Seeing Brokeback Mountain has left me in a mood to talk about it, and... with no one I can really talk to who'll understand. So time to dust off the blog.

It's a story about two men who fall in love, while working together in the wilderness for a few months in 1963. In those pre-gay-lib days - especially in the flyover regions of the West - the idea of actually following their hearts is almost unthinkable, so they go their separate ways, with only their "fishing trips" together as a way to satisfy their mutual longing. Starring the lovely and talented Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, and directed by the talented (and not bad looking either) Ang Lee, it is (rather obviously) worth seeing.

Of course I can't help drawing parallels to the one great relationship of my own life. In this analysis, I am Ennis (Ledger's character) and Andy is Jack (Gyllenhaal). Although neither character is ready to declare "I'm here, I'm queer, get used to it", Jack is the one who entertains the idea of the two of them finding a place somewhere to settle down together. Andy and I were both plenty openly-gay, but it was he who was more eager for us to set up housekeeping together. And while not quite as laconic as Ennis, I was definitely the less talkative one.

This parallel breaks down a bit in some ways, of course. Jack seems to be the gayer of the two, with "needs" that can't be sublimated or simply channeled into heterosexual love-making. Ennis seems to be attracted to women... it's just that the one person he carries a torch for is a guy. But Andy was definitely the fence-straddler of the two of us, a card-carrying bisexual, while I never had any interest in the fairer sex.

But ultimately it was I who played the spoiler, balking when Andy finally made the move to... move in. I wasn't ready for that, and I pushed him away. And for that I'll always bear that burden of being the one who broke us up.

And what makes the story in the movie all the harder to watch is the analogy between what happened to them, and what happened to us. SPOILER ALERT! As the years go on, Jack and Ennis aren't together, except in their hearts. Until tragedy strikes, and Ennis finds out that Jack has died. Although Andy didn't die, he suffered a brain trauma that took him from me just the same.

For years I've feared hearing the news that Ennis actually received: the news that the love of his life has died. Although his family know about our relationship, they don't seem to respect it or understand it. They think it's over. But of course it isn't. Not in my heart. And knowing that Andy's health is more precarious than mine, I expect to someday learn - with the same casual indifference, well after the fact - that he has died. And even just thinking about that brings me sobbing to a stop. Because I know - like Ennis - that the reason we never truly got together, the reason we never found happiness as a couple... is me. My reluctance. My fear. My emotional distance.

My fault.

And it's too late to do anything about it.

P.S. If nobody comes out with a cowboy-themed gay porn movie called Bareback Mountain or Brokeback Mountin' before 2006 is out, then shame on the adult video industry.

Last year I commented about what was described as (and in fact was) the last public apperance by Jimmy Doohan, known to countless Star Trek fans as Scotty, the ship's engineer. I wrote that entry as a eulogy for him, knowing (and hoping, for his sake) that it wouldn't be long before he died. He died today, after a (comparatively and mercifully) short struggle with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and lung fibrosis (from his service in the Canadian military during WWII), at the age of 85.

I don't want to repeat everything I wrote before, but I'll say that Scotty was always my second-favorite character on the original Star Trek (after Spock), but Jimmy was probably my favorite member of the cast. I've never heard a bad thing said about him by anyone who ever met him, which included a lot of people. He didn't get along with Bill Shatner, but that's because of Shatner's ego. His fans included not only countless future engineers, but Neil Armstrong, the man who actually did go Where No Man Has Gone Before (exactly 36 years before Jimmy died). Unlike some actors who chafe at being typecast, or has-beens who cling to their past stardom like a life preserver, Jimmy grew to enjoy the fame that Trek brought him, and tried his best to give back to his fans. Next-Generation actor and self-described geek Wil Wheaton, commented that "Everyone who watched Star Trek liked Scotty, but everyone who met him loved Jimmy."

Once when asked about hearing the catch-phrase (which - for the record - was never actually spoken in an episode of the series) "Beam me up, Scotty," repeated over and over and over, he answered, "I'm not tired of it at all. Good gracious, it's been said to me for just about 31 years. It's been said to me at 70 miles an hour across four lanes on the freeway. I hear it from just about everybody. It's been fun."

Which pretty much sums it up.

May your dilithium crystals be fully charged, your matter/anti-matter reaction balanced, your wee bairns well cared for, and I wish you a safe and painless transport to your final shore leave.

Energise.

The Dove Foundation, a non-profit group that was founded to promote family-friendly (and consistent with mainstream Christian values) movies, has released a study "proving" that G-rated films are more 11 times as profitable as R-rated films, and PG and PG-13 films fall in between. They say their stats show that "what the people want" are the more openly-rated films.

Except that's not true.

I'm not questioning their statistics. Just the way they're trying to misinterpret them. The thing is, Hollywood makes way more R and PG-13 files than either PG or G. Compared to 1,533 R-rated films put out from 1989-2003 that were included in Dove's study, there were only 123 G-rated films. And those dozens of G-rated films included some megablockbusters, including the entire output of Pixar, a bunch of heavily-promoted Disney animations, and so on. All this tells us is that the percentage of G-rated movies that get huge promotion and attract a big audience is bigger than for R-rated movies. If the number of R-rated movies released was restricted to just the best (or most commercial) 123 of them, their average profit would be a lot better, because fans of sex, violence, and "adult language" would all have to go to the same 1 or 2 films playing at any given time. On the other hand, there are a lot of "experimental" and "artsy" movies - stuff no one expects to make any money on - in the R-rated bucket, which the public just doesn't go to see in any number.

Plus, there's the fact that once upon at time... such as the Dark Age before 1989... G-rated films had a tendency to bomb at the box office. Star Trek fans cringed when they saw that ST: The Motion Picture had gotten slapped with a "G" because they were afraid no one would go see it, and the franchise would be doomed. Fortunately (yes, I mean that), the trekkies turned out by the thousands, and the film got good enough reviews to overcome the stigma - yes, stigma - of a G rating. When Disney returned to feature animation in the late 1980s, there were similar fears. And they, too, beat them with quality.

That's what it really comes down to. Quality (which I have to admit probably means "quality of the special effects, marketing, and star power") makes money. The Dove Foundation is trying to dispel the myth that G-Rated films don't make money. But in doing so - by convincing the movie studios to take more chances and green-light more of these kid-friendly films that are being shopped around Tinseltown - they're helping to reduce the average quality of G-Rated films that get made. That in turn will reduce their average profitability... maybe even to the levels that nearly killed off the "G" in the late 1970s.

I saw the world premiere of Sushi Saki Hot tonight at the Wealthy Theatre, which was a lot of fun. It's a no-budget, locally-produced movie, 45 minutes long, about a highly motivated but inept cable advertising director/producer/salesman who manages to get a local sushi restaurant to let him make a TV commercial for them, featuring a third-rate country blues musician. I enjoyed it on three levels:

The movie was entertaining on the basic level of it being funny, well-presented material. The concept is lovably absurd, and the resulting advert (shown at the end of the movie) is perfectly terrible... that is, it's terrible and that's perfect. The actor who plays B.T. Donovan (the salesman) pretty much steals the show, with his largely-improvised monologues (mostly in the first half) giving a real challenge to the actually scripted material. His performance is a bit like the un-self-aware boss in the U.S. version of the sitcom The Office... but without being so monotonously unlikeable. He's a joke, and doesn't realise it, but he's mostly harmless. The other major character is Jumpin' Johnny Blues, who's well-portrayed but not as inherently funny and not as convincingly believable. The rest of the cast are mostly bit parts, including a few local business owners.

That "local businesses" angle made the movie entertaining on another level. The opening shot is instantly recognisable as downtown South Division (the sidewalk sign for Vertigo Music helps), followed by a scene in the (unidentified) My Video Shoppe. The bar where Jumpin' Johnny performed had to be Billy's, I'm sure I've driven past that hardware store, and even the non-descript strip mall where the sushi restaurant is located looked familiar. It had "Made In Grand Rapids" all over it... even more so than Hardcore (the 1979 George C. Scott film which had scenes filmed here). And definitely more so than American Pie, which was set in a clone of Grand Rapids, but didn't look like it.

Finally, I got a boost out of seeing that these guys had pulled this off. They wanted to make a movie, and despite having no money and being stuck in Grand Rapids, Michigan, they did it. One of the team tossed out the number $100,000 as the "cost" of making it, but they got all the services donated by local talent. That puts my own ambitions into perspective, which entail perhaps a few thousand dollars worth of labor to produce a short comic book. That seems to me like a lot of money for a rather small end product, but compared to a hundred grand for a DVD about the same size, which takes maybe 2-3 times to experience... it's not so bad. Comics may be far more labor-intensive than prose, but compared to movies... they're obviously a bargain. Which gives me a little more reassurance that I'm working in the right medium.

For me, at least. These guys have movies in their blood. That's obvious. Apparently most of them do this kind of stuff toward less creative ends (such as making TV commercials) for a living, and they worked on this as A) a favor for guys who'd given them paying work in the past, and B) a chance to use their abilities for fun, rather than finances. That's definitely an example worth following.

More information about the film can be found at SakiHot.com.

my rating:

Kingdom of Heaven is a movie that invites you to believe in miracles. You pretty much have to, to accept any of what it shows you.

It's about this blacksmith (Orlando Bloom) living in the not-even-a-speck-on-the-map of Nowheresburgh, somewhere between England and Jerusalem, who is compelled by the suicide of his wife (a mortal sin, you know), the appearance of his father (a veteran of the Crusades), and a mortal sin of his own, to go to the Holy Land and become a Good Knight. He picks up swordsmanship as if he were studying with Qui-Gon Jinn (played in both this movie and Star Wars by Liam Neeson) and military strategy as if he'd fought at Helm's Deep in a previous life (as an elf, of course), and manages to learn irrigation and the seduction of noblewomen with equal ease.

Equally difficult to buy is the enlightened nobility of the then-current Christian King of Jerusalem and his Muslim Saracen counterpart Saladin (whose name is prounced more correctly here as "Salah al-Din"). The king just wants a Jerusalem where Muslim and Jew and Christian can live together in peace, like some modern-day Secretary General of the United Nations, and Salah has just the kind of respect for his enemies and for the fate of innocent women and children (and even men) that your garden variety modern-day extremist Muslim terrorist does not. Gosh, it almost makes one pine for the good old days of the Crusades, doesn't it?

Of course with such nobility on both sides, you also need some bad guys, and the Knights Templar and some of Salah's lieutenants served that purpose, demonstrating the psychotic religious fervor of those who either believe that "God wills it" or use that as their rallying cry to get the aid of those stupid enough to fall for it. It's clear that the producers were going for a kind of sociopolitical statement about all the "holy" conflicts in the Middle East, but it was undercut by just how forced it was.

Then there's this "good knight" character Balian. He's just oh so fucking noble, to the point that he refuses to accept the hand of the dying king's hottie sister and become king, because it will require someone killing the war-hungry toad she's currently married to, and so the toad (or frog, rather; he's French) becomes king and to no one's surprise picks a war with the greatest military leader the Arabs have ever seen. That was just stupid, not noble. And this same "perfect" man didn't hesitate to have sex with the future queen when she was still married to the aforementioned toad, and has no qualms about conducting a defense of Jerusalem that involves pouring flaming oil on advancing soldiers and otherwise hacking them to bits. Sure, it's defensive, but it's still barbaric brutality. And at least by God's standards, fucking whatshername was adultery. Call that consistency... because I don't.

It all ends up being quite pointless. Sin is called virtue, defeat is called victory... and not just by the characters, but by moviemakers. At least they got one over-arching point right, which is shown by the opening and closing scenes: this chapter of the Crusades - like the whole saga - was itself quite pointless.

For earlier articles on this topic, see God's ex-Boyfriend, volume one.