Reply #15: those of you who missed it -- the reviewer is imposing not

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an ''artistic'' criticism -- but a moral one.

oh there is some blather in the beginning about being bored -- but right away you get this: ''reinforce the popular notion that a gay life is by definition alienating, un fulfilling and tragic.''

folks this is a period piece. and it takes place where it was very easy to lose your life if you were to ''positively affirm'' your affection for another man.

these people are poor and live in a region of the country where it's pretty to look at, yes -- but grindingly, mind numbingly unchanging and poor and if not poor then certainly rigid.

if those aren't recipes for alienation -- i don't know what is.

think about the stories of hard drinking and native american reservations, cowboys who can't keep body and soul together, etc.

gay people DEAL with alienation internally and externally all the time.
it is a very real part of our story .

chekoff himself didn't write plays about ''remarkable'' people -- isn't that the very essence of realism -- these are characters drawn rather precisely.

the whole point is their lives don't go swimmingly -- not every one's does.

and i don't need the gay version of the titanic to redeem the lives gay men for mainstream audiences.

this paragraph is naive at best with regards to what i'm talking about: ''If it's true that some well-known scripts were originally written for two gay characters, then there's hope that someday a really great script won't
have to be subjected to gender changes to make it commercially acceptable. Just to use a few examples of movies I've watched recently, imagine if the two lead characters in "Somethings Gotta Give" were gay men, or the lead character in "Under the Tuscan Sun" was a lesbian. The gay characters in these stories would be far more interesting and rewarding to watch than the one-dimensional cowboys in the narrowly-defined universe of Brokeback Mountain.''

the characters in both of these films have a sweetness about them that is PRECISELY not the subject matter of brokeback mountain.
ennis and his partner in many don't have redeeming heroic qualities -- they don't rise above their circumstance and fate -- how many among us do?

and that is the point to repression -- and not just gay repression -- it's a thief, something that steals twenty years from someone -- and they can be twenty agonizingly unremarkable years in some respects -- EXCEPT that thievery, the suffering from is oh so very human and worth, worthy of writing about, acting about, talking about.

finally there is this paragraph, the one that is in it's way the most dismissive because of it's clawing ache for unreality: ''Some are awkward and immature, hobbled by poorly-written scripts, amateur acting or low budgets. But most have a far greater ring of truth than Brokeback Mountain, partly because many of these movie's writers, directors and actors ARE gay. Some are based on real people or drawn from real-life experiences. Some are wonderful romantic comedies and poignant love stories. But as good as some of these movies are, they haven't been seen by most of the mainstream movie-going public. I'm saddened that Brokeback Mountain will probably leave them in the box office dust. I continue to hold out hope that someday, someone will craft a truthful, romantic, inspiring gay love story that is enormously successful and really captures the heart and soul of the nation. One that doesn't have to rely on so many negative images long associated with being gay. I ain't seen that movie yet.''

gay people aren't living their lives so that we can be heroically romantic, we aren't living our lives to solely be role models for ''enlightened'' straight people with emasculated{yes, both men and women in this case} views of their gay friends and the gay world.

if someone were to write the biography of mathew shephard -- and be truthful -- it would be a fuckin heart breaker -- but it wouldn't be pretty.
mathew was very much a modern day version of an alienated ennis or travis.

gay people are just people -- we have rich and varied lives -- from individual to individual -- but we also live grinding lives, everyday lives, trapped lives.

and hopefully artists will continue to want to talk about these characters as much as they want to talk about something fresh out of the latest, g-rated gay romance novel.