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Brokeback Mountain - 10th Anniversary

Thank you Tampa for taking the time to post these pics. I have watched the movie 2 additional times since the initial post and so many times before,, this movie really hits home for me and both the lead men Jake and Heath had such great chemistry - a great and painful, heart breaking story
 
I'm glad you guys enjoyed the pics! :) Although the movie is incredibly sad most of the time, the pics do convey some of the heart and soul of a masterpiece of cinema.
 
Thank you Stowe!

I love the article. I'll be reading the second one shortly. It's hard to believe it's been 10 years. I also remember how brokenhearted I was in January of 2008 when I heard that Heath Ledger had passed so tragically.

It's rather coincidental that a copy of the book just recently came into my possession long enough for me to read it. My most sincere compliments to the author Annie Proulx. They are not kidding when they say it is based on a short story. lol The whole tiny hardcover book is only about 60 pages. Not the basic 300+ pages we might imagine after seeing the movie.

A straight readership recognized that this was an extraordinary story which had never been openly discussed before. While the characters and the storyline may be fictitious, there was an instinctive awareness that real life stories along those same parameters had been playing out for centuries. I believe that in their heart of hearts that even a straight readership recognized this fact. It took a straight female writer to take a subject about something so iconic as the cowboy tradition of the American West, and weave a fictional story down a non-fiction path that had previously been kept in the shadows and out of public awareness.

Having read the book, it's so much more obvious what a masterpiece the screenplay adaptation was. The script writers really did add flesh to the bones of Proulx's characters. Without the background stories of the men's home lives, the story would not have worked in movie form. The Jack Twist character (played by Gyllenhaall) was also cast with someone handsome, as opposed to Proulx's vision of Twist being a homely man. Just about all of the most iconic and famous lines of the movie however did come directly from the book.

I can certainly relate to Dianna Ossana who co-write the screenplay. In Stowe's link above she describes the first time she saw both actors on the set in costume. She says she was so overcome by emotion that she had to go sit down for an hour to compose herself. After reading the book and writing the script, it had to have been an extremely emotional moment to see these characters alive and standing in front of you as real people. Knowing the whole dramatic story these men were about to go through together, it had to feel like such a heavy burden and responsibility to do well by them and give their life stories the dignity, respect and justice they deserved.

On the day of the ruling on gay marriage, many pundits were at a loss to describe one key moment or factor in recent history to account for how quickly public opinion had shifted in favor of gay civil rights. It seemed an astonishing speed that gained momentum in only the last 10 years or less. There is not any one specific key moment that I can point to myself. I do think that the tremendous mainstream media coverage we witnessed in the murder of Matthew Shepard was a shift in our favor.

The modern and much more global technology of journalism had reached a point where previously something that would have been covered and disseminated as only a local or regional story, could get fast exposure nationwide. In that sense I've always felt that Matthew was a martyr for the cause...and that we are indebted to him and his family for their contributions. Up to that point gay people had been getting assaulted and even murdered for ages. On the face of it, Matthew's story was not all that uncommon. Two guys (or a group of guys) go out and happen to meet a gay guy...gain his trust by telling him they're gay too...proposition him and lead him to believe they might go somewhere for sex or pot...then once they have him alone and vulnerable---they assault, rob, mutilate or kill him. We gay people already knew those dangers were out there. Straight society really had not had to face the ugliness of that level of hatred and violence before.

Why the story of his murder was not buried in the fifth page of the local Laramie Wyoming newspaper or just a brief mention on the local evening newscast, I'll never know. But newspaper editors and others in television news media somehow realized this was a story that "had legs." It went from being a local small-town Wyoming story, to a national story, to an international news story, in the blink of an eye. Larger society was shown in more graphic detail the violence perpetrated against minorities (with gays in particular in this case), why "hate crimes" statutes were needed in the first place, and how they were applied in the court system.

Of course another key cultural moment in popular culture was the release of Brokeback Mountain. The idea that a movie which encompassed a western, a romance and a drama about gay characters, could come to be treated by the general public with such respect and mainstream critical acclaim, was just shocking for the time period. There were so many contributions large and small that led us to where the gay civil rights movement is today. Brokeback Mountain is certainly one of those cultural touchstone moments where you really did feel that a historic seismic shift (however small or large it might have seemed at the time) had taken place.

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Tampa ~

Yes, I loved the movie. And yes, I have had the biggest crush on Jake Gyllenhaal, since, well. . . forever. And yes, like everyone, I am so saddened by Heath Ledger's untimely passing. . . .

But, Tamps, that was the loveliest, and most eloquent, tribute I have ever read, to Matthew Shepard. I wept. Thank you for sharing it, Tampa. I can only hope to emulate you, in words, one day - if I keep practicing. In deeds, I know I never shall. You are truly a man, in a million, and I am so very honoured, to know you.

Love,
"A" XOXOXOXOXOXO

Matthew_Shepard.jpg

 
************************************

Tampa ~

Yes, I loved the movie. And yes, I have had the biggest crush on Jake Gyllenhaal, since, well. . . forever. And yes, like everyone, I am so saddened by Heath Ledger's untimely passing. . . .

But, Tamps, that was the loveliest, and most eloquent, tribute I have ever read, to Matthew Shepard. I wept. Thank you for sharing it, Tampa. I can only hope to emulate you, in words, one day - if I keep practicing. In deeds, I know I never shall. You are truly a man, in a million, and I am so very honoured, to know you.

Love,
"A" XOXOXOXOXOXO

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Dearest Ambi.

Thank you so much. That has to be among some of the sweetest and kindest things anyone's ever said to me. :smiley-love021:
 
In regards to Brokeback Mountain not winning the Oscar for Best Picture, I myself was so upset about it that I refused to see the movie Crash and pretty much stopped watching the Oscars for years afterwards. I still don't go out of my way to watch the awards to this day. Twenty or fifty years from now, who will be talking about the movie Crash? Just as I suspected on Oscar night in 2006, nobody's even talking about it now. I can guarantee that Brokeback Mountain will still be a topic of conversation in the future among both gays and straights.

Now we have some confirmation and vindication of what many of us felt around 10 years ago. And from unexpected quarters.

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/movies/crash-director-paul-haggis-wouldnt-have-voted-126436483722.html


‘Crash’ Director Paul Haggis Wouldn’t Have Voted For ‘Crash’ as Best Picture Either

Jordan Zakarin
Writer

‎August‎ ‎11‎, ‎2015


Nearly a decade after his film became perhaps the most controversial and openly loathed Academy Award winner for Best Picture of all time, Crash director Paul Haggis has thrown a bone to his critics and admitted he wouldn’t have voted for his film to win the Oscar, either.

“Was it the best film of the year? I don’t think so,” Haggis, who also won Best Original Screenplay for Crash in 2006, told HitFix in a new interview. “There were great films that year. Good Night and Good Luck, amazing film. Capote, terrific film. Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, great film. And Spielberg’s Munich… Crash for some reason affected people, it touched people. And you can’t judge these films like that. I’m very glad to have those Oscars. But you shouldn’t ask me what the best film of the year was because I wouldn’t be voting for Crash, only because I saw the artistry that was in the other films.”

Haggis is clearly still proud of the film, which starred a multiethnic ensemble cast — including Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, and Don Cheadle — in interlocking stories about race in Los Angeles. He is right that the film touched a lot of people. But in many cases, that consisted of rubbing them the wrong way. Even after 9 years, there remains outrage over the film’s victory, in part because of its heavy-handed handling of racial issues. For instance, Ta-Nehisi Coates, the award-winning author and writer for The Atlantic, once named Crash the worst movie of the ‘00s, calling it “the apotheosis of a kind of unthinking, incurious, nihilistic, multiculturalism,” and threatened to ban any of his readers who tried to defend the movie.

Also contributing to Crash’s backlash was the fact that it defeated Brokeback Mountain, a landmark (and greatly superior) movie about the love story of two closeted cowboys, played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Director Ang Lee won Best Director, but the Academy appeared unready to reward a film as bold as Brokeback with its ultimate prize. In a survey of Oscar voters done earlier this year by The Hollywood Reporter, a majority of voters said they would now give the Best Picture statue to Brokeback Mountain.

Crash, for its part, is still routinely named the worst Best Picture winner ever, over films such as How Green Was My Valley, which beat Citizen Kane in 1942, and Rocky, which KO’d classics Network and Taxi Driver in 1976. So at least it’s earned the consensus vote in at least one awards race.
 
Like everyone else I felt that "brokeback mountain" should have won the oscar. Then in 2009 when my partner passed I went on a Oscar movie watching kick. I watched almost every best picture oscar winner up to that time and well have to agree that the movie Crash was well worthy of the Oscar win!!! A lot of great movies didn't win over the years as you noted, but if you look at the films on there own merit and not compare them to who they beat out that year I think you'll like them better. "just saying"
 
Like everyone else I felt that "brokeback mountain" should have won the oscar. Then in 2009 when my partner passed I went on a Oscar movie watching kick. I watched almost every best picture oscar winner up to that time and well have to agree that the movie Crash was well worthy of the Oscar win!!! A lot of great movies didn't win over the years as you noted, but if you look at the films on there own merit and not compare them to who they beat out that year I think you'll like them better. "just saying"

Hey Peter,

You're the first person I've known of who actually saw the movie. Yours is the only feedback I've ever heard on it. So you say it was good and well worthy of the Oscar win. Or at least an Oscar win. Hmm...

So do you think that even though it was well worthy of an Oscar win in a hypothetical year that it might have come out, do you feel that it was better than all the other good movies that came out for the year of 2005? Don't worry. lol I'll accept whatever answer you give. :)
 
Hey Peter,

You're the first person I've known of who actually saw the movie. Yours is the only feedback I've ever heard on it. So you say it was good and well worthy of the Oscar win. Or at least an Oscar win. Hmm...

So do you think that even though it was well worthy of an Oscar win in a hypothetical year that it might have come out, do you feel that it was better than all the other good movies that came out for the year of 2005? Don't worry. lol I'll accept whatever answer you give. :)

Yes I do think it would've won any giving year!! It has an all star cast, with no one actor starring in the lead role. It's one of those movies where you can't walk out of the room and miss anything or your lost...
 
Like everyone else I felt that "brokeback mountain" should have won the oscar. Then in 2009 when my partner passed I went on a Oscar movie watching kick. I watched almost every best picture oscar winner up to that time and well have to agree that the movie Crash was well worthy of the Oscar win!!! A lot of great movies didn't win over the years as you noted, but if you look at the films on there own merit and not compare them to who they beat out that year I think you'll like them better. "just saying"
Hi Peter
I loved Crash .But if you have Yahoo as your front page yesterday even the Director of the movie said he didn't think it deserved to win that year.
There were so many good movies that year Crash won by default. No one saw it. But I loved it...
I thought it Oscar Worthy ....
 
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Hi Peter
I loved Crash .But if you have Yahoo as your front page yesterday even the Director of the movie said he didn't think it deserved to win that year.
There were so many good movies that year Crash won by default. No one saw it. But I loved it...
I thought it Oscar Worthy ....
Plus it had my lover Matt Dillon in it
 
Ten Years, unbelievable. I have Brokeback Mountain in my collection of movies. I also have the last of the Batman trilogies where Heath played the Joker. I cannot bring myself to watching these two without going into mourning again over Heath's passing.

When this thread was first posted I pulled out Brokeback Mountain to watch before responding. I placed it next to my DVD player and went in to finish preparing dinner. I sat in my chair ready to eat and watch the movie and I could not. I really only watch movies at night while I am eating dinner. Just three day ago, I was ready to eat. I had my food all set up so I turned the TV on. There was a Batman movie already in process. I turned it on and there was Heath. I immediately changed the channel. Remember, it was during the filming of this movie when he died. I have a copy of this movie and it is my tribute to Heath's legacy to just hold it in my hands and remember.

Louis
 
OK, Guys. I made up my mind. I will watch Brokeback Mountain again tonight. It will not depress me. I will watch it in "Celebration of Heath's Life!

Peace,
Louis
 
OK, Guys. I made up my mind. I will watch Brokeback Mountain again tonight. It will not depress me. I will watch it in "Celebration of Heath's Life!

Peace,
Louis

Heath Ledger was a genuine beautiful man - He had such an influence on my that I remember growing my hair out so I could look more like him. He left us way too early!
 
UPDATE: I watched it last night. It was very good and I did not get depressed over it. I now see the movie as the depiction of a bromance between two men who expressed love and passion with each other but it was a case of forbidden love, at least for one. It reminded me so much of the movie, Maurice, which has the same story line. The movie stars Hugh Grant. Rupert Grave plays a significant role in this film. I'm posting the movie here for anyone who might be interested in seeing it. Enjoy.

 
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