How Brokeback affected me

[neatfreak]

A progress report:

I am a long-married Christian mother of two. It's been over three months since I read the story and was shot through the heart. I have lost 27 pounds and countless "productive" hours of activity. I haven't finished the story yet, because I am still processing it internally. Annie Proulx says "It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, world view and thoughts." I don't know yet when this story will end... I suspect that it may be a very long time.

I have seen the movie more times than I am willing to admit publicly -- even here. My last visit was the first time I did not cry during the film. I still have moments alone when I well up with tears, even over events that have nothing to do with this story. My heart has been rent open and there is no turning back. I spend time every day with Jack and Ennis and all of you. I listen to the soundtrack and related music that soothes the need that has been created in me.

Even though there have been painful revelations, I would not return to the person I was before. Brokeback's gift to me is a new power to love that was hidden too deeply to express before. My radar for others' pain is at an all-time high, and I find myself reaching out even to strangers. This is pretty amazing for someone who identifies closely with Ennis.

My husband saw the movie after seeing the effect it was having on me. He didn't like the story, seeing the infidelity and the pain it caused. But we have had hours of discussion on the nature of homosexuality and our response to it. While we don't agree on a number of things, we respect each other's opinions.

I asked a colleague to join me at the theatre, hoping to have someone with whom I could share my obsession. She didn't like it either; she had a dispassionate view of the process of the movie, ignoring somehow the story itself. Listening to her, I realized that I too viewed movies (over 2000 reviewed on Netflix!) dispassionately, more for the craft than the impact. Until this movie. Only you guys understand -- or more accurately, feel the same and don't understand any more than I do.

So I continue to spend WAY too much time online, reading every single post on this thread and several others. I cry with your stories and laugh at your confessions of obsession. Me too, me too. But I have been compelled to act, also.

I have just finished training as a pastoral lay minister; I want to be available to those affected by AIDS. My brother died almost ten years ago, and this is how I can show my love for him in a way that lives on. I hope to bring my voice to the silence that I met with years ago when he was ill. I have asked our senior pastor to consider Brokeback Mountain for our next series of movie nights. My note included a sermon linked by this website. I hope to speak to him shortly about it; I'll let you all know how it goes.

Here's what occurred to me when I drove away from the theatre dry-eyed for the first time: I love the person I have become because of Brokeback Mountain. So NOW I cry. To all of you here: thank you.

[jmorales]

A progress report:

I am a long-married Christian mother of two. It's been over three months since I read the story and was shot through the heart. I have lost 27 pounds and countless "productive" hours of activity. I haven't finished the story yet, because I am still processing it internally. Annie Proulx says "It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, world view and thoughts." I don't know yet when this story will end... I suspect that it may be a very long time.

I have seen the movie more times than I am willing to admit publicly -- even here. My last visit was the first time I did not cry during the film. I still have moments alone when I well up with tears, even over events that have nothing to do with this story. My heart has been rent open and there is no turning back. I spend time every day with Jack and Ennis and all of you. I listen to the soundtrack and related music that soothes the need that has been created in me.

Even though there have been painful revelations, I would not return to the person I was before. Brokeback's gift to me is a new power to love that was hidden too deeply to express before. My radar for others' pain is at an all-time high, and I find myself reaching out even to strangers. This is pretty amazing for someone who identifies closely with Ennis.

My husband saw the movie after seeing the effect it was having on me. He didn't like the story, seeing the infidelity and the pain it caused. But we have had hours of discussion on the nature of homosexuality and our response to it. While we don't agree on a number of things, we respect each other's opinions.

I asked a colleague to join me at the theatre, hoping to have someone with whom I could share my obsession. She didn't like it either; she had a dispassionate view of the process of the movie, ignoring somehow the story itself. Listening to her, I realized that I too viewed movies (over 2000 reviewed on Netflix!) dispassionately, more for the craft than the impact. Until this movie. Only you guys understand -- or more accurately, feel the same and don't understand any more than I do.

So I continue to spend WAY too much time online, reading every single post on this thread and several others. I cry with your stories and laugh at your confessions of obsession. Me too, me too. But I have been compelled to act, also.

I have just finished training as a pastoral lay minister; I want to be available to those affected by AIDS. My brother died almost ten years ago, and this is how I can show my love for him in a way that lives on. I hope to bring my voice to the silence that I met with years ago when he was ill. I have asked our senior pastor to consider Brokeback Mountain for our next series of movie nights. My note included a sermon linked by this website. I hope to speak to him shortly about it; I'll let you all know how it goes.

Here's what occurred to me when I drove away from the theatre dry-eyed for the first time: I love the person I have become because of Brokeback Mountain. So NOW I cry. To all of you here: thank you.

That is beautiful. I hope everything goes well with your pastor. Good Luck!

[MarkC]

There's no one in my life that I can talk to, and I'm hurting so bad. I can hardly bring myself to post this publicly, but I have to say it to someone, and I'm so thankful you guys are here.

BBM brought back all those memories that had been put away for so many years;memories that had begun to fade with time. Then suddenly I could think of nothing else and everything was vivid in my mind again.

My search for Billy has ended.  This afternoon I received confirmation that he passed away several years ago.  I just can't hardly stand it.  There's so much I wanted to say to him.  I feel so utterly alone now.  I've never had to grieve before. 

For several weeks I've had the feeling that he might be gone because my search wouldn't turn up anything, nothing.  Last week I drove 650 miles round trip to his high school in Georgia, just trying to find his picture in an old yearbook.  When I got there I found the yearbooks for those years were missing.

Who would have guessed that the school librarian would be the key.  When I told her Billy's name, she said she thought he might be the grandfather of one of the students at the school. She offered to bring in the student, but I told her I didn't think it would be proper for me to question a student.  She said she would find out and call me.  The call came this morning. 

The child said her grandmother (Billy's wife Ruth) lives in Atlanta, and there was a phone number.  I called Ruth a little while ago.  She was very cordial, remembered me from years ago, and invited me to come visit.  At first I declined, but she insisted, so I go to Atlanta next week.

Meanwhile the tears won't stop.  My wife noticed this afternoon but I just shrugged it off.  She knows nothing of Billy.  How do you explain to your wife that you're going out of town to meet another woman who was the wife of the man you've loved for fifty years? 

And then there's Ruth.  Is she going to see it in my face?  OMG, this is probably a big mistake, but if I don't make the trip, I'll never know what I must know.

Paul Mejack

Paul,

I am so sorry. You are in my thoughts.
Make the trip. Go find out what his life was like. Get closure.
MarkC


p.s. you are not alone in some ways: I have been following your story from your 1st post onwards, I have been thinking about your stories alot, and I am still thinking about you and your wellbeing. You are not completely alone. You are in my thoughts.

[Garry_LH]

I decided to remove my reply from the book project, and bring it over here. All I can say is WHAT??

Quote from: archbishop on Yesterday at 11:21:37 PM
This is SAD!

Randy Quaid Sues Over 'Brokeback'
Actor claims producers defrauded him
By TMZ.COM STAFF
(Mar. 23) -- Randy Quaid has filed a lawsuit claiming he was done in by producers of 'Brokeback Mountain.'


TMZ obtained a copy of the lawsuit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming producers falsely represented the movie to him as \"a low-budget, art house film, with no prospect of making any money.\" Qauid claims the representations were a ruse from the beginning. 'Brokeback' has grossed around $160 million.


Quaid's suit claims that in 2004, he met with director Ang Lee, who offered him the role of Joe Aguirre. The suit alleges that Lee told Quaid: "We can't pay anything, we have very little money, everyone is making a sacrifice to make this film."


The suit does not specifically state how much Quaid made, but it does claim that the defendants "were engaged in a 'movie laundering' scheme designed to obtain the services of talent such as Randy Quaid on economically unfavorable art film terms..."


The suit asks for $10 million in damages as well as punitive damages. It also seeks "restitution for all ill-gotten gains."

From here down is what I added... Garry

http://tmz.aol.com/article2?id=20060323195809990001

Link to that story. you can click on the highlighted portion to get a PDF of the filing. Having read about BBM as it came to life, there isn't an interview out there to support this claim. As far back as BBM being in less than 500 theaters, everyone involved with the project was amazed it was doing as well as it was. What did Jake and Heath do, take on this movie for a piece of the action, I HOPE, and Quaid took what money he could get up front?  If this is real, I would think suing a studio at this point would be a fast track to retirement. The services of an actor like Randy Quaid are that valuable? I've never found him to be that impressive. Are his friends giving him a bad time about being in the dick flick as he himself implied is the films subject matter. What the heck is going on here?

[sagha/Mo]

Dear Paul my darling, my dear man,

It's silly to say I wish I could be there to hug you, but I do. i feel so deeply sorry for you that you have lost your Billy. After all those years of your sweet & quiet memory of him remained a flame in the recesses of your daily routines, for nearly your whole life. Billy remained a pristine & pure source of a river of passion and innocence and love throughout everything. Then to feel those memories vehemently rekindle like a solar flare after BBM, it became unbearably impossible to not find him, to rush to him, to tell how much you loved him through all the years you held his warmth and his breath and his friendship as part of your body, as is the memory, like the skin. O Paul, I am heartbroken for you after you searched everywhere. (The lines from Kurt Weill's Speak Low come to mind: "Ö, I have looked everywhere you can look without wings and I've seen a great variety of interesting things, but there never was you. No, there never was anywhere you.") Your anguished search for Billy has remained with me for weeks and I feared what you have learned to be a possibility, even likely. We are like blind and deaf people on this internet together, but without the succor and comfort of touch, of embrace. Still know that an anonymous stranger weeps with you this evening as I am deeply moved by the lifetime vigil of your love for Billy, your need to find Billy, to tell him the truth: that you loved him always and as long as you have breath you will have loved him. And he knew he could count on that.  Your anguish is shared by many of us on this forum.

Áh! ás the heart grows older         
It will come to such sights colder 
By and by, nor spare a sigh 
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; 
And yet you wíll weep and know why. 
Now no matter, child, the name:         
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same. 
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed 
What heart heard of ...
                                ---Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and Fall

If you need or want someone to drive with you Paul to Atlanta, just email me.  --Mo/sagha
Hate to be so fucking literary, but I'm a bookish queer. Since a boy it has always been a strange rescue for me

[Zuraffo]

Jenny, thank your husband for me. He has summarized all too perfectly how I had always felt about the movie. I agree with his every word.

Okay, guys, I need to share this.  I finally got my husband of 21 years to come see this movie with me.  We went to an afternoon showing: maybe 8 other people in the theater.  He reached over and held my hand from the final argument all the way to the end.  This was our conversation after we left the theater:

Me:  How did you like it?

Him: It was an excellent movie.  I'm glad I saw it.

Me: You didn't think it dragged or was too slow?

Him:  Not at all.  I thought the pacing was great.

Me:  Didn't you think Heath Ledger was terrific?

Him:  I thought they both were terrific.

We're silent for a minute.  I figured okay, I guess that's where we're going to leave it.  Then he turns to me and says:  "I think that's the first big movie I've seen in a long time where they got it right about how love is."  I asked what he meant, and he says: "Those guys got disappointed and hurt and angry with each other and kept on loving each other anyway.  They weren't sitting there going: "You're the love of my life.  Everything about you is perfect."  They just kept coming back and trying the best they could to give each other someone who knew what it was like for them."  And then he adds this:  "They lost everything in the end, but they were still damn lucky."

[gary-bbm]

My reply got all mixed up in Redbrit's comments, so if it's confusing I didn't mean it to be.  I just feel really bad about some of the comments that have been posted in response to my thoughts about the scene with Ennis and his girls and Jack coming to be with him.  I was hurt by some of them and I am too upset to talk anymore.  I think maybe some people should remember that we are just human beings here trying to make some sense out of a movie and characters that really touched a chord in us.  But I don't like feeling like I should be ashamed of what I think or say.  I see things the way I see them and I try to have the courage to question things I don't understand or look inside myself to see things I may not want to see.  That's all I wanted to say for now.

Hi Mindy,
I just wanted to say that I have appreciated all of your posts and I don't think anyone was intentionally trying to make you feel ashamed.
Kelly

And I'll second that! Really apologize if my comments upset you, and of course noone's abandonment issues can trump yours. English is my second language, and unfortunately sometimes unintentional things can come across because of my clumsiness in expressing myself, but please don't feel ashamed of what you write, I think you give a great contribution.
Gary in Belgium

[gary-bbm]

Paul, I'm but a newbie on this forum (been lurking for a month, don't know what took me so long..), but FWIW: all the best whishes, you are in my thoughts.
Gary

[Erik]

The more thsi movie sinks in, the more i feel sorry for Jack.. He knew wha the wanted but did not get anything, not even his last wish was granted him.. about the ashes..

I wonder, what were his feelings after the last meeting, did he in some way say goodbye to Ennis? Was the relationship in his eyes over? I mean, he said he could not go on like this.. Did he die, thinking that he and Ennis were not together anymore? Did he die so sad?

As to the ashes, I'm sort of thinking that Jack's mother has more in mind for the return visit she offers Ennis than just a slice of cherry cake. She strikes me a little like my grandmother. I should say in all fairness my grandfather was never the monster that Jack's father is - but he was very right-wing and pretty domineering. Well, every election he would say to my Nan,'You know who you're going to vote for, don't you?' and my Nan would say,'Yes dear' - meaning, as she told us, yes - I know you expect me to vote Tory and yes I'm going to vote Labour this time like I always have. Women have ways around these things.

We can only guess at Jack's feelings toward the end. He didn't strike me as a quitter. He found ways to get on with his life as best he could, but always held out for Ennis, and I suspect he always would have unless he found someone else he could care for as much, which would always be a long shot. He invested so much of himself in Ennis - Ennis was part of him and I think that would be very difficult to quit: as Jack himself said. Jack also struck me as a romantic - his dreams of rodeo glory and the cowboy image, his dreams of a life with Ennis - all the stuff that neither Lureen or Ennis really took seriously were real for Jack - he really meant them: as they both realise too late - Lureen when she realises that Brokeback Mountain exists (this casts her muffled sob in the telephone conversation in a new light) and Ennis on discovering the shirts. Dare to dream - that was Jack's credo - things can be better and we have to try. Ennis and Lureen were so crushed they couldn't believe like Jack. When they realise that some of Jack's 'fantasies' are real, physical things - a mountain, a pair of shirts - the emptiness of their own lives and the hole left by the one among them who really lived and dared to dream is what leaves them with a greater emptiness. Maybe this also explains why Jack appears not to react so badly to coming down off the mountain. For him, his continuing relationship with Ennis is not in question - he dreams it, so it can be. We don't know what happens to Lureen, but we do know that Ennis learns this lesson and dreams of happiness for his daughter and continues to dream his happiness with Jack. The lesson? - It is dreamers who live in the real world and those who dare not dream who never really live. This is instinctively understood by the best artists - hence the beautiful realisation of the film by Lee, McMurtry, Ossana, Ledger, Gyllenhaal, Williams and Hathaway.

This also makes me feel a little less sad about Jack. You see - he lived as he saw fit - always - he was so damned brave - he lost his life, but he never gave in. In fact, he's a latterday Carmen - 'I live and die, Carmen!'. Interestingly, when it was first performed, Carmen was considered immoral; there had been great difficulties in getting it made, including potential leading ladies pulling out due to the subject-matter and it failed to gain critical acclaim for much the same reasons until long after it came out. Some things never change... Of course, it is now recognised as one of the greatest Operas ever written and has a secure, permanent place in the repertoire. I wonder what the critics' favourite Opera was in 1875? Any art historians out there?

* bigh sigh*... wow... i believe so too Redbrit, i believe so too

About the other thing: maybe Jack did not have time to bring the neighbout home, and that's just it... He was a romantic and a dreamer but also a very practical one, willing to realize his dreams and let action follow his words...

[Erik]

Only movie that could make me join a forum and talk about 2 fictional characters none stop like they were my best friends.

Yeah, i agree brokaholic, i've never done this before.. would have considered this silly and childish and unreal... before BbM...

[Erik]

Back then, we were meant to believe we really didn't exist.

How old r you then, about 45?

It hurts me what you said...

[bradINblue]

Here I go again. A commute on a long and endless highway void of other traffic. An hour spent before the first light of dawn winding through the foothills of alder, fir, and cedar that are a precursor to that of the Cascade mountain range. An hour on this date, an hour of soft rain which I must smell.  An hour with a friend just met. A friend I will forever cherish and hold and cry with for the rest of my life--that friend, the soundtrack of the most beautiful movie ever made—Brokeback Mountain.

These songs have inspired in me like nothing before. Each one, an application. Overwhelming sadness. The desire to break free of those trappings instilled at an early age. The strum of fluid guitar that isn’t heard with ears, but absorbed deep into ones inner dimension. I don’t want to say goodbye. A card game at a company store. Trailers. Just like the light of the morning after the darkness has gone. Then these words tonight on that lonely highway that remind me of two very special human beings, No one’s going to love you like me, no one else, can’t you see. Tonight, it is these words which belong to one of the most special persons I have yet to meet. These precious words, meant for another special person I’ve yet to meet. This is a love story of an Ennis del Mar and one Jack Twist. A true force not requiring lighting and scrip and gaff and makeup. No direction. No takes. A love story that, without Brokeback Mountain, would certainly have been Brokeback Mountain.

Two very special people, trapped by circumstance and miles, five years ago paths crossed. A friendship. A bond. Sharing. Stories not interrupted, each opinion respected. Then, on a distant mountain while spouses and kids are within the confines of that which is expected, the unexpected. A ‘virgin’ experience of heart and flesh. What follows over time: two buds absorbing sunshine and warmth and moistness. Buds trying to open, one wanting to burst forth into an early explosion of color and fragrance. Jack. The other, afraid to open and show that true color. The other—try to make it work, for there are families and truths that can’t be told. Ennis.

The movie. The experience. Jack, vindicated. Ennis, enlightened. The story told within the confines of these very threads. A story with our very own Jack and Ennis. A happy ending that is a light at the end of a very long tunnel. For tonight on my trek to my own place of happiness and content, I congratulate two very special people--Heidi and Carol. Thank you for a happy ending.

[hayek_uk]

Reaction to BBM by the great (and out - obviously) South African\British actor Antony Sher, from today's Guardian.

"Well, I'm not sure that Brokeback Mountain and Capote really qualify as gay films," says Martin Sherman, writer of gay films like Bent and Alive and Kicking (in which I played one of the leads). "Brokeback Mountain is about two straight men who happen to have a gay affair, and Capote is about an author, who happens to be gay, going to any lengths to get his story."

Sherman explains there's a divide between this kind of cinema, made by mainly straight people, and queer cinema, a purer form where the films are not only about gay subjects, but made by gay people. Perhaps the best mainstream example of queer cinema is Gods and Monsters: the writer/ director (Bill Condon) and star (Ian McKellen) are both openly gay, and the main character in the story is gay. It was a landmark when that film received several Oscar nominations, and won best adapted screenplay.

Thanks very much indeed for posting this.

What a long, tedious article, lacking insight, knowledge and humour.

The quote from gay dramatist Martin Sherman ("...Brokeback Mountain is about two straight men who happen to have a gay affair") is among the most stupid comments I have come across. Even hostile straight critics don't manage things that profoundly unhelpful and lacking in insight. The very idea that BBM is about a "gay affair" shows how uninterested in "Brokeback" the queer establishment is. Again and again the men (and they always are men) who think "gay" means camp urban subculture, gay bars and AIDS protests are negative and deliberately obtuse about BBM.

The "Guardian" and "Independent" in the UK have published a whole stream of such gay critics, who usually make minimal reference to BBM itself and use it as a board to launch onto writing about other subjects that interest them more, or (like Sher) rattle on endlessly about "gay" in the history of the movies. Adam Mars-Jones and Philip Hensher, leading "out" gay critics and columnists in these newspapers have led this small-minded effort to devalue BBM. (As you might have gathered) they make me sick. His gay-written gay-acted (gays only?) gay films are a "purer form" of gay movies -- what bullshit. And sweeping BBM and "Capote" (which does indeed have minimal genuinely gay content - despite Sher loving the depiction of an effeminate gueen for itself, rather than part of the oppression Jack and Ennis had to live with) -- into the same category deepens the offence.

[Poohbunn]

This is so discouraging.  I was watching a video interview with Jake and he seemed to like Randy Quaid.  Beside, if he had not done this, the publicity of the movie alone might have given him potential as a character actor.  Now, he's just going to look like a malcontent.  I hope he loses his case.

[Nick_F]

Just a quick off topic note

A thread has started in the Meet and Greets, for a discussion about why this site is so addictive. It is just people talking about how difficult it is to stay away from here. What they get from being here etc. etc. It has been very nice to see all the differing aspects of the nourishment this place provides.

We would love to get the perspective of "other" members of the community.

Please come and join us down there, all are welcome.It is very social and light hearted relief down in the Meet and Greets.

Here's the link

http://davecullen.com/forum/index.php?topic=3192.0

Thanks

I will leave you all in peace now.

Hugs

Nick