What we've been left with have been a raft of fabulously witty and stylish characters played by openly gay actor Rupert Everett ("My Best Friend's Wedding," "The Next Best Thing"), tortured, foreign gay artists (Stephen Frye as Oscar Wilde in "Wilde," Jonathan Pryce as Lytton Strachey in "Carrington," Leonardo DiCaprio as Rimbaud in "Total Eclipse" and Javier Bardem as Reinaldo Arenas in "Before Night Falls"), and that old chestnut, the gay hustler/psychopath/drug-addict/serial killer ("The Silence of the Lambs," "The Talented Mr. Ripley," "High Art," "My Own Private Idaho").
But short some Hollywood alchemy that reworks the very DNA of the "Brokeback" script, the film can't possibly duck down any of these escape routes. First published in the New Yorker in 1997, where it won both an O. Henry short story prize and a National Magazine Award, and then in Proulx's 1999 story collection "Close Range," it's the tale of sheepherder Ennis Del Mar and rodeo rider Jack Twist. The two men meet and fall in love as 19-year-olds in 1963, tending a herd on the titular Wyoming mountain. The tale follows the men's clandestine relationship for 20 years: their marriages to women, the birth of their children, regular mountaintop assignations, the impossibility of their permanent union, and the gradual acceptance of the grave repercussions of their love.
The story is, very simply, about its two main characters and their passion for each other. There is no murder mystery, no one suffering from AIDS, no drug addiction and no heterosexual romance to move the plot along and distract from the homosexual relationship.
The rights to the story have bounced around Hollywood since its publication. Schamus had them briefly when he was still at Good Machine. Rudin later planned to make the movie with director Van Sant (at the height of his mainstream popularity after the success of "Good Will Hunting"). It wasn't long before it was rumored that that film's stars, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, would take on the roles of Ennis and Jack. But the project couldn't quite get off the ground under Van Sant and was later offered to Kimberly Peirce ("Boys Don't Cry") and Todd Haynes ("Poison," "Far From Heaven"). It languished in no man's land for several years before Lee and Schamus picked it up again in November 2003.
It will now be up to Lee and his actors to determine how raunchy or demure the physical relationship between the two taciturn Westerners will get on-screen. A draft of the script is noncommittal on this point, allowing room for the prim and the explicit in its description of Jack and Ennis' first sexual encounter: "AS THE FOLLOWING ACTION OCCURS, WE PULL AWAY TO THE NIGHT LANDSCAPE, AND WE HEAR ONLY THE SOUNDS ... THE BELT BEING UNBUCKLED, RUSTLE OF JEANS, ENNIS SPITTING, SHARP INTAKES OF BREATH ... ENNIS raises up, gets to his knees, unbuckles his belt, shoves his pants down with one hand, uses the other to haul JACK up on all fours ... JACK doesn't resist ... ENNIS spits in the palm of his hand, puts it on himself. They go at it in silence, except for a few sharp intakes of breath."
According to this early draft of the script, it is only after "ENNIS shudders" that "THE CAMERA MOVES BACK INSIDE THE TENT, as both fall asleep."
Later, in one of the screenplay's most powerful moments, the two men -- each married and a father -- meet again after a separation of many years, supposedly to share some platonic, ass-slapping drinks as straight men. But when they meet on the very visible stairway to Ennis' apartment, they "seize each other by the shoulders, hug mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying sonofabitch, sonofabitch. Then, as easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths come together."
It's the kind of sad-happy-hot scene that -- when well-cast -- can shoot sexual currents off the screen, sparking the hearts and libidos of receptive audiences. But those audiences are used to getting singed by Bacall and Bogart, by Deborah Winger and Richard Gere, by Kate and Leo. Are they ready for the unbridled lust of Gyllenhaal and Ledger?
"In the '60s and '70s and early '80s, various studios tried to see if things like this might work," says Griffin. "They even tried a full-on romance, 'Making Love,' in 1982, where there was an on-screen kiss. It was about the relationship between these two men. And people ran screaming out of the theaters. There was major fleeing up the aisles. And that's exactly what's kept people worried. That's why you didn't see Antonio Banderas and Tom Hanks kissing on-screen in 'Philadelphia.'"
But that's just the sort of fear that many hope is fading. Stephen Macias, GLAAD's brand-spanking-new entertainment media director, says, "GLAAD certainly hopes that as gay characters and gay stories continue to evolve, films will focus on the sexiness, the romance ... that our sex lives won't be edited out anymore. From what I've been hearing about this film, progress is being made."
Rudin points out that these days there are more outlets for films than there were even five years ago. "When I had ['Brokeback Mountain'], it was a very, very tough thing to get made. Basically, studios didn't want to make it. There are many more avenues for smaller movies now. And I think it's really smart for Focus to make it. Whatever it turns out to be it will be a lightning rod for the press."
And the press loves nothing more than gay lightning rods. Perhaps you've heard, as Griffin put it, that "gay is the new black." Sure, Will doesn't have sex with men and seems strangely attracted to Grace. And yes, "Queer Eye's" Fab Five intersect with Amos and Andy in several critical cultural capacities. That gay reality show, "Boy Meets Boy," was, as one writer put it, "a good natured gay-baiting miniseries." But some television has made real strides. "Six Feet Under" features a relationship between two men, one of whom is a retired cop. They kiss, embrace, fight, and go to bed and to couples' therapy together.
Griffin argues that the recent embrace of all things gay isn't to be laughed at. The more gay characters populate the pop-culture landscape, the less pressure will be faced by their progeny. "No one film suddenly has to be the holy grail," says Griffin.
According to another scholar, it's perfectly appropriate that "Brokeback Mountain" may be the movie that shatters Hollywood's gay-sex taboo. Chris Packard, an adjunct professor at New York University's Gallatin School and the author of the forthcoming book "Queer Cowboys," says that this story "makes plain what's implicit in the cowboy stereotype, in terms of an alley-cat, roaming sexuality that is always alive. Cowboys are such central figures in pop culture and such idealizations of mainstream macho masculinity that we should start to include the homoerotic aspect of that masculinity. They are like the fathers of the civilized culture that's going to follow them into the wilderness."
About the writer
Rebecca Traister is a staff writer for Salon Life.
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