March 2006

THAT MOVIE

by Lindsay Thompson

Caesar: The ides of March are come.
Soothsayer: Ay, Caesar, but not gone.
—William Shakespeare, Julius Caeser

So the Academy Awards impend. In this bread-and-circuses life, why should we not focus on the things that really count?

Which brings me to what my sister and I, raised in the blinkered world of small-town Southern gentility, refer to as THAT MOVIE.

"Well," she started off, "have you seen it?"

"Seen what?"

"THAT MOVIE."
   
"Of course," I replied. Seattle was in the first wave of cities in which it opened. How can I miss a public scandal? "I expect you will have to drive up to Charlotte to see it, like you had to do for The Pianist."

So I was surprised when my sister told me THAT MOVIE was playing on four screens in Greenville, South Carolina. Full house, she told me, the night she and her family went.

Lots of movie critics have been hailing THAT MOVIE as either a ticket to the End Times or the dawn of a new Rapture of Tolerance in America. Apparently it has cleared the admittedly low bar of assuring straight guys whose wives and girlfriends drag them to it that there's no reason for the sheep to be nervous, and is making sacksful of money.

Well, call me a curmudgeon, but I don't think THAT MOVIE will make any difference one way or another in the big debate that refuses to end. It's a very well-made movie, but it's still pretty much Formula Hollywood. Straight actors play gay people and give interviews on what a challenge it is. Movie spinmeisters promote the film's mainstream audience crossover appeal. It's not a gay movie, it's about . . . oh, loneliness, that's it, loneliness! A particularly ludicrous example of this occurred in 1982 when Making Love came out. Michael Ontkean left Kate Jackson for Harry Hamlin. The studio people insisted it wasn't a "gay movie."

Frank Rich notwithstanding, THAT MOVIE leaves its gay characters where Hollywood usually does: miserable and alone, or dead. They've been cranking out breakthrough gay movies for half a century, and it pretty much always ends up that way. The Children's Hour, in 1961, ended in a lesbian suicide. 1962's Advise and Consent saw the senator with a gay past kill himself. Rex Harrison and Richard Burton played a gay couple in a movie that sank like a stone. Midnight Cowboy, a sort of ur-THAT MOVIE, is mainly known as the only X-rated film to win an Oscar. Philadelphia changed no more minds than Boys Don't Cry or Gods and Monsters.

For all the actors in those movies, the prediction was the same as for Messrs. Gyllenhaal and Ledger: career death. Didn't happen before, won't happen now. Brad Pitt is reported to be scouting around for a High Profile Gay Script to burnish his bona fides. Other trade papers speculate on what sort of movie Ledger and Gyllenhaal could do together in the future that wouldn't make viewers think of, well, THAT MOVIE.

My 15-year-old nephew saw THAT MOVIE and thought it was a Hollywood play to make money off gay people, as they do with every other subject that comes to hand. He's a smart fella. He liked the movie but didn't think it will turn blue states red or anything.

So the little statues will get handed out; speeches, inane speeches, will be made; and almost none of the male actors will shave for the event. THAT MOVIE may win a clutch of awards, but the next day we'll still be dealing with Tim Eyman's latest initiative and referendum plan, same-sex marriage, constitutional amendments, and the major parties will still beat each other up for being for or against those issues. If THAT MOVIE has a lasting impact, it will be for the way its title and several lines of dialogue have entered the lexicon of late night talk show jokes and popular slang. Gonzaga University's Kennel Club booster group has apparently been shouting "Brokeback Mountain!" at opposing teams' players. Aaron Magruder's comic strip The Boondocks has a character, eyeing a shoulder bag, comment, "That man-purse is so brokeback." Columnists will debate the meaning of THAT MOVIE making more, or less, than The Passion of the Christ.

I guess we can't resist big Oscar speculations any more than we can say we don't care who's playing the Super Bowl halftime show. Over-the-top will always draw a crowd. There's the ever-present possibility of outré behavior and wardrobe malfunctions, but overall, we know these megaspectacles will offend only the most Pecksniffian tastes. We ooh and ahh, or make ironic comments. The news cycle moves on. We live to fight another day. 

For personal correspondence, Lindsay Thompson can be reached at tradelaw@hotmail.com. E-mail letters to the editor to letterstotheeditor@wsba.org or mail to WSBA, Attn: Letters to the Editor, 2101 Fourth Ave., Ste. 400, Seattle, WA 98121-2330.