Brokeback Mountain has now pulled in close to $25 million at the box office, with per-screen revenue coming in at three-times the rate of the blockbuster film King Kong. You'd think that theatre owners would be chomping at the bit to show the film at their theaters. After all, a little controversy never hurt box office sales. Tell that to Larry Miller, owner of the Utah Jazz basketball team. Miller owns the Megaplex at Jordon Commons in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy, Utah, where Brokeback Mountain was abruptly pulled from their schedule. For a film like Brokeback, the strategy is to start at a small number of theaters on the art-house circuit and then expand to the suburbs as word of mouth spreads. Brokeback was produced by James Schamus of Focus Features, which is rapidly becoming the new "Miramax" of important, risky independent films.
From a relatively small opening, Brokeback grew to 484 screens in its fifth week of release (compared to the 3,500 screens that King Kong is playing on in its fifth week.) But one screen, the Megaplex in Sandy, Utah, pulled Brokeback from its schedule with only a handwritten note apologizing for the "inconvenience." "Inconvenient" is one way to describe Brokeback Mountain; it smashes the American cowboy archetype and provides a more complex view of one silent cowboy who fails to grab hold of his chance to be happy. That theme is universal; who among us can't recall a time in our lives when we should have taken a leap but took the familiar way out instead? Brokeback is the type of film that American cinema so badly needs. While the big studios continue to churn out franchise films like Cheaper By the Dozen 2 (wasn't one enough?), Brokeback joined a slate of films in 2005 -- Capote, Crash, Syriana, Grizzly Man, Good Night, Good Luck, Me and You and Everyone We Know -- that seemed to suggest a resurgence in the craft of American filmmaking. The explicit suggestion in Syriana that oil is used to manipulate U.S. foreign policy should be more threatening to the status quo than the idea that two men alone on a mountain for a summer might develop feelings for one another. In the West, though, you don't mess with the myth of the cowboy.
Some people may say that focusing too much on one theatre in suburban Utah that has pulled this film obscures the larger point that a gay romance is rapidly becoming one of the most successful films of the year. We'll see if the Family Research Council wakes up from its Christmas slumber to realize that cowboys have gone gay. In the mean time we can celebrate that as every other social trend in America seems to be heading in the wrong direction -- women's rights, affirmative action, civil rights -- gay rights are expanding in America. There is no doubt that Hollywood has been right at the center of this, from Will and Grace to Ellen DeGeneres to Rosie O'Donnell to Brokeback Mountain. In the last decade the accordion of rights has expanded in this one area while it has seemed to contract everywhere else. In this era of backsliding, hate-mongering and corruption, we do need to defend the few successes we have. One theatre in Sandy, Utah is a place to start.
Petition to Let Brokeback Play
http://www.ironweedfilms.com/brokeback
