the core of Ledger’s character, Ennis Del Mar, a conflicted ranch hand who only feels safe when he’s in the quiet majesty of the Wyoming wilderness and in the arms of his unlikely soul mate, Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal).

But that idea of “stillness” feels a million miles from the ear-splitting buzz surrounding the film itself. “Brokeback Mountain” may be the single most talked about gay movie of all time — propelled by its two straight leads and the firestorm of speculation over how Hollywood would handle such a unapologetic tale of same-sex romance.

Ledger and Gyllenhaal’s rash of recent magazine covers and the festival circuit’s acclaim for the film only fanned the flames that burn on countless “Brokeback” postings online.

As the world braces for the film’s Dec. 9 opening, it’s almost as if there are two “Brokeback Mountains”: the movie itself, which is a somber and gut-wrenching love story in the tradition of celluloid weepies, and the “Brokeback” buzz, with its hope of Oscar acclaim and twin fears of a Red State backlash against Hollywood’s very gay autumn.

Screenwriter Diana Ossana scoffs at any supposed controversy.

“People come in with these preconceived notions of the film, the ‘gay cowboy movie.’ It got that tagline after about three or four years, and we just rolled our eyes at it,” says Ossana, who co-wrote the screenplay with Western novelist Larry McMurtry.

But after people see the film, she says, they can’t stop thinking about it.

“They’ll tell me, ‘You know, I never really thought about gay men and their lives, I always tried to avoid it, but I really felt bad for those guys. “I didn’t know they felt the way that we do,’” Ossana says. “Which floored me.”

NOT ALL OF THE HYPE is universally positive. Last month, contrarian blogger Matt Drudge dug up an unnamed Wyoming playwright (who turned out to be Sandy Dixon, originally quoted in the Casper, Wyo., Tribune) who said she’d never met a gay cowboy and accused the film’s writers of trying to ruin her state’s Western image.

Even some gay fans raised eyebrows when both Gyllenhaal and Ledger indicated in separate interviews that they don’t think their characters are necessarily gay.

Ellen Huang, executive director of the nonprofit film group Queer Lounge, believes those comments were actually part of a marketing campaign.

“You have to connect with the mainstream audience that says you’re going to get beyond the gayness of it all,” Huang says. “Any heartfelt love story is about not being able to be with the one you’re supposed to be with.

“It’s a very enlightened statement,” she continues. “Even in the gay community, people are trapped in labeling. I think there are people who love who you love. I think in this case, especially for Heath Ledger’s character, I feel he just happened to fall in love with a man. What he’s battling is society’s labeling of him suddenly.”

Ledger seems to have learned his lesson on labels. When asked about the love story, he delivers a deliberately worded answer on what exactly “gay” means.

“It’s a touchy subject. If I say, ‘No, it isn’t [gay],’ then a lot of people will say, ‘No it is!’” the 26-year-old Australian actor says.

Instead, he decided to play Ennis as a character who shows that love can “transcend all.”

“Whether you want to label him as gay or not, it’s a human being and his soul falling in love with another soul, which happens to be in the vessel of a man,” he says. “And I think that’s the point of Annie Proulx borrowing the masculine Western iconic figure and landscape. Because it’s so masculine, it shows that love exists in all forms.”

Screenwriters Ossana and McMurtry also heap adoration on Proulx, who wrote the short story on which the film is based. Ossana picked up the piece when it originally ran in the New Yorker in 1997. She says she “sobbed liked a five-year-old” after reaching the end. The next day, she insisted that her friend and collaborator McMurtry read the story.

“I recognized immediately that this was a story that was a work of genius,” says McMurtry, author of “The Last Picture Show” and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for “Lonesome Dove.” “And I wondered, why didn’t I write it? I’ve been there in the West my whole life.”

Before the end of the year, the two optioned Proulx’s short story with their own money, but waited in vain as directors and stars came and went on the project.

“Agents just didn’t want their beloved actors to take on these ‘risky’ roles,” Ossana says.

Finally, Focus Features landed Lee, a director in need of a hit after his “Hulk” tanked at the box office. His newer work ranges from flying kung-fu masters (“Crouching Tiger”) to dysfunctional suburbanites (“The Ice Storm”), but Lee was no stranger to gay storylines: His 1992 comedy “The Wedding Banquet” was about a gay man marrying a woman to appease his Taiwanese parents.

For McMurtry, Lee seemed like an obvious choice to direct the film. “We felt that the exile in Ang connects to the exile in Ennis, just a little bit,” he says. “Ang is exiled from China and Taiwan, while Ennis is exiled from his community.”

Lee says the love between Ennis and Jack might turn off some moviegoers, but he was more concerned with capturing the deeper ideas behind the story: the notion of social obligation versus personal free will.

“There are people who won’t go see this, because of the gay relationship,” Lee says. “Or from the left side, some will ask if it’s gay enough. But I can only be honest and try to do justice to the brilliant writing by Annie Proulx.”

That brilliant writing also attracted fans like Andy Towle, the journalist and photographer who runs Towleroad.com. As evidenced on his blog, Towle has been practically obsessed with “Brokeback” for two years, and his love of the short story goes back a lot longer.

The long-awaited film did not disappoint him. He calls it “groundbreaking.”

“A gay story has never been told in this really classic cinematic context,” Towle says. “Most of the times people have seen gay storylines in urban settings and films that either have to do with coming out or AIDS or about nightlife. This film is shocking in the sense that the gay experience in a familiar cinematic context. It’s more a story about love than it is about being gay.”

And, as Towle points out, having two hot, young stars playing the leads certainly helps.

So how will “BROKEBACK” fare at the multiplex? Given its meager budget of $12.5 million, the film stands to be a financial success even if the folks in Peoria unilaterally reject the notion of queer cowboys.

Early critical response has been overwhelmingly affectionate. The movie scored big at the Toronto, Venice and Telluride film festivals, even though it was rejected by Cannes. Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A” and placed its two stars on the cover of last week’s issue. The movie also earned four nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards.

Huang of Queer Lounge expects the film to be a hit. She notes that even some blogs by straight male writers are reviewing the movie positively, in addition to the glowing response from mainstream magazines.

“These doors will open,” she says. “I think Hollywood is a very fickle monster. If the next two films with major stars playing gay characters tank, they will very quickly blame it on the gay aspect of the film.”

On the other hand, the movie may well repeat the success of, say, “Philadelphia,” and land Oscar statues. Ledger already appears posed to win a nomination for his role.

Huang says this fits with the way the Academy tends to operate. “I think right now in order for gay-themed movies to be made, they have to be Oscar bait,” she says. “I think it’s going to take a while before people start seeing gay James Bond. Gay characters have to be so mainstreamed that there’s no need for Oscar bait anymore.”

LEDGER REMAINS characteristically stoic when the topic of gold statues comes up, and he is equally less inclined to discuss any controversy the movie might stir up.

“That’s kind of out of my hands, really isn’t it?” he says. “It’s obviously not that controversial to me.”

His sentiment neatly reflects the character of Ennis, who keeps his thoughts hidden for most of the movie. That “stillness” — a quiet urgency, really — and the rumbling just beneath the surface are aspects that elevate “Brokeback Mountain” beyond its hype and makes it a film for the ages.

“Sometimes in acting, or in life, words can kind of complicate things. They can confuse an issue,” Ledger says.

“If anything, [Ennis’s quietude] gave me more room and more space to express what I wanted.”

- posted by Ally 
- credits: NewYorkBlade.Com
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- posted by Ally 
- credits: Advocate.Com
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'Brokeback' tells a story some gays know all too well
Wyatt Buchanan, Steven Winn, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, December 9, 2005

The movie "Brokeback Mountain" opens in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles today and already is being hailed as one of the most important gay films ever made by Hollywood because it explores the challenges -- both personal and societal -- of a same-sex relationship.

Two major straight actors star in the movie and are intimate on screen, and the film's director, Ang Lee, is one of the best in the business. This is the most hotly anticipated gay film since 1993's "Philadelphia," in which Tom Hanks played a gay lawyer with AIDS and for which he won an Academy Award. Some in the industry believe the new film could win more than one Oscar.

But the important measure of success for "Brokeback," say gay rights leaders, will be the effect a story about two cowboys who fall in love has outside of movie theaters.

"I think it will be as groundbreaking for gay relationships as 'Philadelphia' was in tackling AIDS issues," said Neil G. Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, an organization that monitors the representation of gays and lesbians in the media.

"It will be moving for anyone who is open to seeing the challenges and difficulties of what at that time, and even for many today, is the self-imposed and society-imposed necessity to live dishonestly," Giuliano said.

Opposition so far has been relatively calm. Conservative organizations like Focus on the Family and the American Family Association plan to review the film on their Web sites for their members. While the groups regularly call for boycotts against companies that contribute to gay causes, they plan no action against theaters showing the movie.

The movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger as cowboys who meet and fall in love during a summer of tending sheep on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming in 1963. The characters are followed for about 20 years as they marry, divorce, raise children and continue their relationship in infrequent weekends back on the mountain.

Gyllenhaal, who plays a bull rider, tries several times to convince Ledger, a ranch hand, that they should be together, but he is rebuffed. Ledger is haunted by a childhood memory of a gay man who was killed for living with another man.

The local presenters of the movie hope that the "Brokeback" buzz will translate into substantial ticket sales. In an unusual move, according to senior regional publicist Steve Indig, Landmark Theatres is showing the film on three screens at the five-screen Embarcadero Center Cinema. It opened early this morning with midnight showings, a tactic generally reserved for Hollywood blockbusters in the "Star Wars" mold.

Landmark plans to open "Brokeback" in its Oakland, Berkeley and Palo Alto theaters next Friday. Nationally, the film will premiere next week in 18 other markets, including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Still wider release, pending the performance of the film, is slated for January.

For the story to have an impact on the culture, it will have to be seen by large numbers of people outside the urban centers, said Jennifer Morris, director of programming for Frameline, which presents the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival.

"I'll be interested to see how far it gets into the mainstream -- how many screens on how many small-town multiplexes it gets to," Morris said.

Along with a clutch of early rave reviews, "Brokeback Mountain" has generated skepticism about its wider appeal, especially from conservative critics. "This is going to be a very tough movie to sell," argued right-wing pundit Michael Medved on "Good Morning America" earlier this week. "For most American guys who are not gay, there's a 'yewwwww' factor to the idea of Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger getting too up-close and personal onscreen."

"Brokeback Mountain" arrives, with all its ambiguities, in a culture that is growing accustomed to a wide spectrum of gay characters and material in theater, movies and television. Shows such as "Will & Grace," "The Laramie Project," "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and "Six Feet Under" create a context for movies like "Brokeback." The new content relies not so much on shock value but on dramatic authenticity.

Homosexual characters and themes have a long history in the movies, much of it cloaked in stereotyping, guilt or campiness. "The Boys in the Band" was widely seen as a breakthrough film when it opened in 1970, but now it seems dated. More textured treatments emerged later with films such as "A Different Story" and "Making Love."

AIDS and HIV changed the landscape in the 1980s. Movies as different as "Longtime Companion," "And the Band Played On" and "Jeffrey" addressed the issue.

With "Philadelphia," another barrier fell with the casting of a straight actor, A-list Hollywood star Hanks. Many observers have cited that film as an important precedent for "Brokeback Mountain." The mainstream appeal of "Philadelphia," which grossed $77 million in the United States, had an impact on the work of AIDS organizations, leaders of those organizations say, and gay rights leaders have the same hopes for "Brokeback Mountain" on the issue of gay relationships and same-sex marriage.

"I know for a fact that it's going to make love between two men real for the first time for tens of thousands of Americans," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "In order to move people from not understanding or being supportive of (same-sex) marriage to being supportive is a series of small steps, not a lot, but two or three. I think 'Brokeback Mountain' is one of those steps."

The unusual contours of this film, about two men who tell each other they are not "queer" but pursue a secret sexual affair for several decades, give "Brokeback Mountain" its particular force. These iconic male figures, with their boots and cowboy hats and laconic speech patterns, tap into cultural archetypes that the original Annie Proulx story of 1997 and the film pointedly transgress. Set in the pristine Wyoming mountains and Texas flatlands of the early 1960s through the '80s, "Brokeback" invokes a kind of primal American innocence. That's what makes the gay love story at once momentous and confounding to both the audience and the film's protagonists.

The Village Voice's J. Hoberman places "Brokeback" in the "idyllically homosocial" tradition of the Western, which often involves "the programmatic exclusion of women." As such, as Hoberman writes, "Brokeback" connects to films like "The Wild Rovers" and "The Hired" as well as "Midnight Cowboy," which starred Jon Voigt as an omnisexual Texas hustler in New York, and Andy Warhol's disco "Lonesome Cowboys."

"Calling this a gay cowboy movie really diminishes it," Jeffrey Friedman says of "Brokeback." Friedman is co-director of "The Celluloid Closet," a 1995 documentary about homosexuality in Hollywood. "I wouldn't even really call it a gay movie," he says. "It transcends those boundaries by taking us away from all the familiar trappings of gay material and, for that matter, of heterosexual love stories as well. This is a story about love and isolation and the difficulties of connection. The fact that they're both men and that they're both hunks is just icing on the cake."

The New York Daily News' Jack Matthews, in handicapping the film's Academy Awards potential, wrote that "Brokeback" "may be too much for red-state audiences, but it gives the liberal-leaning Academy a great chance to stick its thumb in conservatives' eyes."

If Academy voters perceive the film as a virtuous underdog that breaks new ground, a best picture and/or several other Oscars are not out of the question. As the movie moves to other cities, the speculation alone could keep the movie in people's minds and may attract viewers curious enough to see for themselves what all the fuss is about.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: SFGate.Com
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Gyllenhaal Gets Twisted on 'Brokeback Mountain'
By Hanh Nguyen

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Although Jake Gyllenhaal still has a long career ahead of him, director Ang Lee occasionally found the young actor too accomplished while shooting the bittersweet Western romance "Brokeback Mountain" alongside Heath Ledger.

"Every take Jake would have a wide variety, with an understanding of what the scene was about, what the character develops," says Lee. "I sometimes had to remind him that innocence is on his side. As young actors they are scary good, they are too skillful, they take away some of the innocence."

Based on a short story by Annie Proulx, "Brokeback Mountain" centers on rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) and ranch hand Ennis Del Mar (Ledger), two men who become intimate in the summer of 1963 in Wyoming. Although they go their separate ways, get married and have children, they continue to reconnect throughout their lives, hiding their relationship.

Gyllenhaal approached the epic romance with caution, knowing he and his co-star had to play all the nuances in the relationship to make it believable over the 20-year span of the rocky love story. Playing the reticent half of the couple, Ledger was methodical about being consistent from scene to scene.

"Heath has a very meticulous way of approaching the character, because from take to take there is not a lot of difference. He would respond, but he set himself in a certain zone that seemed to me predetermined and he kept refining it," explains Lee. "In a way, I think it's good, because Heath is really the anchor for that Western mood."

Gyllenhaal, however, had to play the more openly emotional of the two cowboys, the one who was more willing to abandon his current life in order to commit to their illicit relationship. In fact, he's the one who instigates the more amorous side of their association.

"Jack has had more experiences with guys before and he's more gay of the two of them. I was like, 'Wow, am I really going to be able to be the one who brings [Ennis] into this and comforts him somehow?'" says Gyllenhaal. "I'm the one who kind of initiates particularly these sexual encounters, which to me was totally foreign. It's like, 'How do you do this? Does it look right?'"

Although the film shows Ennis and Jack kissing and touching often, there's only one full-blown sex scene that had Gyllenhaal apprehensive about depicting realistically, especially since both he and Ledger are straight.

"The best metaphor I can give is that it felt like we were both like, 'Are you ready? 'Yeah, let's go.' And we dove off the boat into the deep end," says Gyllenhaal. "It's like when you're terrified of the water: You see a little kid thrown in the water and they're trying to get back to the boat as fast as they can."

Lee credits the effectiveness of the pivotal scene to his actors, who threw themselves into the private moment.

"In the first lovemaking scene in the tent, I remember thinking, 'This is brave.' Particularly of Jake ... because you [the audience] see in the dark, because it's printed down [on film], but I see very clear right in front of my eyes," recalls the director. "It was very close with a handheld camera. The whole scene was in one shot. So many times you see beautiful lovemaking scene with a lot of exposure or an awkward lovemaking scene, but I think it's very rare that you see it private. And that's what we were shooting for with this story."

Gyllenhaal doesn't have to worry about how the film will be received -- especially after it won the best picture award a the 2005 Venice International Film Festival -- but was gratified to receive a note from author Proulx who gave him a greater appreciation for playing Jack Twist.

"She said that 'twist' refers to the strength of thighs and butt muscles that a bull rider has to have in order to stay on the bull. And I had never really thought of it that way. It's so funny, it's so clearly in your face the whole time and you never really know what that is," says the actor. "There is a strength in nature like holding on to that goal -- wanting things to progress and whatever the response is definitely something that I related to in Jack Twist. I really fell into it, always pushing Ennis to say how he felt or to try and communicate something, even if it's imperfect."

"Brokeback Mountain" opens in limited release on Friday, Dec. 9.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Newsday.Com
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Herding stereotypes to the last roundup

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Zap2it.Com
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Herding stereotypes to the last roundup

- posted by Ally 
- credits: