Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
TOTW 18/07: Do you think classic cowboy icons like the "Marlboro Man" were proto
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: ineedcrayons on February 20, 2008, 02:22:30 am ---Sure, there's a difference in their lifestyles. But what I said still holds. Burning the candle at both ends means working too hard and not getting enough sleep (the idiom refers to burning the candle because it's dark -- that is, late at night and early in the morning) and there's no question that was one of Heath's issues.
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Was he working too hard or just having trouble dealing with his roles so that he couldn't sleep? Or, in the end, was he actually physically recovering from being sick with a cold/pneumonia?
Naw, I don't associate 'burning the candle at both ends' with someone just working too hard. Otherwise, anyone could fit that role,
Boy howdy that orthodontist is burning the candle at both ends...reminds me of James Dean, eh? How about you?
IMO, such people are also playing too hard. James Dean wasn't working hard when he died.
injest:
--- Quote from: delalluvia on February 20, 2008, 09:01:26 am ---Was he working too hard or just having trouble dealing with his roles so that he couldn't sleep? Or, in the end, was he actually physically recovering from being sick with a cold/pneumonia?
Naw, I don't associate 'burning the candle at both ends' with someone just working too hard. Otherwise, anyone could fit that role,
Boy howdy that orthodontist is burning the candle at both ends...reminds me of James Dean, eh? How about you?
IMO, such people are also playing too hard. James Dean wasn't working hard when he died.
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good point.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: delalluvia on February 20, 2008, 09:01:26 am ---Naw, I don't associate 'burning the candle at both ends' with someone just working too hard.
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Well, you may not. But that is what the term is generally understood to mean. Here's one definition, from :"GoEnglish.com: pocket English idioms":
--- Quote ---Burning The Candle At Both Ends ( working for many hours without getting enough rest ... )
"burning the candle at both ends" You are burning the candle at both ends when you are working long hours without resting. Example: "Would you like to go to a party tonight?" Reply: "I can't. I'm way too tired. I've been burning the candle at both ends all week."
Your energy is burning down, and you are growing more and more tired, when you are burning the candle at both ends. Example: "Are you still working day and night?" Reply "Not anymore. Now I work nine hours a day, and I get a good sleep almost every night. No more burning the candle at both ends."
Burning the candle at both ends is not a healthy life because you are working from early to late and not getting enough rest. Example: "Ever since this new project started I have been burning the candle at both ends. I can't take much more of it."
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--- Quote --- Otherwise, anyone could fit that role,
Boy howdy that orthodontist is burning the candle at both ends...reminds me of James Dean, eh? How about you?
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Sure an orthodontist could be burning the candle at both ends. Why not? But what does that have to do with James Dean? I don't particularly think of James Dean as burning the candle at both ends. I don't know why this has become a point of contention anyway. I just said Heath was burning the candle at both ends. And he was, if he was only getting a few hours of sleep a night because he was so embroiled in his work, as pretty much all accounts agree.
As for the Marlboro Man image, it seems we really are overthinking this, or trying to stretch the idea further than it was meant to stretch.
--- Quote from: injest on February 20, 2008, 05:58:34 am ---I don't understand this idea....that someone in an ad agency uses an image that is COMMON in an area and suddenly the IMAGE is what is being copied by the people that the ad guy copied!!
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I may be wrong, but I don't think anyone is saying this. Yes, regular people dress like that. And no, of course they aren't imitating an ad.
--- Quote ---movie guy gets script: needs to dress a poor country boy....does some investigating...
"hat, carhart jacket...ok that is what poor country boys wear....let's get Ennis a carhart and a hat"
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Yes. Again, I don't know that anybody's saying poor country boys don't really dress like that.
--- Quote from: bradINblue on February 20, 2008, 07:30:26 am ---But Jess, this is what people who live in town think, and they don't get it. My point was that it isn't an image. Images are Hollywood as is James Dean. One puts on 'airs' in an attempt to garner 'image'. Some are simply what they are. Your son and his (boyfriend) come to mind. They aren't adopting or imitating or costuming. They are just them, just like Ennis and one Jack Twist. Of course some out there will attempt to lump them into fake image and ads, but that is okay cause', well, they just don't get it.
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If I understand this correctly, this is exactly what I'm saying. You might say that regular people don't keep images in mind when they choose what to wear. (Though I could even potentially debate for that -- most regular people are fully aware of traditional cultural images when they pick their clothing -- otherwise, why do people from the West, or people who want to look like people from the West, wear cowboy hats, for example? Because they're simply the most comfortable headwear? Or because they're how people in Western culture traditionally dress? But never mind.)
But if you are saying that Ang Lee -- who doesn't just live in town, he's from Taiwan, for Pete's sake -- directed this movie without ever considering cultural icons like the Marlboro man and other cowboy images, well then, I disagree. To me, cultural icons and images are, if not the whole point of the movie, at least one big big big point of it. The movie, in my mind, is about how cultural assumptions -- of what cowboys are like, of what gay men are like -- are not always as true as people think. So how is it possible to make that point without using the visual trappings of those cultural assumptions? They could have had Ennis dress throughout the whole movie like he was dressed when he was laying pavement, but that wouldn't have worked as well.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: ineedcrayons on February 19, 2008, 12:48:35 pm ---Completely OT, but in rereading [Diana Ossana's essay "Climbing Brokeback Mountain"] just now, I just noticed that she says Larry took The New Yorker issue with the story upstairs, and came back down in 15 minutes. Did he take an Evelyn Wood speed reading class, or what??
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He probably didn't have to read the entire story to realize it had great potential for a screenplay.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on February 20, 2008, 11:26:00 am ---He probably didn't have to read the entire story to realize it had great potential for a screenplay.
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Well, she says that when he came down he told her it was the best short story he'd ever read in The New Yorker. Which implies he finished it. Plus, it was only then (according to her account) that she brought up the idea of a screenplay.
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