Latest news with #HeathLedger
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Jack, I swear...': 20 years of ‘Brokeback Mountain'
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up To me, being shocked by a gay Western was akin to being shocked by a Black version of 'The Wiz.' Because westerns have always been homoerotic as hell. Take Advertisement How about 'Johnny Guitar,' with Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge? Even Doris Day's Calamity Jane sent signals on a gay audience's wavelength. Lest we forget Robin Williams' Advertisement But I digress. Heath Ledger, left, and Jake Gyllenhaal, in a scene from "Brokeback Mountain." Kimberly French/Focus Features Despite its boffo box office numbers ($178 million worldwide), this film really brought out the homophobia in people. Accusation of homophobia were also leveled at the Academy Awards a few months later when, to the shock and awe of critics and Oscar night pundits everywhere, 'Brokeback Mountain' lost the best picture award to 'Crash.' Even Jack Nicholson, who It was widely considered that 'Brokeback Mountain' had best picture in the bag. It had been critically acclaimed. Audiences fell hard for the bittersweet love story between the stoic Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and the more comfortable in his skin Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal). Set in 1963 and covering 20 years of clandestine meetups, the movie focused on the fears and joys of these two men, and the repercussions being on the down low can have on the women they marry. Michelle Williams showed her talents early with her Oscar-nominated performance as Ennis' wife, Alma, who discovers what her husband and Jack are up to in a scene that elicited gasps from my audience. Actress Michelle Williams in "Brokeback Mountain." HO/AFP/Getty Images Ledger and Gyllenhaal also received deserved Oscar nods, as did Rodrigo Prieto's gorgeous Alberta landscape cinematography. The plaintive score by Gustavo Santaolalla, Ang Lee's direction, and the screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana won Oscars. McMurtry was a perfect choice for this adaptation, as the 'Lonesome Dove' author was an expert at writing lonely and lost men. Advertisement I'm not so sure that voter homophobia was the exact reason 'Brokeback' lost best picture—the same group gave Philip Seymour Hoffman best actor that year for his portrayal of gay author Truman Capote in 'Capote.' I'm inclined to think that the first officially out Western was no match for the white liberal back-patting racial harmony nonsense of 'Crash.' I mean, Paul Haggis's movie featured a racism-curing staircase, for Pete's sake! How could the same Academy that awarded the hideous 'Driving Miss Daisy' before 'Crash,' and the borderline offensive ' No matter the reasons it lost, 'Brokeback Mountain' didn't deserve to be bested by 'Crash.' Had I a ballot, I would have voted for 'Munich' or 'Good Night and Good Luck' for best picture, but I certainly wasn't going to argue with my film critic brethren who thought Lee's movie got robbed. I was actually more irritated by Philip Seymour Hoffman's win over Heath Ledger. Hoffman did a fine imitation of Capote, and the Academy loves imitations, but Ledger found the darkest corner in Ennis Del Mar's soul and took up residence in it. Heath Ledger in "Brokeback Mountain." Kimberly French/Focus Features The power of Ledger's performance had precedent; you can see the genesis in his small but pivotal role in 'Monster's Ball,' a movie just as ridiculous about race as 'Crash.' In just a few minutes of screen time, Ledger burns a hole in the screen as the confused son of Billy Bob Thornton's racist corrections officer. Prior to this, Ledger was best known for lighter fare like 'A Knight's Tale' and '10 Things I Hate About You.' Advertisement The role of Ennis Del Mar and how Ledger played him recalled Marlon Brando's daring turn in 1967's 'Reflections in a Golden Eye.' I still can't believe that this cinematic slice of intense gay longing sprinkled with Southern-fried camp was directed by macho man John Huston. Brando played Army Sgt. Pendleton, a married man who falls in lust with Robert Forster. Forster entices him while riding butt naked on a horse, which he does for about 75 percent of his screen time. Brando plays Pendleton like a tightened coil of confusion, unable to put into words the desires that are driving him mad. Much like Ennis, who can only refer to his love of Jack as 'this thing we got goin' on here,' Pendleton is a man of few words driven by a similar fear of being discovered. And like Ledger's performance, this is one of Brando's best. Jake Gyllenhaal, left, and Heath Ledger in a scene from "Brokeback Mountain." Kimberly French/Focus Features When the 'Crash' Oscars debacle happened, I'd just started my career as a professional film critic. I'd also been officially out as bisexual for about 2 years. So, I felt incredibly guilty for not loving 'Brokeback Mountain' like many of my gay friends and fellow critics did. As a member of the LGBTQ community, I felt I should have lifted up the movie more than I did. But I'm an honest critic, so I gave the movie only three out of four stars. It's a bit too polished and austere, and a tad fearful of scaring off straight people. Despite its technical proficiency, the chemistry between the two leads, and Ledger's amazing acting, the movie ultimately harkened back to the old studio system days, where if you were gay, you had to either die horribly or suffer for your 'depraved' sins. That irritated the hell out of me. The last scene destroys everyone I know, yet I couldn't surrender to it. Advertisement I thought about that the other day when I revisited the movie. 'Brokeback Mountain' still holds up, and people are far less surprised by its content nowadays. It seems quaint by comparison with gay-themed films like Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
New York Post
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
‘Brokeback Mountain' writer reveals exact moment she knew the film would lose Best Picture Oscar
A Hollywood travesty. 'Brokeback Mountain' co-writer Diana Ossana remembers the moment she knew the gay romantic drama would lose the Oscar for Best Picture. In a new interview with the New York Times for the film's 20th anniversary, Ossana, 75, recalled that weeks before the 2006 Oscars, after voting had closed, she went to a party for the nominees at 'Crash' director Paul Haggis' house where Clint Eastwood was one of the attendees. Advertisement 9 Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger in 'Brokeback Mountain.' ©Focus Films/Courtesy Everett Collection Ossana 'was eager to meet' Eastwood, 95, but before they could interact, she got bad news. 'Paul started walking me over and he goes, 'Diana, I have to tell you, he hasn't seen your movie,'' Osanna told the outlet. Advertisement 9 Diana Ossana attends the 25th Annual Scripter Awards in Feb. 2013. WireImage 9 Clint Eastwood at the 20th Annual AFI Awards in January 2020. WireImage 'And it was like somebody kicked me in the stomach,' the screenwriter added. 'That's when I knew we would not win Best Picture.' 'Brokeback Mountain' infamously lost Best Picture to 'Crash,' despite dominating the award season up to that point and winning the Oscars for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score. Advertisement Ossana, who co-write the film with Larry McMurtry, told the NYT that she blames homophobia for the defeat. 9 Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in 'Brokeback Mountain.' AP Photo 'People want to deny that, but what else could it have been?' she said. 'We'd won everything up until then.' At the time, some Academy voters including Ernest Borgnine and Tony Curtis publicly declared that they wouldn't watch the Western romance. Advertisement 'I absolutely think that block of voters kept this movie from winning Best Picture,' Osanna stated. 9 'Brokeback Mountain' screenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry accept the award for Best Screenplay at the 63rd Annual Golden Globes. NBCUniversal via Getty Images 'Brokeback Mountain' followed two men, Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal), who found love despite one being married. 'Crash,' meanwhile, told the true story of a 1991 Los Angeles carjacking and starred Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Esposito, Thandiwe Newton and Matt Dillon. 9 Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal in 'Brokeback Mountain.' ©Focus Films/Courtesy Everett Collection Michelle Williams, who played Ledger's wife in 'Brokeback Mountain,' addressed the film losing Best Picture on 'Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen' in April. 'I mean, what was Crash?' Williams, 44, joked. 9 'Crash' won Best Picture at the 2006 Academy Awards. ©Lions Gate/Courtesy Everett Co Advertisement Williams was also asked if she was aware the project would make such an impact before it hit theaters. 'People were so open about it,' Williams reflected. 'I just remember doing the junket. You know, you don't really get an opportunity to see a lot of grown men cry. That was the moment that I think that we all knew it was going to be special to people.' 9 Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger in 'Brokeback Mountain.' Focus Films/Everett Collection Lee, 70, similarly reflected on the snub to Deadline last month. Advertisement 'Your guess is as good as mine,' the director said. 'There are times when I feel like there's an unlimited willingness to watch the movie. There's so much love for it. Generally, you feel like it's a breakthrough, that it broke all barriers. People seem to melt down. And you cannot even define it as gay cinema. It's not gay cinema, right? It's a love story.' 9 Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in 'Brokeback Mountain.' ©Focus Films/Courtesy Everett Collection But Lee did clarify that he's moved on from the film not winning Best Picture. 'I'm nothing but grateful. I have no bitterness,' he shared.
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The ‘Brokeback Mountain' Scene We Can't Stop Thinking About 20 Years Later
Jack Twist, I swear: the gay cowboys are back! Brokeback Mountain arrived on screen in 2005 with great anticipation and even greater reviews. Twenty years later, the film is hitting theaters again for a special anniversary re-release. It's clearer now than ever just how immediate and far-reaching the film's cultural impact was, its tale of star-crossed male lovers in the American west forever imprinting on our moviegoing hearts. One of the film's standouts was Michelle Williams, launching her career to the stratosphere with one of the film's most memorable, oft-quoted moments: the entrance of 'Jack Nasty' to the lexicon. The scene occurs after a Thanksgiving dinner, where Heath Ledger's Ennis joins his now ex-wife Alma (Williams) and her new husband, all keeping face for the sake of the children. In a moment alone together, Alma confesses that she caught Ennis in a lie about the nature of his fishing trips with his old friend, Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist. She sputters, a knot of anger and fear of the secret she dare not name. With years of pent up venom and lack of understanding, she finally snarls out 'Jack Twist? Jack Nasty!' Two decades on, 'Jack Nasty!' has become one of the film's most enduring lines and a shorthand for retrograde, unsophisticated viewpoints on queer people. But Brokeback Mountain hasn't always inspired jokes affectionate to the source material. No matter all the critical hosannas it received, the film was still plagued by several controversies in its original release. There was hand-wringing over its moniker as a 'gay cowboy' movie, the heterosexuality of its creators, and an ensuing backlash and dismissal in a Bush-era homophobic culture. Ernest Borgnine famously snubbed the movie during its Oscar race, telling Entertainment Weekly, 'If John Wayne were alive, he'd be rolling over in his grave.' Even at the Oscar ceremony–where the film won three awards, but famously not Best Picture–there were gay jokes. Though a benchmark for queer cinema in the mainstream, the film became synonymous with gay jokes. 'Many, many more people have told a Brokeback Mountain joke than have seen the movie. It's one of those things that has really transcended itself," the director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television once told The Advocate. 'Jack Nasty!' stills remains something of a punchline. Alma's place in the love affair between Ennis and Jack has inspired Reddit threads, fancams, and, of course, lots of memes. In twisting Jack's name into a slur, Alma has become an online stand-in for Karen-esque homophobia, even if the film affords her more understanding than that would suggest. While 'I wish I knew how to quit you!' became a line used to mock the film's sentiment in 2005, 'Jack Nasty!' became an iconic one for the film's knowing, intended audience. The reverence for Alma is peak queer irony. But the line's quotability all comes from the tragic earnestness flowing from Williams' performance. At the time, Williams was only two years removed from her run on Dawson's Creek as the rebellious Jen Lindsay. She had pivoted to small roles in several independent films, such as The Station Agent, but none of them managed to shed the shadow cast by the soapy teen drama until Brokeback. Even withering reviews that questioned the mildness of the film's gay explicitness, such as one published by Slant, were effusive about her performance: 'But Michelle Williams, as Ennis's wife Alma, may be the true standout here, fascinatingly spiking her unspoken resentment for her sham of a marriage with a hint of compassion for Ennis's secret suffering.' Compassion? Um, sure. But the unanimous praise for Williams' Oscar-nominated performance still stands. It was the first sign that Williams was one of the major performers of her generation. 'I never really had attention on me before in that kind of a way, and I think that that attention can be sort of destabilizing,' Williams said later, 'I think I felt a little bit frozen for a moment, creatively, about where I would go next, because I felt so free to try things before that, because I didn't think anybody was really paying attention or really cared that much.' Earlier this year, Williams joined Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live and discussed knowing the film's immediate impact at the time. 'People were so open about it,' she said, 'You don't really get an opportunity to see a lot of grown men cry.' With the film back in theaters this weekend, the opportunity comes once again. 'Jack Nasty!'? Jack Weepy!
BBC News
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'In every theatre, people would leave': How 'gay cowboy movie' Brokeback Mountain challenged Hollywood
Twenty years ago, Ang Lee's drama about the love between two male sheep herders was finally released after a long struggle to get it made. It was a watershed moment for gay representation that balanced playing by Hollywood's rules and changing them. When it was released in 2005, Brokeback Mountain entered the collective consciousness in a way that is vanishingly rare for a film with queer subject matter. Even non-cinephiles would have been aware of the "gay cowboy movie", as it was often described in the press, and the subsequent controversy when it lost the Academy Award for best picture to Crash, a clumsy crime film that now regularly appears on lists of the worst Oscar winners ever. Brokeback Mountain did take home three Oscars, including a prestigious best director prize for Ang Lee, and remains a beloved gay touchstone. Actor Paul Mescal recently complained that it feels "lazy and frustrating' to compare his upcoming film The History of Sound, a period romance in which he and Josh O'Connor play travelling lovers in rural Maine, to Lee's tender neo-Western about romantically attracted sheep herders Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal). Whether you agree with Mescal or not, the persistent comparisons are a sign of Brokeback Mountain's enduring impact and popularity. Indeed, to mark its 20th anniversary, Lee's film is now being re-released in US cinemas this week for a limited engagement. Adapted by screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana from a 1997 short story by Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain was a relatively novel proposition back in 2004. "The fact its two leads were handsome A-list male stars and [it showed] their characters in a romantic story together was groundbreaking," says Tim Teeman, author of In Bed With Gore Vidal: Hustlers, Hollywood, and the Private World of an American Master. This view is broadly echoed by queer film critic Manuel Betancourt, author of Hello Stranger: Musings on Modern Intimacies, who says the film's success with critics and audiences alike felt like the start of a "new era of gay representation [on screen]". At the time, Brokeback Mountain looked like a surprising pivot from director Ang Lee, who had recently made the 2003 superhero film Hulk, though his other directing credits ranged from an acclaimed Jane Austen adaptation (1995's Sense and Sensibility) to a hugely successful martial arts film (2000's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). The film's core cast was a quartet of hotly-tipped rising stars in their twenties: Ledger and Anne Hathaway would go on to win Oscars for subsequent roles, while Gyllenhaal and Michelle Williams are rarely far from the awards season conversation. How it was pioneering "It's easy to take for granted the way that Brokeback Mountain, with its starry cast and A-list director, profoundly changed the shape of LGBTQ+ representation in the mainstream," argues Kyle Turner, author of The Queer Film Guide: 100 Films That Tell LGBTIA+ Stories. Turner notes that "the wave of mainstream queer moves in the 90s" tended to "toggle between Aids-related dramas like Philadelphia (1993) and And the Band Played On (1993), and lighter comedies like The Birdcage (1996) and In & Out (1997)". By contrast, he believes that Brokeback Mountain carved out a new niche as a "straightforward and serious" film that won "newfound respectability" for a romantic story involving same-sex lovers. That story begins in rural Wyoming in 1963, when drifters Ennis and Jack are hired by a local rancher to herd sheep through grazing ground on the titular Brokeback Mountain. One night, with their inhibitions loosened by moonshine, Jack makes a pass at Ennis and the two men have sex in a tent – a pretty audacious scene for a mainstream film in 2005. When Brokeback Mountain came out in December 2005, Ossana, who was also the film's producer, made a point of attending screenings in some of the US's more conservative states to gauge the audience's reaction. "The theatres were packed, and in every theatre it was the same – after the tent scene, five or six people would get up to leave," she tells the BBC. Brokeback Mountain grows sadder and more anguished after Ennis and Jack consummate their relationship. Their sheep-herding summer ends with the two men scrapping, presumably in frustration at the romantic feelings they dare not acknowledge. Ennis then marries his fianceé Alma (Williams), while Jack meets and marries rodeo rider Lureen (Hathaway). It's four years before the two men meet again, at which point Jack asks Ennis to leave Alma and build a life with him. Heartbreakingly, it's a giant leap that Ennis can't bring himself to make. "Everyone talks about the 1960s being a time of 'free love', but it was actually a very narrow-minded and restrictive time for many people in America – that's what the hippies were rebelling against," Ossana says. For Ennis, the prospect of living in a gay relationship with Jack is simply too much to countenance, so for the next 20 years, their passion is limited to sporadic fishing trips that are separate from their everyday lives. The men are affected by overt external homophobia: when Jack returns to Brokeback Mountain, he is told by a prejudiced rancher that there is no work there for men "who stem the rose", a deceptively elegant euphemism for gay sex. But ultimately, it is Ennis' deep-rooted internalised homophobia that thwarts their potential happiness. The challenges of getting it produced Thinly-veiled homophobia – this time in early-2000s Hollywood – made Brokeback Mountain an immense challenge for Ossana and her fellow producer James Schamus. After she read Proulx's short story in 1997, Ossana and screenwriting partner McMurtry persuaded the author to let them adapt it for the screen. "Annie said, 'I don't see a film there, but have at it,'" Ossana recalls. They completed the screenplay in three months, but it took nearly eight years to get the film into production. "The biggest problem was casting Ennis. Actors would commit and then back out, or they just were too afraid based upon what their representatives were telling them," she explains – because for an aspiring leading man at the time, playing a gay character was widely viewed as "career suicide". After Lee joined the project in 2001, the producers found an actor willing to play Ennis, but this star dropped out around five months later. "I already had a feeling he might back out," Ossana says, alluding to the widely held trepidation about playing a gay character. By this point, she was already convinced that Ledger was perfect for the role based on his haunting performance in the 2001 romantic drama Monster's Ball. Crucially, too, he had previously "played a gay teenager in a soap opera" in his native Australia, so Ossana hoped he might be more "open" than his American peers. Her hunch was correct, but Ossana says studio executives were initially reluctant to cast Ledger because they felt he wasn't "macho enough" to play a cowboy – or even a "wannabe cowboy", as she sees the character. "It was probably helpful, in terms of the film's infiltration into the mainstream, that [Ennis and Jack] are two men who inhabit a conventional kind of masculinity," Turner says. Betancourt believes Brokeback Mountain was able to provide a watershed moment in LGBTQ+ representation precisely because it was rooted in proven Hollywood tropes. "As a Western and a melodrama, it played within two well-worn genres and infused them both with new vibrancy – mainly due to the fact it's a love story between two men," he says. At the same time, Brokeback Mountain also adheres to another Hollywood trope: what Teeman describes as depicting "queer love as beautiful but doomed", a narrative that plays out in the likes of The Children's Hour (1961) and Philadelphia (1993). The two men's flickering romance is finally extinguished when Jack dies in ambiguous circumstances. Lureen tells Ennis over the phone that Jack was killed by an exploding tyre – though at the same time, we see images of Jack being viciously beaten by a group of men. Ennis is envisioning, all too believably, his lover being killed in a homophobic hate crime. Its debatable legacy Perhaps because it played by the rules while challenging them at the same time, Brokeback Mountain's place in film history is assured. In 2018, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, which recognises works that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It occupies an equally integral, though more complicated place, in the queer film pantheon. "As a piece of cinema, it remains as ravishing and disarming as ever," Betancourt argues, "but as a pivot point for queer representation, it remains as singular but limiting as it was then." It is, after all, the story of two closeted gay or possibly bisexual men who "pass" as straight in their everyday lives. More like this:• Why Requiem for a Dream still divides• The darkest children's film ever made?• The horror that traumatised millennials Though Brokeback Mountain remains important and influential, it's difficult to quantify its long-term impact on LGBTQ+ representation. Teeman notes that Hollywood gave a green light to several "mainstream queer-themed films" in its wake, notably Milk (2008) and The Kids Are All Right (2010); these were followed in turn by Carol (2014), Moonlight (2016) and Call Me by Your Name (2017). But he also believes "there's little consistency and regularity in the flow of queer-themed stories and lead characters to the screen". For Teeman, "TV and theatre are [still] more radical than film when it comes to queer representation." Brokeback Mountain also retains a unique relevance because of its place in the ongoing debate about whether straight actors should play gay roles. Both Gyllenhaal and Ledger, who died in 2008, are widely presumed to be heterosexual, though Ossana says it was "none of my business" as a producer to ask questions about their sexual orientation. "It's the old chestnut, and Brokeback Mountain is the ultimate exemplar," Teeman says. But even with these caveats, it remains a stunning and heartbreaking piece of cinema that strikes a particular chord with LGBTQ+ viewers. Brokeback Mountain offers a stark reminder that denying your true identity is a tragedy that can derail several lives at once. Brokeback Mountain is being re-released in US cinemas, beginning with special showings on June 22 and 25. -- If you liked this story sign up for The Essential List newsletter, a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week. For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
New York Times
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Never Quitting ‘Brokeback Mountain'
'I wish I knew how to quit you,' says a frustrated Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) to his secret lover Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) in a now emblematic scene from Ang Lee's 'Brokeback Mountain,' the celebrated gay-themed drama based on Annie Proulx's 1997 short story. The film was originally released in December 2005, but is back in theaters this June for a 20th-annivesary Pride Month reissue. Jack's sorrowful line came to synthesize the doomed love affair between the two rugged men for whom the majestic landscapes of Wyoming became a sacred romantic hide-out — the only place they were free to express desire and tenderness for each other. But that line, and the notion of two men who embody an archetype of American masculinity falling for each other, was both parodied and memed in pop culture — often reduced to 'the gay cowboy movie' — even while the film received critical raves and Oscar nominations (eight, including best picture, a prize it lost to the movie 'Crash'). Arriving at a political turning point in the United States, 'Brokeback Mountain' struck a chord far beyond cinephile circles. For the film critic and author Alonso Duralde, who wrote a book about queer cinema history called 'Hollywood Pride,' the film was a watershed moment for representation in mainstream Hollywood. It was distributed by Focus Features, the indie outfit of Universal Pictures, with a revered director and up-and-coming stars, which meant it could potentially have a wider reach and impact. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
