I said the other day that I was looking forward to Brokeback Mountain. Then I read the article in this week’s Entertainment Weekly. Ye gods.
Let me just take a quick look at the calendar. Yes, as I thought, it’s almost 2006. And yet, it’s still apparently “daring” for two B-list actors to play gay.
Not to worry, though, as writer Christine Spines is here to provide all the evidence one could ever need of the devout heterosexuality of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal short of grainy video footage. Ledger waves his new baby around (conceived on location, one surmises, with co-star Michelle Williams). Gyllenhaal talks about how difficult it was to see Ledger and Williams gush and swoon, devastated as he was by his break-up with Kirsten Dunst.
And then there’s all the back-slapping over how risky it is for these two to take these roles. Asinine as it is to suggest that intelligent people can’t separate actors from their roles, neither Ledger nor Gyllenhaal are enjoying particularly meteoric career trajectories. Now they’re working with one of the finest living film directors (Ang Lee) on one of the biggest pieces of Oscar bait of the season. To my way of thinking, the only risk they run is of actually making it to the A list.
Gyllenhaal almost always provides some cringe-inducing quotes in every interview he does, and this is no exception. On the day the sex scene was filmed:
“What made me the most courageous was that I realized I had to try to let go of that stereotype I had in my mind, that bit of homophobia, and try for a second to be vulnerable and sensitive. It was f—-in’ hard, man. I succeeded only for milliseconds.”
Boy, I hope those milliseconds show up in the movie! (Come to think of it, if he can only muster vulnerability and sensitivity for that short a span, it’s no wonder Dunst dumped him.)
But bless Lee’s approach to any actor anxieties:
“I didn’t care…. They know what they’re getting into. They’ll just do it.”
At least Entertainment Weekly is around to give them a big hug for being so darned brave.