MrsSpringsteen
Blue Crack Addict
from Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1151805-1,00.html
The film has managed to carry the luster of its daring, as one of the rare Hollywood movies that are frank about gay sexuality, without provoking the sustained ire of social and political conservatives. Says Jack Foley, Focus' chief of distribution: "America didn't resist the film for a second." Well, maybe for a second: the other night on CNN's Larry King when conservative radio host Janet Parshall said, "What we're witnessing, Larry, is the homosexualizing of America." And there are plenty of liberal straight guys like Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, who wrote a puckish Op-Ed in the New York Times, confessing, "Cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat" for him to see it. But most of those who disapprove of Brokeback--or think they would if they saw it--have curbed their outrage. They believe it's a serious, sensitive movie.
.................And, of course, the movie's stars are all hetero. "No one paying attention will fail to know that Heath Ledger just had a child by the woman who plays his wife," says Larry Gross, director of the U.S.C. Annenberg School for Communication, "and that Jake has been dating Kirsten Dunst." But then, every macho Hollywood star is straight--or must pretend to be. "The film says it's terrible that you couldn't be openly gay as a sheepherder in Montana in the '60s, but you can't be openly gay as a successful young actor in Hollywood in 2006," says Gross. "When an A-list romantic action lead comes out, that will be a Jackie Robinson moment."
So how much of a cultural shift does Brokeback represent? "This is the first sort of red-state gay movie," says producer Craig Zadan, who won a Best Picture Oscar for Chicago three years ago. "It's a movie with macho, masculine, acting-straight guys on horses, and it turns out to be a gay love story."
Schamus disputes that a chasm exists between big cities and God's country. "This whole red-state-- blue-state thing is absurd," he says. "The film has performed amazingly in Little Rock, Birmingham and Fort Worth, Texas. The fact is, Americans are Americans. There may be places where their politics in the aggregate tilt one way or the other, but do you cross a state boundary and turn into some other kind of animal? No. Americans talk to each other. Americans are listening to each other. And Brokeback is proving it."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1151805-1,00.html
The film has managed to carry the luster of its daring, as one of the rare Hollywood movies that are frank about gay sexuality, without provoking the sustained ire of social and political conservatives. Says Jack Foley, Focus' chief of distribution: "America didn't resist the film for a second." Well, maybe for a second: the other night on CNN's Larry King when conservative radio host Janet Parshall said, "What we're witnessing, Larry, is the homosexualizing of America." And there are plenty of liberal straight guys like Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, who wrote a puckish Op-Ed in the New York Times, confessing, "Cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat" for him to see it. But most of those who disapprove of Brokeback--or think they would if they saw it--have curbed their outrage. They believe it's a serious, sensitive movie.
.................And, of course, the movie's stars are all hetero. "No one paying attention will fail to know that Heath Ledger just had a child by the woman who plays his wife," says Larry Gross, director of the U.S.C. Annenberg School for Communication, "and that Jake has been dating Kirsten Dunst." But then, every macho Hollywood star is straight--or must pretend to be. "The film says it's terrible that you couldn't be openly gay as a sheepherder in Montana in the '60s, but you can't be openly gay as a successful young actor in Hollywood in 2006," says Gross. "When an A-list romantic action lead comes out, that will be a Jackie Robinson moment."
So how much of a cultural shift does Brokeback represent? "This is the first sort of red-state gay movie," says producer Craig Zadan, who won a Best Picture Oscar for Chicago three years ago. "It's a movie with macho, masculine, acting-straight guys on horses, and it turns out to be a gay love story."
Schamus disputes that a chasm exists between big cities and God's country. "This whole red-state-- blue-state thing is absurd," he says. "The film has performed amazingly in Little Rock, Birmingham and Fort Worth, Texas. The fact is, Americans are Americans. There may be places where their politics in the aggregate tilt one way or the other, but do you cross a state boundary and turn into some other kind of animal? No. Americans talk to each other. Americans are listening to each other. And Brokeback is proving it."
So I may not get to go out with k. d. lang?
for Irvine.
