By now we agree that an opera is no real way to honor the legacies of either Brokeback Mountain or Heath Ledger, but at least an alternative arrived quickly. Or sort of, anyway — and only if you have a spare $1,500 (at least) to "invest": Amid Marilyn Monroe's pencil cup, fishnet stockings and other dustbin diamonds, an auction next week at Bonhams offers up Ledger's director's chair from the Brokeback set, bittersweetly redolent of oak, denim and, we hear, Canada.
Follow the jump for an enlarged photo and all-too-brief description of the year's most macabrely marked-up memorabilia to date.
When America was gripped by an outbreak of Brokeback Mountain spotted fever a few years ago—a rare condition characterized by an onset of involuntary gay-cowboy jokes and acute rose-stemming—more than a few of the afflicted (ourselves included) were visited by visions of high-kicking chorus-boys in a Brokeback musical. Now, reports Variety, our rhinestone-studded delusions are not only coming to pass, but they've even gone one gayer, with the commissioning of Brokeback—The Opera:
New York City Opera has commissioned Charles Wuorinen to compose an opera based on Annie Proulx's short story "Brokeback Mountain," which was adapted into the 2005 film.
Latest by TimGunn: It won't have any good female parts. What's the point of opera without a diva? more »
Our progressive neighbors to the North — they of universal health care and stealthy American media insurgency — may yet cede their place among North America's movie industry vanguard. The Toronto Globe and Mailreports that the country's Conservative leadership wants no part of backing "any film or television show that it deems offensive or not in the public's best interest - even if government agencies have invested in them." Naturally the Canadian left is mortified envisioning a future sans even the tamest of subversive exports. "Would this committee put money into Juno?" asks Toronto lawyer David Zitzerman. "It might not want to encourage teen pregnancy. Would the government put money into a film with a dirty title, like Young People Fucking? Would they invest in something like Brokeback Mountain? They might not want to encourage gay cowboys to have sex together in Alberta." Hollywood studio heads, having long endured the repercussions of Canadian filth from Strange Brew to Paul Haggis, were rumored to vigorously laud the move in a conference call Thursday.
Instruct your assistant to hold all your calls, poor yourself a tumbler of whiskey, and fire up the Bose Wave to ease you into haunting opening strums of Gustavo Santaolalla's "The Wings"—this next one's going to be a little rough. Sources from the New Mexico set of Jake Gyllenhaal's new movie Brotherstell People that the actor is "devastated" since learning of his Brokeback Mountain sharpshooting partner's death:
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We'd like to offer our gratitude to an attentive reader, who pointed us to today's AFP story on a lawsuit Crash director Paul Haggis recently filed against producer Bob Yari, which for one fleeting, poorly fact-checked moment righted one of Hollywood's most egregious wrongs. Even though the wounds inflicted by those heavy hands had long ago healed, briefly revisiting what could have been was still a nice way to begin this Tuesday morning.
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Who could ever forget the final scene of Ang Lee's tragic Brokeback Mountain, in which Heath Ledger's Ennis Del Mar [spoiler alert if you've been meaning to Netflix it!] clutches a shirt belonging to the gay-sheepboy love of his life, as if touching him for the very last time? As shattering as that moment was, however, something called for a coda—perhaps just a brief shot of a smiling Ennis, finally at peace serving daiquiris to vacationing tourists at the Key West bed n' breakfast he opened after Jack Twist's death. We may not have to rely on our imaginations for that kind of closure, however, as OK! Magazine reports that a Brokeback sequel is on the way:
Although we won't be seeing his pal Jake Gyllenhaal, 26, Heath Ledger, 28, is currently in negotiations to reprise his role as Ennis.
Yesterday, a reader threw a good scare into us by pointing out that YouTube superstar Brian Atene, whose too-infrequent video dispatches are the only real Art being produced in the industry today, had yanked all of his previous clips but one, leading us to believe that the gifted, possibly insane monologist might be headed towards a tragically early retirement.
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The Chicago Board of Education is being sued by the family of a 12-year-old girl who claims she was psychologically scarred after a high school substitute teacher screened Ang Lee's award-winning cinematic exploration of forbidden sheepherder love, Brokeback Mountain, for her students:
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Syriana was not exactly a tourism commercial for the United Arab Emirates, unless of course your idea of a vacation is to retrace a girthy, bearded George Clooney's footsteps through a global military-petro-industrial conspiracy. After a four month review, UAE government censors have decided to release the film, minus two minutes of what they consider to be objectionable material. Still, that's nothing compared to the 134-minute edit they made to Brokeback Mountain:
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Life in the big house can be a lonely affair, eased only by the shallow, temporary comforts of the occasional gang rape. Perhaps, then, there is no better audience for Brokeback Mountain's tale of man-on-man yearning than a prison population, who know all too well the pained longing that can often follow a spittle-assisted "claiming" of the new blue-eyed number on the block. Unfortunately, a Massachusetts prison didn't feel the same way, and are disciplining a guard who sought to share the Brokeback experience with his inmates:
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Latest by Bubba Barney: Weren't their only 3 sex scenes? Jake and Heath, Jake and Anne in the car, and Heath and Michelle on the bed? They weren't that explicit. I have seen far worse in indie and foreign films from Netflix. more »
It may be better in the Bahamas, but not if you happen to be a budding island homosexual looking to spend a few hours in a darkened theater, enthralled in a tale of forbidden cowboy love. A Bahamian government decency board has chosen to ban Brokeback Mountain: More »
Now we think we know why Ang Lee called his GLAAD award the only one that "actually means something." All the Academy gives you is a statuette of a bald guy, while the GLAADies send you home with your very own, Oscar-winning bear.
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Randy Quaid's recently filed lawsuit against the producers of Brokeback Mountain has turned a pair of watchful binoculars on how talent is being paid for working in features produced by the so-called "mini-majors"—those arthouse divisions of huge studios such as Focus and Fox Searchlight. The studios claim that the low-budget films wouldn't be made without their casts and crew drastically cutting their asking price, while above-the-line players like Quaid feel they are nickle-and-dimed only to have the studios spend huge amounts on marketing, eventually reaping big distribution fees. The NY Times reports:
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Latest by dith: Oh Please. These actors make plenty of money--most of them have huge bonuses written into their contracts for these smaller movies if they are nominated for awards, so all the money that goes into marketing the film is channeled more »
It was a forgone conclusion that Brokeback Mountain's last go at the awards show rodeo—the GLAAD Media Awards—would rope it its final trophy, what with Brokeback being touted as a monumental turning point in the history of gay acceptance, and these being the awards that celebrate gay acceptance. As predicted, Ang Lee accepted Best Picture, Wide Release at the ceremony in New York last night, easily beating out such other nominated gay-friendly wide releases as Rent and The Family Stone:
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After hearing about Randy Quaid's lawsuit against Brokeback Mountain's producers claiming that the actor's love of independent cinema was taken advantage of to lower his quote and cheat him out of millions, Bat Boy: The Musical co-author Brian Flemming dropped us a note to point out that Quaid once loved indie films so much he wouldn't even joke about the low-budget world at the 1999 Independent Spirit Awards. Says Flemming:
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Defamer
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Our progressive neighbors to the North — they of universal health care and 
After hearing about Randy Quaid's lawsuit against 