Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Brokeback Mountain with Matthew Tinkcom

Transcript

Brokeback Mountain with Matthew Tinkcom · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn bast
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Jamie, I wish I could quit.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: You, Caitlyn, I wish I could. It's the only way.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: It feels like. I wish I could quit this podcast.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: But that's not even true. That's not even true. I'm
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: thrilled to say I like my job.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: You know, I love it.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: I don't wish I could quit this podcast or you.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: That's what I meant to say. The other the alternative
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: was Jamie Twist Jamie Nasty.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: Ooh, that is what a beautiful turn of phrase. Every
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: time I hear it, it really gets me. It hits
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the Bachdel Cast. My name is Jamie Nasty.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: My name is Caitlyn Nasty. Yeah, doesn't quite roll off
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: the tongue as much. But this is our show where
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: we examined movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. Now, Jamie,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: what on earth is that?
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Well? It will be an interesting discussion. Today, we use
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: It was originally created by friend of the show guest
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: of the show, queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who originally wrote
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: or sort of invented the Bechdel Test sometimes called the
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: Bechdel Wallace Test in her comics collection Likes to Watch
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: Out For in the eighties nineteen eighty five, and was
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: written in the context of we've talked about this recently
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: how there were so few first not just women in
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: movies that spoke to each other, but specifically queer women
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: who spoke to each other. And the joke of the
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: strip was that the characters would have to ship characters
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: together because there were so infrequently canonical lesbian couples on screen.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: There's now many versions of it. It has sort of
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: been adapted to a more mainstream, offied version of that.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: The version of the test that we use requires that
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: two characters of a marginalized gender with names speak to
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: each other about something other than a man for more
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: than two lines of dialogue. But again, this is a
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: jumping off point for discussion. Not every movie is going
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: to pass it, and it really is a case to
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: case basis if.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Broke Back Mountain doesn't pass the Bechdel test, which who
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: can say, We'll find out later.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: So I mean it reminds me of so much, Caitlin.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: I was wondering if you were thinking about this as well,
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: or a couple of years ago, I think some bad
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: faith actors weaponized the Bechdel test for Firegast Fire Island,
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: and I'm like, get a life, get a life. You
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: know what you're doing. Anyways, we'll talk about it, but
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: but yes, that is what it is. And today we
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: are covering at long last a movie that we have
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: almost covered so many times, but it was never it
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: either didn't win a poll or we didn't have quite
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: the right guest and the stars of a line. We
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: are covering Broke Back Mountain two thousand and five.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: We sure are, and our guest today is a professor
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: of Communications in Film at Georgetown University. He's the author
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: of books like Working Like a Homosexual, Gray Gardens and
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Queer Theory and Broke Back Mountain Relevant. Hello, it's Matthew Tinkham.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: Welcome, thank you.
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: It is really lovely to be here with you talking
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: about this film. And I already have a sense of
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: whether I may fit with the Bechdel test or not.
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: But I think it fails. It fails for really great reasons,
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: which are the more compelling.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, I mean our listeners know this at
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: this point. But sometimes I feel like it's like when
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: people when people lie to Caitlin and I at parties
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: about having listened to the show, They're like, right, it's
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: the podcast where you figure out if something is passes
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: the Bechdel test and therefore it's good or bad. And
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: you're like, get a library card, and it takes us
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: to two hours each episode to figure it out. I know,
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: I was like, what do you think for saying anyways, yes,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: if this, I honestly I was so locked in that
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: I was not particularly paying attention for the Bechtel test
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: in this particular movie. But we'll talk I mean.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Story of my life, yeah, every episode. But yeah, well
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: we'll talk about that a little later. For now, Matthew,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: tell us about your relationship, your history with Broke Back Mountain.
• 4:28
  Speaker 5: Sure, so, a little bit of backstory, literally, which is
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: that the film Broke Back Mountain is based on a
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: piece of short fiction by the writer Annie Koole and
• 4:40
  Speaker 5: the original really short story It's not even a novella,
• 4:46
  Speaker 5: was published in nineteen ninety seven in the New Yorker magazine, and.
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: I remember just randomly sort of finding and reading it
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: and being astonished at what an amazing piece of writing
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: it was. And Prole was such an interesting figure. She's
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: the famous, important, you know, novelist, and her attentions have
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: been lots of places, but this seemed a kind of
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: an anomalous, fascinating project for her to take on, which
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: is in kind of really the space of about thirty
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: pages of writing, he rethinks of the American West and
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: the American Western in terms of same sex erotics between
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: these two figures, these two men, and the still More
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: and Jack Twist, and the story at the time, and
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: all before the film was even sort of you know,
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: sort of being developed, really sort of grabbed a lot
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: of people as at attention, and for a number of reasons,
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: one of which is they say, was she was rethinking
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: how to write about the West. She's sometimes identified as
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: a kind of environmental writer, and then she was aligning
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: it with you know, the Western and this kind of
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: you know, my mythological storytelling, especially in American you know,
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: popular culture around these kinds of heroic figures, the cowboy
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: in the Western, which was really interesting inasmuch as a
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: as a you know, straight identified cisgender woman. What's going
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: on with this project of taking on of all Western
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: and doing it in this very careful, very sensitive and
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: loving way, which is not to dismiss or insult these characters,
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: these white working class men, and to think about a
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: world in which some kind of uh sort of romantic
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: and sexual and erotic possibilities sort of are thinkable, and
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: that what's going on is I think that it's and
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: this will get to I think our our our topic,
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: which is, you know, I think it's a feminist project
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: kind of coming in sideways towards thinking about masculinity and
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: working class masculinity. And as we'll talk about in a
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: moment when we get to the film, I mean their
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: adaptations then that happened in the movie, that sort of
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: build out from what supplied on the story in the
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: Cruel's story. So I remember reading it in ninety seven,
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: and this was when a sort of a particular body
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: of scholarly, philosophical and political work that we now kind
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: of call in broader fashion and queer theory was really
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: a taking off. And so this was when I was
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: writing my very first book, which was working like a
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: homosexual and thinking about the larger queerness of American popular
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: culture than even had been sort of recognized, and that
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: people like and I discussed for work at length the
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: Queer Brokeback Mountain book. Eve Sedgwick's sort of just amazingly
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: important scholarship and writing was really becoming influential. So it
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: felt as if Andy Prule was kind of doing over
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: on the literary fiction side something that you Sedgwick was
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: working over in kind of the literary and philosophical collary side.
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: So that happened. The story was published in nineteen ninety seven,
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: and then in the early two thousands, this rumor started circulating,
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: which is that there's going to be a film adaptation
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: of it. And as the details unfolded, it got more
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: and more exciting, which was that the kind we needs,
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: American filmmaker On Lee had signed up and was actually
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: really the person who was pushing most most to see
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: if this could be made into a film, and a
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: little bit of that sort of knowledge about that on
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: Lee is one of those directors that never makes the
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: same kind of movie twice, so you know, he he
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: did this idea of much like you know, Poule, who
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: wouldn't be the first person you might identify with the
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: Western wants to do this project, and it seems like
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: there are all these question marks over you know, why
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: and what's his interest. And we'll talk a little bit
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: later when we unpacked the film in more detail, but
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: so first it was on Lee, and then when the
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: cast started to be sort of discussed, the then really
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: sort of you know, hot emerging figures of Hate Ledger,
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: John Jake, Kellen Hall, Michelle Williams, and Anne Hathaway for
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: the sort of four main leads really said this is
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: this is an important film. This is not just some
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: kind of niche, little smaller production. And then the kind
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: of jewel in the crown was going to be that
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: the film is being adapted by Diana Ausena and Larry McMurtry,
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: and especially Larry McMurtry so associated with these kind of
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: colossal pieces of American popular culture about the West and
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: the big project being a lonesome cowboy, and that in
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: a certain sense everyone was wondering, what is Larry McMurtry doing,
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: like basically working on a Western about as it was
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: then called the Gay Cowboy Story and what's going to happen?
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: And so there was a lot of excitement around the
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: possibility of this film being made because the perception was,
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: and I agree with the perception, there's never been a
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: film of this budgeting or stature dealing with a Cauer
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: erodics in the American corporate film, and that it was
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: getting more and more interesting to think about this possibility.
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: So when the film came out in two thousand and five,
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: there was a lot of anticipation, and there was also
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: a lot of sense of can this thing even work
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: is going to be is going to be weird? Is
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: it going to be sanitized? Level of nuance might have
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: there's a certain brilliance that was attached to it. Then
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: it turned out to be a really interesting work of
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: art that took seriously its source material and understood the
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: stature of what it was trying to do, which was
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: to try to kind of assert a kind of different
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: narrative of same sex erotics in the face of probably
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: the genre that's most difficult and instance that's resistant to
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: that of the genre being the Western. So I remember
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: seeing the film and kind of out of the cinema
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: being astonished, and then seeing it several times just sort of,
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: you know, wanting to really understand what was going on.
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: And then because of the film, and the film did,
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: by the way, extraordinarily well. I mean it was I
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: think produced for about fifteen million dollars and it earned
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: a global sort of box office I think one hundred
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: and eighty million, which just meant this thing was just going, yeah,
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: like you know, it's a word, you know, this is
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: this is a success. And what that theme to Harold
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: at the moment was the idea that Hollywood was now
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: able to take on her sexualities and not be weird
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: or squeamish about them. So then just to follow open
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: the last chapter, is that when I was asked by
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: an editor named Todd McGowan, who's a faculty member at
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: the University of Vermont, if I would like to write
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: a book in a series he was editing. And the
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: idea of his book was very similar to how you
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: think about your podcast, which is pick a film and
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: then find that as the doorway into a particular intellectual
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: topic or area. And so Todd had asked me if
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: I wanted to write on queer theory, and to think
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: about a particular film that I thought that this would
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: work with, and so I gave it a lot of thoughts,
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: and I'll oh, I ultimately obviously arrived at broke Back
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: Mountain as the films to write on. I thought about
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: some others, and that included, you know, Todd Haynes's film Carol,
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: the one car Why film in the mood for love.
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: But Todd's sort of response was, and now I know
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: he was right, not that I disagreed, was he was like, look,
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: broke Back Mountain, we'll get people excited in a way
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: that those other films wonderful as they are, they're they're smaller,
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: they're they're more niche on kind of perception. Whereas this
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: thing he won all these awards and won Best Director
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: for ron Lee, won the Baftub for Best Film, and
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: that for a reader who wasn't particularly sort of knowing
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: how to approach it queer theory, the doorway of this
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: film would be then an tindy imitation and entrance into
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: thinking about what this body of work of queer theory is.
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: So that's how the book came out of then that longer.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: History, incredible thank you for outlining all of that, A
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: rich history, a broke backstory.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: If you wrote nice, nice, thank you, Thank you so much.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Jamie.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: What about you?
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: What's your history with this movie?
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: Oh gosh, I will be far less articulate and say,
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: although I had seen this movie once before in college,
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: I believe is when I first saw it. I didn't see
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: it when it came out, But I think it was
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: because I was in seventh grade and this was a
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: grown up movie, so I was still saying about our
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: kids movies. But I do remember I read the short
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: story before I saw the movie. I don't remember why.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: I think I just read it because it was at
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: the library. It must have just been. I used to
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: be all about the front table at the library, and
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: so I read a collection, the Collection of Annie Pool
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Stories that this the Propac Mountain appears in, which has
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: the word wyoming in the title. Anyways, she's an incredible writer.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: The short story is. I reread it last week and
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: it's still so beautiful. It is like so overwhelming and inspiring.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: How much emotion and story and interiority she fits into
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: so little space. I have no idea. It's like a
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: magic trick, but it's really a really beautiful short story.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: And then I saw the movie once and it may
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: be so sad that I didn't return to it for
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: years because it was making me feel too much. But
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: I first sat in a film history class, and this
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: would have been in college in the early twenty tens,
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: so still fairly new at that time. And yeah, I'm
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: very excited to talk about it today. I had another thought,
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: but it has left to me, so leave it at that.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: I'm very excited to talk more about it. And it
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: was really a pleasure to revisit both the Oh. I
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: was thinking, if either of you remember this. I looked
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: for this story. I remember very strongly it was a
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: radio story. Maybe it was this American life story. I'm
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: not quite sure, but there was a story I heard
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: years ago about a superfan of Broke Back Mountain who
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: was a gay man who had read it when it
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: first came out and then had really like it was
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: a whole radio story about his history with the short
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: story and then later the film and just like how
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: much it had affected him. And I don't know, I
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: just if anyone remembers hearing that radio story and it
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: is able to find it. For me, I remember that
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: story and this particular person's connection to the material almost
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: as strongly as I remember the story itself. So just
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: shouting that possible piece of loss media out as well, Caitlyn,
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: what about you.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: I saw this movie around the time it came out.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: I was in college at the time. I don't think
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: I saw it in theaters, but it would have probably
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: been within a year of it coming out for the
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: great Caitlin movie Binge, which I always say was of
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: two thousand and five, but it really started in two
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: thousand and four and lasted into like two thousand and
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: seven eight. So I saw it then and it was like,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, we'll talk about this movie's cultural legacy, of course,
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: and then culture's response to it when it came out,
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: but I just remember, in addition to the film itself,
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: all of the jokes, spoofs, references that were made in
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: pop culture for years afterward, and so that was just
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: like a part of the zeitgeist at the time. And
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: then I rewatched the film and read this short story
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: for the first time when I was in grad school
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: because I took a film adaptation class and shout out
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: to my master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University that
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: I hate to bring up and never mention, but this
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: is one of the films that we studied, one of
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: the adaptations that we read the source material for and
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: then studied the adaptation, and so I got pretty like
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: in depth with that from an adaptation standpoint. But then
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: I hadn't seen it since then. So it's been a
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: number of years since I've watched the film, and I
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: was excited to revisit it. I forgot how just wrenching.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: The final scene is just cry and crying, crying, But yeah,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to discuss it. Yeah, So let's take a
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: quick break and then we'll come back for the recap,
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: and we're back, broke back.
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: Broke back. Yeah, and if you don't like that joke,
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: buckle in because it's gonna keep happening.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately. So we'll provide a content warning at the
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: top here for violence against women and anti queer violence.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: We meet Ennis del Mar played by Heath Ledger and
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Jack Twist played by Jake Gyllenholl. They show up in Signal,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Wyoming looking for work. A sheep rancher named a Geary
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: played by.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: Rand Jump Scare. Truly, I did not remember him completely
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: forgot Randy Quaid was in this The Quaid lineage should
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: be studied, and.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Not by me and not by us.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Someone should do that, truly.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: So he hires these two men to camp on a
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: place called broke Back Mountain for the summer to look
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: after his flock of sheep. Jack and Ennis get acquainted
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: with each other. They settle into the daily life of
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: tending to the sheep. They're camping, they're eating beans, They're
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: dealing with bears and coyotes. Jack has to travel several
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: miles to the sheep grazing area each day, and after
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: a while he says, you know, I spend too much
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: time commuting. We should both sleep here at the camp together. Wink,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: and Enis maybe doesn't get the hint, or maybe he
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: simply ignores it, because he says, oh, I don't mind
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: switching with you. I'll go off and look after the sheep.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: So they kind of switch rolls.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: After more time, Jack gets Ennis to open up a
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: little bit because he's a very like stoic, quiet reserved man,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: and they start becoming friends. And then one night, Enis
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: gets too drunk to head back to where the sheep are,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: so he has to stay at the campsite, and Jack
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: offers to let him sleep in the tent with him,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: and eventually Ennis agrees, and after a short time, Jack
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: makes a move. Ennis is taken aback and he pushes
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Jack off at first, but after a few moments the
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: tides turn and they start having sex. The next morning,
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Jack tries to be like hey boo, but Ennis leaves
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: in a hurry. It's awkward. A bit later, they both
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: deny being queer, and so we're not sure if anything
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: is going to happen again because Enis makes a reference
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: to this being sort of like a one off thing.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: But then one day Ennis goes into Jack's tent and
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: they start kissing and snuggling and it's very tender and intimate.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Then one day the boss man a Geary, sees them
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: in the distance. They're kind of like rough housing with
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: their shirts off, and he gets the sense of what
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: is going on between them, and then a short time
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: later he tells Jack and Ennis to bring the sheep
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: back down from the mountain a month earlier than they
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: were expecting. Basically, he's like firing them, but before they go,
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Ennis and Jack start sort of like playfully rough housing again,
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: but then it gets too rough. Perhaps they resent having
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: to leave each other, and Ennis ends up with a
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: bloody nose and he bleeds on Jack's shirt and will
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: put it and maybe his own shirt.
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: Is like it.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: There's such a this I forgot what a like master
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: class on like masculinity. This movie is.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Repression, yes, yeah, yeah, And also Chekhov's shirts will put
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: a pin in those. He is always talking about that.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So things get physical. They're punching
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: each other. The repression is palpable. They're about to part ways,
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: and it seems like they'll never see each other again.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: After Jack leaves, Ennis has a panic attack or you know,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: he's vomiting or dry heaving. Clearly he's in emotional turmoil.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: We cut to enis getting married to Alma Alma a
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: character played by Michelle Williams, and then a few years
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: pass they've had a couple daughters.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: I always love that they have Almah junior. You dont's
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: see that very often? More shout out.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: More junior girls.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I liked that.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Then meanwhile Jack goes back to Ageary asking for work.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Ageary says no, the subtext being like, I'm not hiring
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: you again because I'm homophobic. So then Jack goes to
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Texas to try to get some rodeo work, and there
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: he meets a woman named Loreen played by Anne Hathaway.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: Who I learned auditioned for this movie while on break
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: from Princess Diaries Too, which I just find delightful. She
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: came in a ball gown and yeah, it's like, wow,
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: what a what a story? Yeah, Princess Diaries Too, I'll
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: say it not the cinematic masterpiece that brother bag Matton is, right, Yeah, Okay.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: So Jack and Loreene get married. Cut to they've had
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: a baby. So a few years have passed, and in
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: that time, Ennis and Alma are doing their best to
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: raise their little girls. They're trying to make ends meet.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: But and we'll talk about class as it relates to
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: this movie, and generally they're struggling and it seems like
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: their marriage isn't that great. Then, out of the blue,
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: one day, Ennis gets a postcard from Jack inviting him
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: to get together with Jack and hang out, and Ennis
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: lies and tells Alma that they were fishing button ease.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: They reunite after four years of not seeing each other.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: They make out a little bit right in front of
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Ennis's house, which Alma sees, and she's shocked and upset,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: but plays it off like everything is fine. Ennis and
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Jack spend the night together. Then they go on a
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: quote unquote fishing trip in which they never actually fish,
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: but Jack and he'll do this throughout the story, but
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: he suggests that they try to make a life with
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: one another. He suggests that they buy and work on
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: a ranch together, but Ennis doesn't see how that's possible.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: He says, we can't abandon our wife and kids, and
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: if people find out we're together, we might be killed,
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: And then Ennis tells a story from his childhood to
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: this effect. We can talk more about that later, but
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: so the plan becomes for them to meet up every
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: once in a while in the privacy of the middle
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: of no where on Brokeback Mountain. Sometime later, Ennis and
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: Alma get divorced. Jack hears about the divorce and drives
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: up to Wyoming to see Enis, thinking that maybe this
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: means they can finally start a life together. Jack is
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: such a romantic no oh quick, But this is the
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: one weekend of the month that Enis gets to see
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: his daughters, so he sends Jack away and Jack is
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: so disappointed and he's crying on his way back home.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: It's again so heart wrenching. He goes to a town
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: in Mexico by the border to go cruising, and he
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: picks up a man to be with for the night.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: It seems like he does this somewhat regularly. Then it's
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Thanksgiving time. We see two separate scenes, one with Jack
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: and his family and in laws, and then another scene
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: with Enis, his daughters, Alma and her new husband, and
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: both scenes are quite tense. We can also talk more
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: about those later if we would like. And then Ennis
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: meets a woman named Cassie played by Linda Cardellini. Also
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: did not remember if he's in this movie now.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: Much less Anna Ferris, David Harbor. Yeah, Kate Mara, you're
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: just like, so what a cast famous people bit parts
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: going on?
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: So Ns meets Cassie and they start romantically seeing each other,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: but he seems to be keeping her at arm's length. Meanwhile,
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Jack and Loreene make friends with another couple. This is
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: the David Harbor and Anna Faris pair, and it seems
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: like this guy, Randall and Jack something might be happening there.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: It seems like Randall is interested in Jack, he suggests
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: they go camping together. We never fully know what might
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: transpire there, but there's something happening there. Then we see
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: a couple more of Ennis and Jack's trips. Again, Jack
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: longs to see Enis more frequently. He wants to build
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: a life together. Ennis thinks he's being unrealistic about that
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: being a possibility. They argue, we get the famous line
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: of Jack saying, I wish I knew how to quit you.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: You know, they're breaking down, crying, and this is a
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation, to quote the movie again.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Ennis returns home and sometime later he receives a returned
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: postcard in the mail that he had sent to Jack,
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: saying that the recipient is deceased. So Ennis calls Jack's
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: house to see what's going on, and Loreene tells him
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: that Jack died after a tire changing mishap on the
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: side of the road, But we see a flashback of
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: either what really happened or what Ennis speculates might be
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: what really happened, which is that Jack was beaten to
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: death by a group of men who presumably found out
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: that he was queer. Loreene tells Ennis that Jack wanted
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: his ashes to be spread on his favorite place, broke
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Back Mountain. So Ennis goes to Jack's parents to retrieve
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: the ashes and carry out his dying wishes. After a
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: tense interaction with Jack's parents, especially his mean old son
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: of a bitch of a father, Ennis goes into Jack's
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: childhood bedroom, where he finds those two shirts, one belonging
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: to Jack and one belonging to Ennis. They're tucked into
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: each other. Yep. Yeah, the idea being that Jack kept
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: these as a memento of their relationship, and you're just
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: like crying, crying, crying. Ennis clutches the shirts. He's fraught
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: with emotion, and then he returns home. His daughter, Alma
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Junior played by Kate Maara. Now she's I think late
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: teen's early twenties. She pays her dad a visit to
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: invite him to her wedding, and at first he's like,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: a heatero wedding. I don't think I can do that,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: but then he's like, it's my daughter, I'll be there.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: And then after she leaves, he discovers that she left
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: her sweater behind accidentally, so he goes to put it
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: in his closet where we get a reveal that he
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: has hung up the shirt that he took from Jack's parents' house,
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: along with a photograph of broke Back Mountain cry the end.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: So that's the story. Let's take a quick break and
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: we'll come back to discuss, and we're broke back and
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: we're broken after that.
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: That was our last break. So you don't need to
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: hear it again, Okay, there is so so much to
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: talk about. I get emotional even hearing the plot described
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: to me, Matthew, is there anywhere that you would like
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: to jump off guest privilege?
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, thank you for that description, and it
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: always really helps to kind of see the narrative arc
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: of this thing. And one of the things that's you
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: remarkable about this film, and I'm interested, you know, in
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: your experience, Caitlin in terms of, you know, studying in
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: terms of adaptation from this piece of fiction writing into cinema,
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: is that a lot of what this film is about
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: is about language lessness. It's about silences and misunderstanding and
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: attribution and never clarity. And so one of the things
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: that is so significant about it and one of the
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: things I do in the books, I locate sort of
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: rules locating of it in the early nineteen sixties, right
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: at this moment in which it seems kind of in hindsight,
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: we know that there's an incipient new kind of politicization
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: of sexuality coming, both in terms of second wave feminism
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: but also in terms of the then what we're called
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: gay in the lesbian liberatory politics, and that this is
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: kind of the threshold moment in which what we see
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: is a world in which there is no language per
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: se to talk about sexuality and desire and it's effect
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: on all of these institutions, most importantly the family. And
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: so you know, the Western, especially as a genre, which
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: is full of these you know, magnificent landscapes that are
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: sort of empty of language and can be kind of
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: builled in right in a way with these figures, but
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: to themselves, they don't have any way to describe what's
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: happening to them. And so much of the film's sort
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: of then drama in folds over the fact that there
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: are these you know, really sad you know this is
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: I think you and you've both said it. You know,
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: it's like this film really just never it's a deep
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: emotion sort of impact never really dissipates I mean, as
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: many times as I see the film, I always think
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: like it's going to get easier, and it doesn't, because
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: that languagelessness thing is about this kind of ache of
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: wishing that these characters could find some way of telling
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: each other what's going on. And that's both between the
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: two figures of Nice and Jack, but it's also within
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: their marriages, and that the fact that their marriages are
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: these frames that sit around sort of their bond with
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: these two women, Alma and Marine who And this is
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: one of the things I really respect about of the
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: films kind of building out of their characters because they're
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: not huge in the source material, but that they are understood,
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: even though they had a lot less sort of development
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: as characters, but they're understood with a great deal of
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: compassion as to their situation and they are not made
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: into villains of Jack, and this is desire for each
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: other in fact, I think, especially you know Alma's confusion
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: over what is essentially excluding her from any understanding what's
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: going on with with her husband and the next husband,
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: and the Michelle Williams character or performance is just really
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: beautiful in terms of her anger and fear and her
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: sense of you know. And this is the thing about
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: the class politics of the movie as well, which is that,
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: you know, there's this thing about the fact that with
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: Ennis and her no longer together as a kind of
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: viable heterosexual couple with children, this jeopardizes her as a woman,
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: and you know that this is about her livelihood, and
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: on the one hand, that's you know, about a certain
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: kind of homophobic sort of inheritance that she probably has
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: as a woman of that historical moment. But it's also
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: about the fact that what the film wants to do
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: in a certain sense depict as this kind of utopian
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: sexuality of Jack and Ennis up on the mountain, you know,
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: in social life, puts her and her daughter's you know,
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: into into financial jeopardy. And I think it's very subtle
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: and sympathetic you know, around that. But you know, just
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: to close the point on that this this ache of language,
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: the sort of loss of language or not having language,
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: and that the only sort of ever approach that you
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: see in the film is you know, between Edison and Jack,
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: the I ain't no queer, I ain't either sort of
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: you know thing is about the fact that you know,
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: you really want, like Stonewall, to happen. It's that these
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: men need, like you know, something to come into their
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: world for them to be able to describe it. Yeah.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, I thank you for I mean, you have literally
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: written the book on it. But it's just it's it's
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: really helpful hearing it framed that way. This was the
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: first time that in conversation with this movie, I did,
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: you know, I guess like just research alongside of like,
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: well what history like, I you know, it's specifically in
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: Wyoming where they are, where this is such a rural area,
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: and that how much class figures into this movie in
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: a way that I feel like isn't as talked about,
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: but there was a wonderful friend of the show, Matt Boehm,
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: made a really thoughtful video about that as well of
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: specifically speaking to your point, Matthew, why this story is
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: set when it's set and where it's set, which is
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: all very intentional, where it's like on the cusp of
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: a step forward for visibility but also still a time
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: of incredible danger. And that's not to say that that
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: has changed meaningfully enough, but just to root it in
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: this specific moment that you just are like so desperate
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: for something to change, for there to be some cultural
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: conversation that could just make Ennis feel comfortable in envisioning
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: a life for himself that he's just so unable to
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: and and to really sit in. And obviously the Heath
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: Ledger performance is incredible, like where you really feel not
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: just how his internalized homophobia is corrosive, but just how
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: homophobia is corrosive to everyone. Everyone in this story is
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: touched by it in one way or another, and it's
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: done so devastatingly but not but still somehow not whacking
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: you over the head with anything. It's so personal to
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: every character, right, Yeah, I really was able to appreciate
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: the historic moment it was set in at this time,
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: and like part of the tragedy is that they are
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: so close to possibly being able to envision a different
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: kind of life together.
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: And then Jack is that's right, which is the you
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: know the one of the distinctions between them as characters
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: is that Jack can envision something and says this, you know,
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: talk about you one of the few people in the
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: film who seems to be you know, bordering onto a
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: language which to think about a different possibility. You know,
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: this idea he has like you know, look, we could
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: we could live together, well, we could both be in
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: the place together. And you know, he has that sort
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: of idea, and I think the Gillenhall performance has this
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: exuberance around it. And then by contrasts and before he died,
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: you know, Keith Ledger said that one of the things
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: that on Lee and he talked about was how to
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: sort of have us as this character. And it's in
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: Ledger's beautiful performance who like words just like he has
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: to he can't get them out. He's punched over and
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: the way the Ledger uses his mouth to have almost
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: like you know, it's like a struggle. It aches for
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: him to have to to speak that you know, that
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: language just doesn't come to him. And that's why, you know,
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: and this is when I teach the film. I always
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: ask my students in the conversation. You know, the film
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: concludes with this assertion from endos you know Jack I swear,
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: And I asked my students, think, what's the second half
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: of that sentence that we always wonder, like, what is
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: it that he is swearing? What is he making a
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: vow around? And because we know anas we know that
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: he himself is you know, it could take forever for
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: him to finally figure out the second half of that
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: sentence totally. Yeah.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, we get the impression throughout the movie
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: that Ennis is so haunted by an image he saw
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: as a boy. One of two flashbacks in the movie
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: both show anti queer violence, where the first one is
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: Ennis describing something he saw as a boy, something that
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: his father deliberately showed him as like a cautionary tale,
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: because he tells his story about how there were two
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: men who lived together and that everyone in the community,
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: you know, presumed that they were in a romantic relationship,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: and then one of the men was murdered, and Ennis's
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: father shows Ennis as a I don't know, eight nine
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: ten year old boy the body of the murdered man,
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: something that clearly affected him for life, and Ennis even
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: speculates like, it might have been my dad who murdered
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: this man. I'm not sure. And we also get the
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: impression that no justice whatsoever was was done for the victim.
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: It's still this was a time in Wyoming specifically, but
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: also in so many states where it wasn't just that
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: homophobic hate crimes weren't, you know, explicitly against the law,
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: but that the law would sometimes encourage them, you know,
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: by how it wasn't just that gay rights weren't codified,
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: said anti gay legislation was the state of the law.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: So right, So that's the nature of the first flashback,
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: and it's clear the impact it has had on Na.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: It has led to repression. It has led him to
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: believe that if he and Jack live the life together
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: that Jack wants them to live, one or both of
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: them will probably be killed. And then the second flashback
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: we get is of either the real event of what
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: happened or Ennis's speculation of what might have happened regarding
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: Jack's death, which might have been another homophobic hate crime.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: Either way, Jack dies, which means Ennis will never see
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: him again and any future that they might have had
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: together no longer exists. And so the movie ends in tragedy.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: And that got me thinking about queer cinema of the
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: time and then even in years that follow and how
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: so much of it ends in tragedy. And I was
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: thinking about how it seems like a hetero mainstream audience
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: tends to be more comfortable with queer love stories that
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: do end in tragedy than not. Because again, this was
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: such a hugely successful film both box office and critical.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: We've shifted away from that a bit, but I couldn't
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: help but think about that.
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a really important question for this film in
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: terms of the implications of it. You know, we could
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: come at it from you know, a couple of directions,
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: one of which we need to say. What it's trying
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: to describe is the sort of deep suffering of sort
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: of queer people, you know, like queer phobic society, and
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: that you know, there are no miraculous or heroic outcomes
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: in the face of such monumental violence and exclusion. So
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: in a certain sense, it tells the truth about that
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: historical sort of moment. And on the flip side, does
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: you know, does the film in a certain sense? I
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: don't necessarily agree with his reading, but I respect it
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: sort of in a certain sense, and join with a
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: long tradition of pathetic queer people who all what Lee,
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: never can have any kind of sort of life. You
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: know that, you know, it's like adult they all die
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: or kill themselves kind of, you know, frame everyone's doomed exactly.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: I guess I wonder well, I'm curious what you think, Matthia,
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: because we've recently also covered I mean, We've covered a
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: lot of queer cinema on the show over the years,
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: but it is like this clear pattern of it's It's
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: not even something that I hold against the movie specifically.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: I think it more is just as an industry, like
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: the film industry, tends to elevate and promote and award
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: tragic stories versus stories that center queer joy or even
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: just has queer characters that doesn't end in abject tragedy,
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: like we just covered Desert Hearts, a movie that definitely,
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: you know, it's also rooted in the past, addresses all
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: of the homophobic elements that existed in that moment in time,
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: but doesn't end in abject tragedy, is made by and
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: written by a queer woman. And these are both tremendously
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: great movies as far as I'm concerned, But one movie
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: gets the mainstream approval, and it's the one that is
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: more centered on tragedy. So I don't view Yeah, I
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: agree with you, I don't view it as a fault
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: of Broke Back Mountain. I think it's just more the
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: pattern of what gets uplifted and sort of put into
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: mainstream cannon and why a movie like Desert Heart sort
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: of remains more obscure. I guess I don't know.
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well this gets at the heart of you know
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: what you know. Earlier I was describing as the anticipation
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: of the film coming out in two thousand and five
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: and leading up to, you know, its appearance, was an
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: excitement over the idea that you know, a large scale,
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: well funded, sort you know, with star and mass appeal
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: film was now possible. And then in a certain sense
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: of kind of all moments or say, but does it
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: applicate the pattern of the pathetic queer you get again,
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: only with maybe a bigger budget and more stories, you know,
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: star power, And then you kind of ask yourself as like, oh,
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: is that a progressive politics or is that just you know,
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: the same one with like, you know, more movie stars.
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: And then a sort of larger framing historical issue around
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: is that the American corporate film just doesn't have a
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: great track record of any kind of you know, queer
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: positive sort of long term you know practice, and that
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: we can we can love the film work back Mountain
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: and sort of say it's nuanced and subtle and his
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: complexity in all the ways that it does, and then
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: kind of go, but it's like one movie you know
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: that happens on a very rare occasion, and this seems
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: to be, you know, in a certain sense, a larger
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: indictment of the what i'll call the conservatism of the
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: American corporate film.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, it did not seem like this was an easy
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: movie to not I mean, first of all, just make
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: much less make well where this was my first time
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: sort of digging more into the production history that I'd
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: love to talk about with both of you. Matt Boma
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: also talks about this in his video, and also I
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: think he was in high school or college when the
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: film came out, and sort of his experience of being
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: frustrated with the film's popularity and also feeling quite defensive
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: of it, especially when I think most famously it was
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: you know, Crash one Best Picture over Broke Back Mountain,
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: which I think now everyone can say makes absolutely no sense,
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: and even at the time most people were like, this
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: feels homophobic for Crash to be winning an oscar like this, Like,
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: if you've seen it, it has no it barely has
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: a right to exist as far as I've concerned. But
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: in any case, just to get a little bit into
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: the production history of this movie, there is so much,
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: so everyone feel free to jump in. But this started
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: with Diana O'sana reading the story and immediately saying like,
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: I want to adapt this. I want this to be
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: a film. Annie Poole, who I think, like many great
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: short story writers, is somewhat prickly, was like, it can't
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: be a movie. Sorry, just like, girl, take the check.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: But you know, she has her dignity and I respect
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: her for that. But in terms of and we've talked
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: about this quite a bit, when it comes to any
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: marginalized identity being represented in a Hollywood film, really that
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: there is so much internal pushback. There is a pressure
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: to change material. There are actors who are quote unquote
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: not comfortable portraying a queer character. Oh yeah, in as
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: few words as possible. I mean. Gus Van Sant was
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: on board to direct this movie for some time and
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: encountered enough frustration and pushback that he ended up leaving
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: the project and ended up making Milk, which is a
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: movie I have not seen actually, but would be an
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: interesting discussion. I hate Sean Penn. I don't know what
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: do we do with that.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: It's complicated.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: But anyways, just going through the list of actors, all
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: of whom are still famous and working, who were considered
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: or approached for the roles of Jack and Ennis, and
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: how many, many many of them were quote unquote not
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: comfortable or just responded in an overtly homophobic way to
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: the suggestion. I think the most famous examples are Matt Damon,
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: who said, Gus, he's saying this is when Gus van
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: Sant was still the attached director. He said, Gus, I
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: did a gay movie referencing the talented mister Ripley than
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: a cowboy movie all the pretty horses. I can't follow
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: it up with a gay cowboy movie. Really awesome response.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: There was also Mark Wahlberg who one as well, it
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: feels almost absurd to approach in this context, but they tried.
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: He have course responded in the way that Mark Wahlberg
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: would respond. He said he was quote creeped out unquote
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: by the script, which again Mark Wahlberg wouldn't know a
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: good script if it like you know, so anyways, that
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: it took some time to find, uh, I mean, the
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: right writer found the material almost immediately. But in terms
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: of building the rest of the team in a way
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: that was respectful and reverent of the material took quite
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: a long time, and it had everything to do and
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: I feel like as a direct may of the homophobia
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: of the time for sure.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And as you pointed out, Jamie Gus van Sandt
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: eventually like abandoned the project because he had such a
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: hard time casting it. So he dropped out. And then
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: other directors were approached, including queer directors like Jewel Schumacher
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: and Pedro Almodovar. Schmacher Broke Back Mountain would have been
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: the mountain have had nipples like what would have happened
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: in dul Schumacher Broke Back.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. Three amazing I mean, including only
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: three amazing directors, three wildly different versions of this story.
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: You'll beginning absolutely, I.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: Didn't didn't know about Pedro alma Jovar. I mean, that's
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: just kind of mind boggling to contemplate the It's almost like,
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: you know, because you know, he's a famous director of women, right,
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: so it would have been maybe emphasis would have been
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: if it's my version of the Almodovar Broke Back Mountain,
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: it's all Alman Loreene and then the two.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: Men background, right, so and only ends up taking the
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: role who I we've covered one other only. I mean,
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: obviously I've seen a lot of his movies, but I
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: think the only other only movie we've covered on the
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: show is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I believe so. Yeah,
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: but he had directed movies with queer characters before in
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: the Wedding Banquet, but it is kind of a fascinating
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: run of movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hulk, Broke Back Mountain.
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: That is range sense of sensibility, sentence, sensibility before that, yes,
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: but going from Hulk to Broke Back Mountain is kind
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: of incredible, right.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Well, he was kind of he was in the middle
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: of debating retiring from the film industry. He's like, I
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: made a few movies that were exhausting, and I want
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: to quit. And he had been approached to direct Broke
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: Back Mountain, and initially he was like, I'm so tired.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: But then he reconsidered and he decided to give it
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: a go, and he tried to get financing, which was,
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: as you can imagine, a struggle at first. People were
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: not interested in financing a film like this typically, But
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: then he eventually met a producer who had a partnership
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: with Focused Features and they stepped in to finance the
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: film and Onley was attached as a director. There were
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: more castings, but then Heath Ledger and Jake Jillenhall were
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: both really enthusiastic about the script and their characters, and
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: they were cast. Obviously, it has been criticized the casting
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: of two straight actors to portray these characters, and that
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: is fair. That was far more common at the time.
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: We have seen more of a shift in casting queer
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: actors to play queer characters, but for a very long time,
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: it was the standard to cast SIS had actors to
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: play queer characters.
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: It was pretty normalized up until like even in the
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: last when did Carol come out? I mean that was
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: the last time I remember really seeing that conversation, and
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: I know we discussed it when we talked about Carol
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: and the show years ago.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there are some examples even after that,
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: especially of SIS actors playing trans characters, because that was
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: a conversation that was still being regularly had up and
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: till like the late twenty tens, maybe even into the
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: twenty twenties. Yeah. And then the last thing I want
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: to say about the like you know, production and development
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: and casting and stuff like that was the marketing of
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: this film. I don't know much about it, but the
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: one thing that I did make note of is that
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: the poster for this film was heavily influenced by Titanic
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven. And then when you do a side
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: by side comparison, you're like, oh.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: That's actually so true. Wow, Wow, two tragic love stories.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: Yep, wow.
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: I didn't know that. And now once you see it,
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: you cannot unsee it.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: You simply cannot. I'd love to go back to talking
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: about the wives. Yes, Matthew, you you talk about this
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: in your book, about how Alma and Loreene's labor make
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: it possible for their husbands to go off on all
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: of these fishing trips, and how their labor is pretty
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: wildly underappreciated by their husbands. Again, I forgot how much
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: class and labor plays into this story, as does some
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: misogyny of the characters. I'm thinking about a scene where
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: Enis is supposed to be taking care of his two
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: small daughters, but he drops them off at Alma's workplace
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: at the grocery store while she is working because he
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: has to tend to something with his job and He's like, well,
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: my thing is more important. So woman, you take care
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: of the children even though you're working. Also, I have
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: to go do my work. That scene really struck me.
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: There's another scene where Ennis and Alma are screaming at
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: each other because she had agreed to pick up another
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: shift at work because they need the money because he's
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: always running off to go on fishing trips, and Enis
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: is furious. He wants her to stay home and serve dinner,
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: but she defiantly leaves, saying like, I need to work
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: to help support this family. So just a few moments
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: that I didn't really clock the first time I watched
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: this movie. And then also, I think the first time
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: I watched this movie, I remember thinking, I confess that
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: I viewed Alma not as a villain necessarily, but as
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: an obstacle or kind of like a foil to Ennis
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: and Jack's relationship. I was sort of like, leave him alone,
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: let him be in love with Jack. Twist, because there's
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: that scene where she confronts him after Thanksgiving dinner. She
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: says like, you know, I thought you were going fishing,
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: but then you never brought back any fish. And then
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: I looked in your fishing box and all the equipment
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: had never been used, and then he reacts with violence
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: because she has clocked the situation accurately. I remember thinking
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: at the time, I was like, oh, like, she's a
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: foil to this relationship. Watching it this time around, I
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: was way more empathetic to her character because all she's
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: asking for is like honesty and transparency in their marriage,
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: which she had done throughout, which she was never able
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: to get. So I'm like, oh, of course, Like I
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: absolutely understand her frustration, but then you also understand why
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: Ennis is withholding information. Yes, he is cheating on her
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: in a monogamous relationship, but he can't be honest about
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: his sexuality in a time and place such as this,
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: or at least there's great risk associated with him being
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: honest about it. But either way, I was way more
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: empathetic to Almah's circumstances on this watch.
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you know, one of the things that
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: you know it has to be sort of seen as
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: implied but not explicitly are articulate them in the film,
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: you know, sort of works in subtle ways in this
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: regard is that classes in here, and there's very sort
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: of you know, important ways both Jack and Ennis, you know,
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: sort of are but the very bottom of the sort
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: of ranking of social prestige around labor, you know. And
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: and famously, you know, the film is called the gay
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: Cowboy Movie. And then you know, one of the things
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: remarkable about it, and this is very much in the
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: pool story and the film. They're not even cowboys. They
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: can care of sheep, you know, I mean, they're.
• 57:30
  Speaker 6: Sometimes and it doesn't even have I mean the landscape
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: is that to be of the sort of West, but
• 57:38
  Speaker 6: the sort of prestige of them being these kind of
• 57:40
  Speaker 6: cowboy figures, you know, in a certain sense is diminished.
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: It's like, you know, the West is now no longer
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: the space of cowboys. It's the space of a certain
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: kind of you know, grunt labor that's not particularly glamorous
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: or dignified. So there's that with class. But then to
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: come to the topic of the women, I think the
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: class ordinances get even more explicit, which is that you know,
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: Alma works in the in the supermarket, trying to make
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: ends meet around this sort of occasional labor that Enna
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: seems to do. And then Loreene, you know, is attached
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: to uh sort of her father's business and it's a
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: successful business. And the film really and I love the
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: way that the film builds out from what little there
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: is in the short sort of fiction. But Lorene's this
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: really interesting figure. You know, she's she's in the rodeo,
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: she knows how to dance, She's really all got a
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: social life, and she is making this business happen. And
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: that in a certain sense, Jack has married up in
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: that particular sort of organization of a social prestige. And
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: there comes a point in which she's kind of not
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: really all that worried about what he's up to on
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: the fishing trips because she has her own life in
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: a way that Alma is still reliant on, you know,
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: on ns is sort of unreliable as he seems to be.
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: And then you know the other thing, and I want
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: to come back a little bit too. What you were
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: talking about a moment ago, Kaylin, in terms of the
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: fantasy statements is in this film, and this is very cinematic.
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: This is where I think the film really sort of
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: can handle because it's on the visual sort of score here.
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: And this is description of the shock of violence of
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: the murdered figures from his childhood and implication that his
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: father is a participant in this film level, whether he
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: is the murderer or simply, you know, sort of showing
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: his child that this kind of violence is possible and
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: to be respected perversely. And then the second fantasy, which
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: I think is just really an amazing piece of filmmaking,
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: of the conversation between Ennis and Loreene, who you know,
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: in narratively, if you kind of piece it out, you
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: figure out this is the first time they've actually ever
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: had to talk to each other, and the class ordinances
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: get even more sort of complicated. And part of it
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: is that the beauty of the editing and that sequence,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: the heartbreaking editing, is both of them know what each
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: other thinks of the other because of the figure of Jack,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: who is gone, and both of them are creating this conversation,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: the last sort of you know, conversation about Jack, this
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: thing on the telephone, about the meaning of it or
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: the circumstances of Jack's death, on Loreen saying well, the
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: official explanation we will agree upon is there was an
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: accident on the roadside. And then this sort of you know,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: then momentary fantasy of you he was murdered. This was
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: a scene of queer violence, and that this is you know,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: in a certain sense, getting into Ennis's head, but also
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: understanding you know, and the context of what's going on
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: in sort of Ennis's mind through this conversation, you know,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: with Loreen. And I think that that is has a
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: has a kind of class to mention to it, which
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: is I think that there's a way that he kind
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: of realizes that Loreene lives in a world of sort
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: of you know, wealth and material comfort in a way
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: that you know he never will, and that the strange
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: connection through Jack, you know, is about him realizing Jack
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: had that life of living with someone that he Jack
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: had proposed to Ennis. Jack had that with Loreene fraud
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: as it might have been, because you know, her family's
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: not ideal by any means, but that that comfort was there,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: that wealth was there.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Anne Hathaway's performance in that scene is also so
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: stunning to me because there are a couple of moments
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: where when Ennis makes a reference to his relationship with
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: Jack and it's all very you know, like codd where
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: it's like, oh, yeah, we met that time on broke
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: Back Mountain summer of sixty three, where we just hearted
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: sheep and nothing else, and it's implied that she knows
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: exactly what that means and what happened there, and you
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: see her give a little like.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: Like a whimper.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: She's like suppressing crying because she knows who Ennis is
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: to Jack. And then she does it again a second
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: time when he makes another reference to him and Jack's
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: connection without being explicit about who they actually were to
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: each other, but just saying something about their friendship, and
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: she whimpers again, and it's just like, oh that, like
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: that performance just it blew me away.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: It gets back to what you're saying about you about
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: like the conversations without words that happen at so many
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: points like that, what can't be expressed by the characters
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: that is like physically seeping out in their performances is
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: like it's just it's unreal. Yeah. I think I also
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: sort of did not remember how crucial class is to
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: the whole story, but also specifically the women's stories. On
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: the reread of the short story. Yeah, there's there's not
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: too much on the page about them, and I really
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: appreciated how it felt like they were. These characters were
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: built out, first of all in like a very sympathetic
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: and grounded way, but also in a way that really
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: distinguishes them from one another, even though obviously they have
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: so much in common. Was weirdly thinking about how if
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: you flip it and then move the timeline ahead just
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: fifty years, it's Grace and Frankie. That's another story though,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: But that Alma and Loreene, they both have their own
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: distinct personalities, but that Loreene in some ways, you know,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: has the financial ability to move on in a way
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: that Alma never does, and in a way that I
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: think women in this place at this time would have
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: been more beholden to a marriage. There's always going to
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: be the stigma that comes with divorce, you know, really
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: at any time, but certainly in the sixties and seventies.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: But that Loreen, we know she has the ability to
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: move on financially, she has the support where Alma you know,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: sort of needs to. And it's lovely that it seems
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: like she moves into a relationship that is positive for her.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, and on this rewatch, the second you see
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: the grocery store manager, you know, be okay with all
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: the glass being knocked down, You're like, there's the guy.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: It's like such a well directed moment. He has a
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: little crush on her. Yeah, it was like, oh, yeah,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: your boss doesn't mind if you broke the whole store,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: whole inventory. Yeah, he's interested, but I I it does
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: make me happy for her to some extent, But it
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: also means, you know, like Alma's not living at a
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: time or within a socioeconomic class where she can really
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: consider being fully independent, where Loreene sort of has more leeway,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: and and seeing how class affects obviously Jack and Ennis
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: as well. And moment that stuck out to me on
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: this viewing was after Loreene has their baby, how immediately
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: dismissive her parents are of Jack. They're calling him rodeo
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: and hyperfixating on Loreene and the baby. It is so
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: clear that he is incidental to them, He is not important.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and just sort of watching all of these
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: like tiny fractures and structures being built in trying to,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: you know, sort of keep this relationship at least functioning.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: It's done very subtly, but if you're looking for it,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: it is like so crucial to the story.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: And then a scene that follows that between Jack and
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: his father in law is the Thanksgiving scene where they're
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: basically doing a dick measuring contest about who has more
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: power in this situation where the father in law is like, oh,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: your boys should watch football if you want him to
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: be a man when he grows up, and Jack is
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: just like, fuck you, this is my house, my rules.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: Loreene spent a lot of time and effort preparing this meal,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: so we're gonna appreciate it without being distracted by a
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: football game. And eventually, I mean, you could argue that
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: like Jack exercises his enough masculinity over the situation that
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: he defeats the other like masculine boy man of the
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: scene and masculine boy man awesome, thank you. I will
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: be saying that every day from now on. But because
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, a lot has been written about this movie
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: in its relation to the setting, the genre of Western,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: the implications of masculinity therein where including you, Matthew, you
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: know in your book you talk about how like, you know,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: the rugged, stoic cowboy character that is the center of
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: the Western genre and is like, you know, the embodiment
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: of the masculine ideal for what a man is quote
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: unquote supposed to be, especially an American man, has been
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: present throughout cinema history. But also there have been homo
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: erotic undertones present within this genre, but that Broke Back
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: Mountain was one of the first films to bring that
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: homo eroticism to text rather than subtext.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Now, one of the things that's remarkable about how
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: this film is trying to work on its topic of
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: this particular version of white American masculinity in this genre
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 4: of the Western, is that the Western, which paradoxically only
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: becomes a kind of afterculture genre right at the moment
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 4: in which the idea that the Western has about the
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: West has concluded. The American frontier has in a certain
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: sense been enclosed, and so the expansive, utopian sort of
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: idea of it around eighteen ninety to nineteen hundred is
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 4: the demise of actual cowboys as these kinds of sort
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 4: of you know, mythical figures. But then the Western takes
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 4: off many critics, and especially James Hompkins, whose wonderful book
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 4: West of Everything is really worth finding, The Western takes off,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: especially just by coincidence or maybe not, but because cinema
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: is taking off at the exact same moment, and so
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 4: the Western becomes this very kind of American project to
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: in a certain sense keep this narrative going, even though
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: the historical circumstances of the actual West have concluded. The
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: center of that genre is this particular idea of a
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 4: man of a cisgender man. And what makes this person
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 4: the hero that they might be, And it's that thing
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: that you know, we were talking about, you know, earlier,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: what makes him heroic is that he doesn't need language.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: He stands outside of society and he doesn't need human
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: sort of language. And then the second part, and this
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: is where the homo erotics come into it, is but
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 4: at the same time, this fantasy of the American West
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: is populated largely by men, and that sort of women
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: are seen as sort of associated with civilization and all
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: of the kinds of obnoxious encroachments on male freedom. And
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: this comes up again and again in Western films. And
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: so one of the things that's remarkable about Broke Back
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: Mountain is it takes all the pre existing ingredients of
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: the Western and then it tweaks them enough for us
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: to see them in a different light. And it's this
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: thing about you know, on the one hand, you know,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: I'll make the assertion that we want Jack to succeed
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: in a certain sense because there's a certain kind of
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: openness to experience that he has, and he's you know,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: adventurous in a way that Ennis is not. But the
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: real hero in a conventional sense of the Western is
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: ns who doesn't like language and has no use for
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: society and kind of just kind of just does what
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: he wants. And then you know, the irony is it's like,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: is Ennis really any kind of hero? You know? You know,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: he he turns down the new possibility of a shared
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 4: life with someone he seems to care about, which is
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: this idea that Jack has that they'll go off and
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: live together. And so the film puts you in this
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: awkward position of trying to, on the one hand, know
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: that you should identify with Ms as this kind of
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: American hero, and on the other hand see him as
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 4: really really disappointing as any kind of role model for that.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that acting out these masculine tropes really only
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: brings suffering to the history. Yeah, And that where we
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: leave him at the end is just like in the
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: most tortured place, and we don't really know, I mean,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: and we're not meant to know is he ever going
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: to move through or past this? It seems like I mean,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: we'd end with a shirt in the closet, So, you know,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 4: I once had a friend say to me, it's like, well,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 4: you know, Jack is gone, but and it's actually still
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: has something left of his life. And this friend said,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: I have a fantasy that he just gets the hell
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 4: out of there finally and he moves to San Francisco.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: I love that.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 4: I want him, yes, but I do also then when
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: I can double back on something you mentioned earlier, which
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: is that, you know, this sort of erotics between these
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 4: two men is so much about repression, but repression as
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 4: something that produces something else, and the sort of first
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: parting scene when they leave the mountain results and them
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: having this you know, this this fist fight. They attack
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: each other, and there's this idea it's like, do they
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: not know how to you know, embrace or say something
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 4: of mere kindness to each other? And the answer is no,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: they have no language except for for physical you know, violence,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 4: and that you know, the thing about it is that
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: that repression is productive of violence in this particular version
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: of masculinity in a way that you know, what we
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: want to see is that it could be repression could
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: be productive of a new kind of sexuality and a
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 4: new kind of shared life that the film is just
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: kind of glimpsing at that doesn't sort of open the
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 4: possibility to which is the way I think, you know,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: you end up having a heartbroken over and over again
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: by watching this movie.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just they don't have the tools they need
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: to be able to communicate with each other. Another seed
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: that out to me with especially like with regards to
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: how masculinity is. Like I think it's like another scene
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: where Ennis is doing what he thinks is necessary and
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: it causes discomfort. It's the scene where they're at the
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: fireworks at Alma and Ennis bringing the girls to see fireworks.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: There are some drunk guys doing drunk n PC dialogue
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: behind them, being like that guy you know probably it
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: doesn't even like them.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: They're being very wildly misogynistic, and.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: Yes, I mean they're they're being assholes, no doubt about it.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: But Ennis almost provokes a fight with them in front
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: of his family, which clearly is distressing and upsetting to everyone.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: And it's I think just another example of Ennis, you know,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: doing what he thinks quote unquote a masculine Western guy
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: should do. He's doing the cowboys. He's defending his family,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: don't talk about my wife that way, all that stuff.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: He's defending his own masculinity, which we know he is
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: constantly calling into question, but it doesn't produce the victorious
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: moment we're trained to sort of expect from there. It's
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: not like a hero beating down a bully. It's just this.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: It's this tense, uncomfortable moment that Alma doesn't seem particularly
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: happy about. It breaks the kids out, and even Ennis,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: I don't know. This is just my like I guess
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: interpretation of the performance, but even in that moment, it
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: doesn't feel like the character is even sure of what
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: he's doing. It just feels like, this, this is what
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: I'm supposed to do. And that's you know, at the
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: core of so much of NS. His behavior is like
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: performing masculinity because he thinks that that's what he's supposed
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: to do and that it's what will keep him and
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: his family safe, even though it is just a corrosive force.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: And we learn why that is from the flashback with
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: his dad.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd love to talk about the cultural impact of
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: the movie, especially at the time and the media landscape,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: and just like the cultural landscape that this came out in,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: because I mean, this movie is largely considered a pretty
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: pivotal moment in queer cinema in the sense that it
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: centers a queer love story that entered the mainstream. It
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: was critically acclaimed, and it was a huge box office success.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: There were not a lot of examples of a movie
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: that fit those criteria prior to Brokeback Mountain, and so
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: it paved the way for more representation of queer characters
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: and queer love stories on screen. It started to normalize
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: that as a narrative vehicle, at least stories that feature white,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: CIS queer characters. But yeah, I just I you know,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: the general cultural landscape at the time in two thousand
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: and five, I mean, this was in the middle of
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: George W. Bush's presidency, where like homophobia was part of
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: his platform, This was an era where in the media
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: mostly queer representation was obscenely homophobic jokes in raunchy comedies.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: The best you might get would be a trophy character
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: like you know, a gay best friend or you know,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: the hairdresser or something like that in a film, very
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: stereotypical roles, and society at large was just like was
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: very homophobic, and so this movie coming out and being
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: the success that it was, like represents a cultural shift
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: or you know, kind of a turning point. But also
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: there was a lot of conservative backlash to this movie.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: There was a lot of jokes made at this movie's expense.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: Many of them were extremely not tasteful and were punching down.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: And Heath Ledger, I mean to the point where Heath
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: Ledger there's like an anecdote that resurvices about him every
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: so often that he refused to appear on any like
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: awards broadcast during the promotion cycle for this movie that
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: featured homophobic jokes. He like would not appear. I mean,
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: he I think refused to present at the two thousand
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: and six Oscars for this reason because he caught win
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: that there was going to be a homophobic joke at
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: broke Back's expense in the opening. So yeah, you know,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: shout out to him there. But it's again like this,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: even when there was this massive moment for queer cinema
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: breaking into the mainstream, the movie and its fans then
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: had to deal with how America always spoke about queer
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: people after that, and with you know, it's like relatively
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: little pushback, which is why that heat Ledger anecdote stands
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: out well.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: I think in terms of the you know, the sort
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 4: of sense of the impact of the film, both in
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 4: the moment of its appearance and then kind of in
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: the long life that it's had, you know, twenty years later. Well,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: one of the things I become ever more sort of
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 4: aware of is that the sort of culture of cinema
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: in the past two decades has changed so much inasmuch
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 4: as we live in such a mosaic media environment now
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 4: that the idea of a big movie like this kind
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 4: of grabbing the attention of lots of people simultaneously, you know,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: seems almost impossible. I say almost because then I think
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 4: about something like Barbie, which is whole other podcast episode, but.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: It's much less common than like monoculture doesn't exist anymore.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: Really, No, that's right, And so you know, it's hard
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: to in a certain sense remind ourselves that you know
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: that this was in a cinema culture of you know,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: going to the cinem This is where you know, you
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 4: had to wait six months before something came out on
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 4: DVD in order to do a home viewing, and you
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: know that there was an event of going to see
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: a movie like this at the theater, and then you know,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: word of mouth built, and then there became this kind
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: of endless kind of you know, and I do say,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think it built out a more nuanced
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: popular audience's ability to talk about a film like this
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 4: without immediately just resorting to homophobic tropes. I mean, those
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 4: are available, but I think that it also opened up
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: a lot of people's sort of imagination to sort of say,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 4: this is a really interesting film. It doesn't hand me
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 4: the tools just simply you know, insult these people, especially
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 4: these two men, which I think, you know, really means
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 4: a lot in its moment. And then the other thing
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: is that you know, you'd mentioned that, you know, it
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 4: was nominated but didn't win, in this case, the Academy
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: Award for Picture that year. Crash one Crash has not
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 4: gone on to have anywhere near those the sort of
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 4: monument mental stature that Broke Back Mountain has, I mean,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 4: not at.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: All sub zero. I feel like it's honestly most famous
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: for the fact that it like could have stole so
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: many you know, oscars from superior movies.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I attribute that to basically and I'll be
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 4: a little bit mean spirited here, but basically kind of
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 4: go to the kind of the white male liberal politics
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: in the Academy was basically sort of like more invested
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 4: in idea of race politics that were available in Crash
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 4: than they were in the more nuanced and subtle and
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 4: actually radical politic that a film like Broke Back Mountain,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 4: which offers ambiguity and subtlety and you know, all of
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 4: this complexity that I think have only more so built
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: Broke Back Mountain's sense of importance in the kind of
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 4: cinematic culture.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: No, we definitely needed the movie that was written and
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: directed by a since canceled scientologist that was that was
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: the movie that should have So it's so wild to
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: look that gud.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, But you know, there's a funny thing about this
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 4: film that really is always fascinating me, which is that
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 4: in China and the PRC, Broke Back Mountain came out
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 4: at the moment in which the gray market cinema sort
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: of economy was developing around book like copies of non
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 4: Chinese films come back disc on the DVD, and this
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 4: was a hugely important film in China for the distribution
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 4: illegal because the government prohibited it because of its perceived
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 4: on tolerance of dissident sexualities. But that reports and I
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 4: trust them largely because some of my students from China said,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 4: oh yeah, like my mom love Broke Back Mountain and
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 4: we had a copy of it, you know, at home.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 4: That because you could buy these things in you know,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 4: like I say, the gray market economy, and that part
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: of the appeal of Broke Back Mountain is that it
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 4: is literally a global piece of filmmaking in as much
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: as audiences in lots of different places that I still
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 4: don't know enough about did things with in order to
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 4: sort of embrace this film. And it's, like I say,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 4: it's interesting ambiguity and complexity, and what my sense of
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: the kind of one of the reading formations along Chinese
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: audiences was that the film is an allegory about conformism
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 4: and individuality, and that it's about asking what price does
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 4: a person pay in order not to have a life
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 4: that they want to lead credit in independence, and that
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 4: this sort of resonates very strongly with audiences in that context.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: And I love that that sense of yeah, this is
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 4: a subtle work of art that can handle a lot
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 4: of sort of multiple interpretations and never resolve them in
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 4: a way that Let's be honest, I don't think Crash
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: really holds up that well.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: No, I haven't seen it, but I can't imagine it.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: You don't need to, Okay, Okay, it doesn't seem worth
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: worth the squeeze I I was. I also, I didn't
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: do enough of a deep dive on it. But I
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: think that yeah, Onlee's connection to the material and how
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: this was received because only is Taiwanese. He has said
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: many times that even though you know, he's made movies
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 3: that take place in England and in this case, I mean,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: it's hard to find a more white American working class
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: setting than where we are, but that all of his
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: movies are connected to Taiwan and to who he is,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: and that is how he chooses the stories that he adapts.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 3: I would be curious to hear how Hulk ties in there,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: But that's not the conversation for today. But but that
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: when when he you know, won an Oscar, that the
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: way that even on Li has talked about in China
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: is very particular and heavily censored. Where he was celebrated
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: in China for being like like, look at this Oscar
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: winning director, with the caveat that all references to both
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: Taiwan and Queerness were removed from his acceptance speech. I
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: don't know how long of an acceptance speech that leaves
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: you with. I think it just sort of leaves you
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: with a sentence but thank you bye, right, hello, and
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: it's a lovely speech. But I wanted to mention that
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: as well, that you know, Onley has had a really
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: fascinating life and career that we don't really have the
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: bandwith to talk about in its entirety in this episode.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: But the international reception of this movie is not just
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: in connection to the theme, but in connection to the director.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, whate thing. I'll also say I can just add
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 4: on in terms of this topic of the genre of itself,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 4: is that one of the brilliant things that Onley did
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 4: not only him, but he recruited a great cinematographer, on
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 4: Diego on piare Troll to photograph this film, and that
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 4: one of the things that you know, it's so fascinating
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 4: about this movie is that it is usually ravishing in
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 4: terms of its sense of the American weft. You know,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 4: there's this way you know that's been talked about, is
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 4: that the landscape is one of the characters in the movie,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 4: and the landscape is in that face of in the
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 4: in the context of the lack of language among the
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 4: sort of you know, human actors, that the world is
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 4: expressing something about what's going on. You know, it has
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 4: this kind of presence, and that the Pietro photographs these
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 4: in a sort of lush I mean, they're just magnificent.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 4: You just you want to sort of stop the image
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 4: of the like, you know, just look at it in
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 4: terms of its beauty. And that he does this in
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 4: multiple layers of both distance photography and the opening shot
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 4: across them towards the mountain range kind of this sort
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: of you know, place of longing and yearning that we'll
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 4: learn about, and then up close when you have these
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 4: beautiful sort of senses of the landscape is the layers
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 4: of trees and green an animals, and that that's really
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 4: necessary in order to not just have this become this
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 4: very claustrophobic domestic drama, but really why these characters want
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 4: to go to, you know, the natural world is to
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 4: escape this enclosure inside you know, those households that do
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 4: feel very very enclosed. And then there's trope of especially
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 4: Ennu's like looking out of windows trying to find his escape,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 4: you know, to to those vistas. That's really important. And
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 4: I think if if that hadn't been achieved in this film,
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 4: in terms of that sense of the visual presence of
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: the landscape as an expression of something about the erotic,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 4: I don't think the film would have been quite as
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 4: sort of a thing that it does. That it turned into.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: It's so beautiful. I love how he uses like I
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: don't know, it's hard to think of a movie that
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: more like intentionally uses distance and close like. It's just
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: it's gorgeous. And as with a lot of great movies
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: about America, it is shot in Canada, which I always
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: find delightful. You're just like that, right as far as
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: movies are concerned, New York is Vancouver, Wyoming is Alberta.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: Don't worry about it.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: Does anyone have any other thoughts about the film?
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 4: The last thing I'll say, in terms of just shout
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 4: outs for all you know the talent involved, is that
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 4: this also does this very you know, it takes a
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 4: budget to do this in any kind of filmmaking anymore.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 4: Which is it has its scored, It has this gorgeous
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 4: score that wants actually you know, the Guestago Santo Alalo
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 4: score which won many awards. Rightly so, because part of
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 4: this thing that we're describing in terms of this just
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 4: you know, emotional intensity is because of that lack of
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 4: lack of language that you know we've been talking about
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 4: gets articulated musically, and that that score is basically booming,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 4: you know, with these emotions at these moments of heartbreak
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 4: or rapture. And again, much like the Piatro cinematography, you know,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 4: if you were to take that score away, it'd be
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 4: a really interesting experiment to kind of go emotionally what
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 4: happens to this film? What happens to this story?
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, and that we've talked about this so many times
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: on this show. But this is yet another example of
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: the film industry in Hollywood specifically insisting that there isn't
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: an audience for this movie because it's about marginalized people.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: And how many I mean this add this to the
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: list of examples that has wildly proven this wrong. God,
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, how many this movie made its budget back
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: like fifteen times or something like that. And we hear
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: that every time there's a movie that is too centered
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: around women too, centered around people of color. I mean,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 3: that's the whole story around the production of Black Panther
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 3: and so many other movies that are extremely successful and
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: well regarded. And it's because these are movies that actually
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: got you know, reasonable budgets and marketing campaigns. It's the
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: you know, you don't need us to tell you. If
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 3: you're listening to the show, you probably agree, but that
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 3: it's so infrequent that movies that center marginalized people in
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: any way receive the support that they deserve. And when
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: they do receive that support, and sometimes when they don't,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 3: they find their audience because the audience is very much there, and.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: Even when they do extremely well at the box office,
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: like Broke Back Mountain did, Hollywood will still be like
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: that was a fluke, that was an accident. We can't
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: make any movies like that.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 4: Again, it always seems to be an anomaly, right, Who
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: know that this might at sixteen? Right? I think?
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: Well, even speaking to your point with Barbie Matthew, it's
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 3: like the takeaway from there is we need to make
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: more movies around toy is not that people are interested
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 3: in a diverse cast of women, right right, right?
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: I mean also worth noting that after the accolades that
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: Broke Back Mountain received, the next queer centered story to
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: receive a major Academy award was in twenty seventeen, when
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: Moonlight won for Best Picture. So over a decade had
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: passed before and there was any like Academy Award attention
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: for a queer story, And in.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 3: That context, it really even It turns the fake out
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: for Best Picture even more charged. If La La Land
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: was about to once again take the oscar from that's right,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 4: It's like it's like, oh no, another crash moments.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: And thankfully it did not go that way. But oh, Caitlin,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: I remember we were together that night. Never forget where
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 3: you were. Oh my gosh, we were at your friend
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 3: from grad schools apartment.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: What a night that was, truly.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 3: Anyways, and you know, does Moonlight win without the success
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: of Broke Back Mountain proving that queer stories you deserve
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 3: the backing of studios, I don't know. It seems like
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 3: Broke Back Mountain definitely has a massive place in the
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 3: history of American core cinema. Yeah, and that's a I think.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 3: You know, Onley unquestionably has made a gorgeous movie here,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: And I did notice this is the first time I'd
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 3: really gotten into the production history. How many queer directors
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 3: almost directed this movie and then didn't. And well, nothing
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: takes anything away from angle. I think that that is
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: kind of a shame that there were at least two
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: very famous queer directors who really wanted to make this
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 3: movie and were not able to get to the finish
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: line with it.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, does this movie pass the Bechdel test? I
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: don't say no.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 4: I don't think there's a scene in which two women
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 4: talk to each.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: Other, thinks So I think that this is rectified by
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: Grayson Frankie eventually, Grayce and Frankie is about Alma and
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: Loreene moving in together in a world war, Jack and
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 3: Ennis get together and then they form a beautiful, fun family.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, But similar to the discussion that was happening around
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: Fire Ireland a few years ago, the Bechdel test is
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: not It's not relevant here, and it doesn't need to
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: be applied to every movie, especially when it's a movie
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: that's doing so much else.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 3: Well, and I think it kind of to some degree,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 3: and only our dear friend Alison Bechdel could tell us
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 3: for sure. But to say that this movie is any
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 3: less wonderful because it doesn't pass the Bechdel Test flies
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 3: in the face of the part of the Bechdel Test
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: that people are less aware of, which is that it
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 3: began as a commentary on how there is no queer
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: representation in movies. So it's I think, kind of antithetical.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: You know, it doesn't pass the mainstream version, but I
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 3: think in some senses, you know, spiritually, it holds true
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: to the reason that the joke existed in the first place,
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 3: which is that there was almost never queer characters that
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: were actually canonically queer on screen.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: So, right, you could interpret the Bechdel test as is
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: there explicit queer representation on screen totally of characters that
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: we don't have to ship together, in which case, yes,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: Broke Back Mountain does pass the Bechdel test.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: Which, by the way, again I'm going to start doing
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 3: this on the show, like if you do a cursory.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, the amount of fan fiction written about Jack
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: and Ennis is just overwhelming, overwhelming, to the point where
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: I think at one point Annie Poole a little grumpily
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: was like, people need to stop writing to me about
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 3: what they think should have happened, okayo, fair enough, but
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: also evil love it of evil one, you know, I
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: think it's beautiful.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: And then that brings us to our nipple scale, where
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: we rate the movie on a scale of zero to
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: five nipples. Examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, it
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 2: is tough. But because the movie examines masculinity in the
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: prison therein and its effect on people, and the repression
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: that it leads to and the torment that that repression
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: leads to, and the fact that it was a significant
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: milestone in queer cinema. Is it a perfect film, Perhaps not,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: but it did do so much to pave the way
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: for more inclusive and just more representation in general. Does
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: it focus on CIS white characters, Yes, but that wouldn't
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: be as much of an issue if there were plenty
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: of other movies that centered a diverse array of identities
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: within the queer community. But even today, there aren't that
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: many options, and certainly not in mainstream cinema. You really
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: have to dig for them usually. But because of the
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: cultural impact this movie did have on queer cinema and
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: American cinema in general, I'll give it.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: Like three and a half or four nipples.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: Does that sound nuts to your decision? That's so true
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: your decision. I'm gonna do three and a half. I'll
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: give them to I'll distribute them between only the screenwriters
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: and any proul.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I'll go. I'll go three and a
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 3: half or four. I can't really decide, and so I'm
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: going to not to decide. But I think, you know,
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: speaking to your point, Klyn, that the frustrations that I
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 3: totally understand people may have with this movie, I think
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 3: aren't necessarily criticisms of them, or to me, aren't criticisms
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 3: as much of the movie as of what Hollywood is
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 3: willing to finance and elevate versus what it is. Not sure,
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 3: I think that this story, I appreciate that it is
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 3: very it seems very intentionally written. Where, when and who
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 3: it's about. Going back to the original short story, that
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 3: this movie is entrenched in the white working class masculinity
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 3: of this place and this time that is not incidental
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: to the story, and that Annie Poole is commenting on it,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 3: and I think to some extent the movie is commenting
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 3: on it pretty extensively, less so on whiteness. We are
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 3: sort of presented with a white actor void, I think,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 3: as we are in many movies, but most of these
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 3: elements are pretty thoroughly commented on. I think that especially
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 3: in the moment that this movie was released, the fact
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 3: that it was as difficult as it was to get
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 3: a movie with a queer couple at its center released,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 3: it almost feels like the movie how I hope I'm
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: articulating this correctly, that often when seeing marginalized identity represented,
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 3: it's starting at almost the most easy difficulty level to
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 3: do so, which is having famous white actors do it
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 3: and almost ideally prove that these are stories that people
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 3: are eager to hear.
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: It's like a proof of concept almost, which sucks because
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: it's again this is a criticism of Hollywood, of like
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: that we're so often told, well, there's no interest in
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: anything except action movies starring.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 3: White CIS guys, right, like overgeneralizing there, but that any
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 3: marginalized story has such a significant barrier to even being
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 3: produced or seen that I think that that is why
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 3: we often see famous CIS, white straight actors at the
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: center of stories, and that ideally they're used as a
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 3: successful template for more diverse stories to be told. I'm
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 3: not saying that that is necessarily what happens, but I
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 3: do sort of see Broke Back as a building block
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 3: in more diverse queer cinema going mainstream in the years
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 3: that followed. I hope that makes sense. Yeah, totally outside
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: of I think, yeah, incredible in its cultural impact, and
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 3: it's just a beautiful movie. It's so, so, so beautiful,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 3: and I think for two thousand and five for a
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 3: movie to be so faithfully adapted and also expanded on,
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 3: I love the ways that the movie expands on the
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 3: source material really skillfully. Yeah, really beautifully in a way
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 3: that I think works great for our show because it
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 3: a lot of it expands on giving the women more
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 3: interiority and sympathy.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 7: Then there's like a space for in the original story.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: So I just it is beautiful. I guess I'm gonna
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: I'm going to go three point seventy five because I'm
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 3: feeling indecisive, and I will I will distribute it between
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 3: on Leigh Larry McMurtrie, Diana Osana, and Annie Proul.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: Matthew, how about you.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think in terms of getting it, you know,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 4: some kind of assessment around it being intersectionally, you know,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 4: having an intersectional feminism. I think what I would say
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 4: is it's it comes at it kind of sideways in
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 4: terms of having a kind of feminist critique that relates
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 4: to other kinds of ideas. And we've talked about, you know,
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 4: in terms of how it's racialized without sort of announcing
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 4: that that's what it's working on. It has a class
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 4: politics without necessarily announcing that that that's what it's you know,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 4: working on. And you know, there's this there's this way
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 4: that I think about it in terms of an intersectional feminism,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 4: which is that one of the things I think is
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 4: interesting about the film is that it's historical. It says,
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 4: you know, nineteen sixty three to whatever nineteen sixty aid,
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 4: but it's not nostalgic at all or any of that.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 4: And that that's one of the centerpieces of a lot
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 4: of what I will call sort of reactionary popular culture.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 4: It's always like a you know, because that's part of
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 4: the current conservative political formation, starting with Reaganism, that you know,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 4: in the present moment with trump Ism, it's let's go
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 4: back to the past when it was better. This film
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 4: does not do that at all, day right, And so
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 4: part of it's what I would say sort of relationship
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 4: to feminism is that, especially in relation to the women characters,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 4: that second wave feminism is literally just about to sort
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 4: of emerged as a public discourse in nineteen sixty three,
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 4: and it's so needed. It's sort of the film's not nostalgia.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 4: It's about the constraints around these women and the fact
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 4: that a feminist political project that's about to emerge, and
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 4: you know, with understandings that it's largely a white middle
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 4: class of feminism and in the first iteration of the
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 4: second wave, but that nevertheless that you know that it's
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 4: about thinking about new kinds of possibilities for the lives
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 4: of women, and that you know, the pathos of just
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 4: takes a you know, Alma's situation is that she is
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 4: left high and dry by some sort of disappearing on
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 4: their marriage, and that you know, she has to take
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 4: the initiative and basically sort of like figure out what's
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 4: going to happen next because he he won't and that
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 4: you know, in the utopian world, it would be like
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 4: sort of like why must Alma be reliant on anyone
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 4: to have the life that she would like to have
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 4: to lead or Loreen. For that matter, she does rely
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 4: on her father, who's you know, no role model of patriarchy,
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 4: you know in you know particular you know fight at
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 4: Thanksgiving God. So I think you know, yes, I'm with you.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 4: I'd say around three nipples would allow me to sort
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 4: of say, I think that it's sort of inadvertent feminism
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 4: still is a kind of intersectional feminism of sorts.
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 2: Totally easly, Matthew, thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 2: This has been such a wonderful conversation.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 4: Truly, Oh my pleasure. This has been a lot of fun.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: Come back anytime, Yeah, truly, Yeah, bring another favorite.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 4: Well, if you haven't talked about Grey Gardens, I'm always
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 4: up for that. I have.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 3: Somehow done that yet, So please come back.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 4: Sure, and I can do a plug in fact in
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 4: regards to that, which is that a new edition of
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 4: the Greg Gardens book has just come out from the
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 4: British Film Institute. They asked me to update it. The
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 4: first version came out in twenty twelve and they're doing
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 4: a reissue of some of their top titles and so
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 4: they asked me if I would revise it, and so
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 4: I did. And largely what I do is put the
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 4: new version that just came out in the context of
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 4: drag culture and thinking about Grey Gardens, Is this like
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 4: having this presence film in sort of drag performativity now,
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 4: which it didn't as much in twenty twelve?
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: Sure?
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, please come back for Grey Gardens. That would
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 3: be a blast.
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 4: Yes, please, I would love that anytime.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 3: Wonderful.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 2: Is there anything else you'd like to plug in addition
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: to note that's it?
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, just look for Grey Gardens and it has a
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 4: beautiful new cover of the I mean covers. Yeah, what's
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 4: the big deal. When the first version came out it
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 4: was okay, And then for the re issue they said,
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 4: would you like redesign? If you go google it, you
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 4: can see the beautiful and elegant vision with little Edie
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 4: on the cover. And I think it's much more loving
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 4: and respectful of her than the first edition was.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 3: I remember the first edition clear, yeah, vividly. Oh this
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 3: is wonderful.
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: And let this be a lesson that sometimes you can
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: judge a book by its cover.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 3: People do, whether whether we like it or not. Unfortunately, Yeah,
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 3: oh this is so wonderful. Thank you so much again
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 3: for joining us, Matthew, my pleasure.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: You can support us by joining our Patreon aka Matreon.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: It's five dollars a month that gets you access to
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: two bonus episodes every single month, plus access to the
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: back catalog of over two hundred bonus episodes, all for
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: five dollars a month at patreon dot com slash Bechdel
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 2: Cast and with that, shall we It's.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 3: Always hard to do a send off in a movie
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 3: that ends tragically.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we just have to say we quit
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 4: each other?
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 3: And ye, shall we quit this?
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: I wish I could quit this episode.
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 3: By bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia,
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 3: hosted and produced by Me Jamie Loftus and.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: Me Caitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: Lichtermann and.
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 7: Edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever heard of them? That's me
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 7: and our logo and merch and all of our artwork
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 7: in fact are designed by Jamie Loftis, Ever heard of her?
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 3: Oh my God? And our theme song, by the way,
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 3: was composed by Mike Kaplan.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 3: Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 3: Aristotle Ascevero.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 2: For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree Slash
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: Bechdel Cast