The 78th Annual Academy Awards held few surprises on March 5—but the biggest one denied the maverick film Brokeback Mountain a place in history.
Crash—a movie about racial tensions—lived up to its name by crashing in on the Brokeback Mountain party in receiving the Best Picture Oscar. In doing so, Crash’s distributor, Lionsgate Films, became the first independent studio to take the top Oscar since DreamWorks, now a unit of Viacom Inc., won in 2001 for Gladiator, according to Reuters Canada.
However, Brokeback Mountain (favored to win Best Picture) certainly did not go home empty-handed. The film snagged three awards, including one for Best Director (Ang Lee). During his acceptance speech, Lee saluted the Brokeback writers for showing the importance of ‘the gay men and women whose love is denied by society.’
Brokeback also won for best adapted screenplay (Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry) and best score (Gustavo Santaolalla).
Though Crash and Brokeback took some of the top honors, two big-budget studio spectaculars also won three Oscars each: King Kong and Memoirs of a Geisha, which each won in technical categories, according to Forbes.
According to The Times Online, some critics have questioned whether Hollywood is yet ready to give its biggest prize to a gay love story. ‘Perhaps the truth really is, Americans don’t want cowboys to be gay,’ said Larry McMurtry, the veteran Western writer who shared the award for best adapted screenplay.
However, the rest of the Oscars pretty much proceeded exactly as many predicted—meaning that Philip Seymour Hoffman walked away with the Best Actor Oscar for his role as gay writer Truman Capote in the film Capote. Unfortunately, the predictability also meant that Felicity Huffman came up short in her bid to win the Best Actress award for Transamerica; Reese Witherspoon captured the Oscar for her role as June Carter in Walk the Line.
At the Independent Spirit Awards, which took place the day before on a Santa Monica, Calif., beach, Brokeback Mountain was named Best Picture and Ang Lee won another Best Director trophy. Also, Capote and Transamerica aboth won two prizes apiece, including acting honors for Hoffman and Huffman.