According to an article in The Sydney Morning Herald, Joel Pearlman, managing director of Roadshow, the distributor of the film Brokeback Mountain, doesn’t think a lot of Australians are sophisticated enough to warrant them seeing the movie:
MILLIONS of Australians have been denied the chance to see the Academy Award-nominated film Brokeback Mountain because of a distributor’s decision that some regions are not sophisticated enough to view it.
Despite being one of the most talked-about releases of the year, the movie is not being shown at cinemas in Sydney suburbs including Campbelltown and Blacktown, nor in regions including Newcastle, the Hunter and the Central and South coasts.
Joel Pearlman, managing director of film distributor Roadshow, said a “strategic release plan� led to the movie being categorised as “art house� and not suitable for regions including Campbelltown.
So all youse who don’t live in the western suburbs of Leichhardt and Newtown back to yer Sunday Tele and yer slab of coldies.
(The Age has published an interesting essay by Annie Proulx on some background to her story and her thoughts on the movie adaption.)
Contact in the States has seen it. His personal opinion (for what it is worth) as a long-time cinemaphile is that it is a ‘niche intended’ movie, specifically aimed at a specific demographic for which he has an unflattering description. He has watched every gay-themed movie ever made, I think.
He thought it had a mediocre plot, was poorly made and fragmented, with mundane acting: a movie of the ‘ooh, they can do that on screen now?’ type. His partner’s self-description of himself is ‘professional bitch’, and he came up with one of his wonderful comments; ‘I can’t think of anyone better suited to playing a gay shepherd than Heath Ledger’. I am still chuckling over that one.
MarkL
Canberra
Wow, kewl, MarkL. Your friend’s friend obviously has a subtle mind and impeccable cred to match. And it’s always so satisfying to claim that the opinions of countless professional literary and film critics of various sexual preferences in various countries are all actually complete bullshit, and that one of the world’s distinguished directors and one of the world’s distinguished writers are both actually crap merchants, and that millions of moviegoers are idiots. It does make one feel so very superior.
Thanks for the link, Mark B. Brilliant essay, as one would expect.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the cinema ads up her– no sign of it yet, but as I’s living in the supersize-me Penriff of the Norff, I doubt after reading your post, that it will feature up here. Maybe at the local independent (thank god for the independents). Looking foward to it one way or tuther. Might have to see it on dvd. Went into DVD library ie video sleezy or whatev, twas a grey afternoon and sometimes fillums are uplifting methinks. However I had to run away from the horror and banality and just escaped brain death and didn’t hang around long enough to join, nor see anything I wanted to see. What sort of films do I like? I must ask myself again and again, as I gaze upon wall after wall of what on the face of it looks like highly questionable gumph. But I digress into gripes and woes re our banal and much dummed and dumming down society.
It strikes me as kinda strange that this movie would be the subject of such controversy and censorship. Homosexuality has been a feature of pop culture since I can remember… or are people only comfortable when gays are identifiable and alienable under the sign of “camp”?
Erm … I meant “Thanks for the link, Ron.”
D’oh.
“Wow, kewl, MarkL. Your friend’s friend obviously has a subtle mind and impeccable cred to match.”
Why the sarcasm?
” And it’s always so satisfying to claim that the opinions of countless professional literary and film critics of various sexual preferences in various countries are all actually complete bullshit…”
Some folks prefer to think for themselves.
“….and that millions of moviegoers are idiots…..”
Why the sarcasm?
I can’t imagine ever getting in the mood to see this movie. I have the choice right now to see magnificent South Island of New Zealand vistas, Talking animals both known and invented and children in slashing sword fights with servants of evil. I could watch that. Or I could watch gay cowboys eating pudding. (as was SouthParks cliche of art movies which preceded this buggery hill by some years.)
In fact you’d almost have to be suspect of people who chose the one over the other. The fact that this movie has made any money is something of a mystery. What must be happening is that some bloke will get a call from his leftist mates to go see this movie and not be able to turn it down due to PC social pressure.
I’m supposing there is a lot of social pressure involved in the success of this movie.
Ron, I’m a slowcoach half-way through a post on Brokeback Mountain which I was going to post here at LP, but perhaps it’d be better to keep this as one htread, what do you think? I can whack it into the comments thread if you have no objection.
Thank you also for the link to the Age article.
On topic, meanwhile; it is very disappointing that such an accomplished film is on limited release at the moment, but after reading the SMH article I’d suggest that this might be one instance where the mighty dollar is the key motivating factor and not homophobia (although that is probably contributing to the decision to tread lightly and let things build slowly.)
I think the distributors, who as a class are not always completely aesthetically challenged, must know what a tremendous property the movie is. It’s the kind of film where a staggered release to different streams of the market over several weeks will do lots of good and no harm in terms of the buildup of word of mouth. With crappy but expensive high-concept films (random example: the remade Planet of the Apes) you get huge openings on lots of screens and they make a shitload of money over the first few days, but then the word gets out about how dire the movie is and takings go into free fall. With this movie, they know that nobody who sees it is going to do anything but rave about it to anyone who will listed for days on end.
Also there are a couple of other grown-up movies doing the rounds at the moment - Munich, Walk the Line: they will be anxious to make as much money as possible by staggering these movies in individual multiplexes so the people who get one babysitter a fortnight are repeatedly lured back to the cinema rather than spending their money elsewhere.
There is no doubt whatsoever that Brokeback Mountain will get onto loads of suburban multiplex screens, but it probably won’t happen until Oscar buzz really starts to build and it gets lots of free advertising in the popular media. They may even be holding out for the explosion in box office traffic that’s guaranteed if a movie wins one of the big Oscar categories and if it hasn’t been around on the marquee for too long getting stale.
Pavlov, why the weird-o reaction? I happened to get an email from an old friend yesterday which discussed a movie he’s just seen. A post pops up about it here, so I put up his PERSONAL OPINION of it, noting exactly that, and qualified with ‘for what it is worth’. He did not like it much. But you come out all ad hominem.
How rude: and how bizarre.
MarkL
Canberra
After reading the Aus piece I had a *click* lightbulb moment - I had read the story a few years ago, yeah - its a memorable short story. But its more about Wyoming than being gay.
As to why it wont go out west, maybe gay cowboys in Wyoming arent really all that entertaining - there are too many misconceptions about rural life as it is.
I live in a rural area and there are quite a few gays and it is simply just not an issue.
Back to the danish cartoon crisis
Actualy went to see it and thought it wasn’t a bad movie at all. There was no politcial line I could see. It was a story and a good one. That’s all.
Perhaps it was an economic decision. I personally thought it was less then stellar movie, and can’t see it being very successful except on the back of all the press it is getting in the same circles the distributor mentioned. Many much better movies fall by the wayside because their angle is not as attractive to overhyped critics as this happens to be.
Believe it or not, most moviegoers don’t make their decisions based on what certain Manhattan critics have to say. Not even by what Pavlov’s Cat has to say.
There’s always a risk of disappointment with hyped movies, but I thought it was very good indeed. It’s a modest film and doesn’t overreach - as befits its Taiwanese arthouse sensibility. All the performances are terrific, too.
Taiwanese??
Director Ang Lee.
The film, like many of his, and like his compatriots (esp. Tsai Ming-liang) has an absence of melodrama and concomitantly, of excess. Excess is what characterizes a lot of mainland Chinese cinema, and mainland cultural production generally. Taiwan is very different, and Brokeback Mountain expressed that different sensibility very nicely.
The director Ang Lee is Taiwanese.
sorry for hosing down any notions of conspiracy, but the roadshow mid-level art-house roll-out is a carbon copy of US release.
and a common enough one that is too - to maximise screen averages in core interest markets, then gradually feed it out to a larger audience if the film gets genuine repeat viewings. which it is, and which it will continue to do right through oscars.
the publicity has been on a carefully guided drip feed for 10 weeks or so in Oz.
pretty good job, but differs little, if at all, from US set-up.
Yes, I am aware that Ang Lee is Taiwanese by birth. I meant my comment to signal that I don’t see how & where this is discernible in the movie, which I must also say I thought resembled the “unknown woman” genre of melodrama more than any other genre I have been able to think of.
Ang Lee is an interesting intervention in the viability of the category of “national cinema”, given the non-Taiwanese subject matter of his recent films. I think, though, that his work is part of a dialogue between the Chinese and non-Chinese speaking worlds, and also a part of debates within the Chinese-speaking world, too. Rey Chow has theorized this in much detail. Discussion falls too easily into essentialisms of some imagined national or cultural sensibility, but when his work is taken in relation to other imagined sensibilities, especially “China”, then there are some insights which can be drawn out. These are in addition to the many other possible analyses of Brokeback Mountain. I wrote a review for a journal a while ago which in part compared Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon to Zhang Yimou’s Hero, if you’re interested, here: http://bourdieu-boy.livejournal.com/6106.html
My use of the term “melodrama” was loose, and meant mostly to the notion of “excess” rather than a specific narrative theme.
HULK HATE ANG LEE
MAKE HULK HAVE UNRESOLVED RELATIONSHIP ISSUES
HULK WAIT TWO HOURS TO SMASH PUNY TANKS
Now, I hope I did the right thing in rescuing that comment from the Spaminator? Anthony?
My shorts! What happened?
Must be ALL THEM CAPS, Hulky!
The comments above about the limited release being a marketing ploy aimed at a staggered release make a lot of sense.
It may be a very good movie. But its doubtful that a staggered release will work as well as what happenend in the States. Its a real phenomenon. And there must have been a bit of a ‘must see’ aspect to it. This ‘must see’ deal probably isn’t going to be sustained on staggered release.
You know in ten years time I might borrow it from fitness first and watch it and say to myself “Gee whiz. That’s really WAS a fantastic movie”. But its just hard to see, without this group thing going, how you would get motivated to go tho that movie rather then another one.
After seeing the hysteria MarkL copped for criticising the quality of this bomb one should be discreet. But still I wonder why a bizarre man-hating piece of ephemeral trash like this ever gets made at all. Except that shrewd corporations are lately on the go for buckets of pink dollars. Plus there’s no shortage of well-off penitent dopes who’ll waste good dough to see this fart house stuff so they can come out feeling virtuous. Meanwhile poverty kills a child in Africa ever three seconds.
Too juicy to resist!
1. MarkL did not criticise the film - he hadn’t seen it! He passed on second hand views.
2. The film took another million dollars on the weekend from 48 screens. It could not be further from a bomb.
3. I’m not sure where the man-hating theme in the film occurs. One assumes you’ve not seen it?
Further to limited screen marketing for openers, the flip side is if a film is opened too wide, the screen averages can be so low as to suggest to corporate heads that it’s not “practical” to continue screening. The screen averages that Brokeback is pulling in Oz are astonishing.
Too resistant to be juicy.
1. It was a criticism.
2. Bombs make dough.
3. Masculinity offends certain types of women. They enjoy seeing it nullified.
Whenever you read ‘positive’ reviews for this type of thing, watch out for Freudian slips.
I thought it was a good movie so I am not necessarily lining up with RH but I do agree it was a man hating film or more specifically an attack on traditional masculinity.
I read a great reviw which I think I found by wandering through links that began at this site that drew attention to the fact that (inspite of its even-handedness in every other sense) every male in the film apart from the two main characters was portrayed as a cruel bigot. The implication I took from this was that it is a very thin line between being an unreconstucted hetero-sexual male and being a hateful violent crowbar weilding murderer. It isn’t a thin line at all.
That’s my gripe, but for all that I still think it is a good film worth seeing.
Portrayal of different types of masculinity (which need not be an attack) is not necessarily “man-hating”. And it’s not just same-sex attracted masculinities at issue. Asian men, for instance, often have culturally different ways of doing masculinity, as do lots of Anglo men from different social classes.
Haven’t seen the film yet, mind you.
“corporations are lately on the go for buckets of pink dollars”
I can’t provide evidence, RH, but commonsense tells me that a movie like this one cannot be as successful as it is, both in box office takings and awards, unless there are huge numbers of heterosexual people viewing it.
the full cinema that i watched the film at last week was about a diverse slice of australians as one could hope to see: young, old, male, female, white, multi-coloured.
that’s what i saw anyway. i’m sure other people’s friends, or cousins saw different audiences.
i didn’t think a whole lot of the film myself initially - though the expression and desire for freedom that it creates in the first hour is staggering. i was surprised at how the gay issue is actually not much of an issue by comparison with the themes of freedoms dreamed, and the restraints that daily life can place.
but the film does resonate nicely. or maybe it’s the endless publicity that’s resonating!
RH said, “…there’s no shortage of well-off penitent dopes who’ll waste good dough to see this fart house stuff so they can come out feeling virtuous.”
(Where’s his evidence for that!)
It’s currently showing at the trendy Sun theatre in Yarra(yuppie)ville. I see them coming out, all red faced and smilingly refreshed. They’ve been to church.
Who remembers that other great sermon now, something about a rabbit-proof fence?
I didn’t see it, I wouldn’t bother seeing either of them, or any other cynical pap shrewdly cooked up in board rooms.
Well they’d better sell plenty of tickets, damn right, to get back all the dough they’ve invested on publicity. It’s a while since I’ve seen anything promoted this high.
I’ll just say this, I don’t want to see two blokes in bed together, and I’m sure not going to pay for it. Two dames would be a different matter - but they’d have to be good looking.
Well I don’t plan see it ‘cos I’m not into icky love stories anyway.
Ang Lee also helmed a brillant (and criminally overlooked) western/Civil War movie called “Ride With The Devil”. For someone who makes icky love stories (What a patronising term. I mean, really!) and who hulked up The Fuck, he can stage great action setpieces when he wants to - like Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence in RWTD. He could have taught David Lean a thing or two with that sequence.
Good Lord, what is with some people?? Methinks thou doth protesteth too much?
I went to see it with a date - in fact *she* was the one who suggested we see it. We both enjoyed it and she was teary eyed after the movie. It was a good story, period. No subversiveness, no politics.
Any amount of protest from R.H. would be too much. Any criticism impertinent.
I don’t go to movies for a cry, or a laugh, or to be terrified and feel that maybe my stupid pointless life ain’t so bad after all when I escape the joint. I don’t go to movies or watch stupid DVDs to get emotionally involved in a false world.
Make believe is useless to me. A waste of life.
‘Make believe is useless to me. A waste of life”
Then what are you doing on a thread about a movie?
Congratulations, RH, on par with Elle McPherson’s infamous ‘I only read what I write’.
Unlike your blogging, RH, which enlivens us all.
We need a proper Aussie movie that is not about gays or aborigines, both vocal minorities, and is about normal Australians. Maybe a sporting movie, yeah.
Screw this silly crap, let us get a proper movie made apart from one about a serial killer.
Wake up daddy. What are you doing on threads about politics?
To talk about it, right? To say it’s no good.
It might suit you if other people shut up.
Well golly me, you poor thing.
“Maybe a sporting movie, yeah.”
Why bother. There’s a very good reason the Aus film industy doesn’t attempt sports movies much. And even then, pretty much as period drama. TV news, sport and gossip delivers all that would be unfolded by such movies for us everyday. The ups and downs of Warnie or Lleyton and Bec, on and off the field is the plot at first hand and in real time.
There’s also another reason why we don’t get many sports movies here. Unlike gridiron, baseball or golf, the iconic Aus sports like AFL, cricket, tennis, swimming or farnarkling are hard to make visually believable without onscreen talent that can actually play the sport at a decent level.
If I wasn’t about to put on “Cherry Bomb” and dance around in my unmentionables , I’d bore you all shitless with my theory about why you can’t make a good tennis movie, despite all the apparent dramatic potential of the sport.
R.H., speaking on behalf of the yuppies, it’s comforting to know that when we are enjoying a piece of corporate confection designed to separate us from our hard-earned, that you are possibly outside the cinema. And when you have observed us, you will judge us.
And you will report to us. Not a day goes by when these internets don’t truly amaze me.
I walk around with my eyes open.
That’s travel. My own show.
I ain’t seen it, but when I popped up to The Nova the other night to chuckle my way thru The Aristocrats, the cheap night queue for BBM was the longest conga line of film goers I’ve ever seen in Lygon Street. It must be doing something right.
Actually the cricket scene was the crappest bit of the Crying Game.
How’s The Aristocrats, wbb? I hadn’t realised it had opened in Melbz.
I could do with a laugh.
Would ‘Gallipoli’ be your favourite Aussie film then Patrick? No gays, only a token blackfella, a bit of sport, and stick-it-to-the-Poms patriotism we can all get behind.
I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain yet (going on the weekend I daresay) but I can fully get behind a movie with two hot young cowboys kissing. In their hot cowboy get-up. Phew. Is it warm in here or what?
I also like heart-rending and moving stories of forbidden love and repression, so it’s going to be right up my alley.
Just saw an ad for the movie during the CH10 news (Sydney) so perhaps it’s getting closer to a wider release.
I’d like to hear your theory on why you can’t make a good tennis movie, Nabs.
I think there was a play in Melb about 20 years ago set on a tennis court.
(I didn’t write it - although Table-tennis did feature in an early one)
Nabs, your great Strayan tennis fillum could be called Love Actually. Or Ployers.
Andy Warhol also did a kissy cowboy film called ‘Lonesome Cowboys’, all the cattle must have gone bush as they spent a lot of time talking about their hair and stuff. I’m not sure that the actors knew they were actors or if there was even a plot let alone a script, it was more like a footie player bonding session.
“’I’d like to hear your theory on why you can’t make a good tennis movie, Nabs.”
Well, it’s all about balls. Seriously. Any decent actor can look convincing teeing up on a golf ball or flexing their baseball bat while eyeing the pitcher. But unless you can actually serve a tennis ball in real life, you can’t fake it on screen.
Actually, since yer going light on the blogging for the moment, how about I cough up a short essay on the subject as a guest post for Boynton? And you can choose the piccies and court surface.
Laura, The Aristocrats is very funny. It’s a smorgasbord of about a hundred yank comedians doing some decent downtime schtick. (Not for children however. Nor the family pet, really.)
Nabs: (that’d be) Ace…
Just scanned box office and screens internationally Ron, and the pattern is consistent everywhere. Less screens than the average middle-ranking feature, huge per screen averages. $41,000,000 in US pales next to a Potter, but it would feed a lot of sheep.
I would guess that if it blitzes Oscar, it will go wide, but until then, it’s cooking at the perfect heat.
Seconding the Aristocrats, saw it with Gran, we both nearly died laughing. From what I’m hearing about BBM it sounds tame as hell in comparison. When it comes to Profanity, Lewdness and other Unclean and Immoral acts Aristocrats beats the crap out of it live on stage with a bucket of RU486′d fetuses. Moralists can be so selective…
Annie Praeioulx’s story BBM is not the first film about it’s theme.
Decades ago an English film The Family Way (John Mills, Hayley Mills, Hywel Bennett), as I recall from my own memory of seeing it, was about JMills getting married and taking his best mate on the honeymoon, and despite spawning the pretty Mr Bennetts son-character, Mills loved his best mate all his life.
The story was that this fact seemed to prevent the son character from consumating his own marriage to Hayley Mills character.
It was very sad and dramatic and Very Sixties
(now I will go to imbd it and see how inaccurate I might have been)
although nobody served up a tennis ball.