“Part of the medicine of storytelling is that we were two straight guys playing these parts. There was a stigma about playing a part like that, you know, why would you do that? And I think it was very important to both of us to break that stigma. But then again, I think that has led the way towards people saying, you know, people of all different experiences should be playing more roles, that it shouldn’t be limited to a small group of people. And I believe that.”—Brokeback Mountain star Jake Gyllenhaal, commenting on how the stigma he faced after making the film helped start an important conversation about representation of queer people on screen. Gyllenhaal, along with co-stars Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams all snagged Oscar nominations for their performances; in 2005 it was still considered taboo for straight leading men to play gay characters.
Donston
I mean, was Brokeback Mountain really much of a “risk”? It was high-profile awards bait from the beginning, especially once Ang Lee signed on. Actors were clamoring for those roles. While the movie didn’t change much when it comes to casting. Back then, when it came to overtly “queer” high-profile roles they tended to look for “straight-presenting” and “mostly straight” presenting actors for those roles. That’s still the case today.
I kinda understand what Jake is trying to say. But Jake also comes off kinda phony and has always seemed like somebody who just says what he’s expected to say, with not much real insight or individual opinion or personality.
EddieB
You can like Jake or not ( I really don’t have much of an opinion either way) but I really don’t think a lot of actors were clamoring for those parts. Or perhaps a lot of actors were. A lot of stars certainly were not.
ScottOnEarth
Funny, I don’t ever remember Jake or Heath advocating for gay people or for anything other than the awards they clamored for after the movie came out. They both had a huge opportunity to offer substantive support for gay people, gay men, in particular, but they just said a few politically-correct things and left it at that.
Donston
Like the vast majority of “straight presenting” actors taking on these depressing, tragic “queer” roles, it was mostly about winning awards. That’s all. Jake’s few comments about Brokeback Mountain over the years have all been shallow, pc drivel and have came off insincere/kinda phony. Honestly, he still seems to kinda resent his attachment to it. I guess one could say that they didn’t have any responsibility beyond their acting. (though I thought Jake’s performance was the weak link the movie to be honest).
Fahd
I think Jake is a prevaricator, and his comment is Hollywood doublespeak. I enjoyed the movie when it first came out, but for whatever reason I haven’t been motivated to watch it again.
Donston
Let’s be real. It seems as if Jake is in the queer spectrum, and it seems as if he’s had at least one semi lengthy same-sex relationship. That’s not a definite reality, but at this point it appears likely. And he’s very much still paranoid about folks knowing this. However, I don’t believe anyone should feel forced to be “out”, especially if they are dealing with a lot of internal stuff (mental health issues, fluidity, contradictions, uncertainty about where they are in the gender, sexual, affection, romantic, emotion, commitment spectrum, if they ultimately have hetero ambitions or are in a hetero commitment, if they’re contending with queer insecurities, masculine fragility, internalized phobias, gay resentments, etc.)
Beyond that, he has always seemed cagey, and everything he says is by-the-books, shallow Hollywood talk. I started not really messing with Jake when Brokeback Mountain came out, and he seemed like he was kinda ashamed of the project. He didn’t even really want to discuss the movie in-depth. He would always just talk about how much he wanted to work with Ang Lee and how interesting the experience was. He was the only cast-member that came off that way. And even today, he doesn’t seem all that proud of the film or that it’ll likely be what he’s mostly remembered for. However, he has to play the game.
Bengali
I’m a shallow because
Heath Ledger (RIP) and Jake G. have way too many moles for me to stomach. Sorry. I’m shallow.
Gadfeal
The main “value” of Brokeback Mountain was that it introduced a “mainstream” audience/spectatorship/viewership to the possibility that a) homosexuality is NOT a choice, but a phenomenon that causes so much social strife that no child would actually choose it, b) one cannot differentiate gay men from most other men i.e. most gay men are not apparent (despite the myth of “gaydar”; I can’t tell who among the thousand men I cross in a month are gay if they are dressed and behaved like most.). The “star power” of Jake and Health was to induce a mainstream audience to see a film that would otherwise be ignored due to its theme.
That said, the director was negligent in no having a gay person vet the script for plausibility
1. Who among us, as virgins, were penetrated in seconds with no foreplay, no lubrication? Really, it took me months to get accustomed, and it is always associated with a cleaning process.
2. The scene in daylight in the small town when the Health character came out his house and started making out with Jake made no sense. If they wished to hide their relationship in a homophobic rural town, they would have done it in private, NOT in daylight, and NOT in plain view of the neighbors, the wife, or passers-by.
3. The other characters were two-dimensional caricatures. Really, the air-head daddy’s girl played by Anne Hathaway!
4. Harking back to the pre 1970s when the only gay story was one of ostracism, violence, or mental illness, the theme has flashes of Jake heading to Mexico to “do the dirty”, and then ending up killed by the road. Please! Storeylines like this were stereotypical pre Stonewall, and fills naive gay youth with connotations of homosexuality = disaster as an expected consequence.
Donston
I wouldn’t be so entirely dismissive of “gaydar”. There’s a reason why a handful of actors have talked about practicing things that would help shield their voice and mannerisms. Yes, there are many, many folks who do not appear “obvious”. But the majority of guys who ping the “gaydar” in multiple ways do tend to be “gay”/“queer”/somewhere in the gender, sexual, affection, romantic, emotional investment, commitment spectrum. The problem is using that to shame folks or thinking everyone is “straight” because they don’t ignite the “gaydar”. We still have a ways to go as far as not looking at everything through identity and through hetero/gender normalcy and understanding stereotypes, not being ashamed of stereotypes, and understanding the overall spectrum.
As for that infamous sex scene, it was definitely a bit extreme. Heath’s character gave no indication of being into him. Yet, Jake’s character grabs him and tires to force anal. When I watched it the first time and especially now, it came off kinda rape-y. I’m assuming Jake’s character is supposed to have had decent amount of previous experience. But even then, it’s still a bit cringe-y and unrealistic.
I actually think Michelle Williams arguably gave the best performance and most convincing performance in the movie. She didn’t have a ton of screen time, but she was very affecting with what she had to work with. Anne’s character was just there.
I understand the movie’s importance. The film isn’t great though to me though, and it had more than a handful of creaky moments. While as a “love story” it felt underdeveloped and surface level. Having Jake’s character be killed at the end was also kind of a cop-out. But I guess it was a needed ending for the movie to be typical “gay tragedy”/awards bait. It also doesn’t help that one of its stars still seems so phony and not that proud to be a part of the project and its legacy.
Gadfeal
Sorry for the typo. “Storyline” (not “storeyline”)
WSnyder
People mostly do things for their own self interest. It’s only the confluence of circumstances that some things people do shift the paradigm in ways never foreseen or expected. When this does happen, it’s also human nature to elevate the person(s) who started these changes to a station above what their original motivation was. Rosa Parks did not want to give up her seat to a white person to become one of the focal points in the Civil Rights movement she simply felt “”I don’t think I should have to stand up.” [She already was an activist and become more so and an enduring Icon after and rightly so].
Jake and Heath knew of the risks that taking these roles could be for their careers, and with any risk there was the possibility of some reward. Most involved knew that pushing a serious studio project about gay men could lead to repercussions within the industry but I doubt they could foresee how such a project could move the needle forward for the LGBTQ+ Community.
Regardless of how much that needle moved [depending on who you ask], the fact was that two known, Str8, up and coming actors chose to play Gay Men in a serious Hollywood production at a time when such a project was HIGHLY risky for the studio and anyone directly involved.
So even if people doubt motivations or rational for people involved, it remains a Benchmark worthy of acknowledgement.
Personnel Note: I pride myself at being one of only three people in the world to actually have driven the actual truck used in the movie by Heath Ledger [Ford F-100 White and Aqua pick-up] to Wyoming and up the mountain that is locally know to be the Brokeback Mountain location [yes, it’s fictional and the movie was filmed in Canada, but where we went is the ‘accepted’ location for the stories basis].
ingyaom
Jake seems to be saying it’s a good thing 2 srtr8 guys played these gay roles … but doesn’t that mean they took them away from 2 gay actors? If they did this movie today I doubt they’d give the lead gay roles to str8s – at least not both of them.
Rich85
Jake G is almost certainly gay. I have worked in film for 35 years + and I’ve just heard too many stories from reliable sources. I think It makes him very uncomfortable to talk about “Brokeback Mountain” because it starts to cross over into his sexuality so he says a few politically correct shallow things and moves on. I think he’d really like to never get asked about the film ever again. It was Nathan Lane who said: “I’m single, I’m 40, I work in musical theater, you do the math”. That mathematical equation applies to Jake as well. And before you say he doesn’t do musical theater, Jake has played the lead male role in both “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Sunday in the Park With George” on Broadway. At a certain point a handsome, successful, 40 year old actor can only use the “I’m too busy for a relationship” line for so long.