Why Brokeback Will Bomb

Note: Update appended at end of post ...

Way back about seven years ago, I was engaged to be married to a woman.  (Shocking, I know.)  We were together for a total of about three years, before and during the engagement.

She is a great woman, actually, as kind and decent as they come.  We're still actually surprisingly close, especially given everything we've been through.  She might even be reading this now.

As you can guess, from all my talk about my husband, things obviously didn't work out between us.  The realization that my attraction to men was quite a bit more than a passing fancy was what ultimately did us in, a fact I revealed to her at the time.

But what I don't think I told my ex-fiancée was when I really knew, or at least began to know, that I was probably beginning a journey that would later end with peace about my sexuality, despite the immense pain it caused her (and others).

My method of picking rental movies often tends toward the haphazard.  I'll listen with half an ear to Roger Ebert or glance at a movie title with four stars next to it, then later I will see the title and rent it because "I had heard it was good."

One such movie was a cute, little comedy called "Lie Down With Dogs."  A cute, very gay little comedy.  It is basically about a Manhattanite's summer of debauchery in Provincetown.  (Huh, sounds familiar.)

We started the movie and almost immediately I began to feel very uncomfortable.  Oops, Matt picked a gay movie!  Hee hee!

It truly was not intentional, but now that I was in it, I was in it for the duration.  Could there have been any possible interpretation "favorable" to me if I had decided to stop the tape and return it?  I thought, She'll think I'm progressive if I can watch it with her and not react any differently than I would with any other movie.

But this wasn't any other movie, as made evident by a rather graphic sex scene between the main character and another hot boy on a kitchen table.  The sex went on quite a bit longer than I thought possible in an R-rated movie made in 1995.

And then suddenly, horrifyingly, I realized that I was getting turned on.  Very turned on.  In a rather obvious physiological sense that I practically had to work miracles to conceal.  The more I got turned on and the more I tried to hide it, the redder my face became.  Amazing, since I didn't think there was any blood flowing upward at the moment.

My ears were burning, and my face felt like it was radiating heat.  I felt like my secret was going to burst forth from me right at that moment, that my delicately arranged house of cards would come crashing down, courtesy of Hollywood.

In the end, I honestly don't think she had a clue what was going on inside me, even if she had her suspicions at other points during our relationship.  It was probably just a "Tell-Tale Heart" moment on my part, right there on the sofa.

But I always reflect back on that night when I think of audiences filing into theaters this weekend to see Brokeback Mountain.

If I were at a place now like I was at then, would I willingly go see a movie that I knew would feature extremely hot sex between two extremely hot A-list actors?  I wouldn't even make it past the concession stand.

Have things changed enough in the intervening seven years or eight years that even a sliver of a fraction of straight men will feel sufficiently secure in their sexuality to see a movie during which there is even the remotest chance that, like George Costanza's Swedish massage, it might decide to "move"?

I think a good many straight men are fine with homosexuality purely as an abstraction, and can find entertainment value in the eunuch clowns of "Queer Eye," "Will & Grace" and three-quarters of the shows on Broadway.

But how many of them are ready for Jack and Ennis's brand of in-your-face and uncompromising homo love and lust?  And will straight women who are fans of a good (straight) romance, and gay men, be enough of an audience to propel Brokeback's grosses to even middling status?

Either way, we are about to find out.  But I am predicting an opening weekend in the $8-$10 million range, tops.

If I am wrong, all the better.  Just be sure to keep an eye on the lap of the "straight" guy sitting next to you.

UPDATE: I debated when writing this originally whether to reveal that my true motivation was a kind of reverse psychology.  Because virtually every bold prediction I make is spectacularly wrong, I was hoping to make a small contribution to Brokeback's success by virtually daring the American public to make a liar out of me.

It should be obvious from my previous boosterism that I do not want this movie to fail.  I am, after all, a gay man who grew up in a Wyoming ranch community.  But I genuinely wonder whether people are ready enough for the flim's subject matter to make it a bona fide hit.

So far, I am indeed being proved wrong.  The per-screen average has been quite stellar.  (Technically, of course, I was correct because its extremely limited release prevented an opening-weekend gross coming anywhere near $8-$10 million.  And yes, I am aware that the movie has already reportedly broken even through its various distribution deals.)

But I think it will be impossible to gauge its ulimate domestic success until the film opens more widely.  If I had been paying closer attention to the release schedule, I would have known that that will not fully occur for another month or so.

So I will revise my prediction: If Brokeback's total domestic gross exceeds, say, $30 million to $35 million, I will be pleasantly surprised.

Comments

[Downtown Lad]

$8 - $10 million wouldn't be a bomb. And I don't think it's playing in that many theaters.

This is not going to be King Kong and nobody is going to judge it by that. It will be judged a success or a bomb based on whether it makes a profit.

[Josh]

Mal, when are you NOT staring at boy-crotch? I mean, I thought that was sort of a given...

[tim]

I'm told it already made it's money back in prerelease deals from europe so we don't have to worry about it being a flop, I'm just frigging worried about not getting to see it till it comes out on DVD. geez can anyone find a release schedule about which states are going to pick it up after this weekend?

[Jay Croce]

Regarding your "Tell-Tale Heart" moment ...

Just thinking about George Costanza should have thrown cold water on that problem. Ewww!

[Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest)]

Mal--I don't think this flick'll bomb, but it'll do well for what it is. If it gets an opening weekend of $8-$10 million, I (and Universal) would be doing back flips, especially on a weekend with a number of pictures being released. I'd be doing back flips because it would show that there is a large interest in gay movies and Universal because (I'm sure) that total is above their forecasts. (And heck, this film's success would make it easier for me to sell some of my scripts.)

That said, thanks for sharing your experiences with Lie Down with Dogs; it's amazing the power of a movie to help him discover who we truly are -- and to spur us to change our lives.

[Noisy American]

Hilarious story. Well, now, it is. Sure, it wasn't at that moment. I'm sure that many of us have had similar experiences. I had the same experience with Passolinni's Arabian Nights, but I was, at least, in a darkened movie theatre. I think that the most difficult thing I can remember is sitting around watching telly with the folks when something 'gay' would come on. My parents are not exactly the most liberal people and the disgust would issue out from them while I would try to not show any reaction either way.

[sonicfrog]

I have three sisters. When we were growing up in the seventies, they were gaga for Robert Redford, David and Shawn Cassidy, and other hunks of the day. Often, I would not watch movies or TV with my sisters because, even though I was not teenager just yet, I kinda felt the same things about these guys that my sisters did. The first girl I had a crush on, Jill Bradford, ended up dating a football player in junior high. I hated it because not only was my love spurned, but I completely understood why she would date Paul and not me. He was sooo HOT. He already had some hair on his chest. Yet another blow to my already cavernously low self esteem .

As far as embarrasing movie moments, a few years before I came out to my parents, my mom took me to see "Fatal Attraction". I had to watch those sex scenes sitting next to my MOM!!

I did get even. Right after I came out to my parents in 92, I took my mom to see "The Crying Game".

[SquallCloud]

This is so interesting to read now that BBM has made nearly $70 flippin million dollars. I can't even believe it myself. So if you were "pleasently surprised" at 30 I suppose your over the moon now. Great site btw. I love Jake too much for it to be healthy.

[Malcontent]

Yes indeedy, I think $70 million is stellar, and the degree of mainstream acceptance the movie has gained -- with the obvious exception of the "usual suspects" -- is cause for optimism. Still, there has been at least a lot of anecdotal reportage about the reluctance of straight guys, in particular, to see it. A normally sane blogger like Mickey Kaus has made it a bizarre cause celebre.

If I had known the movie's roll-out schedule when I first wrote this post, I probably never would have written it, because my argument was mooted from the beginning.