Marketing is everything, and it appears that the “Brokeback Mountain” folks suddenly want you to think ‘confused family man’ instead of ‘gay cowboy.’ Gee, I wonder why. Ah, the manipulation that dare not speak its name.

Check out PunditGuy’s excellent analysis here.

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  1. Vikki says:

    Movies especially, and tv shows to an extent, need to open big. Be an instant success and it’s like you need to make your money BEFORE word gets around on the street about the project. If a film doesn’t open big. that’s it. Finished usually.

    The opposite of blogs for instance where you start pretty raw with limited money and with a few people supporting you and your reputation builds and you grow into success. While marketing is a small factor, the great ones are usually sleepers. Powerful because, to me, it’s a worthy expedition that’s interesting to others and worth reading and talking about. For the creator, it also means you really have to believe in it because it might be a while before it is widely recognized.

  2. political_junkie says:

    Tammy, I am a bit confused. Why is it that you have an issue with a gay love themed movie? I can understand how much of the heartland isn’t really going to appreciate this movie, and I am personally uncomfortable of the idea of watching a gay love movie, but that is my trip, I am hetero. What is your trip?

  3. Artist for truth says:

    Maybe Focus on the Family is making it big with movies at the box office. . . I don’t think so. The movie industry is loosing it because they are too greedy for a market where they repeat proven scripts, create sequels and beat an already decaying horse.

    What they should notice and indulge is the success of British comedies that do not mimic but rather create authentic, original works such as ‘The Office’.

  4. I can’t fathom your hostility to this movie either, & it sounds like Something Else is Going On. Art & politics are separate arenas & one can’t be judged by the other’s standards. The movie will be whatever Ang Lee put on film, not what GLAAD wants it to be. The story is about two men with feelings for each other who can’t articulate them, a common experience of gay men, esp non-urban ones.

    I like your political analysis, but you stumble badly when you wade into the arts. You seem almost to embrace the PC Left’s utilitarian view that the role of art is to provide ‘good role models’, only from the other side. As a writer, I find that an odious, Soviet view. Art is an organic creation, & manipulation renders it leaden & lifeless, whether it’s of the Susan Sarandon kind or ‘let’s make a patriotic movie.’

  5. Asher Abrams says:

    Interesting back-and-forth between you and Bill on this, Tammy.

    I think there’s a number of things going on at once in this conversation, all of them interesting, and potentially confusing when taken together.

    Probably we’re all agreed that one reason Hollywood is on the skids, is the utter moral vacuity of most recent films. This (we would all agree) includes the disappearance of the very concepts of right/wrong, good/evil; contempt for rural, Midwestern, and conservative Americans; stylistic slickness at the expense of solid storytelling; overt left-wing political partisanship; and hostility toward America itself.

    For many social conservatives, gay-sympathetic attitudes are an intrinsic part of this corrupt value system. That’s an assumption I don’t share. On the contrary, I’d like to see more pro-gay-rights advocates embrace the values of justice, tradition, honor, and patriotism – WITHOUT watering down the pro-gay-rights message.

    I haven’t seen the movie “Brokeback Mountain” yet, but I did read the short story by Anne Proulx in her wonderful collection “Close Range: Wyoming Stories” when the book first came out. “Brokeback Mountain” first appeared in The New Yorker, I believe right around the time of the Matthew Shepherd killing. (Whether Proulx wrote the story as a response to the murder or not, I do not know.) The story is deeply moving, horrifying, and compelling. I only hope that the movie does justice to it.

    I don’t know how much to read into the movie in the context of the “Hollywood values” debate. The movie may be either typical or atypical of Hollywood in one respect or another. I’ll have to judge the movie on its own when I see it.

    For the most part, Hollywood has been fairly kind to lesbian, gay, and transgendered people in recent years. I do not count this among the film industry’s sins, but I don’t think the movie industry is doing us any favors by encouraging people to link gay people with a generally depraved culture.

  6. Talkin Horse says:

    The “buzz” on Brokeback Mountain suggests that the movie does more than push PC hotbuttons. I suspect that it might be watchable; I might even like it if I saw it. (Or I might not.) But they need a hook to draw me in. “Gay cowboy” won’t do it. It’s not a theme that interests me, either alone, or with the guys, or with a lady. Certainly not with the kids (if I had any). Or with relatives. Is it a “chick flick”? Are the gals going to drag the guys to the theater? Or is it going to become a cause célèbre, so people will feel obligated to see it? Doesn’t seem likely to me, but you never know. So I could believe that the promoters would like to de-emphasize the “gay” aspect of the buzz. But if that’s their intention, it’s probably too late.

    Here’s a page listing current box office receipts. I guess the Brokeback numbers aren’t yet meaningful, since this indicates an extremely limited release. But it’s an interesting site to look in on:

    http://boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/

    By the way, the site has some other interesting box office statistics on their page of records:

    http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/

    Here’s a fun one: The fastest box office drops. That is to say, these are the record numbers for films that the people ran to see in the first week, but after two weeks, nobody ever went again.

    http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/theaterdrops.htm

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