Here's the link to the original, wonderful, Entertainment Weekly, October 25, 2007 article with a couple of key excerpts. Please go read the whole thing at your leisure:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20153963,00.htmlIn the weeks before the 78th annual Academy Awards, Brokeback Mountain producer Diana Ossana already suspected what few outside Hollywood could imagine: Her film was going to lose the Best Picture race. ''Several people told me they knew a lot of Academy voters who just refused to see the film,'' says Ossana, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Larry McMurtry. This tragic love story between two men had dominated the critics' awards and banked $178 million worldwide. It even captivated sellout crowds in states like Oklahoma and Ohio — just not, apparently, in Academy screening rooms. ''What are they afraid of?'' McMurtry asked Ossana. ''It's just a movie.'' But Brokeback was more than a movie. It was a phenomenon that commanded the cultural conversation for months, from Jay Leno to YouTube to the cover of The New Yorker. More important, it proved that straight audiences would snap up tickets to a same-sex romance.
Brokeback could have done the same for gay film. It wasn't just a hit, but the first unabashed gay romance to cross over to mainstream audiences. It also obliterated an ancient Hollywood phobia that playing gay would kill an actor's career. Not only did stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal both score Oscar nominations, but Ledger is playing the Joker in next summer's Batman sequel, The Dark Knight. Gyllenhaal will be starring opposite Tobey Maguire in Brothers. ''It's been extraordinary,'' Gyllenhaal says of life post-Brokeback. ''It has taken me to a different place in my career. Nothing but wonderful, positive things have come out of that experience.''
Even one (Harvey) Milk movie is a step in the right direction, and a hint that Brokeback's achievements did not go entirely unnoticed. ''There's just no way Brokeback didn't break down significant barriers about the way [independent] financiers think,'' London says. ''If there was some sense that gay subject matter doesn't work, we wouldn't be making Milk.'' London — who is, for the record, straight — suspects that if this movie is successful, the industry will realize that there's gold in gay film. ''Maybe Milk will make clear that audiences are way less conservative about this than conventional wisdom holds,'' he says. ''I don't think audiences care as much about distinctions in sexuality as generations did 20 years ago.'' One can only hope. Brokeback's Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar have carried the almost impossible weight of cinema history. It would be nice if they could share the burden.
Here is the letters that ran in the November 23, 2007 issue of Entertainment Weekly in response.
With ''Out of Sight,'' the truth finally comes out: Brokeback Mountain lost the Best Picture Oscar due to Hollywood homophobia.
Ira Gilbert
New York City
Brokeback Mountain received more Oscar nods (eight) than any other movie in 2006. The same electorate gave it three Oscars, including directing and screenplay. (No picture won more that year.) If Academy members were recoiling in distaste from Brokeback, as the article suggests, they picked an odd way of showing it.
Bruce Davis
Executive Director, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Some of the films you mentioned (The Crying Game, Boys Don't Cry, Transamerica) focus on characters who are transgendered, not gay. These are not the same: The former concerns gender identity; the latter, sexual orientation.
Andrew Matzner
Roanoke, Va.
Bruce Davis still doesn't get it. Actually, he and Sid Ganis probably do, but Davis has had to explain this away for 2 years now. It's probably a reflex. Maybe he's due for another round of letters saying we haven't forgotten and history will never forget (since he denied receiving many letters when it actually happened).
I wrote my own letter to Entertainment Weekly indicating my own conversations with my friend Barry, an Academy member of the Art Directors branch, about his witness to a late homophobia-phobia panic by people he knew in the Academy -- irrational fear of what backlash Hollywood might suffer if the Academy awarded BBM Best Picture (which he felt had a lock on the Best Picture award until then), the basic facts as we knows them involving other Academy members like Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine, and general commentary about the different voting rules between the Motional Picture Academy, the Television Academy and Critics, and AMPAS members being able to vote on awards for movies which they haven't seen and in categories for which they have no expertise. I included the analogy involving an American gymnast or figure skater being denied a gold model because of a low score submitted by a judge who hadn't seen the performance or even refused to see it. It probably won't be published, but it feels good just to tell the truth.
In this day and age simply telling the truth and repeating the facts instead of the official spin is a dangerous act, isn't it? In any event, I'm sure Mr. Davis and the Academy would still appreciate your letters as would Entertainment Weekly.
Wouldn't it have been simpler for Bruce Davis, Sid Ganis and the Academy to simply have issued after the result, after the Daily Variety Ad, a statement saying,
"We are appalled that homophobia played even the tiniest role in the Best Picture balloting. If even one vote was influenced by fear and ignorance, that was one vote too many. The fact that a handful of our members went public with their fear and ignorance is appalling. Their views do not reflect the views of the Academy leadership or the Academy as a whole, and we apologize to anyone who may have been offended by the actions of these individuals."Wouldn't that have been easier? Even a statement like that today would still be welcome. Even setting aside the whole debacle of Academy members voting on films they haven't seen and in categories in which they have no expertise (the ignorance part of the fear, hate and ignorance that goes into homophobia), and without debating these rules, a simple statement such as I have outlined would have made the issue go away and put the onus on a handful of Academy members.
If ardent Crash supporters like Oprah had just stated, "I believe Crash was the best film of the year, and I voted for it, and I'm delighted it received the Oscar for Best Picture for I hope more people will now see it. However, I am equally outraged that homophobia played any part in the contest, and certain Academy members who went public with their prejudices should be ashamed of themselves. Homophobia and prejudice is unacceptable whether it is in society or within certain members of the Academy."
Anything simple like that, and the supporters of Crash could have had their cake and eaten it too. The Academy could have moved on. But, like the Academy always does, and guilty-liberals often do (and I am at times a guilty-liberal myself), it is seemingly (mistakenly seemingly) easier to ignore the problem and hope it goes away. I'm sure the Academy never thought people would still talk about the issue, and film historians will be referring to it as a fact for decades.
Some Academy members may have recoiled in distaste, which Bruce Davis implies is the only issue, but others acted cold-bloodedly in what they believed was in Hollywood's and therefore their best interests. The homophobia-phobia that my Art Director and Academy-member friend Barry discussed with me. It was this cold-bloodedness that doomed Citizen Kane and High Noon. It is ironic that the cold-blooded members of the Academy who vote for Ang Lee, but against Brokeback Mountain, to avoid a backlash, ended up with another type of backlash anyway. The Academy snubbing reminds me Clinton's support for"Dont' Ask, Don't Tell" or support for DOMA. Apologists told me Clinton HAD to take those actions to save himself. I still don't believe it. I never expected the so-called American "Family" Association to give Brokeback Mountain an award. When people you think are on your side stab you in the back or throw you under the bus, the tire iron hurts that much more.
Would an official Academy apology now be "too little, too late" now? It's late for sure, but I actually think it might be healing. Of course, admitting the problem might require an actual amends like changing the voting rules. The Academy still hasn't apologized for Citizen Kane and High Noon losing Best Picture because of fear of a backlash. Don't expect an apology for this anytime soon, though one would be welcome by me.
In any event, it is liberating to hear the truth being told even if it cannot change what happened two years ago. Go Dianna. We all know which film was the "best" and we all know why it "lost".
I hope everyone is having a peaceful, merry and happy holiday season.