Brokeback Mountain with Matthew Tinkcom

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn bast
start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Jamie, I wish I could quit.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
You, Caitlyn, I wish I could. It's the only way.
It feels like. I wish I could quit this podcast.
But that's not even true. That's not even true. I'm
thrilled to say I like my job.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
You know, I love it.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
I don't wish I could quit this podcast or you.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
That's what I meant to say. The other the alternative
was Jamie Twist Jamie Nasty.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Ooh, that is what a beautiful turn of phrase. Every
time I hear it, it really gets me. It hits
Welcome to the Bachdel Cast. My name is Jamie Nasty.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
My name is Caitlyn Nasty. Yeah, doesn't quite roll off
the tongue as much. But this is our show where
we examined movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. Now, Jamie,
what on earth is that?

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Well? It will be an interesting discussion. Today, we use
the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion.
It was originally created by friend of the show guest
of the show, queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who originally wrote
or sort of invented the Bechdel Test sometimes called the
Bechdel Wallace Test in her comics collection Likes to Watch

(01:33):
Out For in the eighties nineteen eighty five, and was
written in the context of we've talked about this recently
how there were so few first not just women in
movies that spoke to each other, but specifically queer women
who spoke to each other. And the joke of the
strip was that the characters would have to ship characters

(01:55):
together because there were so infrequently canonical lesbian couples on screen.
There's now many versions of it. It has sort of
been adapted to a more mainstream, offied version of that.
The version of the test that we use requires that
two characters of a marginalized gender with names speak to
each other about something other than a man for more

(02:15):
than two lines of dialogue. But again, this is a
jumping off point for discussion. Not every movie is going
to pass it, and it really is a case to
case basis if.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Broke Back Mountain doesn't pass the Bechdel test, which who
can say, We'll find out later.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
So I mean it reminds me of so much, Caitlin.
I was wondering if you were thinking about this as well,
or a couple of years ago, I think some bad
faith actors weaponized the Bechdel test for Firegast Fire Island,
and I'm like, get a life, get a life. You
know what you're doing. Anyways, we'll talk about it, but
but yes, that is what it is. And today we

(02:55):
are covering at long last a movie that we have
almost covered so many times, but it was never it
either didn't win a poll or we didn't have quite
the right guest and the stars of a line. We
are covering Broke Back Mountain two thousand and five.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
We sure are, and our guest today is a professor
of Communications in Film at Georgetown University. He's the author
of books like Working Like a Homosexual, Gray Gardens and
Queer Theory and Broke Back Mountain Relevant. Hello, it's Matthew Tinkham.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Welcome, thank you.

Speaker 4 (03:26):
It is really lovely to be here with you talking
about this film. And I already have a sense of
whether I may fit with the Bechdel test or not.
But I think it fails. It fails for really great reasons,
which are the more compelling.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Yes, yes, yes, I mean our listeners know this at
this point. But sometimes I feel like it's like when
people when people lie to Caitlin and I at parties
about having listened to the show, They're like, right, it's
the podcast where you figure out if something is passes
the Bechdel test and therefore it's good or bad. And
you're like, get a library card, and it takes us
to two hours each episode to figure it out. I know,

(04:02):
I was like, what do you think for saying anyways, yes,
if this, I honestly I was so locked in that
I was not particularly paying attention for the Bechtel test
in this particular movie. But we'll talk I mean.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Story of my life, yeah, every episode. But yeah, well
we'll talk about that a little later. For now, Matthew,
tell us about your relationship, your history with Broke Back Mountain.

Speaker 5 (04:28):
Sure, so, a little bit of backstory, literally, which is
that the film Broke Back Mountain is based on a
piece of short fiction by the writer Annie Koole and
the original really short story It's not even a novella,
was published in nineteen ninety seven in the New Yorker magazine, and.

Speaker 4 (04:51):
I remember just randomly sort of finding and reading it
and being astonished at what an amazing piece of writing
it was. And Prole was such an interesting figure. She's
the famous, important, you know, novelist, and her attentions have
been lots of places, but this seemed a kind of
an anomalous, fascinating project for her to take on, which

(05:15):
is in kind of really the space of about thirty
pages of writing, he rethinks of the American West and
the American Western in terms of same sex erotics between
these two figures, these two men, and the still More
and Jack Twist, and the story at the time, and

(05:39):
all before the film was even sort of you know,
sort of being developed, really sort of grabbed a lot
of people as at attention, and for a number of reasons,
one of which is they say, was she was rethinking
how to write about the West. She's sometimes identified as
a kind of environmental writer, and then she was aligning
it with you know, the Western and this kind of

(06:03):
you know, my mythological storytelling, especially in American you know,
popular culture around these kinds of heroic figures, the cowboy
in the Western, which was really interesting inasmuch as a
as a you know, straight identified cisgender woman. What's going

(06:25):
on with this project of taking on of all Western
and doing it in this very careful, very sensitive and
loving way, which is not to dismiss or insult these characters,
these white working class men, and to think about a
world in which some kind of uh sort of romantic

(06:50):
and sexual and erotic possibilities sort of are thinkable, and
that what's going on is I think that it's and
this will get to I think our our our topic,
which is, you know, I think it's a feminist project
kind of coming in sideways towards thinking about masculinity and
working class masculinity. And as we'll talk about in a

(07:13):
moment when we get to the film, I mean their
adaptations then that happened in the movie, that sort of
build out from what supplied on the story in the
Cruel's story. So I remember reading it in ninety seven,
and this was when a sort of a particular body
of scholarly, philosophical and political work that we now kind
of call in broader fashion and queer theory was really

(07:37):
a taking off. And so this was when I was
writing my very first book, which was working like a
homosexual and thinking about the larger queerness of American popular
culture than even had been sort of recognized, and that
people like and I discussed for work at length the

(08:00):
Queer Brokeback Mountain book. Eve Sedgwick's sort of just amazingly
important scholarship and writing was really becoming influential. So it
felt as if Andy Prule was kind of doing over
on the literary fiction side something that you Sedgwick was
working over in kind of the literary and philosophical collary side.

(08:23):
So that happened. The story was published in nineteen ninety seven,
and then in the early two thousands, this rumor started circulating,
which is that there's going to be a film adaptation
of it. And as the details unfolded, it got more
and more exciting, which was that the kind we needs,

(08:45):
American filmmaker On Lee had signed up and was actually
really the person who was pushing most most to see
if this could be made into a film, and a
little bit of that sort of knowledge about that on
Lee is one of those directors that never makes the
same kind of movie twice, so you know, he he
did this idea of much like you know, Poule, who

(09:06):
wouldn't be the first person you might identify with the
Western wants to do this project, and it seems like
there are all these question marks over you know, why
and what's his interest. And we'll talk a little bit
later when we unpacked the film in more detail, but
so first it was on Lee, and then when the
cast started to be sort of discussed, the then really

(09:29):
sort of you know, hot emerging figures of Hate Ledger,
John Jake, Kellen Hall, Michelle Williams, and Anne Hathaway for
the sort of four main leads really said this is
this is an important film. This is not just some
kind of niche, little smaller production. And then the kind
of jewel in the crown was going to be that

(09:51):
the film is being adapted by Diana Ausena and Larry McMurtry,
and especially Larry McMurtry so associated with these kind of
colossal pieces of American popular culture about the West and
the big project being a lonesome cowboy, and that in

(10:12):
a certain sense everyone was wondering, what is Larry McMurtry doing,
like basically working on a Western about as it was
then called the Gay Cowboy Story and what's going to happen?
And so there was a lot of excitement around the
possibility of this film being made because the perception was,
and I agree with the perception, there's never been a

(10:33):
film of this budgeting or stature dealing with a Cauer
erodics in the American corporate film, and that it was
getting more and more interesting to think about this possibility.
So when the film came out in two thousand and five,
there was a lot of anticipation, and there was also
a lot of sense of can this thing even work

(10:55):
is going to be is going to be weird? Is
it going to be sanitized? Level of nuance might have
there's a certain brilliance that was attached to it. Then
it turned out to be a really interesting work of
art that took seriously its source material and understood the
stature of what it was trying to do, which was

(11:16):
to try to kind of assert a kind of different
narrative of same sex erotics in the face of probably
the genre that's most difficult and instance that's resistant to
that of the genre being the Western. So I remember
seeing the film and kind of out of the cinema
being astonished, and then seeing it several times just sort of,

(11:40):
you know, wanting to really understand what was going on.
And then because of the film, and the film did,
by the way, extraordinarily well. I mean it was I
think produced for about fifteen million dollars and it earned
a global sort of box office I think one hundred
and eighty million, which just meant this thing was just going, yeah,

(12:04):
like you know, it's a word, you know, this is
this is a success. And what that theme to Harold
at the moment was the idea that Hollywood was now
able to take on her sexualities and not be weird
or squeamish about them. So then just to follow open
the last chapter, is that when I was asked by

(12:24):
an editor named Todd McGowan, who's a faculty member at
the University of Vermont, if I would like to write
a book in a series he was editing. And the
idea of his book was very similar to how you
think about your podcast, which is pick a film and
then find that as the doorway into a particular intellectual

(12:45):
topic or area. And so Todd had asked me if
I wanted to write on queer theory, and to think
about a particular film that I thought that this would
work with, and so I gave it a lot of thoughts,
and I'll oh, I ultimately obviously arrived at broke Back
Mountain as the films to write on. I thought about

(13:05):
some others, and that included, you know, Todd Haynes's film Carol,
the one car Why film in the mood for love.
But Todd's sort of response was, and now I know
he was right, not that I disagreed, was he was like, look,
broke Back Mountain, we'll get people excited in a way
that those other films wonderful as they are, they're they're smaller,

(13:28):
they're they're more niche on kind of perception. Whereas this
thing he won all these awards and won Best Director
for ron Lee, won the Baftub for Best Film, and
that for a reader who wasn't particularly sort of knowing
how to approach it queer theory, the doorway of this
film would be then an tindy imitation and entrance into

(13:49):
thinking about what this body of work of queer theory is.
So that's how the book came out of then that longer.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
History, incredible thank you for outlining all of that, A
rich history, a broke backstory.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
If you wrote nice, nice, thank you, Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Jamie.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
What about you?

Speaker 2 (14:11):
What's your history with this movie?

Speaker 3 (14:13):
Oh gosh, I will be far less articulate and say,
although I had seen this movie once before in college,
I believe is when I first saw it. I didn't see
it when it came out, But I think it was
because I was in seventh grade and this was a
grown up movie, so I was still saying about our

(14:34):
kids movies. But I do remember I read the short
story before I saw the movie. I don't remember why.
I think I just read it because it was at
the library. It must have just been. I used to
be all about the front table at the library, and
so I read a collection, the Collection of Annie Pool
Stories that this the Propac Mountain appears in, which has

(14:58):
the word wyoming in the title. Anyways, she's an incredible writer.
The short story is. I reread it last week and
it's still so beautiful. It is like so overwhelming and inspiring.
How much emotion and story and interiority she fits into
so little space. I have no idea. It's like a

(15:19):
magic trick, but it's really a really beautiful short story.
And then I saw the movie once and it may
be so sad that I didn't return to it for
years because it was making me feel too much. But
I first sat in a film history class, and this

(15:41):
would have been in college in the early twenty tens,
so still fairly new at that time. And yeah, I'm
very excited to talk about it today. I had another thought,
but it has left to me, so leave it at that.
I'm very excited to talk more about it. And it
was really a pleasure to revisit both the Oh. I

(16:03):
was thinking, if either of you remember this. I looked
for this story. I remember very strongly it was a
radio story. Maybe it was this American life story. I'm
not quite sure, but there was a story I heard
years ago about a superfan of Broke Back Mountain who
was a gay man who had read it when it
first came out and then had really like it was

(16:24):
a whole radio story about his history with the short
story and then later the film and just like how
much it had affected him. And I don't know, I
just if anyone remembers hearing that radio story and it
is able to find it. For me, I remember that
story and this particular person's connection to the material almost
as strongly as I remember the story itself. So just

(16:48):
shouting that possible piece of loss media out as well, Caitlyn,
what about you.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
I saw this movie around the time it came out.
I was in college at the time. I don't think
I saw it in theaters, but it would have probably
been within a year of it coming out for the
great Caitlin movie Binge, which I always say was of
two thousand and five, but it really started in two
thousand and four and lasted into like two thousand and

(17:17):
seven eight. So I saw it then and it was like,
I mean, we'll talk about this movie's cultural legacy, of course,
and then culture's response to it when it came out,
but I just remember, in addition to the film itself,
all of the jokes, spoofs, references that were made in

(17:40):
pop culture for years afterward, and so that was just
like a part of the zeitgeist at the time. And
then I rewatched the film and read this short story
for the first time when I was in grad school
because I took a film adaptation class and shout out

(18:00):
to my master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University that
I hate to bring up and never mention, but this
is one of the films that we studied, one of
the adaptations that we read the source material for and
then studied the adaptation, and so I got pretty like
in depth with that from an adaptation standpoint. But then

(18:23):
I hadn't seen it since then. So it's been a
number of years since I've watched the film, and I
was excited to revisit it. I forgot how just wrenching.
The final scene is just cry and crying, crying, But yeah,
I'm excited to discuss it. Yeah, So let's take a

(18:45):
quick break and then we'll come back for the recap,
and we're back, broke back.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
Broke back. Yeah, and if you don't like that joke,
buckle in because it's gonna keep happening.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, unfortunately. So we'll provide a content warning at the
top here for violence against women and anti queer violence.
We meet Ennis del Mar played by Heath Ledger and
Jack Twist played by Jake Gyllenholl. They show up in Signal,

(19:27):
Wyoming looking for work. A sheep rancher named a Geary
played by.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
Rand Jump Scare. Truly, I did not remember him completely
forgot Randy Quaid was in this The Quaid lineage should
be studied, and.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Not by me and not by us.

Speaker 3 (19:46):
Someone should do that, truly.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
So he hires these two men to camp on a
place called broke Back Mountain for the summer to look
after his flock of sheep. Jack and Ennis get acquainted
with each other. They settle into the daily life of
tending to the sheep. They're camping, they're eating beans, They're
dealing with bears and coyotes. Jack has to travel several

(20:14):
miles to the sheep grazing area each day, and after
a while he says, you know, I spend too much
time commuting. We should both sleep here at the camp together. Wink,
and Enis maybe doesn't get the hint, or maybe he
simply ignores it, because he says, oh, I don't mind

(20:36):
switching with you. I'll go off and look after the sheep.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
So they kind of switch rolls.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
After more time, Jack gets Ennis to open up a
little bit because he's a very like stoic, quiet reserved man,
and they start becoming friends. And then one night, Enis
gets too drunk to head back to where the sheep are,
so he has to stay at the campsite, and Jack
offers to let him sleep in the tent with him,

(21:05):
and eventually Ennis agrees, and after a short time, Jack
makes a move. Ennis is taken aback and he pushes
Jack off at first, but after a few moments the
tides turn and they start having sex. The next morning,
Jack tries to be like hey boo, but Ennis leaves

(21:29):
in a hurry. It's awkward. A bit later, they both
deny being queer, and so we're not sure if anything
is going to happen again because Enis makes a reference
to this being sort of like a one off thing.
But then one day Ennis goes into Jack's tent and
they start kissing and snuggling and it's very tender and intimate.

(21:54):
Then one day the boss man a Geary, sees them
in the distance. They're kind of like rough housing with
their shirts off, and he gets the sense of what
is going on between them, and then a short time
later he tells Jack and Ennis to bring the sheep
back down from the mountain a month earlier than they
were expecting. Basically, he's like firing them, but before they go,

(22:17):
Ennis and Jack start sort of like playfully rough housing again,
but then it gets too rough. Perhaps they resent having
to leave each other, and Ennis ends up with a
bloody nose and he bleeds on Jack's shirt and will
put it and maybe his own shirt.

Speaker 4 (22:36):
Is like it.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
There's such a this I forgot what a like master
class on like masculinity. This movie is.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Repression, yes, yeah, yeah, And also Chekhov's shirts will put
a pin in those. He is always talking about that.
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So things get physical. They're punching
each other. The repression is palpable. They're about to part ways,
and it seems like they'll never see each other again.

(23:08):
After Jack leaves, Ennis has a panic attack or you know,
he's vomiting or dry heaving. Clearly he's in emotional turmoil.
We cut to enis getting married to Alma Alma a
character played by Michelle Williams, and then a few years
pass they've had a couple daughters.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
I always love that they have Almah junior. You dont's
see that very often? More shout out.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
More junior girls.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, I liked that.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Then meanwhile Jack goes back to Ageary asking for work.
Ageary says no, the subtext being like, I'm not hiring
you again because I'm homophobic. So then Jack goes to
Texas to try to get some rodeo work, and there
he meets a woman named Loreen played by Anne Hathaway.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
Who I learned auditioned for this movie while on break
from Princess Diaries Too, which I just find delightful. She
came in a ball gown and yeah, it's like, wow,
what a what a story? Yeah, Princess Diaries Too, I'll
say it not the cinematic masterpiece that brother bag Matton is, right, Yeah, Okay.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
So Jack and Loreene get married. Cut to they've had
a baby. So a few years have passed, and in
that time, Ennis and Alma are doing their best to
raise their little girls. They're trying to make ends meet.
But and we'll talk about class as it relates to
this movie, and generally they're struggling and it seems like
their marriage isn't that great. Then, out of the blue,

(24:48):
one day, Ennis gets a postcard from Jack inviting him
to get together with Jack and hang out, and Ennis
lies and tells Alma that they were fishing button ease.
They reunite after four years of not seeing each other.
They make out a little bit right in front of

(25:08):
Ennis's house, which Alma sees, and she's shocked and upset,
but plays it off like everything is fine. Ennis and
Jack spend the night together. Then they go on a
quote unquote fishing trip in which they never actually fish,
but Jack and he'll do this throughout the story, but
he suggests that they try to make a life with

(25:31):
one another. He suggests that they buy and work on
a ranch together, but Ennis doesn't see how that's possible.
He says, we can't abandon our wife and kids, and
if people find out we're together, we might be killed,
And then Ennis tells a story from his childhood to
this effect. We can talk more about that later, but

(25:52):
so the plan becomes for them to meet up every
once in a while in the privacy of the middle
of no where on Brokeback Mountain. Sometime later, Ennis and
Alma get divorced. Jack hears about the divorce and drives
up to Wyoming to see Enis, thinking that maybe this
means they can finally start a life together. Jack is

(26:13):
such a romantic no oh quick, But this is the
one weekend of the month that Enis gets to see
his daughters, so he sends Jack away and Jack is
so disappointed and he's crying on his way back home.
It's again so heart wrenching. He goes to a town
in Mexico by the border to go cruising, and he

(26:34):
picks up a man to be with for the night.
It seems like he does this somewhat regularly. Then it's
Thanksgiving time. We see two separate scenes, one with Jack
and his family and in laws, and then another scene
with Enis, his daughters, Alma and her new husband, and
both scenes are quite tense. We can also talk more

(26:55):
about those later if we would like. And then Ennis
meets a woman named Cassie played by Linda Cardellini. Also
did not remember if he's in this movie now.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
Much less Anna Ferris, David Harbor. Yeah, Kate Mara, you're
just like, so what a cast famous people bit parts
going on?

Speaker 2 (27:16):
So Ns meets Cassie and they start romantically seeing each other,
but he seems to be keeping her at arm's length. Meanwhile,
Jack and Loreene make friends with another couple. This is
the David Harbor and Anna Faris pair, and it seems
like this guy, Randall and Jack something might be happening there.
It seems like Randall is interested in Jack, he suggests

(27:39):
they go camping together. We never fully know what might
transpire there, but there's something happening there. Then we see
a couple more of Ennis and Jack's trips. Again, Jack
longs to see Enis more frequently. He wants to build
a life together. Ennis thinks he's being unrealistic about that
being a possibility. They argue, we get the famous line

(28:02):
of Jack saying, I wish I knew how to quit you.
You know, they're breaking down, crying, and this is a
goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation, to quote the movie again.
Ennis returns home and sometime later he receives a returned
postcard in the mail that he had sent to Jack,

(28:25):
saying that the recipient is deceased. So Ennis calls Jack's
house to see what's going on, and Loreene tells him
that Jack died after a tire changing mishap on the
side of the road, But we see a flashback of
either what really happened or what Ennis speculates might be

(28:47):
what really happened, which is that Jack was beaten to
death by a group of men who presumably found out
that he was queer. Loreene tells Ennis that Jack wanted
his ashes to be spread on his favorite place, broke
Back Mountain. So Ennis goes to Jack's parents to retrieve

(29:07):
the ashes and carry out his dying wishes. After a
tense interaction with Jack's parents, especially his mean old son
of a bitch of a father, Ennis goes into Jack's
childhood bedroom, where he finds those two shirts, one belonging
to Jack and one belonging to Ennis. They're tucked into

(29:30):
each other. Yep. Yeah, the idea being that Jack kept
these as a memento of their relationship, and you're just
like crying, crying, crying. Ennis clutches the shirts. He's fraught
with emotion, and then he returns home. His daughter, Alma
Junior played by Kate Maara. Now she's I think late

(29:52):
teen's early twenties. She pays her dad a visit to
invite him to her wedding, and at first he's like,
a heatero wedding. I don't think I can do that,
but then he's like, it's my daughter, I'll be there.
And then after she leaves, he discovers that she left
her sweater behind accidentally, so he goes to put it

(30:14):
in his closet where we get a reveal that he
has hung up the shirt that he took from Jack's parents' house,
along with a photograph of broke Back Mountain cry the end.
So that's the story. Let's take a quick break and

(30:34):
we'll come back to discuss, and we're broke back and
we're broken after that.

Speaker 3 (30:52):
That was our last break. So you don't need to
hear it again, Okay, there is so so much to
talk about. I get emotional even hearing the plot described
to me, Matthew, is there anywhere that you would like
to jump off guest privilege?

Speaker 4 (31:10):
Well, you know, thank you for that description, and it
always really helps to kind of see the narrative arc
of this thing. And one of the things that's you
remarkable about this film, and I'm interested, you know, in
your experience, Caitlin in terms of, you know, studying in
terms of adaptation from this piece of fiction writing into cinema,
is that a lot of what this film is about

(31:33):
is about language lessness. It's about silences and misunderstanding and
attribution and never clarity. And so one of the things
that is so significant about it and one of the
things I do in the books, I locate sort of
rules locating of it in the early nineteen sixties, right

(31:56):
at this moment in which it seems kind of in hindsight,
we know that there's an incipient new kind of politicization
of sexuality coming, both in terms of second wave feminism
but also in terms of the then what we're called
gay in the lesbian liberatory politics, and that this is
kind of the threshold moment in which what we see

(32:17):
is a world in which there is no language per
se to talk about sexuality and desire and it's effect
on all of these institutions, most importantly the family. And
so you know, the Western, especially as a genre, which
is full of these you know, magnificent landscapes that are
sort of empty of language and can be kind of

(32:39):
builled in right in a way with these figures, but
to themselves, they don't have any way to describe what's
happening to them. And so much of the film's sort
of then drama in folds over the fact that there
are these you know, really sad you know this is
I think you and you've both said it. You know,
it's like this film really just never it's a deep

(33:01):
emotion sort of impact never really dissipates I mean, as
many times as I see the film, I always think
like it's going to get easier, and it doesn't, because
that languagelessness thing is about this kind of ache of
wishing that these characters could find some way of telling
each other what's going on. And that's both between the

(33:23):
two figures of Nice and Jack, but it's also within
their marriages, and that the fact that their marriages are
these frames that sit around sort of their bond with
these two women, Alma and Marine who And this is
one of the things I really respect about of the
films kind of building out of their characters because they're
not huge in the source material, but that they are understood,

(33:47):
even though they had a lot less sort of development
as characters, but they're understood with a great deal of
compassion as to their situation and they are not made
into villains of Jack, and this is desire for each
other in fact, I think, especially you know Alma's confusion
over what is essentially excluding her from any understanding what's

(34:10):
going on with with her husband and the next husband,
and the Michelle Williams character or performance is just really
beautiful in terms of her anger and fear and her
sense of you know. And this is the thing about
the class politics of the movie as well, which is that,
you know, there's this thing about the fact that with

(34:31):
Ennis and her no longer together as a kind of
viable heterosexual couple with children, this jeopardizes her as a woman,
and you know that this is about her livelihood, and
on the one hand, that's you know, about a certain
kind of homophobic sort of inheritance that she probably has
as a woman of that historical moment. But it's also

(34:51):
about the fact that what the film wants to do
in a certain sense depict as this kind of utopian
sexuality of Jack and Ennis up on the mountain, you know,
in social life, puts her and her daughter's you know,
into into financial jeopardy. And I think it's very subtle
and sympathetic you know, around that. But you know, just
to close the point on that this this ache of language,

(35:15):
the sort of loss of language or not having language,
and that the only sort of ever approach that you
see in the film is you know, between Edison and Jack,
the I ain't no queer, I ain't either sort of
you know thing is about the fact that you know,
you really want, like Stonewall, to happen. It's that these
men need, like you know, something to come into their

(35:37):
world for them to be able to describe it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
Absolutely, I thank you for I mean, you have literally
written the book on it. But it's just it's it's
really helpful hearing it framed that way. This was the
first time that in conversation with this movie, I did,
you know, I guess like just research alongside of like,
well what history like, I you know, it's specifically in

(36:01):
Wyoming where they are, where this is such a rural area,
and that how much class figures into this movie in
a way that I feel like isn't as talked about,
but there was a wonderful friend of the show, Matt Boehm,
made a really thoughtful video about that as well of
specifically speaking to your point, Matthew, why this story is

(36:25):
set when it's set and where it's set, which is
all very intentional, where it's like on the cusp of
a step forward for visibility but also still a time
of incredible danger. And that's not to say that that
has changed meaningfully enough, but just to root it in
this specific moment that you just are like so desperate

(36:46):
for something to change, for there to be some cultural
conversation that could just make Ennis feel comfortable in envisioning
a life for himself that he's just so unable to
and and to really sit in. And obviously the Heath
Ledger performance is incredible, like where you really feel not

(37:09):
just how his internalized homophobia is corrosive, but just how
homophobia is corrosive to everyone. Everyone in this story is
touched by it in one way or another, and it's
done so devastatingly but not but still somehow not whacking
you over the head with anything. It's so personal to
every character, right, Yeah, I really was able to appreciate

(37:34):
the historic moment it was set in at this time,
and like part of the tragedy is that they are
so close to possibly being able to envision a different
kind of life together.

Speaker 4 (37:45):
And then Jack is that's right, which is the you
know the one of the distinctions between them as characters
is that Jack can envision something and says this, you know,
talk about you one of the few people in the
film who seems to be you know, bordering onto a
language which to think about a different possibility. You know,
this idea he has like you know, look, we could
we could live together, well, we could both be in

(38:07):
the place together. And you know, he has that sort
of idea, and I think the Gillenhall performance has this
exuberance around it. And then by contrasts and before he died,
you know, Keith Ledger said that one of the things
that on Lee and he talked about was how to
sort of have us as this character. And it's in

(38:29):
Ledger's beautiful performance who like words just like he has
to he can't get them out. He's punched over and
the way the Ledger uses his mouth to have almost
like you know, it's like a struggle. It aches for
him to have to to speak that you know, that
language just doesn't come to him. And that's why, you know,

(38:49):
and this is when I teach the film. I always
ask my students in the conversation. You know, the film
concludes with this assertion from endos you know Jack I swear,
And I asked my students, think, what's the second half
of that sentence that we always wonder, like, what is
it that he is swearing? What is he making a
vow around? And because we know anas we know that

(39:12):
he himself is you know, it could take forever for
him to finally figure out the second half of that
sentence totally. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
Well, I mean, we get the impression throughout the movie
that Ennis is so haunted by an image he saw
as a boy. One of two flashbacks in the movie
both show anti queer violence, where the first one is
Ennis describing something he saw as a boy, something that

(39:42):
his father deliberately showed him as like a cautionary tale,
because he tells his story about how there were two
men who lived together and that everyone in the community,
you know, presumed that they were in a romantic relationship,
and then one of the men was murdered, and Ennis's

(40:04):
father shows Ennis as a I don't know, eight nine
ten year old boy the body of the murdered man,
something that clearly affected him for life, and Ennis even
speculates like, it might have been my dad who murdered
this man. I'm not sure. And we also get the
impression that no justice whatsoever was was done for the victim.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
It's still this was a time in Wyoming specifically, but
also in so many states where it wasn't just that
homophobic hate crimes weren't, you know, explicitly against the law,
but that the law would sometimes encourage them, you know,
by how it wasn't just that gay rights weren't codified,
said anti gay legislation was the state of the law.

(40:52):
So right, So that's the nature of the first flashback,
and it's clear the impact it has had on Na.
It has led to repression. It has led him to
believe that if he and Jack live the life together
that Jack wants them to live, one or both of
them will probably be killed. And then the second flashback

(41:14):
we get is of either the real event of what
happened or Ennis's speculation of what might have happened regarding
Jack's death, which might have been another homophobic hate crime.
Either way, Jack dies, which means Ennis will never see
him again and any future that they might have had

(41:35):
together no longer exists. And so the movie ends in tragedy.
And that got me thinking about queer cinema of the
time and then even in years that follow and how
so much of it ends in tragedy. And I was
thinking about how it seems like a hetero mainstream audience

(41:55):
tends to be more comfortable with queer love stories that
do end in tragedy than not. Because again, this was
such a hugely successful film both box office and critical.
We've shifted away from that a bit, but I couldn't
help but think about that.

Speaker 4 (42:12):
Yeah, that's a really important question for this film in
terms of the implications of it. You know, we could
come at it from you know, a couple of directions,
one of which we need to say. What it's trying
to describe is the sort of deep suffering of sort
of queer people, you know, like queer phobic society, and

(42:34):
that you know, there are no miraculous or heroic outcomes
in the face of such monumental violence and exclusion. So
in a certain sense, it tells the truth about that
historical sort of moment. And on the flip side, does
you know, does the film in a certain sense? I
don't necessarily agree with his reading, but I respect it

(42:55):
sort of in a certain sense, and join with a
long tradition of pathetic queer people who all what Lee,
never can have any kind of sort of life. You
know that, you know, it's like adult they all die
or kill themselves kind of, you know, frame everyone's doomed exactly.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
I guess I wonder well, I'm curious what you think, Matthia,
because we've recently also covered I mean, We've covered a
lot of queer cinema on the show over the years,
but it is like this clear pattern of it's It's
not even something that I hold against the movie specifically.
I think it more is just as an industry, like
the film industry, tends to elevate and promote and award

(43:36):
tragic stories versus stories that center queer joy or even
just has queer characters that doesn't end in abject tragedy,
like we just covered Desert Hearts, a movie that definitely,
you know, it's also rooted in the past, addresses all
of the homophobic elements that existed in that moment in time,

(43:56):
but doesn't end in abject tragedy, is made by and
written by a queer woman. And these are both tremendously
great movies as far as I'm concerned, But one movie
gets the mainstream approval, and it's the one that is
more centered on tragedy. So I don't view Yeah, I
agree with you, I don't view it as a fault

(44:18):
of Broke Back Mountain. I think it's just more the
pattern of what gets uplifted and sort of put into
mainstream cannon and why a movie like Desert Heart sort
of remains more obscure. I guess I don't know.

Speaker 4 (44:32):
Yeah, well this gets at the heart of you know
what you know. Earlier I was describing as the anticipation
of the film coming out in two thousand and five
and leading up to, you know, its appearance, was an
excitement over the idea that you know, a large scale,
well funded, sort you know, with star and mass appeal

(44:53):
film was now possible. And then in a certain sense
of kind of all moments or say, but does it
applicate the pattern of the pathetic queer you get again,
only with maybe a bigger budget and more stories, you know,
star power, And then you kind of ask yourself as like, oh,
is that a progressive politics or is that just you know,

(45:13):
the same one with like, you know, more movie stars.
And then a sort of larger framing historical issue around
is that the American corporate film just doesn't have a
great track record of any kind of you know, queer
positive sort of long term you know practice, and that
we can we can love the film work back Mountain
and sort of say it's nuanced and subtle and his

(45:34):
complexity in all the ways that it does, and then
kind of go, but it's like one movie you know
that happens on a very rare occasion, and this seems
to be, you know, in a certain sense, a larger
indictment of the what i'll call the conservatism of the
American corporate film.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
Absolutely, it did not seem like this was an easy
movie to not I mean, first of all, just make
much less make well where this was my first time
sort of digging more into the production history that I'd
love to talk about with both of you. Matt Boma
also talks about this in his video, and also I

(46:11):
think he was in high school or college when the
film came out, and sort of his experience of being
frustrated with the film's popularity and also feeling quite defensive
of it, especially when I think most famously it was
you know, Crash one Best Picture over Broke Back Mountain,
which I think now everyone can say makes absolutely no sense,

(46:35):
and even at the time most people were like, this
feels homophobic for Crash to be winning an oscar like this, Like,
if you've seen it, it has no it barely has
a right to exist as far as I've concerned. But
in any case, just to get a little bit into
the production history of this movie, there is so much,

(46:57):
so everyone feel free to jump in. But this started
with Diana O'sana reading the story and immediately saying like,
I want to adapt this. I want this to be
a film. Annie Poole, who I think, like many great
short story writers, is somewhat prickly, was like, it can't
be a movie. Sorry, just like, girl, take the check.

(47:19):
But you know, she has her dignity and I respect
her for that. But in terms of and we've talked
about this quite a bit, when it comes to any
marginalized identity being represented in a Hollywood film, really that
there is so much internal pushback. There is a pressure
to change material. There are actors who are quote unquote

(47:41):
not comfortable portraying a queer character. Oh yeah, in as
few words as possible. I mean. Gus Van Sant was
on board to direct this movie for some time and
encountered enough frustration and pushback that he ended up leaving
the project and ended up making Milk, which is a
movie I have not seen actually, but would be an

(48:05):
interesting discussion. I hate Sean Penn. I don't know what
do we do with that.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
It's complicated.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
But anyways, just going through the list of actors, all
of whom are still famous and working, who were considered
or approached for the roles of Jack and Ennis, and
how many, many many of them were quote unquote not
comfortable or just responded in an overtly homophobic way to
the suggestion. I think the most famous examples are Matt Damon,

(48:33):
who said, Gus, he's saying this is when Gus van
Sant was still the attached director. He said, Gus, I
did a gay movie referencing the talented mister Ripley than
a cowboy movie all the pretty horses. I can't follow
it up with a gay cowboy movie. Really awesome response.
There was also Mark Wahlberg who one as well, it

(48:56):
feels almost absurd to approach in this context, but they tried.
He have course responded in the way that Mark Wahlberg
would respond. He said he was quote creeped out unquote
by the script, which again Mark Wahlberg wouldn't know a
good script if it like you know, so anyways, that
it took some time to find, uh, I mean, the

(49:17):
right writer found the material almost immediately. But in terms
of building the rest of the team in a way
that was respectful and reverent of the material took quite
a long time, and it had everything to do and
I feel like as a direct may of the homophobia
of the time for sure.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah, And as you pointed out, Jamie Gus van Sandt
eventually like abandoned the project because he had such a
hard time casting it. So he dropped out. And then
other directors were approached, including queer directors like Jewel Schumacher
and Pedro Almodovar. Schmacher Broke Back Mountain would have been

(49:59):
the mountain have had nipples like what would have happened
in dul Schumacher Broke Back.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
Well, I don't know. Three amazing I mean, including only
three amazing directors, three wildly different versions of this story.
You'll beginning absolutely, I.

Speaker 4 (50:13):
Didn't didn't know about Pedro alma Jovar. I mean, that's
just kind of mind boggling to contemplate the It's almost like,
you know, because you know, he's a famous director of women, right,
so it would have been maybe emphasis would have been
if it's my version of the Almodovar Broke Back Mountain,
it's all Alman Loreene and then the two.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
Men background, right, so and only ends up taking the
role who I we've covered one other only. I mean,
obviously I've seen a lot of his movies, but I
think the only other only movie we've covered on the
show is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I believe so. Yeah,
but he had directed movies with queer characters before in

(50:53):
the Wedding Banquet, but it is kind of a fascinating
run of movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hulk, Broke Back Mountain.
That is range sense of sensibility, sentence, sensibility before that, yes,
but going from Hulk to Broke Back Mountain is kind
of incredible, right.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Well, he was kind of he was in the middle
of debating retiring from the film industry. He's like, I
made a few movies that were exhausting, and I want
to quit. And he had been approached to direct Broke
Back Mountain, and initially he was like, I'm so tired.
But then he reconsidered and he decided to give it

(51:34):
a go, and he tried to get financing, which was,
as you can imagine, a struggle at first. People were
not interested in financing a film like this typically, But
then he eventually met a producer who had a partnership
with Focused Features and they stepped in to finance the
film and Onley was attached as a director. There were

(51:59):
more castings, but then Heath Ledger and Jake Jillenhall were
both really enthusiastic about the script and their characters, and
they were cast. Obviously, it has been criticized the casting
of two straight actors to portray these characters, and that
is fair. That was far more common at the time.

(52:23):
We have seen more of a shift in casting queer
actors to play queer characters, but for a very long time,
it was the standard to cast SIS had actors to
play queer characters.

Speaker 3 (52:37):
It was pretty normalized up until like even in the
last when did Carol come out? I mean that was
the last time I remember really seeing that conversation, and
I know we discussed it when we talked about Carol
and the show years ago.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
Yeah, I think there are some examples even after that,
especially of SIS actors playing trans characters, because that was
a conversation that was still being regularly had up and
till like the late twenty tens, maybe even into the
twenty twenties. Yeah. And then the last thing I want
to say about the like you know, production and development

(53:10):
and casting and stuff like that was the marketing of
this film. I don't know much about it, but the
one thing that I did make note of is that
the poster for this film was heavily influenced by Titanic
nineteen ninety seven. And then when you do a side
by side comparison, you're like, oh.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
That's actually so true. Wow, Wow, two tragic love stories.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Yep, wow.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
I didn't know that. And now once you see it,
you cannot unsee it.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
You simply cannot. I'd love to go back to talking
about the wives. Yes, Matthew, you you talk about this
in your book, about how Alma and Loreene's labor make
it possible for their husbands to go off on all
of these fishing trips, and how their labor is pretty

(54:04):
wildly underappreciated by their husbands. Again, I forgot how much
class and labor plays into this story, as does some
misogyny of the characters. I'm thinking about a scene where
Enis is supposed to be taking care of his two
small daughters, but he drops them off at Alma's workplace

(54:27):
at the grocery store while she is working because he
has to tend to something with his job and He's like, well,
my thing is more important. So woman, you take care
of the children even though you're working. Also, I have
to go do my work. That scene really struck me.

(54:47):
There's another scene where Ennis and Alma are screaming at
each other because she had agreed to pick up another
shift at work because they need the money because he's
always running off to go on fishing trips, and Enis
is furious. He wants her to stay home and serve dinner,
but she defiantly leaves, saying like, I need to work

(55:07):
to help support this family. So just a few moments
that I didn't really clock the first time I watched
this movie. And then also, I think the first time
I watched this movie, I remember thinking, I confess that
I viewed Alma not as a villain necessarily, but as
an obstacle or kind of like a foil to Ennis

(55:30):
and Jack's relationship. I was sort of like, leave him alone,
let him be in love with Jack. Twist, because there's
that scene where she confronts him after Thanksgiving dinner. She
says like, you know, I thought you were going fishing,
but then you never brought back any fish. And then
I looked in your fishing box and all the equipment

(55:50):
had never been used, and then he reacts with violence
because she has clocked the situation accurately. I remember thinking
at the time, I was like, oh, like, she's a
foil to this relationship. Watching it this time around, I
was way more empathetic to her character because all she's

(56:12):
asking for is like honesty and transparency in their marriage,
which she had done throughout, which she was never able
to get. So I'm like, oh, of course, Like I
absolutely understand her frustration, but then you also understand why
Ennis is withholding information. Yes, he is cheating on her
in a monogamous relationship, but he can't be honest about

(56:35):
his sexuality in a time and place such as this,
or at least there's great risk associated with him being
honest about it. But either way, I was way more
empathetic to Almah's circumstances on this watch.

Speaker 4 (56:51):
Yeah, I think you know, one of the things that
you know it has to be sort of seen as
implied but not explicitly are articulate them in the film,
you know, sort of works in subtle ways in this
regard is that classes in here, and there's very sort
of you know, important ways both Jack and Ennis, you know,
sort of are but the very bottom of the sort

(57:14):
of ranking of social prestige around labor, you know. And
and famously, you know, the film is called the gay
Cowboy Movie. And then you know, one of the things
remarkable about it, and this is very much in the
pool story and the film. They're not even cowboys. They
can care of sheep, you know, I mean, they're.

Speaker 6 (57:30):
Sometimes and it doesn't even have I mean the landscape
is that to be of the sort of West, but
the sort of prestige of them being these kind of
cowboy figures, you know, in a certain sense is diminished.

Speaker 4 (57:43):
It's like, you know, the West is now no longer
the space of cowboys. It's the space of a certain
kind of you know, grunt labor that's not particularly glamorous
or dignified. So there's that with class. But then to
come to the topic of the women, I think the
class ordinances get even more explicit, which is that you know,
Alma works in the in the supermarket, trying to make

(58:06):
ends meet around this sort of occasional labor that Enna
seems to do. And then Loreene, you know, is attached
to uh sort of her father's business and it's a
successful business. And the film really and I love the
way that the film builds out from what little there
is in the short sort of fiction. But Lorene's this

(58:28):
really interesting figure. You know, she's she's in the rodeo,
she knows how to dance, She's really all got a
social life, and she is making this business happen. And
that in a certain sense, Jack has married up in
that particular sort of organization of a social prestige. And
there comes a point in which she's kind of not

(58:48):
really all that worried about what he's up to on
the fishing trips because she has her own life in
a way that Alma is still reliant on, you know,
on ns is sort of unreliable as he seems to be.
And then you know the other thing, and I want
to come back a little bit too. What you were
talking about a moment ago, Kaylin, in terms of the
fantasy statements is in this film, and this is very cinematic.

(59:13):
This is where I think the film really sort of
can handle because it's on the visual sort of score here.
And this is description of the shock of violence of
the murdered figures from his childhood and implication that his
father is a participant in this film level, whether he
is the murderer or simply, you know, sort of showing

(59:34):
his child that this kind of violence is possible and
to be respected perversely. And then the second fantasy, which
I think is just really an amazing piece of filmmaking,
of the conversation between Ennis and Loreene, who you know,
in narratively, if you kind of piece it out, you
figure out this is the first time they've actually ever

(59:56):
had to talk to each other, and the class ordinances
get even more sort of complicated. And part of it
is that the beauty of the editing and that sequence,
the heartbreaking editing, is both of them know what each
other thinks of the other because of the figure of Jack,
who is gone, and both of them are creating this conversation,

(01:00:19):
the last sort of you know, conversation about Jack, this
thing on the telephone, about the meaning of it or
the circumstances of Jack's death, on Loreen saying well, the
official explanation we will agree upon is there was an
accident on the roadside. And then this sort of you know,
then momentary fantasy of you he was murdered. This was

(01:00:40):
a scene of queer violence, and that this is you know,
in a certain sense, getting into Ennis's head, but also
understanding you know, and the context of what's going on
in sort of Ennis's mind through this conversation, you know,
with Loreen. And I think that that is has a
has a kind of class to mention to it, which

(01:01:00):
is I think that there's a way that he kind
of realizes that Loreene lives in a world of sort
of you know, wealth and material comfort in a way
that you know he never will, and that the strange
connection through Jack, you know, is about him realizing Jack
had that life of living with someone that he Jack

(01:01:22):
had proposed to Ennis. Jack had that with Loreene fraud
as it might have been, because you know, her family's
not ideal by any means, but that that comfort was there,
that wealth was there.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Yeah. Anne Hathaway's performance in that scene is also so
stunning to me because there are a couple of moments
where when Ennis makes a reference to his relationship with
Jack and it's all very you know, like codd where
it's like, oh, yeah, we met that time on broke

(01:01:55):
Back Mountain summer of sixty three, where we just hearted
sheep and nothing else, and it's implied that she knows
exactly what that means and what happened there, and you
see her give a little like.

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
Like a whimper.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
She's like suppressing crying because she knows who Ennis is
to Jack. And then she does it again a second
time when he makes another reference to him and Jack's
connection without being explicit about who they actually were to
each other, but just saying something about their friendship, and
she whimpers again, and it's just like, oh that, like

(01:02:30):
that performance just it blew me away.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
It gets back to what you're saying about you about
like the conversations without words that happen at so many
points like that, what can't be expressed by the characters
that is like physically seeping out in their performances is
like it's just it's unreal. Yeah. I think I also

(01:02:55):
sort of did not remember how crucial class is to
the whole story, but also specifically the women's stories. On
the reread of the short story. Yeah, there's there's not
too much on the page about them, and I really
appreciated how it felt like they were. These characters were
built out, first of all in like a very sympathetic

(01:03:16):
and grounded way, but also in a way that really
distinguishes them from one another, even though obviously they have
so much in common. Was weirdly thinking about how if
you flip it and then move the timeline ahead just
fifty years, it's Grace and Frankie. That's another story though,
But that Alma and Loreene, they both have their own

(01:03:41):
distinct personalities, but that Loreene in some ways, you know,
has the financial ability to move on in a way
that Alma never does, and in a way that I
think women in this place at this time would have
been more beholden to a marriage. There's always going to

(01:04:02):
be the stigma that comes with divorce, you know, really
at any time, but certainly in the sixties and seventies.
But that Loreen, we know she has the ability to
move on financially, she has the support where Alma you know,
sort of needs to. And it's lovely that it seems
like she moves into a relationship that is positive for her.

(01:04:25):
I mean, and on this rewatch, the second you see
the grocery store manager, you know, be okay with all
the glass being knocked down, You're like, there's the guy.
It's like such a well directed moment. He has a
little crush on her. Yeah, it was like, oh, yeah,
your boss doesn't mind if you broke the whole store,
whole inventory. Yeah, he's interested, but I I it does

(01:04:49):
make me happy for her to some extent, But it
also means, you know, like Alma's not living at a
time or within a socioeconomic class where she can really
consider being fully independent, where Loreene sort of has more leeway,
and and seeing how class affects obviously Jack and Ennis

(01:05:12):
as well. And moment that stuck out to me on
this viewing was after Loreene has their baby, how immediately
dismissive her parents are of Jack. They're calling him rodeo
and hyperfixating on Loreene and the baby. It is so
clear that he is incidental to them, He is not important.
Oh yeah, and just sort of watching all of these

(01:05:33):
like tiny fractures and structures being built in trying to,
you know, sort of keep this relationship at least functioning.
It's done very subtly, but if you're looking for it,
it is like so crucial to the story.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
And then a scene that follows that between Jack and
his father in law is the Thanksgiving scene where they're
basically doing a dick measuring contest about who has more
power in this situation where the father in law is like, oh,
your boys should watch football if you want him to

(01:06:10):
be a man when he grows up, and Jack is
just like, fuck you, this is my house, my rules.
Loreene spent a lot of time and effort preparing this meal,
so we're gonna appreciate it without being distracted by a
football game. And eventually, I mean, you could argue that
like Jack exercises his enough masculinity over the situation that

(01:06:33):
he defeats the other like masculine boy man of the
scene and masculine boy man awesome, thank you. I will
be saying that every day from now on. But because
I mean, a lot has been written about this movie
in its relation to the setting, the genre of Western,

(01:06:56):
the implications of masculinity therein where including you, Matthew, you
know in your book you talk about how like, you know,
the rugged, stoic cowboy character that is the center of
the Western genre and is like, you know, the embodiment
of the masculine ideal for what a man is quote

(01:07:18):
unquote supposed to be, especially an American man, has been
present throughout cinema history. But also there have been homo
erotic undertones present within this genre, but that Broke Back
Mountain was one of the first films to bring that
homo eroticism to text rather than subtext.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:07:41):
Yeah. Now, one of the things that's remarkable about how
this film is trying to work on its topic of
this particular version of white American masculinity in this genre
of the Western, is that the Western, which paradoxically only
becomes a kind of afterculture genre right at the moment

(01:08:01):
in which the idea that the Western has about the
West has concluded. The American frontier has in a certain
sense been enclosed, and so the expansive, utopian sort of
idea of it around eighteen ninety to nineteen hundred is
the demise of actual cowboys as these kinds of sort
of you know, mythical figures. But then the Western takes

(01:08:23):
off many critics, and especially James Hompkins, whose wonderful book
West of Everything is really worth finding, The Western takes off,
especially just by coincidence or maybe not, but because cinema
is taking off at the exact same moment, and so
the Western becomes this very kind of American project to

(01:08:44):
in a certain sense keep this narrative going, even though
the historical circumstances of the actual West have concluded. The
center of that genre is this particular idea of a
man of a cisgender man. And what makes this person
the hero that they might be, And it's that thing
that you know, we were talking about, you know, earlier,

(01:09:07):
what makes him heroic is that he doesn't need language.
He stands outside of society and he doesn't need human
sort of language. And then the second part, and this
is where the homo erotics come into it, is but
at the same time, this fantasy of the American West
is populated largely by men, and that sort of women

(01:09:31):
are seen as sort of associated with civilization and all
of the kinds of obnoxious encroachments on male freedom. And
this comes up again and again in Western films. And
so one of the things that's remarkable about Broke Back
Mountain is it takes all the pre existing ingredients of
the Western and then it tweaks them enough for us

(01:09:53):
to see them in a different light. And it's this
thing about you know, on the one hand, you know,
I'll make the assertion that we want Jack to succeed
in a certain sense because there's a certain kind of
openness to experience that he has, and he's you know,
adventurous in a way that Ennis is not. But the
real hero in a conventional sense of the Western is

(01:10:14):
ns who doesn't like language and has no use for
society and kind of just kind of just does what
he wants. And then you know, the irony is it's like,
is Ennis really any kind of hero? You know? You know,
he he turns down the new possibility of a shared
life with someone he seems to care about, which is

(01:10:35):
this idea that Jack has that they'll go off and
live together. And so the film puts you in this
awkward position of trying to, on the one hand, know
that you should identify with Ms as this kind of
American hero, and on the other hand see him as
really really disappointing as any kind of role model for that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:58):
Yeah, and that acting out these masculine tropes really only
brings suffering to the history. Yeah, And that where we
leave him at the end is just like in the
most tortured place, and we don't really know, I mean,
and we're not meant to know is he ever going

(01:11:18):
to move through or past this? It seems like I mean,
we'd end with a shirt in the closet, So, you know,
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:11:27):
I once had a friend say to me, it's like, well,
you know, Jack is gone, but and it's actually still
has something left of his life. And this friend said,
I have a fantasy that he just gets the hell
out of there finally and he moves to San Francisco.

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
I love that.

Speaker 4 (01:11:42):
I want him, yes, but I do also then when
I can double back on something you mentioned earlier, which
is that, you know, this sort of erotics between these
two men is so much about repression, but repression as
something that produces something else, and the sort of first
parting scene when they leave the mountain results and them

(01:12:04):
having this you know, this this fist fight. They attack
each other, and there's this idea it's like, do they
not know how to you know, embrace or say something
of mere kindness to each other? And the answer is no,
they have no language except for for physical you know, violence,
and that you know, the thing about it is that
that repression is productive of violence in this particular version

(01:12:28):
of masculinity in a way that you know, what we
want to see is that it could be repression could
be productive of a new kind of sexuality and a
new kind of shared life that the film is just
kind of glimpsing at that doesn't sort of open the
possibility to which is the way I think, you know,
you end up having a heartbroken over and over again
by watching this movie.

Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
Yeah, it's just they don't have the tools they need
to be able to communicate with each other. Another seed
that out to me with especially like with regards to
how masculinity is. Like I think it's like another scene
where Ennis is doing what he thinks is necessary and
it causes discomfort. It's the scene where they're at the

(01:13:13):
fireworks at Alma and Ennis bringing the girls to see fireworks.
There are some drunk guys doing drunk n PC dialogue
behind them, being like that guy you know probably it
doesn't even like them.

Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
They're being very wildly misogynistic, and.

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
Yes, I mean they're they're being assholes, no doubt about it.
But Ennis almost provokes a fight with them in front
of his family, which clearly is distressing and upsetting to everyone.
And it's I think just another example of Ennis, you know,
doing what he thinks quote unquote a masculine Western guy

(01:13:56):
should do. He's doing the cowboys. He's defending his family,
don't talk about my wife that way, all that stuff.
He's defending his own masculinity, which we know he is
constantly calling into question, but it doesn't produce the victorious
moment we're trained to sort of expect from there. It's
not like a hero beating down a bully. It's just this.

(01:14:19):
It's this tense, uncomfortable moment that Alma doesn't seem particularly
happy about. It breaks the kids out, and even Ennis,
I don't know. This is just my like I guess
interpretation of the performance, but even in that moment, it
doesn't feel like the character is even sure of what
he's doing. It just feels like, this, this is what
I'm supposed to do. And that's you know, at the

(01:14:40):
core of so much of NS. His behavior is like
performing masculinity because he thinks that that's what he's supposed
to do and that it's what will keep him and
his family safe, even though it is just a corrosive force.
And we learn why that is from the flashback with
his dad.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
Yeah, I'd love to talk about the cultural impact of
the movie, especially at the time and the media landscape,
and just like the cultural landscape that this came out in,
because I mean, this movie is largely considered a pretty

(01:15:23):
pivotal moment in queer cinema in the sense that it
centers a queer love story that entered the mainstream. It
was critically acclaimed, and it was a huge box office success.
There were not a lot of examples of a movie
that fit those criteria prior to Brokeback Mountain, and so

(01:15:46):
it paved the way for more representation of queer characters
and queer love stories on screen. It started to normalize
that as a narrative vehicle, at least stories that feature white,
CIS queer characters. But yeah, I just I you know,
the general cultural landscape at the time in two thousand

(01:16:09):
and five, I mean, this was in the middle of
George W. Bush's presidency, where like homophobia was part of
his platform, This was an era where in the media
mostly queer representation was obscenely homophobic jokes in raunchy comedies.

(01:16:30):
The best you might get would be a trophy character
like you know, a gay best friend or you know,
the hairdresser or something like that in a film, very
stereotypical roles, and society at large was just like was
very homophobic, and so this movie coming out and being
the success that it was, like represents a cultural shift

(01:16:53):
or you know, kind of a turning point. But also
there was a lot of conservative backlash to this movie.
There was a lot of jokes made at this movie's expense.
Many of them were extremely not tasteful and were punching down.

Speaker 3 (01:17:09):
And Heath Ledger, I mean to the point where Heath
Ledger there's like an anecdote that resurvices about him every
so often that he refused to appear on any like
awards broadcast during the promotion cycle for this movie that
featured homophobic jokes. He like would not appear. I mean,
he I think refused to present at the two thousand

(01:17:30):
and six Oscars for this reason because he caught win
that there was going to be a homophobic joke at
broke Back's expense in the opening. So yeah, you know,
shout out to him there. But it's again like this,
even when there was this massive moment for queer cinema
breaking into the mainstream, the movie and its fans then

(01:17:52):
had to deal with how America always spoke about queer
people after that, and with you know, it's like relatively
little pushback, which is why that heat Ledger anecdote stands
out well.

Speaker 4 (01:18:05):
I think in terms of the you know, the sort
of sense of the impact of the film, both in
the moment of its appearance and then kind of in
the long life that it's had, you know, twenty years later. Well,
one of the things I become ever more sort of
aware of is that the sort of culture of cinema
in the past two decades has changed so much inasmuch

(01:18:26):
as we live in such a mosaic media environment now
that the idea of a big movie like this kind
of grabbing the attention of lots of people simultaneously, you know,
seems almost impossible. I say almost because then I think
about something like Barbie, which is whole other podcast episode, but.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
It's much less common than like monoculture doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:18:48):
Really, No, that's right, And so you know, it's hard
to in a certain sense remind ourselves that you know
that this was in a cinema culture of you know,
going to the cinem This is where you know, you
had to wait six months before something came out on
DVD in order to do a home viewing, and you
know that there was an event of going to see

(01:19:09):
a movie like this at the theater, and then you know,
word of mouth built, and then there became this kind
of endless kind of you know, and I do say,
I mean, I think it built out a more nuanced
popular audience's ability to talk about a film like this
without immediately just resorting to homophobic tropes. I mean, those

(01:19:31):
are available, but I think that it also opened up
a lot of people's sort of imagination to sort of say,
this is a really interesting film. It doesn't hand me
the tools just simply you know, insult these people, especially
these two men, which I think, you know, really means
a lot in its moment. And then the other thing
is that you know, you'd mentioned that, you know, it
was nominated but didn't win, in this case, the Academy

(01:19:53):
Award for Picture that year. Crash one Crash has not
gone on to have anywhere near those the sort of
monument mental stature that Broke Back Mountain has, I mean,
not at.

Speaker 3 (01:20:02):
All sub zero. I feel like it's honestly most famous
for the fact that it like could have stole so
many you know, oscars from superior movies.

Speaker 4 (01:20:12):
Yeah, and I attribute that to basically and I'll be
a little bit mean spirited here, but basically kind of
go to the kind of the white male liberal politics
in the Academy was basically sort of like more invested
in idea of race politics that were available in Crash
than they were in the more nuanced and subtle and
actually radical politic that a film like Broke Back Mountain,

(01:20:34):
which offers ambiguity and subtlety and you know, all of
this complexity that I think have only more so built
Broke Back Mountain's sense of importance in the kind of
cinematic culture.

Speaker 3 (01:20:49):
No, we definitely needed the movie that was written and
directed by a since canceled scientologist that was that was
the movie that should have So it's so wild to
look that gud.

Speaker 4 (01:21:01):
Yeah, But you know, there's a funny thing about this
film that really is always fascinating me, which is that
in China and the PRC, Broke Back Mountain came out
at the moment in which the gray market cinema sort
of economy was developing around book like copies of non

(01:21:21):
Chinese films come back disc on the DVD, and this
was a hugely important film in China for the distribution
illegal because the government prohibited it because of its perceived
on tolerance of dissident sexualities. But that reports and I
trust them largely because some of my students from China said,

(01:21:44):
oh yeah, like my mom love Broke Back Mountain and
we had a copy of it, you know, at home.
That because you could buy these things in you know,
like I say, the gray market economy, and that part
of the appeal of Broke Back Mountain is that it
is literally a global piece of filmmaking in as much
as audiences in lots of different places that I still

(01:22:06):
don't know enough about did things with in order to
sort of embrace this film. And it's, like I say,
it's interesting ambiguity and complexity, and what my sense of
the kind of one of the reading formations along Chinese
audiences was that the film is an allegory about conformism
and individuality, and that it's about asking what price does

(01:22:30):
a person pay in order not to have a life
that they want to lead credit in independence, and that
this sort of resonates very strongly with audiences in that context.
And I love that that sense of yeah, this is
a subtle work of art that can handle a lot
of sort of multiple interpretations and never resolve them in

(01:22:50):
a way that Let's be honest, I don't think Crash
really holds up that well.

Speaker 3 (01:22:55):
No, I haven't seen it, but I can't imagine it.
You don't need to, Okay, Okay, it doesn't seem worth
worth the squeeze I I was. I also, I didn't
do enough of a deep dive on it. But I
think that yeah, Onlee's connection to the material and how

(01:23:16):
this was received because only is Taiwanese. He has said
many times that even though you know, he's made movies
that take place in England and in this case, I mean,
it's hard to find a more white American working class
setting than where we are, but that all of his
movies are connected to Taiwan and to who he is,
and that is how he chooses the stories that he adapts.

(01:23:37):
I would be curious to hear how Hulk ties in there,
But that's not the conversation for today. But but that
when when he you know, won an Oscar, that the
way that even on Li has talked about in China
is very particular and heavily censored. Where he was celebrated

(01:23:57):
in China for being like like, look at this Oscar
winning director, with the caveat that all references to both
Taiwan and Queerness were removed from his acceptance speech. I
don't know how long of an acceptance speech that leaves
you with. I think it just sort of leaves you
with a sentence but thank you bye, right, hello, and

(01:24:19):
it's a lovely speech. But I wanted to mention that
as well, that you know, Onley has had a really
fascinating life and career that we don't really have the
bandwith to talk about in its entirety in this episode.
But the international reception of this movie is not just
in connection to the theme, but in connection to the director.

Speaker 4 (01:24:44):
Yeah, whate thing. I'll also say I can just add
on in terms of this topic of the genre of itself,
is that one of the brilliant things that Onley did
not only him, but he recruited a great cinematographer, on
Diego on piare Troll to photograph this film, and that
one of the things that you know, it's so fascinating

(01:25:05):
about this movie is that it is usually ravishing in
terms of its sense of the American weft. You know,
there's this way you know that's been talked about, is
that the landscape is one of the characters in the movie,
and the landscape is in that face of in the
in the context of the lack of language among the
sort of you know, human actors, that the world is

(01:25:29):
expressing something about what's going on. You know, it has
this kind of presence, and that the Pietro photographs these
in a sort of lush I mean, they're just magnificent.
You just you want to sort of stop the image
of the like, you know, just look at it in
terms of its beauty. And that he does this in
multiple layers of both distance photography and the opening shot

(01:25:50):
across them towards the mountain range kind of this sort
of you know, place of longing and yearning that we'll
learn about, and then up close when you have these
beautiful sort of senses of the landscape is the layers
of trees and green an animals, and that that's really
necessary in order to not just have this become this

(01:26:11):
very claustrophobic domestic drama, but really why these characters want
to go to, you know, the natural world is to
escape this enclosure inside you know, those households that do
feel very very enclosed. And then there's trope of especially
Ennu's like looking out of windows trying to find his escape,

(01:26:31):
you know, to to those vistas. That's really important. And
I think if if that hadn't been achieved in this film,
in terms of that sense of the visual presence of
the landscape as an expression of something about the erotic,
I don't think the film would have been quite as
sort of a thing that it does. That it turned into.

Speaker 3 (01:26:49):
It's so beautiful. I love how he uses like I
don't know, it's hard to think of a movie that
more like intentionally uses distance and close like. It's just
it's gorgeous. And as with a lot of great movies
about America, it is shot in Canada, which I always
find delightful. You're just like that, right as far as

(01:27:12):
movies are concerned, New York is Vancouver, Wyoming is Alberta.
Don't worry about it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:21):
Does anyone have any other thoughts about the film?

Speaker 4 (01:27:25):
The last thing I'll say, in terms of just shout
outs for all you know the talent involved, is that
this also does this very you know, it takes a
budget to do this in any kind of filmmaking anymore.
Which is it has its scored, It has this gorgeous
score that wants actually you know, the Guestago Santo Alalo
score which won many awards. Rightly so, because part of

(01:27:49):
this thing that we're describing in terms of this just
you know, emotional intensity is because of that lack of
lack of language that you know we've been talking about
gets articulated musically, and that that score is basically booming,
you know, with these emotions at these moments of heartbreak
or rapture. And again, much like the Piatro cinematography, you know,

(01:28:12):
if you were to take that score away, it'd be
a really interesting experiment to kind of go emotionally what
happens to this film? What happens to this story?

Speaker 3 (01:28:21):
Absolutely, and that we've talked about this so many times
on this show. But this is yet another example of
the film industry in Hollywood specifically insisting that there isn't
an audience for this movie because it's about marginalized people.
And how many I mean this add this to the
list of examples that has wildly proven this wrong. God,

(01:28:43):
I mean, how many this movie made its budget back
like fifteen times or something like that. And we hear
that every time there's a movie that is too centered
around women too, centered around people of color. I mean,
that's the whole story around the production of Black Panther
and so many other movies that are extremely successful and
well regarded. And it's because these are movies that actually

(01:29:05):
got you know, reasonable budgets and marketing campaigns. It's the
you know, you don't need us to tell you. If
you're listening to the show, you probably agree, but that
it's so infrequent that movies that center marginalized people in
any way receive the support that they deserve. And when
they do receive that support, and sometimes when they don't,

(01:29:27):
they find their audience because the audience is very much there, and.

Speaker 2 (01:29:31):
Even when they do extremely well at the box office,
like Broke Back Mountain did, Hollywood will still be like
that was a fluke, that was an accident. We can't
make any movies like that.

Speaker 4 (01:29:44):
Again, it always seems to be an anomaly, right, Who
know that this might at sixteen? Right? I think?

Speaker 3 (01:29:52):
Well, even speaking to your point with Barbie Matthew, it's
like the takeaway from there is we need to make
more movies around toy is not that people are interested
in a diverse cast of women, right right, right?

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
I mean also worth noting that after the accolades that
Broke Back Mountain received, the next queer centered story to
receive a major Academy award was in twenty seventeen, when
Moonlight won for Best Picture. So over a decade had
passed before and there was any like Academy Award attention

(01:30:29):
for a queer story, And in.

Speaker 3 (01:30:32):
That context, it really even It turns the fake out
for Best Picture even more charged. If La La Land
was about to once again take the oscar from that's right,
I know.

Speaker 4 (01:30:44):
It's like it's like, oh no, another crash moments.

Speaker 3 (01:30:49):
And thankfully it did not go that way. But oh, Caitlin,
I remember we were together that night. Never forget where
you were. Oh my gosh, we were at your friend
from grad schools apartment.

Speaker 2 (01:31:00):
What a night that was, truly.

Speaker 3 (01:31:04):
Anyways, and you know, does Moonlight win without the success
of Broke Back Mountain proving that queer stories you deserve
the backing of studios, I don't know. It seems like
Broke Back Mountain definitely has a massive place in the
history of American core cinema. Yeah, and that's a I think.

(01:31:24):
You know, Onley unquestionably has made a gorgeous movie here,
And I did notice this is the first time I'd
really gotten into the production history. How many queer directors
almost directed this movie and then didn't. And well, nothing
takes anything away from angle. I think that that is
kind of a shame that there were at least two

(01:31:46):
very famous queer directors who really wanted to make this
movie and were not able to get to the finish
line with it.

Speaker 2 (01:31:54):
Yeah, well, does this movie pass the Bechdel test? I
don't say no.

Speaker 4 (01:32:03):
I don't think there's a scene in which two women
talk to each.

Speaker 3 (01:32:06):
Other, thinks So I think that this is rectified by
Grayson Frankie eventually, Grayce and Frankie is about Alma and
Loreene moving in together in a world war, Jack and
Ennis get together and then they form a beautiful, fun family.

Speaker 4 (01:32:22):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:32:22):
Yes, But similar to the discussion that was happening around
Fire Ireland a few years ago, the Bechdel test is
not It's not relevant here, and it doesn't need to
be applied to every movie, especially when it's a movie
that's doing so much else.

Speaker 3 (01:32:39):
Well, and I think it kind of to some degree,
and only our dear friend Alison Bechdel could tell us
for sure. But to say that this movie is any
less wonderful because it doesn't pass the Bechdel Test flies
in the face of the part of the Bechdel Test
that people are less aware of, which is that it
began as a commentary on how there is no queer
representation in movies. So it's I think, kind of antithetical.

(01:33:04):
You know, it doesn't pass the mainstream version, but I
think in some senses, you know, spiritually, it holds true
to the reason that the joke existed in the first place,
which is that there was almost never queer characters that
were actually canonically queer on screen.

Speaker 2 (01:33:20):
So, right, you could interpret the Bechdel test as is
there explicit queer representation on screen totally of characters that
we don't have to ship together, in which case, yes,
Broke Back Mountain does pass the Bechdel test.

Speaker 3 (01:33:35):
Which, by the way, again I'm going to start doing
this on the show, like if you do a cursory.
I mean, the amount of fan fiction written about Jack
and Ennis is just overwhelming, overwhelming, to the point where
I think at one point Annie Poole a little grumpily
was like, people need to stop writing to me about

(01:33:55):
what they think should have happened, okayo, fair enough, but
also evil love it of evil one, you know, I
think it's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:34:05):
And then that brings us to our nipple scale, where
we rate the movie on a scale of zero to
five nipples. Examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, it
is tough. But because the movie examines masculinity in the
prison therein and its effect on people, and the repression

(01:34:30):
that it leads to and the torment that that repression
leads to, and the fact that it was a significant
milestone in queer cinema. Is it a perfect film, Perhaps not,
but it did do so much to pave the way

(01:34:51):
for more inclusive and just more representation in general. Does
it focus on CIS white characters, Yes, but that wouldn't
be as much of an issue if there were plenty
of other movies that centered a diverse array of identities
within the queer community. But even today, there aren't that

(01:35:14):
many options, and certainly not in mainstream cinema. You really
have to dig for them usually. But because of the
cultural impact this movie did have on queer cinema and
American cinema in general, I'll give it.

Speaker 3 (01:35:34):
Like three and a half or four nipples.

Speaker 2 (01:35:37):
Does that sound nuts to your decision? That's so true
your decision. I'm gonna do three and a half. I'll
give them to I'll distribute them between only the screenwriters
and any proul.

Speaker 3 (01:35:53):
Yeah, I think I'll go. I'll go three and a
half or four. I can't really decide, and so I'm
going to not to decide. But I think, you know,
speaking to your point, Klyn, that the frustrations that I
totally understand people may have with this movie, I think
aren't necessarily criticisms of them, or to me, aren't criticisms

(01:36:15):
as much of the movie as of what Hollywood is
willing to finance and elevate versus what it is. Not sure,
I think that this story, I appreciate that it is
very it seems very intentionally written. Where, when and who
it's about. Going back to the original short story, that
this movie is entrenched in the white working class masculinity

(01:36:40):
of this place and this time that is not incidental
to the story, and that Annie Poole is commenting on it,
and I think to some extent the movie is commenting
on it pretty extensively, less so on whiteness. We are
sort of presented with a white actor void, I think,
as we are in many movies, but most of these
elements are pretty thoroughly commented on. I think that especially

(01:37:02):
in the moment that this movie was released, the fact
that it was as difficult as it was to get
a movie with a queer couple at its center released,
it almost feels like the movie how I hope I'm
articulating this correctly, that often when seeing marginalized identity represented,

(01:37:26):
it's starting at almost the most easy difficulty level to
do so, which is having famous white actors do it
and almost ideally prove that these are stories that people
are eager to hear.

Speaker 2 (01:37:39):
It's like a proof of concept almost, which sucks because
it's again this is a criticism of Hollywood, of like
that we're so often told, well, there's no interest in
anything except action movies starring.

Speaker 3 (01:37:53):
White CIS guys, right, like overgeneralizing there, but that any
marginalized story has such a significant barrier to even being
produced or seen that I think that that is why
we often see famous CIS, white straight actors at the
center of stories, and that ideally they're used as a

(01:38:15):
successful template for more diverse stories to be told. I'm
not saying that that is necessarily what happens, but I
do sort of see Broke Back as a building block
in more diverse queer cinema going mainstream in the years
that followed. I hope that makes sense. Yeah, totally outside

(01:38:36):
of I think, yeah, incredible in its cultural impact, and
it's just a beautiful movie. It's so, so, so beautiful,
and I think for two thousand and five for a
movie to be so faithfully adapted and also expanded on,
I love the ways that the movie expands on the
source material really skillfully. Yeah, really beautifully in a way

(01:38:57):
that I think works great for our show because it
a lot of it expands on giving the women more
interiority and sympathy.

Speaker 7 (01:39:05):
Then there's like a space for in the original story.

Speaker 3 (01:39:10):
So I just it is beautiful. I guess I'm gonna
I'm going to go three point seventy five because I'm
feeling indecisive, and I will I will distribute it between
on Leigh Larry McMurtrie, Diana Osana, and Annie Proul.

Speaker 2 (01:39:26):
Matthew, how about you.

Speaker 4 (01:39:28):
Yeah, So I think in terms of getting it, you know,
some kind of assessment around it being intersectionally, you know,
having an intersectional feminism. I think what I would say
is it's it comes at it kind of sideways in
terms of having a kind of feminist critique that relates
to other kinds of ideas. And we've talked about, you know,

(01:39:50):
in terms of how it's racialized without sort of announcing
that that's what it's working on. It has a class
politics without necessarily announcing that that that's what it's you know,
working on. And you know, there's this there's this way
that I think about it in terms of an intersectional feminism,
which is that one of the things I think is
interesting about the film is that it's historical. It says,

(01:40:12):
you know, nineteen sixty three to whatever nineteen sixty aid,
but it's not nostalgic at all or any of that.
And that that's one of the centerpieces of a lot
of what I will call sort of reactionary popular culture.
It's always like a you know, because that's part of
the current conservative political formation, starting with Reaganism, that you know,
in the present moment with trump Ism, it's let's go

(01:40:34):
back to the past when it was better. This film
does not do that at all, day right, And so
part of it's what I would say sort of relationship
to feminism is that, especially in relation to the women characters,
that second wave feminism is literally just about to sort
of emerged as a public discourse in nineteen sixty three,

(01:40:55):
and it's so needed. It's sort of the film's not nostalgia.
It's about the constraints around these women and the fact
that a feminist political project that's about to emerge, and
you know, with understandings that it's largely a white middle
class of feminism and in the first iteration of the
second wave, but that nevertheless that you know that it's

(01:41:18):
about thinking about new kinds of possibilities for the lives
of women, and that you know, the pathos of just
takes a you know, Alma's situation is that she is
left high and dry by some sort of disappearing on
their marriage, and that you know, she has to take
the initiative and basically sort of like figure out what's

(01:41:40):
going to happen next because he he won't and that
you know, in the utopian world, it would be like
sort of like why must Alma be reliant on anyone
to have the life that she would like to have
to lead or Loreen. For that matter, she does rely
on her father, who's you know, no role model of patriarchy,
you know in you know particular you know fight at

(01:42:01):
Thanksgiving God. So I think you know, yes, I'm with you.
I'd say around three nipples would allow me to sort
of say, I think that it's sort of inadvertent feminism
still is a kind of intersectional feminism of sorts.

Speaker 2 (01:42:17):
Totally easly, Matthew, thank you so much for joining us.
This has been such a wonderful conversation.

Speaker 4 (01:42:23):
Truly, Oh my pleasure. This has been a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 (01:42:27):
Come back anytime, Yeah, truly, Yeah, bring another favorite.

Speaker 4 (01:42:30):
Well, if you haven't talked about Grey Gardens, I'm always
up for that. I have.

Speaker 3 (01:42:36):
Somehow done that yet, So please come back.

Speaker 4 (01:42:38):
Sure, and I can do a plug in fact in
regards to that, which is that a new edition of
the Greg Gardens book has just come out from the
British Film Institute. They asked me to update it. The
first version came out in twenty twelve and they're doing
a reissue of some of their top titles and so
they asked me if I would revise it, and so

(01:43:00):
I did. And largely what I do is put the
new version that just came out in the context of
drag culture and thinking about Grey Gardens, Is this like
having this presence film in sort of drag performativity now,
which it didn't as much in twenty twelve?

Speaker 2 (01:43:18):
Sure?

Speaker 3 (01:43:19):
Right, Yeah, please come back for Grey Gardens. That would
be a blast.

Speaker 4 (01:43:22):
Yes, please, I would love that anytime.

Speaker 3 (01:43:25):
Wonderful.

Speaker 2 (01:43:26):
Is there anything else you'd like to plug in addition
to note that's it?

Speaker 4 (01:43:30):
Yeah, just look for Grey Gardens and it has a
beautiful new cover of the I mean covers. Yeah, what's
the big deal. When the first version came out it
was okay, And then for the re issue they said,
would you like redesign? If you go google it, you
can see the beautiful and elegant vision with little Edie
on the cover. And I think it's much more loving

(01:43:52):
and respectful of her than the first edition was.

Speaker 3 (01:43:56):
I remember the first edition clear, yeah, vividly. Oh this
is wonderful.

Speaker 2 (01:44:02):
And let this be a lesson that sometimes you can
judge a book by its cover.

Speaker 3 (01:44:07):
People do, whether whether we like it or not. Unfortunately, Yeah,
oh this is so wonderful. Thank you so much again
for joining us, Matthew, my pleasure.

Speaker 4 (01:44:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:44:18):
You can support us by joining our Patreon aka Matreon.
It's five dollars a month that gets you access to
two bonus episodes every single month, plus access to the
back catalog of over two hundred bonus episodes, all for
five dollars a month at patreon dot com slash Bechdel

(01:44:39):
Cast and with that, shall we It's.

Speaker 3 (01:44:45):
Always hard to do a send off in a movie
that ends tragically.

Speaker 4 (01:44:49):
Yeah, I think we just have to say we quit
each other?

Speaker 3 (01:44:52):
And ye, shall we quit this?

Speaker 2 (01:44:55):
I wish I could quit this episode.

Speaker 3 (01:44:58):
By bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia,
hosted and produced by Me Jamie Loftus and.

Speaker 2 (01:45:08):
Me Caitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie
Lichtermann and.

Speaker 7 (01:45:13):
Edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever heard of them? That's me
and our logo and merch and all of our artwork
in fact are designed by Jamie Loftis, Ever heard of her?

Speaker 3 (01:45:24):
Oh my God? And our theme song, by the way,
was composed by Mike Kaplan.

Speaker 2 (01:45:28):
With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.

Speaker 3 (01:45:31):
Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only
Aristotle Ascevero.

Speaker 2 (01:45:36):
For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree Slash
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