My friend Tommy

My friend Tommy writes for a paper in Ottawa, KS.....This is his article this week. I thought it was awesome.

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys

By Tommy FeltsThe Ottawa Herald, The Paris News

Published the week of January 8, 2006

As the gay cowboy flick “Brokeback Mountain” rides through the pre-Oscar season, it’s picking up more award nominations than a sheepdog has ticks. Without the film’s hype and surrounding controversy, however, would it really demand such high praise?

“We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” one moviegoer at a showing in Olathe said. “It’s not about whether it’s a great movie. It’s about finally telling our stories – the real stories of the human experience.”

Good movie or not, Director Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” is wracking up kudos left and right (well, maybe not on the right) – seven Golden Globe nominations, seven Best Picture nods from various film critic associations, and, most recently, several top award nominations from the Screen Actors Guild.

Too bad most of these accolades are undeserved.

The film, initially set in the Wyoming wilderness in 1963, revolves around the relationship between rancher Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and failed rodeo rider Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal). Hired to herd sheep for the summer, the pair suffer the usual pains of being alone in the wild – bad weather, bears, coyotes and nothing to eat but beans. They are bored, tired and look longingly at one another. Then – thirty minutes into the film – they get drunk and have rather violent, graphic sex in a tent.

Yes, it’s as romantic as it sounds.

The next day, marble-mouthed Ennis tells Jack, “You know I ain’t queer.” To which whiny Jack responds, “Me neither.” This masterful dialogue is immediately followed by another round of sex. Collectively, the two scenes come to epitomize the rest of the film, which becomes agonizingly sluggish as it lurches on.

After their sheepherding experience draws to a close, Ennis and Jack go their separate ways. They get married and start families. Ennis works at a ranch, Jack sells combines in Texas, and periodically they meet up to go “fishing.” They lie to their wives, largely ignore their children and engage in 20 years of self-absorbed, irresponsible indulgence.

In any other film – at least those involving straight couples – such activity would be reserved for the movie’s villains. In “Brokeback Mountain,” however, leading a secret life – one completely occupied by sex and desire – is treated as an acceptable, even romantic, part of this “tragic” tale.

For their part, audiences haven’t been overly offended by the film’s moments of male nudity or gay sex. After all, one would assume few conservative moviegoers would accidentally wander into the theater without having an inkling of what was to transpire on screen. At the Olathe showing, audience members seemed far more shocked to see Ennis and Jack shoot an elk than to take aim at each other.
Overall reaction to the movie, however, has been puzzling to say the least.

For some reason, gay and liberal activists have championed “Brokeback Mountain” as a film that promotes their cause – despite the fact that it does the exact opposite. The movie paints a bleak, hopeless picture of the gay lifestyle. It presents two main characters with few redeeming qualities and seemingly insatiable appetites for sex (Jack notably isn’t faithful to Ennis or his wife, taking a lover in Texas and frequenting Mexican male prostitutes). Here, there is no friendship, love or romance – only lust.

“Brokeback Mountain” is a lot of things. It’s the kind of movie that makes two hours seem like four. It’s the kind of movie that trendy folks love to call “groundbreaking,” but wouldn’t watch twice. It’s the kind of movie that you wouldn’t know was good if someone hadn’t told you before you watched it.

Near the movie’s end, Jack spouts the film’s most memorable catchphrase, telling Ennis, “I wish I knew how to quit you.” Audiences should be wishing they knew how to pick better movies.