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Fri 29 Apr, 2005 04:55 pm
Annie Proulx is an amazing writer. "Brokeback Mountain" is an absolutely incredible short story, probably one of my top 100 if not top 10 ever.
But a movie???
I got the latest issue of People because it has an article about Laurent, SD, (yes I feel the need to justify reading People, oh well), and at the front it had a picture of Heath Ledger and his pregnant girlfriend on the set of "Brokeback Mountain". Wha...?! Googled it and sure enough...
I guess the pregnant girlfriend bit is advance "uh, I'm not gay, really" publicity? This will either be the gayest mainstream movie ever or it will completely bastardize the story. Could do both of course.
Jake Glyllenhall will be the other guy, evidently.
They have had trouble treating gay literature with any sensititivity which would involve ignoring that the two characters are gay and just tell their love story. I'm not hopeful.
I'm not either. I'd be less hopeful if it was, like, Ashton Kutcher and Jason Biggs as the leads. Glyllenhall and Ledger are pretty good. But, like, the kiss when they see each other again where one breaks his tooth? They're gonna show that? It would be so incredibly disrespectful to the story to just show a smoldering look or something.
Oliver Stone made that mistake in "Alexander." Although there was a kiss, it was not with Alexander's male lover so even though he appeared to go out on the proverbial limb, he still managed to sanitize it to be politically correct. Not an Oliver Stone trait but there were many other things wrong with that film.
The broken tooth is perhaps viable in the written word but I'm not so sure how it would work cinematically regardless of the kiss.
Well I don't think they'd have to show the broken tooth per se, but the violent, voracious kiss that caused it.
Actually, I think I did see an interview with Jake or Heath that was joking about how passionate the kiss became and how comfortable it was for an actor. The response, I remember, was positive. Maybe both Jake and Heath are just plain good kissers! (Okay, I didn't mean their faces).
Oh really? That's promising, then.
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