All quiet on the gay western front

Dec. 7, 2005 | The new celluloid version of C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" finally arrives in theaters on Friday, the same day the smaller but also eagerly awaited "Brokeback Mountain" debuts. The two films could hardly be less alike: One is the family blockbuster of the winter season with heavily marketed Christian overtones; the other is a small love story about two cowboys. And yet their simultaneous release this weekend could touch off the year's first real box-office culture clash.

The Disney/Walden Media version of Lewis' Narnia tale comes with all the bells and whistles of a crowd-pleaser -- CGI wizardry and epic battles -- and the studios are hoping, no doubt, that it will become just the first installment of a lucrative fantasy series, à la "The Lord of the Rings," but with more episodes (there are seven books in "The Chronicles of Narnia"). In a marketing campaign built on the lessons of "The Passion of the Christ," Narnia has also been skillfully sold to the Christian audience via special church screenings and a plethora of Sunday school teaching materials that tie into the film, much of it orchestrated by Motive Entertainment, the company that helped launch "Passion."

"Brokeback Mountain," on the other hand, is a quiet drama made very much in the mold of classic American tragic love stories, and has been compared to everything from "Titanic" -- even the movie posters are purposefully similar -- to "Gone With the Wind." But while in no way political in itself -- the story sticks close to the characters and the arc of their relationship -- a film about two cowboys (even one with the tag line "Love is a force of nature") cannot help finding itself suddenly sucked into a political vortex beyond the filmmaker's control, given the current cultural divide over gay rights. It's a film that "bucks Hollywood convention" and "explores the last frontier," and in a year that has seen a ferocious national debate over same-sex marriage, a taboo-busting movie that brings together two rising young male Hollywood stars locking lips on the big screen is bound to stir controversy.

Or you'd at least be forgiven for thinking so. Because it turns out that there's a concerted effort -- on both sides -- to avoid turning "Brokeback Mountain" into a political battle.

Instead of boycotts, picket lines or enraged letters to the editor, conservative Christian groups are hoping to kill the film with silence. Robert Knight, director of the Culture & Family Institute at Concerned Women for America, says his group has made a conscious decision not to campaign against the film. "People aren't going to walk around outside theaters with protest signs," Knight says. "This is not 'The Last Temptation of Christ,' which was such an affront that people felt they had to respond. This is something that could be and should be ignored.

"We've actually discussed whether to do some sort of action," Knight says. "But the consensus was, why give it that much credit, or why call attention to it?"

Peter Sprigg, vice president of the Family Research Council -- the group that a year ago led a campaign against "Kinsey," the biopic about America's favorite/most-hated sex researcher -- says his group came to a similar conclusion. "We talked about whether we should do something, but at this point we don't have any plans," says Sprigg. "Some of these things, we don't want to draw attention to them. We would almost be doing them a favor if we were to mount a big campaign -- we'd be making a martyr out of the movie, so to speak. I don't think we want to fall into that."

Even Focus on the Family, which on Thursday announced it would stop using Wells Fargo because of the bank's contributions to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), has been mum, indicating that it would release some sort of statement on the film, but that it had no campaign planned.

What happened to the phone tree and newsletter agitation of years past, like the protests that surrounded Ellen's coming out on "Ellen," or the American Family Association's sustained campaign against "Will & Grace"? Perhaps the Christian right believes there's no such thing as bad press, and the surest method to induce box-office death is total silence. "Hey, it's about time," says Curtis Mork, a coordinator at the gay activist group Wyoming Equality in Cheyenne, Wyo. "They're getting smart. I've always said, the more they complain about us, the stronger we get."

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