September 7, 2005

I'm spending today travelling Toronto and on Thursday, coverage will switch over to MCN for the 10 days following.

It seems only fair to offer equal time to at least one passionate reader who wrote in to comment on Brokeback Mountain and my review of it. The e-mail follows and my response follows that.

-----Original Message-----
From: M.W.
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 7:19 PM
To: poland@moviecitynews.com
Subject: Brokeback Mountain Script

Mr. Poland:

Each and every one of us is entitled to our views regarding a work of art, even as to whether it qualifies as art or not. You're a critic, and so that is your job.

However, there are some basic facts about BBM you ought to be made aware of:

1. I've read the script--and I have seen the film. There were only two versions of the script written; one in 1997, and the other with some small changes before filming began. It was touted around Hollywood for years as one of the best unproduced scripts out there.

2. In interviews, the screenwriters revealed that when they set out to adapt the story, the full story itself only comprised 50 pages of script. The pre-production script was 110 pages. Even though the story is faithfully adapted and almost fully incorporated into the script, the writers had to more than double the content of what was contained in the story for the screenplay, and thus create the world in which the story itself takes place.

3. The story Brokeback Mountain is iconic, and has been since it was first published in 1997. In an interview, Annie Proulx revealed that she had received close to 500 letters from cowboys all around the world about those two shirts at the end of the film. Additionally, she had received many, many letters from people all over the world as well, simply about the story and how powerfully it had affected them.

4. The screenwriters themselves are both accomplished and experienced. Larry McMurtry has worked on close to seventy scripts in his Hollywood career. He is the author of 41 books (mostly novels, some collections of essays, and a few biographies). Films based upon his works (for example, HUD, LAST PICTURE SHOW, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT--not to mention he's the author of LONESOME DOVE) have garnered a total of 10 Oscars and 26 Oscar nominations. Diana Ossana has written over a dozen feature scripts with McMurtry, two novels with McMurtry, four teleplay scripts, and has produced three miniseries and is a producer on Brokeback Mountain. These people are hardly fools--they are intelligent, informed, sensitive and perceptive human beings. They are also the ones (Ms. Ossana specifically first read the story and urged McMurtry option the story with her and write the screenplay with her) who worked hard and long since 1997 to get this film made. Many directors, actors and producers were involved at various times (Gus Van Sant, Scott Rudin, et al.), but because of the subject matter, actors were ultimately reluctant to commit, until very recently.

5. Mr. McMurtry is near-genius when writing about domestic life in his novels, as you have seen if you've read his works. His are novels of character, not necessarily of plot, because it's his belief that life is a continuum. He is an unsentimental man, and an unsentimental writer. His writing is full of feeling--but not manipulative: simply realistic. These men, Ennis and Jack, are from a non-verbal culture. They have no context in which to relate or even to articulate what they're feeling.

Those are some of the facts.

I'd like to add some thoughts of my own:

I have been around long enough to have read about Stonewall in the newspapers, and to have seen Midnight Cowboy, for example, on the big screen when it first premiered. So in that regard, I feel within my right to ask that you be more cautious what you choose to write before you write it regarding the politics of homosexuality. I don't know you; I don't know how old you are; or whether you may or may not have close personal friends who are gay. But if you do, it's clear you're not particularly sensitive to what it was like and is STILL like to be homosexual in America. I found many of your comments regarding the politics of homosexuals to be blatantly offensive to me, as did several of my friends.

The fact that this story and film take place beginning in the 60's and moves into the early 80's clearly demonstrates how little, if anything, has changed for GLBT's in America, other than they've become more outspoken. You mention Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena and Stonewall as political examples of what it's like to be gay--and in fact, Matthew Shepard was murdered one year after the script for BBM was completed. Matthew Shepard lived in the west; Brandon Teena lived in the MIDwest. Middle America has never been and is still not a friendly place for homosexuals. And you mistakenly and rather dismissively invoke Stonewall as a reason why these men should have been eager and willing to "out" themselves and live happily ever after together. How insensitive of you, Mr. Poland. Gay people everywhere should be offended by that statement--as if Stonewall made everything okay all of a sudden for GLBT's in America!!!!

People, especially folks in America, don't enjoy being preached to about hot-button issues. Some artists believe it's their place to preach; and some do not. Not every story or film about homosexuality needs to be bashing people over the head with its POV, and in fact, sometimes audiences are moved far more by a convincing, compelling character study--and a good story--than by an overt political sermon.

BBM is, on the surface, an old-fashioned romance (between two men, absolutely)--but that is what makes it subversively political. And that's why its politics work, especially with the GLBT community: because its politics insinuate themselves into the reader's/viewer's psyche in spite of any preconceived notions they might have about homosexuals. Believe it or not, many people in the U.S. are convinced that homosexuals are sexual perverts who don't have the same feelings as heteros. BBM, in its own underground way, subverts that conviction. This is a spare, raw, severe, unsentimental story. Hardly a mushy romance. And THAT is the reason so many smart fellows at Telluride were moved by the film: if it had been sentimental, mushy fluff, few would have been moved in the ways they were so powerfully moved.

I'll close be reiterating that we all have the right to like or not like a film, or a story, or a painting. That's one thing. But to disparage something because it's not obviously political in a way that you, as a hetero man, believes it should be, demonstrates a serious degree of narrow-mindedness and insensitivity.

Yours,
M.W.

 

MY RESPONSE

First, thank you for taking so much care in the e-mail you sent. I respect and appreciate it.

That said, "But to disparage something because it's not obviously political in a way that you, as a hetero man, believes it should be, demonstrates a serious degree of narrow-mindedness and insensitivity" shows some insensitivity itself. I don't get to like or dislike something based on my own sense of drama - the same one I use for every film of every creed, color, nationality or sexuality - or I am narrow minded and insensitive?

Or do I have to be swayed by all the facts you offered, most of which I knew, and none of which is relevant to whether the film works. One need not be a "fool" to make a flawed movie. And I am one critic who believes that effort is being made on even the worst professionally made films... trying hard does not get you a pass. Working with well- respected material does not guarantee success.

I have no interest in being beaten over the head either. But there is minimalist filmmaking that works and minimalist filmmaking that doesn't work. This film didn't work for me. The argument for subtlety actually reminds me of a line in Walk The Line, when Johnny Cash is asked not to sing a song that will remind the prisoners that they are in prison. He says, "Did you think they forgot?" Brokeback is a film that has modestly graphic anal sex in the first act. The film's story is completely reliant, at least until the third act, on these characters not being together based on the fear of the perception of them as gay men in a cowboy's world. Asking for more richness in dealing with this central issue is hardly abusive.

Moreover, I am quite offended that you have repurposed my mention of Matthew Sheppard and Stonewall and Teena Brandon to fit your idea of what I am indicating and not what I wrote. The point is, over those 20 or so years in the script, there were changes happening. As I wrote, I would have preferred a movie that was set in this era, where all the dangers of 1963 still exist... but there isn't a reliance on the bad old days. There were reasons why Teena Brandon and Matthew Sheppard didn't run to New York or San Francisco also... but that "why" is part of their stories. Yet I am so terrible and insensitive for asking the same of this film.

If the only context in which this film works, then it is a limited film... without deriding the film, very much like any other niche product. If it only works if you bring the "right" things too it, then it has failed in my view... and that is the same for a movie that speaks specifically to my personal demographic. If I love Eyes Wide Shut and few others do, I can preach that gospel, but I also have to acknowledge that those who don't see what I see in it are not insensitive or limited. It is no more my job to put myself in "gay" shoes to watch Brokeback Mountain than it is to think like a geek when seeing an action film. I acknowledged in today's column that this might be the situation.... and you seem to confirm it. But that is not my standard for success.

Additionally, your arguments could well be used by those who are truly insensitive and indifferent to the plight of gay America or any other group that is weighed down by more than its share of the cultural burden. There are terribly racist, sexist and phobic iconic texts all around us. Though I don't think it was a call to hurt anyone, The Passion of The Christ, which I believe was anti-semetic, is the most obvious example. How shall we look at the lack of gay and black people in Star Wars? Is the gay caricature in Wedding Crashers okay because the film makes fun of all kinds of people? There are a million examples.

Finally, I would argue that being "sensitive" and "cautious" in how I discuss gay politics would be the most insulting thing I could do. We may not agree. We may disagree violently. But sharing this discussion, in which we can both show respect to one another, is the whole point. This issue came up last year when I coined the term "fag noir" for Almodovar's Bad Education. Some felt it was offensive because I am not gay. But I think the word "fag" has context and I felt and feel that it speaks very specifically to what Almodovar did in that film. It wasn't "gay noir." It wasn't "homosexual noir." It had the tang that the word "fag" has in cultures that accept homosexuality. And if someone is reading me - as I am not writing for USA Today - who wishes to take it out of context and use it as an epithet, in my moral world, I am not doing wrong. If we do everything to avoid others who abuse what we offer, we can do NOTHING, as no matter how innocent, all things can be twisted by those who seek to twist them.

On the other hand, if I questioned the morality of Brokeback Mountain based on the gay content of the film, I would be stoking a bad fire. And I believe that if I gave it a pass based on that gay content, I would be stoking an equally dangerous fire. It is disturbing that my review is somehow the subject of a sexual political debate rather than a discussion of the specific merits of the film. Taxi Zum Klo is a much better picture than Making Love, regardless of the graphic nature of one and the banality of the other... one says something more interesting. On the flip side, Shoah, which is nothing but talking heads, says more about Nazi Germany than a boatful of docs with dead Jewish bodies. It's not my job to like Schindler's List because it's "good for the jews." I have argued that the Shaft remake missed the point because Sam Jackson's Shaft didn't have the contempt for other black men that Roundtree's did. I have also argued that some male critics like Wedding Crashers better than 40 Year Old Virgin because they'd rather identify with the studs who succeed than the geek who stumbles.

The whole argument about Brokeback is interesting... but it hardly comes down to my insensitivity or my political/historical ignorance. The first act of Brokeback works because it has no context outside of these two men. But once they come back to town, I wanted more.

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING

And sadly, once Gylenhaal's character dies, the film improves again, because the context of "society won't allow it" fades... not because that context isn't valid, but because it is not addressed in the film, one way or the other.

Best,
DP

MW RESPONDS: I suppose, as a film critic, that one's own perspective is the only one that matters or is the only one relevant to their criticism. I am in no way asking or wanting you to change your opinion of this film. This film didn't work for you, and that is all that really matters in writing your review. All of that I "get".

I thought, as a considered reader, that relating those facts to you and giving you some context regarding the making of this film might be appreciated. I'm a person who likes to have that kind of information. And I'm not naive enough to think that hard work and effort in the film industry--or in any creative endeavor--guarantees success.

My point in telling you what I've told you is this: your statements regarding homosexuals in America is what offends me and the people I know. I don't believe in political correctness; I prefer "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know" approach. The term "fag noir" doesn't offend me, either. But what I do believe in is being respectful of other human beings and their plight.

You Wrote: ...the only circumstance that really stands in their way is the fact that the film starts in 1963. Nevermind that Stonewall took place in 1969 and this dusty duo is still whiming about their tragic fate into the late 1970. They are, after all, in the west...if these men want to be together so badly, why not risk it?"

I don't advocate avoiding inflammatory speech in one's writing and/or criticism, either. It's important to stimulate debate. I am simply asking for you to consider stepping back a bit from what you've written in your review and try looking at it objectively, if that's possible for you, and see that your statement about Stonewall making it easy for gays to "out" themselves is misguided. No one asks that you put yourself in "gay" shoes--unless you're a writer and can imagine yourself as that character, or are gay yourself, it's nearly impossible to put yourself there. But it is certainly possible, as a feeling human being, to sympathize. And to demonstrate some degree of sensitivity regarding that statement in particular. You repeatedly contradict yourself in your review, unless you're being sarcastic and I'm not "getting" that aspect of it or something--i.e., you say on the one hand that "...you don't think it's hard to be gay today?" meaning it IS hard to be gay today; and yet you're saying it wasn't hard after Stonewall...which is it?

What you're saying, and feel free to correct me if I'm "repurposing" here, is that BBM should have made a political statement about the "bigger picture" of being homosexual in rural America. It didn't. And so that, in part, is why it doesn't work for you. I never said you were terrible; I never said you were abusive. Those are your words. I did say, and I say it again, that you're insensitive. It's not a criticism, per se; it's merely an observation of personality based upon your writing.

By the way: I just noticed that you mention in your Hot Button column that you're going to view the film again. Why would you want to watch again a 131 minute film that didn't move you in any direction except towards the exit???

Yours,

M.

DP RESPONDS: But you quote me... I never say that Stonewall made it easy to out themselves... not even close. A close friend of mine is still struggling with outing herself in a town with a large gay population... and her brother is already out. I never suggested anything about "easy," hence the word "risk." The point of the Stonewall reference is that the world was changing. As I point out in the Breakfast On Pluto review, the film is in the same period, the boy there is in Ireland in catholic school... but he has a very different experience, albeit still surrounded with danger and challenges.

I don't need BBM to be about the big picture of gay America... I needed the bigger picture within the context of the film to be clearer... these men... this situation... their personal choices, one way or the other.

Looking at the review, I am even more surprised at some of your comments after reading my words: "it would have been a real challenge and far more compelling to put this film in modern day. Do you think it is easy for men to come out now? Do you think cowboys like riding with gay counterparts now?" I think my answer - no - is clearly implied.

And I don't think I said that it only moved me to the exit... I think I said that the running time was challenging. But this film has importance to many people, no matter whether it fails or succeeds at the box office or in awards season, and I think it is only fair that I reexamine the film and not just get caught up in defending a position for the next four months on a film I only saw once.


Best,
DP

 

M REPONDS: Mr. Poland:

With all due respect, your SECOND reply to me here is much more direct and clear. I quoted you because I wanted you to see that you're contradicting yourself in your review of BBM. If you meant something other than what was said, it's not clear by your writing in that review. It comes off as flippant and dismissive. I'm merely telling you how reading it made me and several of my friends feel.

I read your review of WALK THE LINE, which is a film I am eager to see, and it was cogent, direct, and revealing. I occasionally read your reviews because I've agreed with so many of them: Million Dollar Baby comes to mind, for example. Also, I myself found Schindler's List the film to be inaccessible, and I only felt something when I saw the REAL Schindler's people at the end of the film--I actually cried when I saw them.

But whether or not we agree on BBM, your review of it felt like it was all over the map-- muddled, confused, and it reads as angry. I was startled by it, frankly. And I guess I'm simply disappointed that it had such a negative effect upon you.

I agree that BBM is a very important film, for many reasons. But comparing the iconography of BBM for gays, with racist iconography, doesn't compute, and you know it. There isn't much, if anything, like BBM out there for gays. There isn't much of anything like BBM out there, period. This film has already had a profound effect upon many people, gay AND straight. And the effect has been pretty amazing, and in a good way.

E-ME. I will leave the last word to M.W., though I would also suggest that the response to the initial review is more emotional on the part of this and other readers than on my part. But you can judge for yourself... and you are welcome to have your own last word as well.