Brokeback Mountain
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50 States, 50 Gay Movies
The last half of my 20s and the first half of my 30s were spent in Los Angeles working in mainstream television (That 70s Show) and film (Jesus People). I never made much money, but I did get to live out my dreams of visiting Kathy Griffin’s house, serving crumpets to my favorite comedic actress, Lisa Kudrow, and brushing my leg up against my favorite dramatic actress, Holly Hunter. In the mid-90s, I took for granted the fact that gay characters were becoming well represented on television. After all, my favorite TV shows were thirtysomething and My So-Called Life and […]
by Dan Steadman on Dec 22, 2012 -
VIDAL ON THE OSCARS
Sheerly Avni has an interview with Gore Vidal up on Truthdig.com in which the American author discusses Oscar-nominated films Brokeback Mountain and Capote (both of which he approves of, saying of the latter, “The movie is quite brave about showing somebody who did not have any redeeming characteristics, nor did they pretend he had”). Of Capote himself, Vidal has some choice memories: Oh, Capote. [Sighs.] I spent half a century trying to avoid him, in life, and now suddenly I’m surrounded by him. He was a pathological liar. He couldn’t tell the truth about anything, and he’d make it up […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 12, 2006 -
BROKEBACK MASH-UP
The strangest thing about the Brokeback Mountain phenomenon is the extent to which a movie that has so thoroughly entered the popular cultural discourse plays as an extremely private film. Gay or straight, one feels as if one is the only person in the theater while watching Lee’s intimate epic. Contrast that highly personal feeling with the late-night talk show jokes and SNL parodies and one finds a rare case of a soft-voiced, emotionally penetrating film that doubles as a cultural juggernaut careening through the contemporary zeitgeist. The latest affectionate parody is this trailer mash-up by students at Emerson College […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2006 -
MOODY ON BROKEBACK
Author Rick Moody, whose novel The Ice Storm was adapted by James Schamus for an Ang Lee film, discusses Brokeback Mountain in the pages of The Guardian. I wish he had gone a bit more into his thoughts on Lee and the process of adaptation informed by his own first-hand experience, but his is a good take on Lee’s artistic intent: “There is also the question of whether or not Lee’s film is a genuine western. The western, in American cinema, is one of the foundational genres. It’s the bedrock on which the language of film was constructed. It’s the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 18, 2005
