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Fielding questions from a Kansas State University audience on January 23rd, President Bush got sandbagged when a student asked him what he thought of Brokeback Mountain, the R-rated gay-cowboy flick. "You'd love it!" the student urged. "You should check it out." As the crowd tittered, Bush insisted, "I haven't seen it," and then reiterated his point: "I haven't seen it." (This despite the fact that weeks earlier, the White House requested, and received, a copy of the film for screening.) Like it or not, Bush had stumbled into the debate swirling around Brokeback Mountain -- a movie that appeared to repulse much of his core constituency.
Thanks to adoring reviews and eight Academy Award nominations, Brokeback has already surpassed $50 million in ticket sales and has begun its run on the $100 million mark. It's a remarkable accomplishment for a slow-moving, low-budget art-house film with gay themes. On its well-engineered journey to the mainstream, Brokeback has emerged as far more than just an unlikely pop-culture phenomenon (and endless spoof fodder for Letterman, Leno and SNL) -- it has also become a political litmus test. Unlike 2004's hot-button movies Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ, Brokeback was never marketed as a statement film. But that hasn't stopped advocates on the left and right from trying to spin the debate -- and to use the film as a cinematic bully pulpit.
The Brokeback battle began weeks before its December release. On November 6th, conservative blogger Matt Drudge fired the first shot, posting the headline HOLLYWOOD ROCKED: 'GAY COWBOY' MOVIE BECOMES AN OSCAR FRONT-RUNNER and warning that despite "nudity and explicit gay sex scenes," the film was positioned to clean up at the Oscars.
Then came the pile-on. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly said that the liberal media were championing Brokeback in order to "mainstream homosexual conduct"; far-right WorldNetDaily.com accused the film of "raping the Marlboro Man." Pat Robertson said, "I can't subject myself to such moral pollution." And other conservative pundits predicted empty theaters for the film. In Salt Lake City, Larry Miller, owner of the NBA's Utah Jazz, yanked Brokeback from the megaplex he owns hours before showtime.
But neither director Ang Lee nor the film's producers entered the fray. "We decided to ignore it," says producer James Schamus. "We were always vulnerable to others setting the agenda. But we wanted people to see the film and then talk about it. The film itself did most of the work."
Focus Features sold its purportedly radical film the old-fashioned way: by word of mouth. It slowly rolled out the movie, expanding it from a few sites to fifty screens to 300, all the while breaking into more blue-collar markets like Little Rock, Arkansas, and Columbus, Ohio. Following the Oscar nominations, it expanded to 2,000 screens. Along the way, Focus tempered its ad campaign: Early posters showed Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal against a mountainous landscape; later ads depicted the pair cuddling with their respective onscreen wives, nary a hint of homoeroticism in sight.
The strategy seems to have worked. "[Brokeback] is going to be one of the most profitable movies of the year," says Gitesh Pandya, editor of Boxofficeguru.com. When the final worldwide receipts are tallied, Brokeback could post $200 million in business, she predicts. "It's a cash cow."
That's tough for some to swallow. "It shows that Americans have changed," says Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute at Concerned Women for America, a far-right advocacy group. "The constant promotion of homosexuality in the media has lowered resistance to the idea that homosexuality is normal and healthy."
Schamus believes that the unexpected success of the film stands as a direct rebuke to the right-wing forces who tried to marginalize it. "Americans are sick of people trying to culturally manipulate and politicize these things," he says. But he does credit conservatives with at least being upfront with their predictions: "God bless them. They put their money on the table and they lost."
Now Lee and Co. seem prepared for the happiest ending of all: a sweep of the Academy Awards on March 5th. But while most critics predict that Brokeback will walk away with the Best Picture award, not everyone is convinced that the backlash is over. Some within the gay community are turned off by the profound sadness that hangs over the onscreen romance. Meanwhile, LA Weekly writer Nikki Finke believes the film's Oscar chances may be hurt by the reluctance among some voters to actually see it. "There are those for whom the cowboy is an iconic figure in Hollywood, old guys who boast about their friendships with John Wayne," Finke says. "This is something that really offends them."
Ultimately, the Brokeback dilemma -- to watch or not to watch -- may transcend politics. As liberal funnyman Larry David wrote in a New York Times op-ed column, "I just know that if I saw that movie, the voice inside my head that delights in torturing me would have a field day. 'You like those cowboys, don't you? They're kind of cute . . . You can't fool me, gay man. Go ahead, stop fighting it. You're gay! You're gay!' Not that there's anything wrong with it."