OK, we’ve seen Oprah’s Brokeback Mountain show (1/27) and all we can say is: way too straight. A screaming (straight) female audience there to see the two (straight) male hottie leads, bringing out the film’s (straight) actresses so as to be able to talk about the foursome’s (straight) relationships in front of and behind the camera. It’s a film that has a GAY theme, a GAY plot and GAY characters. Why is it so hard to call it a GAY film? Oprah did manage to squeak out that there were no stereotypes—not even a lisp. You missed, Ms. Lady—there are at least two and maybe more stereotypes: Gay Relationships Often End Tragically & Gay People Get Murdered Because They’re Gay. How about some hard questions? How did a straight author, straight screenwriters, straight actors and a straight director come up with this near-perfect gay movie? Has it changed any straight minds? The New York Times found some real present-day gay Wyoming cowboys; how about an interview? Why have some people seen the movie three, four and even five times? Why has it already become a ruefully commonplace event to say to people ‘You’ll never look at shirts in your closet the same way again?’ Oprah, you could’ve given us journalism and commentary but you gave us fluff.
A little article in the Chicago Sun-Times (1/26) mentions that while Brokeback may be the first cowboy movie to actually portray male-male love explicitly, there are many Hollywood productions ‘practically pink with gay sub-text’: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (with people asking, even in 1969, ‘Why is Katherine Ross in this movie?’), Bend of the River (1952 flick in which Jimmy Stewart & Arthur Kennedy pair up; Rock Hudson appears as, apparently, the other woman), The Wild Bunch (1969 movie with Bill Holden and Robert Ryan going off orgying together), and Red River (1948 film in which Monty Clift and John Ireland, AKA ‘Cherry’ Valance stroke each other’s pistols murmuring, ‘Nice, awful nice’). And don’t forget all those singing cowboys who always had male sidekicks when wives and girlfriends weren’t around on that lone prairie.