I think it is changing… and it’s pretty amazing how it’s changing. And one of the things that I’m so proud about [Brokeback Mountain is that], within the past basically 10 years, how much has changed.
When the Supreme Court [issued a ruling] just a little while ago, I felt like we had been part, a little part and parcel of that movement. I was proud, you know? To me that’s really a pretty incredible moment. We had to wait a little while for it. But when will it be OK for an actor to be gay? I mean, it’s OK now.
Heath was always somebody who I admired. He was way beyond his years as a human, in a way. I wasn’t quite sure where he came from. I mean, I know he’s from Perth, but I wasn’t really quite sure where he came from, and I think that’s the feeling most people got when they were around him and why he was so extraordinary.”
— Jake Gyllenhaal discusses the legacy of Brokeback Mountain and his friendship with the late Heath Ledger with The Hollywood Reporter
Tim Collins
True story
Edward Woods
Love this movie, I had to get the DVD
martinbakman
Definitely something to be proud of.
For anyone that is a fan, read his entire interview at the link.
Sweetie Pie
Brokeback Mountain is actually one of the very gay movies I like…the other one is Maurice
Brian
There is no such thing as a gay movie. Movies cannot have a sexual orientation.
Was Brokeback Mountain groundbreaking? Not really. It got people talking but it did not signal a new open-mindedness in Hollywood. Hollywood today is just as closed-minded as it’s always been.
Jack Kear
I love this film so much
André Bonnet
WE paved the way for our own equality. And the job isn’t done yet.
Cagnazzo82
He’s not wrong.
Brokeback Mountain was the first gay movie marketed to the mainstream female audience.
It flipped gays from being ‘other’ to being attractive. I remember after this movie came out in the mid-2000s sentiments towards gays started flipping around.
Good timing too considering that’s about the same time republicans were passing constitutional bans on gay marriage in all the southern states.
stanhope
@Brian: You missed the point.
Bo Hamrk
@Brian: We all have our own opinion(s). Mine is…
I think that Hollywood has made MUCH progress with portraying people in a better light than it was 10~20 years ago. Brokeback WAS a great movie. Maybe not groundbreaking (Birdcage and Jeffery are two that DO come to mind) but, [BBM] was [somewhat]controversial at the time AND it DID get people talking. We have come a l~o~n~g way since Dynasty and Soap. Stereotypes are being shattered and the old farts are dying off. (WASPs’) The younger gens are not even aware of what the 20th century was like. Those of us left have always accepted human beings for not only face value but, how they treat and respect others and by looking into their hearts. Kindness goes well when people appreciate others with open minds.I do not know what your age is but, unless you’re over 30 YO, U cannot even fathom what it was like b4 your time. YES! Films, sitcoms AND theater have progressed (needless to say America) very nicely thank you. WE are able to get (and are) married to the one(s) WE love. That was UNTHINKABLE 20 years ago when me and my husband first started dating and I never thought I would live to see it. Too bad, a LOT of my friends did not survive to see it, feel it and EXPERIENCE it. BBM was one of the watershed moments in history.
> Andre Bonnet, You say it clearly. WE worked hard for the rights WE have in order for others to have them too. Many of these young gens take too many things for granted these days…
martinbakman
@Brian: B.B. Mtn, was a short story written by a woman, so right there I doubt you would care a whit about it. IMO the movie will remain a timeless achievement of cinema.
@Sweetie Pie: I’m with you. Maurice and B.B Mtn. are two awesome movies.
Sweetie Pie
@Brian: So….if a movie has a scene with two guys 69ing and fucking their brains out is not a gay movie?
Don´t bother to answer….never mind
NoCagada
@Brian: Well, thank you, Hedda…
Transiteer
@Sweetie Pie: Agreed. Brokeback Mountain is an awesome movie. Maurice is also a wonderful work, I’ve enjoyed and admired it for a long time. Shelter I could easily add to the list as well. I’m glad Gyllenhaal is proud of the film. He should be. It made a very big difference (a positive one) to a great many people, straight and gay.
Brian
@Sweetie Pie: No, it’s not a gay movie if there’s a sex scene between two men. It’s just a movie containing a sex scene between two men.
Movies don’t have identities. They cannot identify as gay or straight or any of the other baloney terms there are out there. Nobody can place an identity on a movie or another person for that matter.
Brian
If you want groundbreaking for its depiction of male-male erotic scenes, look no further than William Friedkin’s Cruising. Released in 1980, it was greeted with a storm of disapproval from mainly gay men. It starred Al Pacino and was a mainstream release.
1980 was 35 years ago. There hasn’t been a mainstream Hollywood movie since with the same level of honesty and explicitness in its depiction of male-male sexuality.
Cam
@Bo Hamrk:
The Birdcage was not groundbreaking. It was a remake of a groundbreaking movie from more than a decade earlier and Nathan Lane played the character so absurdly stereotypically that it’s level of ridiculousness wasn’t seen again until Mitchel’s husband Cam on Modern family.
Vian
Cam: I dunno, I know some gay men who are very much like Nathan Lane’s character from The Birdcage. I also know some gay men who are very backwoods lumberjack style stereotypical masculine. Most are somewhere in between.
The whole point of the Birdcage was that it was disgusting for this man’s husband and son to be so ashamed of embarrassed of who he was, and how hurtful and silly it was to let society make them feel that this man they loved was something shameful.
So it makes me really uncomfortable pushing against the stereotypes so hard we label people as ridiculous.
Cam
@Vian:
I think my issue was, that the Birdcage was a remake. The original French film came out much earlier and to me that was the groundbreaking aspect.
yikes373
I hate to agree with Brian – because in the spirit of the article, I agree with calling the movie a gay movie. But… He is correct. A movie does not have a sexuality, so cannot be straight or gay. But … c’mon, Brian. If this is the point you want to make, do you also correct people who say they are gay or straight? Because sexuality is gay or straight, a person is not. Their sexuality is. So – yeah, movies are not gay. Not straight. But for conversation and communication, let’s try to understand the spirit of what someone is saying, and not get so bogged down in worrying about word choices. Okay?
I did not want to go see BBM when it came out – and then, once I saw it, I loved it. I thought it was a great love story. And I think it affected many people in ways they might not have expected, and because it featured a love story between two men, it was groundbreaking in that sense. Not that it had not been a theme or idea before but because it was well told and widely seen and loved.
That’s my two cents. Thank you for listening.
chuck
This was the last movie I watched with my LTR before he died. Years before I had an experience while doing our laundry. One of his shirts was becoming threadbare and was ready to be thrown away. I remember becoming emotional because it made me aware that time was passing. When I saw the shirt scene near the end of the film I fell apart. Wonderful expression of being unable to let go.
I met my partner 35 years ago today at the 21st Street Baths in San Francisco on thanksgiving 1980. It was the luckiest day of my life…
alphacentauri
Brokeback mountain was a story and then later a movie/film about two bisexual men.
philipcfromnyc
For so long, Hollywood has acted on a self-fulfilling prophecy. I once had a one night stand with a Hollywood producer, and he was adamant that no out gay man could play a leading role as a straight man, particularly in a romance. When I tried to point out to this individual that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy and that the only way of testing its veracity was to allow a gay actor to be open and to cast him as the leading man in a heterosexual-oriented movie, he simply became even more stubborn and clinged to his obtuse assertion all the more strongly. I wasted time trying to get him to change his mind.
Today, I don’t think it would make a jot of difference. There is one gay male actor who is well known to most gay persons as being gay (he is an adherent to a particular, made-up religion) who would do so much good were he to come out and be open about his sexual orientation — but he is too afraid of doing so, for fear of what this would do to his career. I believe that a person of his profile has a DUTY to come out — were he to do so, he would do even more good than the US Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015) (legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide). But he stubbornly clings to his closeted status…..
PHILIP CHANDLER
philipcfromnyc
@Brian: With all due respect, this was a truly disgusting movie. I had just immigrated to the USA when this movie was released to tape, and I saw it and could not believe that it in any way resembled my life, or that of other gay persons I knew. And the ending — with Al Pacino’s character murdering his neighbor because he felt some form of attraction to his neighbor — validated the “gay panic” defense, which made the movie all the more disgusting and cruel.
PHILIP CHANDLER
philipcfromnyc
@alphacentauri: I think that Jake Gyllenhaal’s character was definitely bisexual, but I am not so sure that I agree with you about Heath Ledger’s character. The scene where Heath Ledger’s character literally folded up on the ground in the wake of the splitting of these two men made it very clear that he felt genuine love for Gyllenhaal’s character, which was not nearly so evident with respect to his wife and family in the footage of him with his family.
I nearly fell apart at the end, when he opened the closet door and found the frayed shirt…
PHILIP CHANDLER
philipcfromnyc
@Brian: Did you watch “Priest?” It was very, very revealing in terms of male on male sexuality, which made it so controversial — I remember that John Cardinal O’Connor condemned the movie vehemently, yet acknowledged when asked that he had not seen it. The Catholic League, led by Bill Donohue, practically went berserk when this movie was released, calling it one of the most viciously anti-Catholic movies ever to be released.
The scene in which Linus Roache’s character (the younger priest in the movie) picked up another man and had sex with him was very explicit and left very little to the imagination. Another movie which left very little to the imagination was “Behind the Candelabra,” with Matt Damon and Michael Douglas. In both of these movies, the sex scenes were pretty explicit……
PHILIP CHANDLER
philipcfromnyc
I immigrated to this country in 1986. At that time, the word “homosexuality” connoted evil, depravity, lust gone berserk, and “sodomy.” My manager at the establishment where I first worked stated that homosexuality was “Satanic.” I can vouch for the changes which have occurred since 1986. In the early 1990s, heterosexual society started to see gay persons not as stereotypes but as actual persons. By the end of the 1990s, gay persons were pressing for gay marriage, and our visibility (and our love lives) had taken on a much higher profile. In the early 2000s, gay marriage became legal in several states, further boosting our visibility and further making it clear that we are persons with lives and loves, not mere characters. Then, in 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) handed down United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. ___ (2013), striking down the heart of the misnamed “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA). Instantly, we were propelled to the front pages of every newspaper and news magazine in the country. Then, on June 26 of this year, SCOTUS handed down Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015), thereby legalizing same sex marriage nationwide.
The sea change in American attitudes towards gay men and lesbians since I arrived in 1986 is difficult to overstate. More and more states are passing anti-discrimination statutes, and efforts to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (as amended on numerous past occasions) to include sexual orientation as a basis on which discrimination in employment, housing, and access to places of public accommodation would be prohibited are gathering steam with each Congressional session. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) will, I predict, be passed within the next three years, simply because the millennials and younger persons are going to question their fathers, mothers, and grandparents as to why they were so bigoted as not to pass this measure. We are gaining recognition, which is why it is utterly imperative that every person who is in a financial position such that they would not end up on the streets were they to do so should come out and be open about his or her homosexuality.
PHILIP CHANDLER
Bad Ass Biker
Gay movie or not, it is one that I found, and sitll find, incredibly moving
GayEGO
@Cam: You must be referring to “Birds of a feather!” We saw the movie and then the play, it was really fun to see. Of course in my younger years, we often shrieked and carried on for laughs.
Pistolo
I know what he means but I don’t like it when people overstate things like this too much because it undercuts plenty of inequities that still exist. For instance, even though Brokeback was nominated for Best Picture, it lost to Crash which was so obviously inferior and has only deteriorated in quality in the subsequent years. Then, when Milk ended up winning a few Oscars, it happened to coincide with all that Prop 8 drama which Sean Penn thankfully addressed.
People do this with Will & Grace, Ellen, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, they say “Hollywood was homophobic AND THEN?! WILL & GRACE!!!!!!”- gay actors still don’t get the roles straight actors do and straight actors still populate most prominent gay roles. People still can’t really accept a capable, threatening, or confident gay man in movies, lesbians have a bit of an edge but they’re also prey exploitation.
lauraspencer
@Brian:
I agree.
Brian
@philipcfromnyc: The themes of Cruising were pretty dark and dismal but it was honest. There has never been another mainstream Hollywood movie which depicted such an honesty and explicitness in a certain aspect of the homosexual male scene. Just because its themes were distasteful, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t applaud its honesty as a movie.
Remember, this was a mainstream movie. It was directed by one of the most acclaimed directors in Hollywood, William Friedkin. There hasn’t been anything like it since.
Oh, and Brokeback Mountain was actually about two men who could swing both ways but repressed that same-sex side of themselves because it’s not acceptable to cheat on your wife.
Wooly
I might be aging myself here but the first gay film I saw was “Making Love” starring one of ‘Charlie’s angel’s I think. I was only 18 at the time but I :got the meaning of the movie which had a happy ending.
mgkbus
I think that this brat is missing the whole history of gay rights beore this movie. Not to hale those years of struggle is quite shallow. One needs to look at the whole of gay experience in policitics, not just because some pretty straight boy was acting in a questionable movie. Not all of the gay rights movements started after that movie. It’s a conceit to even think so.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
One of the WORST MOVIES I EVER SAW
Showed two closeted guys who fcuk around once a year. They lead miserable unhappy lives and one is murdered. Seems like a rightwing nutbag’s wet dream of a movie rather than a Gay love story………………..
pscheck2
@philipcfromnyc: Chandler: your comments are insightful, re: the Hollywood scene and your witnessing the evolution of gay acceptance since you immigrated to this country (by the way: which country?>). Your comments also make me sense that you are familiar with the entertainment industry, so are you involved in a personal way with it? (Just label me as ‘curious-ha).
Captain Obvious
@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS: Truth. Most gay movies are absurdly depressing for no real reason. Lately it seems a lot of new movies have finally moved away from this though and even feature happy endings.
It’s crazy how a minority of people who always talk about depression, being alone, and suicide think it’s best to make movies that feature unhappy endings 90% of the time.
God forbid you see a bunch of gay people being happy and finding their happiness instead of waiting for it to find them.