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I REALLY want to see this movie now, especially after it's win at the Golden Globes. But my parents are cheap (as always ) and don't want to go to the movies with me because they want to save every penny possible for my college fund. When it comes out on DVD though, I'm definitely going to rent it (with my own money! HAH!) and write a beautiful review on every single forum, as always. I also want to see Transamerica because both of these movies address fairly controversial issues that Hollywood has been edging away from for some time.
A middle aged woman, arduously working her way through night school for some years now, asked me to see Brokeback Mountain and tell her my thoughts and impressions to help her with ideas for an assignment. Had it not been for her request, I might not have seen the movie, as I do not go out of my way to see movies in the theater, but wait for them to come on television or DVD. It was also at her request that I saw "Farhenheit 911".
I saw the movie twice, in order to familiarize myself with small details, and enjoyed the experience very much. I found the 30 page short storie by Annie Prouxl on the internet and read it.
I will mention one interesting example of speculative interpretation: In the opening scene of the movie, a lone truck drives along a deserted highway, and one very briefly sees a fleeting image of three telephone poles which look exactly like the three crosses at Calvary (Golgotha). Some people speculate that such symbolism is intentional, and others dismiss it as coincidental.
I joined http://www.ennisjack.com which is a message board dedicated exclusively to the movie Brokeback Mountain.
Anyone who is deeply interested in the movie may join and read there, literally for days on end, and learn more than you ever thought possible about every aspect of the movie, production, symbolism, etc.
Both males and females join that message board, but the majority of the membership is male. Both gays and straights join, but the majority are gay, who are overwhelmed by the love story between two men, see their own lives reflected in the movie, and I suppose yearn for a similar romance in their own lives.
Some members have viewed the movie in the theaters as many as 30 times.
I would liken the experience of viewing the movie to the experience of "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh, and "Kiss of the Spider Woman", both of which deal with similar themes of same sex relationships.
Many people who object to same sex relationships on moral grounds, or who are homophobic, refuse to even discuss the movie, much less go and see it.
I have pointed out to people that one might very much enjoy seeing "Silence of the Lambs" without personally subscribing to the activities and values of the character Hannibal Lechter.
Annie Proulx, who wrote the original story in the New Yorker, is a Pulitzer prize winner, and a mother of three children, who raised those children by working as a freelance writer of "How To Books" as well as fiction. She wrote the short story "Brokeback Mountain" at an advanced age in life. These facts in my mind, detract from theories that the movie is some conspiracy to promote liberal values in society. The entertainment industry was reluctant to take on the controversy of such a movie, and the marketing of it was strategically conceived to overcome and downplay controversy.
I could say much more, I suppose, but the above mentioned message board says it all, with posts from over 1000 members.
That message board did consider implementing a read time chat room. I found a wonderful, free chat room, based on an IRC Java applet which allows anyone to join a chat room at the click of a link. Such a chat room would be ideal for TBF forum, if some of you desired such a thing and I would be happy to provide the details if there is some interest. The BBM message board decided not to implement any sort of chat room.
Thanks for your kind words. I will also purchase the DVD when it comes out. I would like to see it a few more times, to look for various details which have been discussed, but I feel it would be wasteful to spend so much money on theater tickets. Of course, a DVD will never give the same experience as the wide screen, but I have seen it twice in the theater, and a DVD will allow me to look for more subtle details.
Perhaps Brokeback Mountain will become a cult film similar to Rocky Horror, and will be shown in theaters for years and years. I got the feeling that some of the folks who have seen the film 20 or 30 times may be motivated more by a desire for Guinness Book of Records fame than for actual enjoyment of the movie.
Lordy, lordy. And some of us will probably soon be found wearing saddle shoes, bobby socks and heart-shaped sunglasses to watch our Lolita DVDs at home.
Here are the questions I have collected so far for the chat room "game".
Since they may spoil your enjoyment of the movie, I will post them as spoiler code. So read at your own risk.
Topic 1 - Significance of the phrase "Stem the Rose"
Topic 2 - How did Jack die?
Topic 3 - Did Jack really give up on Ennis?
Topic 4 - How did Jack know that Ennis was in Riverton?
Topic 5 - What might the lasso scene symbolize?
Topic 6 - Why is Ennis is reluctant to go to the 'Church Social' ?
Topic 7 - Is Ennis straight or gay?
Topic 8 - Did anyone other than Jack love Ennis?
Topic 9 - Did Alma really ever love Ennis?
Topic 10 - Is Ennis ever attracted to any other man?
Topic 11 - Why did it take Ennis and Jack 4 years to meet again?
Topic 12 - Was Ennis ever happy, and if so, when?
Topic 13 - Was Jack ever happy, and if so, when?
Topic 14 - Discuss Ennis' poverty.
Topic 15 - Discuss Jack's prosperity.
Topic 16 - Discuss "I wish I knew how to quit you."
Topic 17 - Discuss the significance of castrating sheep.
Topic 18 - Discuss "one shot deal"
Topic 19 - Discuss "If ya cant fix it ya gotta stand it"
Topic 20 - Did Lureen know?
Topic 21 - Why does Ennis leave open the window in Jack's room?
Topic 22 - Did daughter Alma Jr. always know Ennis' secret.
Topic 23 - Did you cry during the film. If so, why? If not, why?
Topic 24 - What was Jack's mother's inner thoughts and feelings.
Topic 25 - Did Ennis and Jack have friends?
The above link takes you to the chat room (channel) #brokeback
You will see me in there, if I am on line as @Sitaram , which is a
session running in the mIRC client on my computer. Often I leave it
running all night. It also serves as a BOT, which can give simple
responses to commands. If you type the word HELP, then you will see
a menu of help commands. If you type the word TOPIC, then the BOT
will give you a random topic from the above file. If I add lines to the
topic.txt file with notepad, then they immediatly become available to
the BOT's event script. If you type ALLTOPICS then the BOT will list
the entire file for you.
If you type ALERTADMIN then the BOT will pop up a large alert window
on my computer, and also play an audible alert, which will catch my
attention if I am home, with the speakers turned on, but away from
keyboard.
These functions are simply event scripts which I wrote during my first hours of learning and experimenting with the mIRC scripting language.
mIRC client is shareware, which, I am told, continues to run, with a nag screen, even after the 30 day trial.
There is also a totally free chat client (not even a nag screen) called XirCON, which works fine, but is no longer in development, and its scripting language is different from mIRC, which seems to be a standard in the IRC world.
This Java/IRC free chat room feature would allow a message board
such as TBF to create a separate chat room for each monthly reading
in a book club, create a random topic file to suggest topics for
discussion to chatters, and, if you use the mIRC client rather than the
Java client, you may log the chats and edit them into a published
seminar for posting to the message board. Of course, it would take
some work on the part of volunteers, to create the topic.txt file, and
moderate the chat room.
One possible scheme, with regard to spammers, trolls, flamers, is to
automatically de-voice all who enter the chat, and have an event
script which recognizes TBF members, and gives them a voice. Visitors
with no voice may read what is posted in chat, but may not post. I
have not actually implimented such a scheme, but I know it is
possible and not extremely difficult.
Such an IRC chat room for TBF might attract more members to TBF
from the IRC community.
Or, if you just want an easy free place to chat real time, without all the
bells and whistles, then someone on TBF could promote each member
to OP(mod) status in the forum, and they would have the power to
boot or ban pesky interlopers.
Since I have gone this far in explanations, I might as well post for those of you who are curious the actual scripts that perform all these wondrous feats, so you may see that it is not that complicated, especially once you have a model of a working script, to modify to your needs.
mIRC scripts said:
on 1:join:#brokeback:{
/msg $chan The IP address for $nick $ip has been recorded
/msg $nick You are $fullname
/msg $nick You are on $network
/msg $nick Welcome! I am your BOT host
/msg TYPE THE WORD HELP at any time to see help menu of keywords
/msg $nick This is chat room, which has no connection with http://www.ennisjack.com message board,
/msg $nick is devoted to the discussion and enjoyment of
/msg $nick the movie Brokeback Mountain. Both gay and straight people
/msg $nick love this movie and join the message board. So please,
/msg $nick do not come here to express your prejudice with unkind remarks.
}
on 1:text:*hello*:#:/msg $chan $rand(1,10)Hi there!
on 1:text:*anyone here*:#:/msg $chan We may be away from our keyboards.
on 1:text:*anybody here*:#:/msg $chan We may be away from our keyboards.
on 1:text:*sitaram*:#:/msg $nick The real Sitaram is asleep. I am the BOT. Visit http://ennisjack.com and post or PM your comments!
on 1:text:*where is everyone*:#:/msg $chan We may be away from our keyboards.
on 1:text:*where is everybody*:#:/msg $chan We may be away from our keyboards.
on 1:text:*help*:#:{
/msg $nick !topic - Random topic suggestion
/msg $nick !alltopics - Display all topics
/msg $nick alertadmin - Pop up an alert on Sitaram's screen
}
on 1:text:*alltopics*:#:{
/count {
var %i = 1
while (%i <= 24) {
/msg $nick $read(topic.txt, %i)
inc %i
}
}
}
on 1:text:*topic*:#:{
/msg $chan $read(topic.txt)
}
on 1:text:*alertadmin*:#:{
/msg $chan alert request issued to Sitaram
/splay c:\testofmike.wav
/window -d @alertadmin
/aline @alertadmin $nick requests your attention
/aline @alertadmin $1-
}
Having said all this, I must confess that very few people visit the #brokeback chat channel, although I only created it a week ago.
I should mention that the most successful chat channel I have seen is #philosophy at net.undernet.org, which is run by a retired teacher with the nick of Skept. That channel has serious philosophy debate by 20 or 30 members at any given hour of the day or night. I left my mIRC client running for 24 hours and captured a log of #philosophy to a disk file for later study.
Though it is true that much of IRC is a wasteland, yet there is an occasional meaningful oasis to be found.
I look at this movie as portraying not just two people in love who happen to be men, but I see it as a movie about a deep friendship and love, and the matters of the heart. I haven't seen it (time doesn't permit yet) I plan to see it soon. I've heard good things and I'm looking forward to it.
Men (and woman) who have said negative things about it are probably afraid of their own relantionships and cannot see the depth of this story.
I just finished viewing the original story in the New Yorker, and printing it to 10 pdf pages/files.
I am about to read it carefully, but just now, glancing quickly through it, I am impressed by how true the move is to various descriptive passages and dialogue from the short story, quoted verbatim.
I am reminded of the first time I looked through the book version of "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh, after having seen the 12 hour pbs production, and noticing how true the movie was to the novel.
I'm a fan of Annie Proulx, and don't know how I missed reading this story in the first place, although somehow I did. Which NY edition did you find it in, Sitaram?
Spoilers don't usually spoil anything for me. For me, it's the journey that counts; the how and why rather than the what.
my friend saw the movie and understood the hype. she didn't sympathize (sp) with the two guys though, b/c of the adultery and how they treated their wives.
I have recently seen "Brokeback Mountain" with my son, who is 16 years old.
I think the film was very very good and they did a great job in portraiting the feelings and the situation the two men were in. Most of all, I thought it to be a great love story.
My son liked the film as well, thought it was very good.
When I talk to men about this film, they dont even want to consider watching the film. Only one guy I know have actually seen the film, and he liked it very much. Maybe a lot of men, have some kind of homofobi, since they feel this way?
I have read that the film should set new standard of how Hollywood will portray gay/lesbian in the future. And that it is up in the running for Oscars.
Boys have been trained since birth that they are to be macho, never cry, and above all, never act like a girl. Homosexual/bisexual men do not fit this mold, and many men would consider being homosexual too similar to being a girl. For some reason, it threatens their masculinity. It's very pathetic. What's so scary about a gay man? It's not like all gay men hit on straight men--in fact, most don't because it's pointless.
I loved the movie, especially the look of the movie, but there were moments during where I felt that Heath force his acting, whereas Jake came across as being more natural with his acting. Just my opinion.
This movie really is going to be a classic. Perhaps partly because of all the awesome lines from the movie ("If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it," "I wish I knew how to quit you", there's more.. i'll have to watch it again to remember) People will be saying "I wish I knew how to quit you" for as long as they'll be saying "Say 'ello to my little friend"
The story itself is brilliant too. Like someone else said, this is a modern Romeo & Juliet. They may not come from fueding families, but they are faced with a world that fueds against their kind of love. It's sad, it's romantic, and above all it's extremely moving. It's so great to see a talented author like Annie Proulx get a wonderful adaptation of her story by equally as brilliant folks like Ang Lee, that Lonesome Dove guy, and of course the amazing cast. If only every novel or story could get such professional treatment.
This movie really is going to be a classic. Perhaps partly because of all the awesome lines from the movie ("If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it," "I wish I knew how to quit you", there's more.. i'll have to watch it again to remember) People will be saying "I wish I knew how to quit you" for as long as they'll be saying "Say 'ello to my little friend"
The story itself is brilliant too. Like someone else said, this is a modern Romeo & Juliet. They may not come from fueding families, but they are faced with a world that fueds against their kind of love. It's sad, it's romantic, and above all it's extremely moving. It's so great to see a talented author like Annie Proulx get a wonderful adaptation of her story by equally as brilliant folks like Ang Lee, that Lonesome Dove guy, and of course the amazing cast. If only every novel or story could get such professional treatment.
I loved the movie, especially the look of the movie, but there were moments during where I felt that Heath force his acting, whereas Jake came across as being more natural with his acting. Just my opinion.
I have heard that Heath Ledger played the roll as a "tight fit", which I certainly can see and I think thats what makes him brilliant. Just that tight fit shows how his character feels in the situation in the film. (Under pressure and trying to suppress his feelings towards the other guy).
) and don't want to go to the movies with me because they want to save every penny possible for my college fund. When it comes out on DVD though, I'm definitely going to rent it (with my own money! HAH!) and write a beautiful review on every single forum, as always. I also want to see Transamerica because both of these movies address fairly controversial issues that Hollywood has been edging away from for some time.
