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But I gotta wonder how you deal with life if a thread on a messageboard can freak you out to such an extend. Do you really think the straight people here are that bad?

Michael wrote:Carson, yeah I agree with you that BBM succeeds as a tragic love story done in the best Hollywood fashion..it works only if it's taken in that aspect. I happen to be one of those people who find the movie mediocre.. I don't exactly hate it and I tried my hardest to present my points which I now realize have become way too personal and emotional. People like the tragic marty accuse me for not liking BBM because it is not "cum-soaked" enough. How ridiculous, offensive and shallow is that! There is a lot of very hurtful things expressed on here that I've lost sleep and been neglecting my partner and pets at home for days.

It seems like some people here can't seem to understand why some gay people don't care for BBM so they jump in treating them like they are the "militant separatists". They seem to expect every gay person to embrace and love BBM, like we're expected to shower the film with thanks for going "mainstream", breaking the ground, briding the gap between straights and gays, etc.

I simply don't care for BBM because there's nothing new or refreshing about it. It's been done so many times before. But this time with two gay cowboys. Being gay becomes the Issue with them and how internalized homophobia can destroy every opportunity to be a stable, happy person. That's what make BBM a very "queer" story but somehow, the mainstream seems to gloss over it and generalize it as a universal love story. That's exactly the gripe I have with the whole thing. It's a very specific love story. The mainstream acts like the cowboys don't know a thing about "queer". Of course they do or otherwise they wouldn't be suffering like the way they do throughout the film.

Other than the stunning cinematography and Michelle Williams' lovely performance (which strangely moved me more than anyone else's performance), the best thing I can say about BBM is that it makes me realize how smart, brave and strong I am for stepping out of the closet when I was 17 (in the height of the AIDS scare when 3/4 of my family didnt want me to come around my cousins in fear that I would transmit the virus to them.. that was way before my first gay kiss!) and also that Pedro and I are fortunate that we can live an openly gay life and feel safe and comfortable.

I'm simply concerned about how people outside the gay world perceive the gay characters portrayed so tragically in BBM. How hard is that to understand?

I represented the gay community as most of them have acted as if the film were a cross between an Act of Congress declaring their gayness valid, and the ressurrection of Judy Garland.

Carson Dyle wrote:David E., I love that you love Night of the Hunter. I would kill to see those outtakes.

Carson Dyle wrote:I found the following interesting. It's excerpted from an article on SFGate.com dated 1-24-06:

On Saturday, Gus Van Sant -- one of the industry's first openly gay directors, whose credits include "Good Will Hunting" and "To Die For'' -- spoke at the Queer Lounge about his efforts to get "Brokeback Mountain" made five years ago.

"That's the one that got away," he acknowledged. "I dropped the ball. I didn't get the cast I wanted. I wanted big-name actors so I could make a political statement." Van Sant generously called Ang Lee's film "everything I wanted mine to be. I'm not sure it would have happened like that five years ago. It's all come true, and I'm really happy it worked out."

Carson Dyle wrote:Waters said. "But I'm still waiting for a gay actor to be nominated for playing a gay man."

What about Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters?

souvenir wrote:

Carson Dyle wrote:Waters said. "But I'm still waiting for a gay actor to be nominated for playing a gay man."

What about Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters?

Michael wrote:The Dave Cullen blog is quite cluttered to navigate through so can you please lead me to the exact place with those comments? Thanks.

Jun-Dai wrote:

I'll repeat myself by saying that the whole Spike-Lee-like notion that you have to be black to make a movie about Malcolm X or Rubin Carter or Ali is preposterous and is just the kind of attitude that only maintains cultural strife.

You can repeat it, but it's kind of meaningless if you don't have some sort of rationale to support it.

Besides, I don't think the point was ever that you can't make a film about Malcolm X if you aren't black, the point was that you can't make a film about Malcolm X that's any good if you aren't black, and this idea depends on "good" being defined as (a) reflecting Malcolm X's struggle and cultural and social background with any kind of authenticity and (b) offering an insight into Malcolm X's thinking and relevance that will be meaningful to a significant black audience. I suspect that Spike Lee wouldn't doubt for a second that a white director would be capable of directing a film about Malcolm X that is "good" by the terms of conventional white cinema.

Even if you set aside the notion that a white person, without having gone through the difficulties that Malcolm X was fighting against, would lack the personal capability to relate the story effectively, there's also the fact that a white director wouldn't have any credibility, and his attempts at focussing on authenticity would have a ring of condescension--at the very least the fact of him directing it would be tantamount to saying that the story can't be told effectively by a black director.

To quote Jane Elliott (who I suspect was quoting someone else): "white people talking to white people about racism is simply sharing ignorance."

How does this maintain cultural strife? I would suggest that colorblindness, the notion that people are capable of not being racist, de facto segregation, inequitable educational privileges, and the fact that the dominant cultural group is reluctant to cede power over the cultural definition of this country are significant reasons why cultural strife continues to exist in this country. The idea that minority groups feel that their viewpoint cannot be effectively told by white men doesn't strike me as having any significant effect on the cultural strife in this country.

Going back to Brokeback Mountain, I don't think anyone here (except to some extent me) is really advocating the notion that straight directors are incapable of directing a good film about gay people. The biggest critics of Brokeback Mountain have listed more films directed by straight men about gay people that they consider quality than most of their antagonists have mentioned about gay people that they've seen period. Similarly they have listed straight actors that have carried off convincing gay roles. In the end, however, Brokeback Mountain is a production that seems to be completely absent of any gay input, which seems like it would be a pretty serious limitation of its capabilities in speaking about a gay experience.

One thing Spike proved decisively: you don't have to be white to make a bad film about Malcolm

David Ehrenstein wrote:

One thing Spike proved decisively: you don't have to be white to make a bad film about Malcolm

Quite true. But that doesn't get away from the fact that Brokeback is a medicore film about gay love.

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David Ehrenstein wrote:In addition I've pointed out that Cillian Murphy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt,both straight, gave superior (and strikingly different) performances as gay men in (repsectively) Breakfast on Pluto and Mysterious Skin, films made respectively by a bisexual and a gay writer-director.

viciousliar wrote:Somebody sent me this -

http://www.youtube.com/w/Bareback-Mount ... h=bareback

marty wrote:Expect a BBM whitewash at the Oscars, I think.