Brokeback Mountain writer knew the movie would lose Best Picture when she found out Clint Eastwood hadn't seen it

Duh.

Hollywood is woke on everything except out gay centered stories and out actors as A list leading men.

Even then, it was common knowledge that old guard Hollywood, led by Ernest Borgnine and Tony Curtis, torpedoed any chances Brokeback had for best picture.

TCM showed it a few weeks ago. Ben Mankiewicz was quite articulate discussing gay sex among cowboys. He concluded with saying BBM lost Best Picture to Crash, a win that doesn't hold up now. (or something along those lines.)

^ Fuck those old farts

Ironic since Eastwood and Curtis both broke into the business as kept boys.

Oprah was critical of BBM too.

get lost with your overused woke r2.

it means anything gay positive as well as anti racism.

[quote] Oprah was critical of BBM too.

She's a closeted dyke. Not surprising at all.

When did Oprah criticize BBM?

[bold] Can we please stop making WOMEN rich for writing about GAY MEN. [/bold] Seriously. What the fuck.

link to Oprah criticism please

R2 You do realize this film came out 20 years ago right?

R4 It doesn’t hold up now, it didn’t hold up then, didn’t hold up in 2012. It was blatant homophobia. Crash is a bad film. They didn’t just play it safe a la Ordinary People/ Raging Bull. Two very good films, one way more prolific and influential. The Academy chose the safe choice. Crash was an offensive win.

R10 She didn’t. I want to see the mafuckin receipts.

So disappointed. All we wanted was to see Jake’s dick-didnt happen.

It was a dumb movie.

It holds up fine for it's period.

Some of you sound like crazed Christian mommies worried your sons will turn out to be gay.

R18: they were talking about "Crash" (not) holding up.

Where's the link to Oprah's criticism?

No. R19. Nice try

I hated "Crash."

I didnt hate CRASH until it won over BBM.

Frankly, I don't get the praise for "Brokeback Mountain" nor Heath Ledger's performance.

It was long and boring and all Heath did was mope around for over 2 hours and didn't show any emotion till the very end.

I was rooting for "Walk the Line," which shockingly missed out on a Best Picture nod despite being well-received by critics and a smash hit in theaters. It would've been #1 at the box office for most of November 2005, but it had the misfortune of opening the same day as "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," so had to settle for #2 those three weeks.

BEST PICTURE: "Brokeback Mountain," "Capote," "Crash," "Good Night and Good Luck," "Munich"

At least, Joaquin got a nomination for Best Actor. IMO, his performance was more physically and emotionally demanding than any of the other nominees, including winner Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Capote." And he did his own singing and learned to play the guitar.

BEST ACTOR: Philip Seymour Hoffman ("Capote"), Terrence Howard ("Hustle & Flow"), Heath Ledger ("Brokeback Mountain"), Joaquin Phoenix ("Walk the Line"), David Strathairn ("Good Night and Good Luck")

I didn’t mind Crash, because it put three of my favorite actors, Matt Dillon, Loretta Devine, and Ryan Phillippe, in scenes together. I didn’t think it deserved to be nominated, let alone be voted Best Picture.

As for Jake and Heath, I wish their characters had moved to NY or SF. I hated the way BM ended. HATED IT.

I always saw it as the Race film winning over the Sexuality film.

And Crash's writer/director Paul Haggis wrote the previous year's Best Picture winner so he was obviously doing something the Academy liked.

[quote]She believes homophobia led the movie to lose to Crash

Duh...

R21, maybe read the posts a bit more attentively? R14 was clearly talking about "Crash" not holding up. "Crash" was set in present-day (early-to-mid-2000s) LA, and looks dated now. "Brokeback Mountain" is a timeless, near-flawless film.

[quote]It doesn’t hold up now, it didn’t hold up then, didn’t hold up in 2012. It was blatant homophobia. Crash is a bad film. They didn’t just play it safe a la Ordinary People/ Raging Bull. Two very good films, one way more prolific and influential. The Academy chose the safe choice. Crash was an offensive win.

As I recall, Ernest Borgnine also refused to see BBM.

Christ, guys -- how many years ago did this happen?

Get the fuck over it.

[quote]As for Jake and Heath, I wish their characters had moved to NY or SF.

I don’t know why people keep saying this. They were two ranch hands who knew nothing outside of the world in which they were raised. Those cities were alien worlds to them. And not nearly as gay friendly in that era as some may think. LGBTQ+ people were still being harassed and oppressed by the legal and cultural authorities in those cities. They weren’t going to be all that free to live as an openly gay couple, even IF Ennis were able to get over his fears.

They would have been just as likely to move to Katmandu

R31, how old are you?

Old enough to have a sense of historical and sociological awareness, I presume

The year BBM lost to Crash was when I gave up on the Oscars.

I enjoyed Crash, but it wasn’t a great film, & it had NOTHING on BBM.

The CoS was quite effective in backing Crash, which absolutely did not deserve to win that year.

Brokeback Mountain is a beautiful movie.

I eat old people’s excrement.

I didn’t care for BBM. I didn’t get any chemistry from it whatsoever. And that visit to Mexico with the lisping queen prostitute was absolutely cringeworthy.

Tom Hanks won an Oscar for playing a gay man over a decade before this. I don’t buy the homophobic angle. That said, Crash didn’t deserve it either. All three other nominees would have been a better win.

It was a ladies picture! Still, fuck Borgnine.

[quote] Can we please stop making WOMEN rich for writing about GAY MEN

Amen!

Lot’s of gay men in that era did manage to find their way to NYC and SF so the idea was unlikely to be beyond their imagination. But they were married. Not free to relocate.

[quote]Can we please stop making WOMEN rich for writing about GAY MEN

Fair point, but there is a huge difference between Annie Proulx and Alice Oseman, and not just generational. One wrote a short story that struck a nerve with thousands of gay men (both out and closeted [or formerly closeted]) and became a literary touchstone that inspired a movie that became a cultural touchstone. The other has made a very lucrative career writing comic books about idealized, chaste gay boys for other young women. You really should try to judge each author on (t)he(i)r individual merits.

It’s not a fair point. Gay men have written about straight women forever. Writing is about imagination.

Crash was Trash. Someone above criticized Ledger for not showing enough emotion, but I thought he showed as much emotion as that character was capable of. He was never gonna break down and shout, "I love my dead, gay cowboy!"

If he showed emotion it would not have been as appealing to fraus. Their gay love had to be doomed.

Paging Clint - isn't Scott Eastwood rumored to be a closet case?

The movie was cowritten by Larry McMurtry. He and Diana both won Oscars for Adapted Screen Play.

[quote]Tom Hanks won an Oscar for playing a gay man over a decade before this. I don’t buy the homophobic angle.

By the way, it should be noted that Ledger lost the Best Actor Oscar to PSH for “Capote,” which was a perfectly fine performance in its own right but I thought Ledger deserved it more.

Tom Hanks didn't fuck a dude onscreen

Not so long ago I was reading the Wikipedia article about the film and I was laughing my ass off when back in the day, film critic Gene Shalit accused Jack Twist of being a sexual predator.

Munich should've won.

Tom Hanks wasn’t playing a gay man. He played an AIDS patient.

All I remember of BBM is Ledger topping Gyllenhaal. It was way too slow but still better than Crash, about which I remember nothing.

[quote]Tom Hanks didn't fuck a dude onscreen

He also died of AIDS at the end, the perfect portrayal of a gay man for some. Such a "noble" portrayal.

Jack Twist died as the result of a gay bashing and while conservatives love that in real life, seeing it portrayed on screen hits too close to home. Better just to show their demise as "God's will."

Honestly, I can't believe someone on DL is touting that minstrel show with a side a Kaposi's Sarcoma as a positive portrayal, let alone evidence of Hollywood's tolerance.

An opera queen AIDS patient, no less. Who never touched his boyfriend or even really spoke to him much.

Quentin Crisp looked uncomfortable in it.

Read it, seen the movie. I just never really believed their "love" story.

Tom Hanks did get a blow job in a porn theater.

FOR WHICH HE HAD TO DIE, R59.

And they made sure it was tawdry, too. Not even a regular hookup, a guy he met at a bar, it had to be a stranger in a porno theater so the "punishment" was well justified.

Wow, you guys have great memories. "Philadelphia" was released in 1993 and is hardly ever shown on TV anymore. All I remember of the movie is the eponymous Bruce Springsteen track playing over the opening title sequence and the only-slightly overwrought (presumably 'iconic') "Maria Callas" scene.

R60 Exactly. And he won an Oscar for that 13 years before BBM was blackballed due to “homophobia”.

BBM didn’t win the Oscar because it wasn’t a particularly good movie.

r62, you think it was worse than Crash? Because that's what it lost to

R63 I do not. lt was me upthread that said any of the other three were better.

r11, so you're wishing Annie Proulx had never wrote the novella on which this was based?

[quote] As for Jake and Heath, I wish their characters had moved to NY or SF.

They weren't real people. It was a story.

Heath was too busy raising a family in town somehow on his seasonal agricultural laborer wages.

Here's the short story by Annie Proulx. It's quite moving.

[quote]As for Jake and Heath, I wish their characters had moved to NY or SF. I hated the way BM ended. HATED IT.

WTF would they have done in NY or SF? They had no city-friendly job skills.

Ratso was already taken.

[quote]Ironic since Eastwood and Curtis both broke into the business as kept boys.

Is it, though?

If that story is true, in Eastwood's mind, the fags "forced" him to do all that faggot crap. Delusional narcissists think that they're victims even when they get what they want. So, of course, he hates gay people because those same people just paint all people with the same paintbrush.

[quote]Heath was too busy raising a family in town somehow on his seasonal agricultural laborer wages.

I remember it being theorized at the time that the reason PSH won the Oscar over Ledger was because the Academy found it easier to reward the portrayal of an effeminate (i.e., stereotypical) gay character vs. that of a masculine gay character (which I guess made them more uncomfortable).

You mean a masculine bisexual character? He was not a gold star guy.

^ It probably made Clint and Tony Curtis uncomfortable....

Clint can go fuck himself with his empty chair routine.

[quote] I remember it being theorized at the time that the reason PSH won the Oscar over Ledger was because the Academy found it easier to reward the portrayal of an effeminate (i.e., stereotypical) gay character vs. that of a masculine gay character (which I guess made them more uncomfortable).

I very much agree that "Brokeback Mountain" lost out as Best Picture to "Crash" because of homophobia, but that argument about PSH vs. Ledger is just not at all convincing to me.

Ledger was excellent as Ennis, but PSH as Capote had the more richly written role between the two, and he very much rose to the occasion. It's one of the greatest Best Actor performances ever.

Ledger damned near goes full retard with the role.

BEST PICTURE: "Brokeback Mountain," "Capote," "Crash," "Good Night and Good Luck," "Munich"

It's pathetic that the worst film of the category won. Crash was basically a popularity contest.

r78, I saw all five movies that year. Good Night and Good Luck was the worst of the bunch.

[quote]They didn’t just play it safe a la Ordinary People/ Raging Bull. Two very good films, one way more prolific and influential.

I like Ordinary People, but it's basically an above average TV movie that is highly sanitized in the way it treats its subjects.

Raging Bull is true moviemaking art.

[quote]Christ, guys -- how many years ago did this happen? Get the fuck over it.

DL is still not over Judy Garland losing the Academy Award to Grace Kelly. That was 69 years ago.

I seem to remember Clint Eastwood speaking out in support of gays many years ago. And whilst I am not a fan these days I really don’t believe that Oprah ever spoke out again this film. This is very much the kind of film that she would have featured on her show and supported.

The movie was only made a couple of years after the national decriminalization of gay sex. It’s not surprising that people were still squeamish.