Brokeback Mountain

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For the article about the short story, see Brokeback Mountain (short story)

2005 film

Brokeback Mountain

Directed by	Ang Lee
Written by	Annie Proulx Diana Ossana Larry McMurtry
Produced by	Diana Ossana James Schamus
Starring	Heath Ledger Jake Gyllenhaal Anne Hathaway Michelle Williams Linda Cardellini Anna Faris Randy Quaid
Music by	Gustavo Santaolalla
Distributed by	Focus Features
Release dates	December 9 2005 (North America)
Running time	134 min.
Language	English
Budget	$14,000,000 (estimated)

Brokeback Mountain is a widely acclaimed Academy Award, BAFTA, and Golden Globe-winning film directed by Ang Lee. The 2005 film stars Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Michelle Williams, and Randy Quaid. The drama depicts a sexual, romantic, and emotional relationship between two men in the American West from 1963 to 1983. The film led the nominations with eight categories at the 78th Academy Awards and was widely seen as a frontrunner for Best Picture , but was ultimately upset by Crash. The film won three Oscars, including Best Director.

The screenplay by Diana Ossana and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry was adapted from the short story Brokeback Mountain, written by U.S. novelist Annie Proulx, also a Pulitzer Prize-winner.

Tagline: Love is a Force of Nature

Plot

Brokeback Mountain is the story of Ennis del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal), two young men who meet and fall in love in 1963 while on a sheepherding job on the titular mountain, somewhere in Wyoming. The film documents their meeting and the complex relationship over the years that follow.

Template:Spoiler The two men, not yet twenty, get to know each other during brief periods at their main camp on Brokeback Mountain, gradually revealing details about their upbringing and outlooks. Ennis, at first the camp tender, soon switches jobs with Jack, riding out daily to where the sheep are pastured. One night, after the two share a bottle of whiskey, he stays at the main camp, sleeping next to the campfire while Jack sleeps in the tent. The fire dies and Jack orders the shivering Ennis into the tent. After a while he takes Ennis' hand, and after brief resistance from the reserved and cautious Ennis, the men couple passionately. For the remainder of the brief summer their sexual and emotional relationship deepens.

After the two part ways at the end of their job, Ennis marries his fiancée, Alma Beers (Williams) and starts a family. Jack moves to Texas where he meets Lureen Newsome (Hathaway), whom he subsequently marries.

Four years later, Ennis receives a postcard from Jack saying that he will soon be in town and hopes Ennis will want to see him again. The two men reunite and find their passion is as strong as ever. Jack broaches the subject of creating a life together operating a small ranch. Ennis, haunted by a childhood memory of the torture and murder of a gay man in his hometown, fears that such an arrangement can only end in tragedy. He is also unwilling to leave his family. Unable to be open about their relationship, Ennis and Jack settle for infrequent meetings on camping trips in the mountains.

As the years pass, Ennis's marriage deteriorates. Alma eventually divorces him and takes custody of their children. Jack hopes that Ennis's divorce will allow them to live together at last, but Ennis refuses to move away from his daughters. In scenes of their occasional trips together, Jack's expresses frustration over Ennis' refusal to consider a life together. As the two prepare to part at the end of one trip, the frustrations and fears lead to angry confrontation. Jack admits to visiting Mexico (where Ennis knows men can find homosexual prostitutes) and Ennis threatens him. "What I don't know," he says, "all them things I don't know could get you killed if I should come to know them."

Jack responds with equal anger over their situation: "We could a had a good life together, a fuckin real good life. You wouldn't do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain," he says, and then utters the words that sum up his longing and frustration: "I wish I knew how to quit you."

Several months after that last meeting, Ennis learns that Jack has died when a postcard Ennis sent to him is returned, stamped "deceased". In a strained telephone conversation, Jack's wife Lureen tells Ennis that Jack died in an accident. As she explains, a brief scene of Jack being brutally murdered illustrates Ennis's fears that Jack's death was not accidental. Lureen tells Ennis that Jack wished to have his ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain, and suggests contacting his parents.

Ennis visits Jack's parents and offers to take Jack's ashes to Brokeback Mountain. Jack's father refuses, insisting that Jack's remains be buried in the family plot. Jack's mother is more welcoming, and invites Ennis to go upstairs to Jack's boyhood bedroom. There, Ennis discovers two old shirts hidden in the back of the closet. The bloodstained shirts, with Jack's enclosing Ennis' shirt on the same hanger, are the ones the two men were wearing on their last day on Brokeback Mountain in 1963.

At the end of the movie, Ennis opens his own closet to reveal that he has hung the two shirts, this time with his surrounding Jack's, inside the door with a postcard of Brokeback Mountain. With tears in his eyes, Ennis mutters, "Jack, I swear..." before he closes the closet door.

Template:Endspoiler

Filming locations

The film was shot primarily in Alberta, Canada. Ang Lee usually shoots his films in the exact locations in which they are set (another notable exception was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, in which the scenes set in the Wudangshan monastery were actually filmed at another Taoist monastery), but he decided that Alberta would be an ideal place to shoot Brokeback Mountain because of its lush landscapes broadly similar to those in Wyoming, the lower production costs in Canada, and the willingness of the Alberta Film Development Corporation, an instrumentality of the Alberta provincial crown, to assist with funding.

The movie was filmed during the summer of 2004.

File:Brokebackmountainjakegyllenhaal.jpg

Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist.

Commercial success

Brokeback Mountain cost about U.S.$14 million to produce, excluding its advertising budget. According to interviews with the filmmakers, Focus Features was able to recoup its production costs early on by selling overseas rights to the film.

The film saw limited release in the United States on December 9, 2005 (in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco), taking $547,425 in five theaters its first weekend. This was the highest per-showing average for any drama in film history.

Over the Christmas weekend, it posted the highest per theater gross of any movie and was considered a box office success not only in urban centers such as New York City and Los Angeles, but also in suburban theaters near Portland, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, and Atlanta. On January 6, 2006, the movie expanded into 483 theaters, and, on January 13, 2006 Focus Features, the movie's distributor, opened Brokeback in nearly 700 North American cinemas as part of its ongoing expansion strategy for the movie. On January 20, the film opened in 1,194 theaters in North America; it opened in 1,652 theaters on January 27 and in 2,089 theaters on February 3, its widest release.

As of April 16, 2006, Brokeback Mountain has grossed over $83 million in North America and $89.2 million elsewhere, adding up to a worldwide theatrical gross of more than $172.2 million It is already the top-grossing release of Focus Features . It ranks fifth among the highest-grossing westerns and eighth among the highest-grossing romantic dramas (1980-Present).

The film was released in London, UK on December 30, 2005 in only one cinema, and was widely released in UK on January 6, 2006. On January 11, Time Out London magazine reported that Brokeback was the number one movie in the city, a position it held for three weeks.

The movie was released in France on January 18, 2006 in 155 cinemas (expanding into 258 cinemas in the second week and into 290 in the third week). In its first week of release, Brokeback Mountain was in third place at the French box office, with 277,000 people viewing the movie, or an average of 1,787 people by cinema per week, the highest such figure for any film in France that week. One month later, it reached more than one million viewers (more than 1,250,000 on March 18th), with still 168 cinemas (in the 10th week). Released in Italy on January 20, the film grossed more than 890,000 euros in only three days, and was the fourth highest-grossing film in the country in its first week of release. In the second week, in 224 theatres, the film's gross increased to €1,986,000, and is at €4,626,271 for its fifth week (second only to Match Point at its sixth week).

Brokeback Mountain was released in Australia on January 26, 2006 where it landed in fourth place at the box office and earned an average per-screen gross three times higher than its nearest competitor during its first weekend, despite being released in only 48 cinemas nationwide. Most Australian critics praised the film. Brokeback was released in many other countries during the first three months of 2006 . The film was released in Peru and in the Netherlands on 16 February, and opened in Germany on 9 March. It premiered in Brazil on February 3 and quickly topped the charts with over 100,000 viewers. The movie was released in India on March 10.

For its first week of release, Brokeback is the first at the Hong Kong's box-office, with more than US$350,000 (nearly $17,000 per cinema).

Brokeback Mountain was the highest-grossing movie in the U.S. from Tuesday, January 17 through Thursday, January 19, 2006, perhaps due primarily to its wins at the Golden Globes on January 16. Indeed, the movie was one of the top five highest-grossing films in the U.S. every day from January 17 until January 28, including over the weekend (when more people go to the movies and big-budget films usually crowd out independent films from the top-grossing list) of January 20-22. On Saturday, January 28, the movie fell out of the top five and into sixth place at the box office during that weekend before entering the top five again on Monday, January 30, and remaining there until Friday, February 10.

Critical reception

Professional film critics have heaped praise on Brokeback Mountain. The film won four Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture-Drama, and was nominated for seven, leading all other films in the 2005 awards. It has won the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, as well as the title Best Picture from the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Dallas Fort Worth Film Critics Association, the Florida Film Critics Circle, the Las Vegas Film Critics Society, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics Circle, the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the Utah Film Critics Society, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (the BAFTAs).

Brokeback Mountain was given two thumbs up by Ebert & Roeper, the former granting a four-star review in the Chicago Sun-Times. Currently, the film holds an 86% rating of "Certified Fresh" from 208 reviews on RottenTomatoes.com and received 'circumspect' positive reviews from the Catholic News Service and Christianity Today. Conservative movie critic Michael Medved gave the film three and a half stars, stating that while the movie's "agenda" is blatant, it is an artistic work. He did not, however, place the film on his year end top 10 list.

Most gay and lesbian cultural commentators have praised the film, although a few critics, such as David Ehrenstein, believe that the film's cultural impact is being overplayed at the expense of other groundbreaking films and the challenges that openly gay and lesbian actors still face. A few other gay commentators have written disapprovingly about the fact that, in what has been widely hailed as a "breakthrough" film for gay cinema, neither the film's two lead actors, nor its director, nor its screenwriters are gay.

The film significance is attributed to its portrayal of a same-sex relationship without any reference to the history of the civil rights movement . This emphasizes the tragic love story aspect, which leads many commentators to effectively compare Ennis and Jack's drama to classic and modern romances like Romeo and Juliet or Titanic, often using the term star-crossed lovers. . This link to classic romances is no coincidence: the poster for the film was inspired by that of James Cameron's Titanic, after Ang Lee's collaborator James Schamus looked at the posters of "the 50 most romantic movies ever made".

When Ledger and Gyllenhaal were asked about any fear of being cast in such controversial roles, Ledger responded that he was not afraid of the role, but rather he was concerned that he would not be mature enough as an actor to do the story justice. Gyllenhaal has stated that he is extremely proud of the movie and his role, regardless of what the reactions would be. Although he has repeatedly stated being heterosexual, he regards rumours of his bisexuality as flattering. Both have stated that the sex scenes in the beginning were difficult to do. Lee found the first scene difficult to film and has stated he has great respect for the two main actors for their "courage."

On January 3, 2006, Focus Features' parent company, Universal, announced that Brokeback Mountain was the most honored film of 2005. The independent website criticstop10.net backed that assertion, reporting that Brokeback Mountain was the most frequently-selected movie on reviewers' year-end "Top Ten" lists of 2005.

On March 9, 2006 Brokeback Mountain made headlines yet again when a press release was sent out to over 400 media outlets announcing that nearly $26,000 had been raised for an ad to be posted in the Daily Variety on March 10, 2006. This $26,000 had been raised by just over 600 fans through an online donations site, affiliated with a non-studio-sponsored online forum devoted to the film. The story was quickly picked up by several outlets including Yahoo!, The Advocate , and the New York Times . The ad served as a simple show of fan support despite its losing the Best Picture Oscar, and is probably the first time that fans have sponsored the running of such an ad. This Daily Variety issue is already sold out and it's impossible to order as a back issue.

Controversy

Roman Catholic Church

The warm review by the Catholic News Service caused a controversy in itself when it labeled the movie "L" for "appropriate for limited adult audiences". A few days after the original post praising the film, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting changed the rating to "O" for "morally offensive," in part due to the reaction of conservative Catholic organizations, such as LifeSite. On December 29, 2005 the review was completely removed and replaced with a review that praised the film and its actors as "superb" but also stated that the homosexual relationship the film portrays went against Catholic teachings. Nevertheless, the review stated, "the universal themes of love and loss ring true."

Utah theater cancellation

On January 6, 2006, Utah Jazz owner and Latter-day Saint Larry H. Miller pulled the film from his Jordan Commons entertainment complex in Sandy, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. The decision was made at the last minute after entering into a contract to show the film and heavily advertising for it. He reneged on his obligations approximately two hours before the first scheduled showing upon learning that the plot concerned a same-sex romance. Miller stated that the film got away from "traditional families," something he called "very dangerous." Focus Features has threatened to sue him and announced it will no longer do business with him. In a statement the company added, "You can't do business with people who break their word."

Former School of Brokeback actress rejects her

The former school of actress Michelle Williams, Santa Fe Christian School in San Diego, has shunned Williams as a result of her participation in the movie. Even though she did not play a controversial character, her former headmaster feels that they don't wish to be associated with the film. "We don't want to have anything to do with her in relation to that movie," said the school's headmaster, Jim Hopson. '"Michelle doesn't represent the values of this institution. Brokeback Mountain basically promotes a lifestyle we don't promote."'

Fox News

Several political pundits on Fox News, including commentators Bill O'Reilly, John Gibson, and Cal Thomas, accused Hollywood of pushing an agenda and told their viewers that the Christian-themed Chronicles of Narnia had more merit for "Best Picture of the Year." On December 23, 2005, the network reported that Brokeback Mountain was facing "Brokeback Burnout," citing as evidence a fall in revenues from Sunday, December 18, 2005, to Monday, as well as subsequent falls during the week. Others have pointed out that nearly every movie faces declining business during the transition from weekend to weekdays. O'Reilly has persisted in his criticism, bringing up the movie as a subject of intense criticism on over nine different occasions thus far on his cable show, and a half dozen times on his radio program saying, "I have nothing against the subject matter. The point is that these newspapers use entertainment to push political agendas. They do it all the time, it's indoctrination. I'll predict the movie will get a lot of awards, but will not do big box office outside of the big cities." Fox News columnist Priest Jonathan Morris has referred to the movie as "propaganda" that "glorifies homosexuality".

Gene Shalit and The Today Show

The film critic for the U.S. morning show The Today Show, Gene Shalit, called Gyllenhaal's character, Jack Twist, a "sexual predator" who "tracks Ennis down and coaxes him into sporadic trysts." This triggered complaints, particularly from gay media watchdog group GLAAD, which argued that Shalit's characterization of the character would be akin to calling Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Titanic a sexual predator for his romantic pursuit of the character played by Kate Winslet. Shalit later apologized.

In a letter to GLAAD, Shalit's son Peter, who is gay, said "He may have had an unpopular opinion of a movie that is important to the gay community, but he defamed no one, and he is not a homophobe." He went on to say that GLAAD had defamed his father by "falsely accusing him of a repellent form of bigotry."

U.S. social conservatives

Several Christian fundamentalist groups, such as Concerned Women for America and Focus on the Family, lambasted the film without viewing it and before it was released. Following wins by Brokeback Mountain, Capote, and Transamerica at the 2006 Golden Globes, Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, a Concerned Women for America Senior Fellow, cited these films as examples of how "the media elites are proving that their pet projects are more important than profit" and suggested that they were not popular enough to merit so much critical acclaim .

Some anti-gay groups have explicitly dissuaded their supporters from protesting the movie, in an attempt to avoid additional publicity for it.

Criticism of marketing

Some commentators have voiced concerns about the coverage of the movie's homosexual theme in the mass media both in advertising and in public events, such as press conferences and award ceremonies. Several journalists, including New York Daily News writer Wayman Wong, Dave Cullen , and Daniel Mendelsohn , have complained that the movie's director, lead actors, and publicity team all avoided using the word "gay" to describe the story, and pointed out that the movie trailer does not show the two male leads kissing each other but does include a clip from a heterosexual love scene.

Middle Eastern release

Homosexuality remains a serious crime in most Middle Eastern nations and remains a taboo subject even in the few nations where it is legal. Hence, the film has been shown in Turkey, with a condition that audience members must be older than 18. However, the film was officially banned in the United Arab Emirates, and while the film is expected to be played in select theatres in Lebanon, it is unclear how much of the film will be censored before its public release. Israel, the only country in the Middle East where homosexuals are protected under anti-discrimination laws, has allowed the film to be shown.

Quaid lawsuit

On March 23, 2006, actor Randy Quaid, who had a small role as Joe Aguirre (Ennis and Jack's boss), filed a lawsuit against Focus Features (LLC), Del Mar Productions (LLC), James Schamus, David Linde, and Does 1-10 (i.e. "John Doe" and "Jane Doe") alleging that they all intentionally and negligently misrepresented Brokeback Mountain as being, "a low-budget, art house film with no prospect of making any money," in order to secure Quaid's professional acting services at below-market rates. The film has since grossed over $160 million as of the date of his lawsuit. He is suing for $10 million plus punitive damages.

Animal cruelty

The Humane Society has raised concerns that animals were treated improperly during the filming of Brokeback Mountain. A specific concern was that the sheep were handled roughly and that an animal was made to appear as if it had been shot "on cue", suggesting further that the animal was anesthetized for this purpose, violating standard guidelines for animal-handling in the movie industry.

Post-Academy Awards reaction

Some critics who had lauded the Academy for its recognition of Brokeback Mountain subsequently accused its members of being unfair and homophobic for naming Crash Best Picture:

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: In the privacy of the voting booth, as many political candidates who’ve led in polls only to lose elections have found out, people are free to act out the unspoken fears and unconscious prejudices that they would never breathe to another soul, or, likely, acknowledge to themselves. And at least this year, that acting out doomed Brokeback Mountain.
Nikki Finke, Los Angeles Weekly: I knew there was a chance that, even without seeing the movie, Oscar voters could feel guilt-tripped or succumb to a herd mentality to vote for the 'gay-cowboy' movie and strike a blow against Republican wedge politics and extremist religious hatemongering. But they didn’t, and Brokeback lost for all the Right’s reasons.
Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Sunday's selection of Crash over Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture was the first time in memory that fear seemed to be the guiding impulse for awarding Oscar's top prize. Faced with the choice between a feel-good movie about the evils of racism and a troublesome film that challenged prejudices about homosexual love, Academy voters grabbed their security blankets and started sucking on their thumbs.

Supporting the charge of homophobia were media reports that some older, influential members of the Academy were so opposed to the subject matter of the film that they refused to even view Brokeback Mountain before voting. The articles specifically mentioned Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine as being part of this anti-Brokeback group.

Proulx has also blamed right-wing influences for the film's failure to win Best Picture: "The people connected with Brokeback Mountain, including me, hoped that, having been nominated for eight Academy Awards, it would get Best Picture as it had at the funny, lively Independent Spirit Awards. We should have known conservative heffalump Academy voters would have rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture. Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good. And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the Academy voters with DVD copies of Trash — excuse me — Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline. Next year we can look to the awards for controversial themes on the punishment of adulterers with a branding iron in the shape of the letter A, runaway slaves, and the debate over free silver."

By contrast, Roger Ebert defended the selection of Crash as Best Picture in a post-Oscar editorial: "It is noticeable how many writers on 'Hollywood's homophobia' were able to sidestep Capote, which was a hard subject to miss, being right there on the same list of best picture nominees. Were supporters of Brokeback homophobic in championing the cowboys over what Oscarcast host Jon Stewart called the "effete New York intellectual"? Of course not. Brokeback Mountain was simply a better movie than Capote. And Crash was better than Brokeback Mountain, although they were both among the best films of the year. That is a matter of opinion. But I was not 'discomfited' by Brokeback Mountain. ... I chose Crash as the best film of the year not because it promoted one agenda and not another, but because it was a better film."

Trivia

File:Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal.jpg

Gyllenhaal and Hathaway as Jack Twist and Lureen Newsome.

The film is one of several highly acclaimed LGBT-related movies of 2005 to be nominated for critical awards, others being: Breakfast on Pluto, Capote, and Transamerica. It is also the second LGBT work for director Ang Lee, his first being The Wedding Banquet.
Filmmakers Gus Van Sant and Joel Schumacher, who are both gay, considered directing Brokeback Mountain before Ang Lee (who is heterosexual) signed on to the project.
During filming Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger began dating and conceived their first child.
During filming it was reported Ledger almost broke Gyllenhaal's nose during a kissing scene, as the scene required that they pull each other close very quickly.
It has been reported that several major actors declined to audition for the film because of its frank depiction of a strong and sexual relationship between two men.
The quote by Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Jack Twist, "I wish I knew how to quit you," has become a catch phrase from this movie.
According to news reports, the film has been banned from theaters in mainland China, where censors still consider homosexual relationships to be a taboo topic. . Brokeback Mountain is, however, playing in Lee's native Taiwan and opened in Hong Kong on February 23 2006.
The shirts that Ennis finds hanging one inside the other in Jack's closet sold on eBay on February 21, 2006, for over $100,000. The buyer, a collector of movie memorabilia, called the shirts “the ruby slippers of our time,” and intends never to separate them. The proceeds will benefit California children's charity Variety , which has long been associated with the movie industry.
There are more than 30 spoofs and parodies of Brokeback Mountain making the rounds on the internet. The widespread viewing of the clips brought mainstream attention to re-cut trailers.
The film also gave rise to the slang expression "brokeback" when describing someone who is gay. .
The work "brokeback" is now being used as an adjective to describe something of questionable masculinity.
Although there are minor differences between the original short story and the movie, Proulx stated in an extra essay published in a reprint of her "Brokeback Mountain" short stories compilation that she was positively surprised and impressed how Ang Lee, the scriptwriters and the actors were able to portray the story, calling it even an improvement from her original short story. She also said that Ledger was "exactly" as she'd envisioned Ennis, but Gyllenhaal was something altogether different, although she loved the way he played it.
This film is the first to be released as a download-to-own via the Internet.
The film has inspired residents of the state of Vermont to name a mountain in their state "Brokeback". The petition required to name a location has many more signatures than are required. The state librarian's office has said that the hardest part of the process will most likely be finding a mountain that is not already named.
Brokeback mountain has been parodied in many shows and movies, including Mind of Mencia, South Park, The Benchwarmers and Scary Movie 4.

Awards

Main article: Brokeback Mountain awards

Some of the most significant awards and nominations for Brokeback Mountain are listed below.

Notable awards

78th Academy Awards: Best Director - Ang Lee, Best Adapted Screenplay (Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana), Best Original Score - (Gustavo Santaolalla)
59th BAFTA Awards: Best Film, Best Supporting Actor (Jake Gyllenhaal), Best Director (Ang Lee), Best Adapted Screenplay (Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana)
Directors Guild of America Awards: Director of the Year Award - Theatrical Motion Picture (Ang Lee)
European Film Awards: Best Director (Ang Lee)
GLAAD Media Awards: Outstanding Film - Wide Release
63rd Golden Globe Awards Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Director - Motion Picture (Ang Lee), Best Screenplay (Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana), Best Song (Gustavo Santaolalla and Bernie Taupin, "A Love That Will Never Grow Old")
Independent Spirit Awards: Best Picture, Best Director (Ang Lee)
Producer's Guild Awards: Producer of the Year Award - Theatrical Motion Picture
62nd Venice International Film Festival: "Golden Lion" for Best Film
Writers Guild of America Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay (Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana)

Notable nominations

78th Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Heath Ledger), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Jake Gyllenhaal), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Michelle Williams), Best Cinematography (Rodrigo Prieto)
59th BAFTA Awards: Best Actor (Heath Ledger), Best Supporting Actress (Michelle Williams), Best Cinematography (Rodrigo Prieto), Best Score (Gustavo Santaolalla), Best Editing (Geraldine Peroni and Dylan Tichenor)
European Film Awards: Screen International Award (Ang Lee)
63rd Golden Globe Awards: Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama (Heath Ledger), Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture (Michelle Williams), Best Original Score
Independent Spirit Awards: Best Male Lead (Heath Ledger), Best Supporting Female (Michelle Williams)
Screen Actors Guild: Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role (Heath Ledger), Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role (Jake Gyllenhaal), Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Michelle Williams), Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

DVD release

File:Brokeback Mountain dvd.jpg

DVD cover

The DVD was released in the United States on April 4, 2006 and sold over 1.4 million copies on its first day of release.. Though the ranking fluctuates daily, by late March and early April 2006 Brokeback Mountain had been the #1 selling DVD on Amazon.com several days running . The Region 2 DVD is set to be released on April 24, 2006.

Footnotes

IMDB ratings as of April 17, 2006
"Lee's Brokeback leads Oscar race". BBC News. 2006-01-31. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Box Office Mojo (2006). "Brokeback Mountain." Retrieved Mar. 5, 2006.
Ben Katner (2006). "Brokeback Mountain." TV Guide, Feb. 27, 2006.
Box Office Mojo, "Brokeback Mountain". Retrieved Mar. 26, 2006.
Box Office Mojo. "2006 Studio Market Share: Focus Features." Retrieved Mar. 9, 2006.
Box Office Mojo. "Genres\: Western." Retrieved Mar. 12, 2006.
Box Office Mojo. "Genres\: Romantic Drama." Retrieved Mar. 12, 2006.

External links

Reviews

News articles

The Brokeback Mountain Oscar Snub
Why Crash won, why Brokeback lost and how the Academy chose to play it safe. (Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2006)
Will Crash go down as one of the worst Best Picture winners ever? (MSNBC)
DGA Makes Brokeback Director Ang Lee Official Odds-On Favorite for Oscar
An interview with Heath Ledger on the film
Author Annie Proulx discusses the origins of her Brokeback Mountain (Associated Press, December 15, 2005)
'Gay cowboy movie' a cultural sensation (San Jose Mercury News, December 16, 2005)
'It's very brave of them' - A gay radio host's critical look at the press surrounding the making and showing of the film (The Advocate, December 13, 2005)
"Chick-Flick Cowboys" - Article on Brokeback's success in mainstream America. (Newsweek.com, January 20, 2006)
"A Picture of Two Americas in Brokeback Mountain" - (Washington Post February 2, 2006)
"An Affair to Remember" - analysis of the short story and movie. (The New York Review of Books, February 2006)
Brokeback Hillock: Is Brokeback Mountain completely over-rated?
Cowboy Controversy: The battle over Oscar front-runner Brokeback Mountain - (Rolling Stone, February 10, 2006)
Brokeback wives find solace in cowboy tearjerker: Oscar film helps women cope with gay husbands - (The Scotsman, March 12, 2006)
Lee: Brokeback Wasn't Meant As Statement- (Washington Post, March 8, 2006)
Blood on the red carpet: Annie Proulx on how her Brokeback Oscar hopes were dashed by Crash- (The Guardian, March 11, 2006)
Why Crash conquered the Mountain - (Chicago Tribune, March 12, 2006)
Bisexual Cowboys in Love: Brokeback Mountain and the Bi-Tragedy Genre (American Sexuality Magazine)
Vermonter starts petition to name Mountain "Brokeback"

Preceded byThe Aviator	Golden Globe for Best Picture - Drama 2005	Succeeded byTo be determined
Preceded byThe Aviator	BAFTA Award for Best Film 2005	Succeeded byTo be determined

v t e Films directed by Ang Lee
Pushing Hands (1992) The Wedding Banquet (1993) Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) Sense and Sensibility (1995) The Ice Storm (1997) Ride with the Devil (1999) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) Hulk (2003) Brokeback Mountain (2005) Lust, Caution (2007) Taking Woodstock (2009) Life of Pi (2012) Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016) Gemini Man (2019)

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