Sunday, December 18, 2005
One conservative leader called the movie 'a mockery of the Western genre.'
NEW YORK (AP) -- Gay-rights leaders are elated that a tale of same-sex love and heartbreak is reaching mainstream filmgoers in the form of acclaimed "Brokeback Mountain," while some conservatives are dismayed by the film's glowing reviews and rooting for it to fail at the box office.
The story of two Wyoming cowboys in the 1960s has drawn capacity crowds in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Its big test, though, started Friday when -- on the heels of seven Golden Globe nominations -- it expanded to more than 20 other cities.
"This film has tremendous potential to connect with audiences gay and straight alike," said Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
"What 'Brokeback Mountain' does," Giuliano added, "is allow audiences to experience, on an intensely emotional level, how ignorance and intolerance can force people to deny their love and deny who they are."
Hoping for a flop
But Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America's Culture and Family Institute, hopes the film flops.
"I can't think of a more effective way to annoy and alienate most moviegoing Americans than to show two cowboys lusting after each other," Knight said on his group's Web site. "It's a mockery of the Western genre embodied by every movie cowboy from John Wayne to Gene Autry to Kevin Costner."
Knight contrasted "Brokeback Mountain" with "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," a family-oriented film with underlying Christian themes.
"That's why it will make zillions while 'Brokeback' will impress the critics and some fringe audiences in urban centers, but that's about it," Knight said.
The men in "Brokeback Mountain" are played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Another Hollywood star, Felicity Huffman of "Desperate Housewives," plays a transsexual in the new movie "Transamerica."
Susanne Salkind of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay-rights group, urged gays to take straight friends, relatives and co-workers to both movies, which she said were capable of shattering stereotypes.
"The more people who are exposed to authentic stories about our lives, the more support we'll get throughout the fabric of American culture," Salkind said.
Gay media
There has been vibrant discussion in gay-oriented media about how "Brokeback Mountain" will fare in the U.S. heartland.
Ryan James Kim, writing for Advocate.com, likened the film's romantic appeal to "Titanic" and predicted young straight women will flock to it.
"Most viewers will remember 'Brokeback' not as a movie in which cowboys kissed but as a love story they cannot forget -- straight guys included, if they're mature enough, or at least smart enough, to follow the lead of the women they love," Kim wrote.
However, Matt Hennie of the Atlanta-based gay weekly Southern Voice predicted the film will be a box-office bust.
"Don't misunderstand, I'm a big fan of the movie," he wrote. "But America isn't ready and willing to flock to theaters to watch a two-hour film about two gay cowboys. ...a movie that will put faces on issues that silently make them shudder."