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Chick-Flick Cowboys
‘Brokeback Mountain’ has stolen the hearts of women in Middle America.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Susanna Schrobsdorff
Newsweek
Updated: 11:16 a.m. ET Jan. 20, 2006



Jan. 20, 2006 - If you think discussions about “Brokeback Mountain” are winding down, think again. The story of a doomed love affair between two cowboys in 1960s Wyoming has become a surprise commercial success, as well as a critical hit. On Tuesday, one day after its best-picture win at the Golden Globes, Ang Lee’s film based on an Annie Proulx short story hit No. 1 at the box office, topping the mainstream sports drama “Glory Road,” which was showing on about three times as many screens. With a nationwide take of more than $33 million, it has already earned more than double its production costs.

This weekend the Focus Features film, which stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as hunky star-crossed lovers, will move to about 1,200 screens (up from 684) and reach even more suburban markets. But don’t necessarily expect “Brokeback,” which has a fairly explicit sex scene with the two men, to ignite widespread heartland protests. So far it has played relatively well outside the traditional coastal city areas where somber indie hits usually rise and fall. Producer James Schamus explains: “What’s driving the gross now is the gigantic numbers from the small and medium-sized cities, not New York and Los Angeles.” He attributes its success to lots of advance, Internet-driven buzz and near-universal critical acclaim.

Ben Fritz, a box-office reporter for Variety magazine, says that Focus has had a deliberately cautious strategy in distributing the film. "They've been very judicious in letting it build," he says. "By the time it reaches these small cities, there's been so much talk, there's almost a pent-up demand." So far, the plan has paid off. The film has already earned more than Focus's less-controversial "Pride and Prejudice." Fritz says that even if it does not win a best-picture Oscar, "Brokeback" is likely to become a "cultural touchstone, that we look back on in five or 10 years as an important film." And with four Golden Globes under its belt, he adds that "it's gone beyond the gay-rights issue. At this point, it just deserves to be judged like any other independent serious movie, and it's doing very well for that kind of movie."

Even in predominantly Mormon Utah, where one theater owner cancelled its scheduled showings of the picture, the film was an unexpected smash in Salt Lake City where it grossed $40,000 its first weekend. “For a film like this, that’s saying something in my business,” Schamus says. And in Mason City, Iowa, last week, 41 people petitioned an eight-screen commercial multiplex to get the movie shown. “It’s the first time I’ve seen that happen,” says the cinema’s assistant manager, Johnny Mattis, who explains that the film was scheduled to arrive on Jan. 27 anyway.

Mattis, 24, isn’t sure what all the fuss is about. “I don’t know why people really want it to come here,” he says. “I don’t like the drama-romances anyway, and I really don’t want to see one with two gay men.” But Mattis and the rest of the usually coveted audience of guys 18-34 years old aren’t the target this time. From early on, Focus said the film was aiming for the same female fans with upscale tastes who loved “Titanic.”

Ann Eichler, a 63-year-old grandmother in Scottsdale, Ariz., is smack in the middle of that demographic. She went to a 12:30 p.m. weekday showing without her husband and found the theater packed with women. “I think men are so uncomfortable with this kind of thing, even if they are very liberal-minded,” explains Eichler, who says she was enormously moved by the film. She admits she was “a little worried about a seeing a homosexual love scene, but I found I could handle it.” And she adds that her husband was kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” about her seeing the movie. “He knows it’s out there, he just doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Eichler’s husband is not alone. On personal blogs, around water coolers and even on Web sites like WebMD.com, women are talking about trying to get their husbands to go see it and debating whether not wanting to see it makes you a homophobe--“no” say many heterosexual men, they just don’t want to see chick flicks. “I didn’t even want to see ‘Cold Mountain',” protests one.

Meanwhile, "Seinfeld" creator Larry David deftly tackled one of the most sensitive issues for some straight men in a recent New York Times op-ed piece. David said that he’s afraid to go see the film because he might hear a little voice in his head saying of the cowboys: “Go ahead, admit it, they’re cute. You can’t fool me, gay man.”

If those in the so-called cultural elite (like David) have trouble seeing a gay love story, does the film have any hope of changing nationwide attitudes on gay relationships? Armond Aserinsky, a Philadelphia-area media psychologist doesn’t think so. “Both sides in the cultural war have dug in their heels,” he says. “['Brokeback Mountain'] is preaching to the choir. It’s not going to move anyone to a new camp.”

But Schamus, the producer, has a different take: “This film has completely punctured the Red State-Blue State myth. We’ve been stereotyped as a gay cowboy movie. But it’s much more damaging to stereotype Arkansas as anti-gay. America is a much more diverse place than we’re given credit for.”


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