Juan - I hope I didn't sound like I was snapping at you. As I said...I've read many people who watch the movie feel that way. I've read gay porn stars on their blogs say they "didn't like it" (Sean Storm)... a curious cross section of people. We all have our own tastes.... maybe Torch Song Trilogy tastes good and Brokeback Mountain is just too bitter.
See, when I watch Torch Song today, I kind of wince. It plays to virtually every stereotype ever mentioned about gay people. I value the film for its place in history, but it's hard for me to really enjoy it today as much as I did back when it first came out. Plus, it tugs at far too many heartstrings in a really ham-handed, overly melodramatic way. Leave it to a drag queen.


When I first heard about Brokeback Mountain, the discussion centered on if it would "play in Peoria" and break out from the gay audiences. Hell... it sure can play in Perioa, but can it play in West Hollywood? Manhattan? Dupont Circle?
Sure it can. I know LOTS of gay people who love this film with all their heart. It's the film the gay community has been begging for -- one that finally shows us as human beings who value love instead of as wantonly promiscouous dick hounds cruising the back alleys and back rooms for our next trick.

So many people today are used to seeing gay television characters, it can be really a great reach to grasp it. So, have we now realized how far we've actually come???

Michael Lucas made a blog entry that typiifies this attitude: Criticizing the Brokeback Mountain producers for not mentioning the gay theme of the film during the GG awards. As I mentioned, the typical gay attitude is so extremely decadent, when all you expect out of a civil rights movement is for someone in a tuxedo to give you a verbal lick on national TV....
People are also attacking the commercials for not being "gay enough," as if there is ANY question when Heath and Jake are embracing what the movie is about.

The irony is that I used to be the guy who got mad about silly little things like this. I used to be the in-your-face gay guy who wanted it NOW, damn it, but after I spent three years as the notoriously outspoken columnist at my college paper and received tons of hate mail and death threats, I realized the value in a little bit of stealth. Nobody wants to be hit over the head with polemics. It just makes you feel as if you are being beaten into submission. People have a negative reaction to anger and self-righteousness. When I moved back to my hometown and started writing for that paper, I decided that I was going to try something a little different. I was going to talk about all the same things, but I was going to do it with a little bit of stealth and see how people reacted. Well, wouldn't you know it, I got more positive response from that than when I was angrily crying from the rafters and rooftops.

The timing of this movie couldn't have been better. Considering the landslide defeat of all the gay marriage bills in 2004, Brokeback is just the movie that Middle America needs to see right now. It doesn't let audiences off the hook -- it shows the sex (which is a lot more than we could say for Philadelphia) -- and it asks the questions: What is it you are so worried about? What's so wrong with the way these two guys feel about each other?

What makes Brokeback Mountain's story so powerful and elegant is that it spells out to all watching how homosexuality is as much a force of nature as the sweeping mountains of Wyoming. Compared to the effectiveness of, say, National Coming Out Day, it's it like the power of the sun to an energy-saving light bulb.
Great analogy, and I agree with you. For gays not to understand the merits of this film simply stupefies me.

There was one guy who was posting on this blog site who said, "I was really disappointed that there was not more sex. I expected a Falcon film, and I got nothing like that." And my mouth just fell open. Is that all that gay audiences care about? Seeing guys have sex? What a sad, sad statement about our community that is. But what a sadly perceptive one at that.

People obviously have the right not to like this movie. Some think it's way too slow. I can see how a lot of people might be bored by its languid pacing. And a lot of people just don't like love stories. OK. But I would say to really ask yourself WHY you didn't like it, and see if perhaps the problem is not the movie itself, but your expectations of it. Then ask why you have those expectations in the first place. And who is it more important for this movie to speak to? The quoir (us), or a larger community of ill-informed people (Them) who can learn and grow and change from having seen it?