Small Town America And BBM

[Karan13]

Hi there !
             I live in Birmingham England , i have never been to any part of America , been from a big city pretty much anything goes , i`ve heard that in some places , it was hard to even get to see Brokeback , i know some some towns are pretty religious is this so ?

Did you have trouble getting to see the movie ?
If so where are you from ?
I know the movie starts in 63 , but are things about where you live still similar ,? do let me know .

I usually post on ImDb so this is my first post here i`d love your feedback , Jack and Ennis struggle really got to me and hearing people on the IMDB board made me realise that in some places it`s not so different today. xx kaz

[Phillip Dampier]

Hi there !
             I live in Birmingham England , i have never been to any part of America , been from a big city pretty much anything goes , i`ve heard that in some places , it was hard to even get to see Brokeback , i know some some towns are pretty religious is this so ?

First, WELCOME!!!   

I think in the United States, it all depends on where you live.  I live in New York, a "blue" state that tends towards the Democratic party.  In this area, Brokeback Mountain showed up at the local art house theatre, but it also had limited release in some of the small towns south of Rochester.  In the USA, most people see movies in these large "multiplexes" which can have 12-30 movie screens.  Many smaller towns have lost their movie theaters because they cannot compete with the multiplexes.  But for those that do have small independent theaters, BBM probably never made it to their screens, only because they show one to three "mainstream" films at a time, and BBM was not considered mainstream enough.

In more conservative states, BBM still made it to art house theaters, but probably not the commercial multiplexes.  Since theater attendance in this country has been dropping like a rock (it can cost $10US + per ticket, and if you want popcorn and a soda, please fill out this easy credit application because you don't have that much cash on you), theater attendance doesn't give the full story of a movie's success any longer.

Even in conservative towns, religion may not play as prominent a role as conservative political values.

The state of Wyoming (which is where Dick Cheney is from) is one of America's most rural states and although it has a Democrat for governor (who doesn't dare act like a liberal on anything), the state is one of four "mountain" states (Utah, Idaho and Montana being the others) that are reliable conservative states and were the last to send George Bush's poll numbers south of 50%.  I'd say the state is so rural that if you lived your life quietly and never made a "scene," I'd wonder if most people there would care what you were. 

[nakymaton]

BBM was released like an art-house movie in the US -- it showed in three major cities at first, and then a handful of other major cities, and then expanded to smaller cities and to some small towns. I saw it about three weeks after it opened, but I had to drive for eight hours round-trip to see it. (Crossed state lines, saw a pair of shooting stars just before desert sunrise... it was quite an experience.) It played in my small town for two months, so when it finally opened here, there wasn't a problem seeing it. But this town was an exception -- I think it may have been one of a handful of towns used to test-market BBM in more rural communities. In some other towns, there were actually articles in local newspapers after the Golden Globes, explaining that the local theaters weren't boycotting BBM, and they would show it as soon as Focus made enough prints available. (But BBM didn't do nearly as well in those expansions, which were the ones right after Oscar nominations came out.) It did show in multiplexes where those were the only theaters around, but it didn't generally show in towns with fewer than five theater screens. If it had won Best Picture at the Oscars, maybe it would have shown in some towns with limited numbers of screens -- some of those towns still get movies really late in the release. But, well, that didn't happen.

The DVD was sold in Wal-Mart, which is the major discount chain store in small towns in America, so it's available to people in small towns even if it didn't show on a big screen. (And the Dave Cullen message board did a big donation campaign to libraries. The Wyoming libraries seemed really happy to get it, and it's now available in libraries in Riverton and near where Ennis and Jack grew up. Some libraries refused copies, a few because they disapproved of the movie, but most for reasons related to their circulation policies (no feature films, for instance).)

[starboardlight]

I live in LA, so seeing the film was no problem for me. I was on IMDB pretty early on and as the film rolled out its release through the States, I was seeing people coming on to the forum posting about how difficult it was for them to see the film. That we know of, there were only 3 reports of theaters pulling the film from their line up, because of theater owner's "religious" objection. I put "religious" in quotes because those owners still went on to show films like Hostel and Match Point, which my any religious standard is far more objectionable. For small town American, it seemed that there was a lack of choices and opportunity to see this film, as the film ended up in the big cities for the most part. There were people reporting drive 2-3 hours into the city just to see it. Some even made it a whole day screening, going in early afternoon, and sitting through two screenings. Small town America can still be very conservatives, not only socially, but economically. As a theater owner in a small town, this film would have been a financial risk, where as some of the easier to digest films would be easy to sell to a limited population.

[serious crayons]

I lived in Minneapolis when the film first came out, and live in the Chicago area now -- both cities in the Midwest. Seeing it was no problem in either place. But again, they're cities. And both extremely liberal.

[Lynne]

Karan - I'm very glad you're here - Welcome!  and thanks for posting!

I live in a fairly rural town in Tennessee/USA, but I think my problems seeing BBM in theatres were more related to the art-house style distribution plan that Focus Feature used than to any moral objection from the theatres.  I read the short story in the fall of 2005 when I first heard of the movie, but it seemed to take FOREVER to make it from the premiere in the large cities to anywhere a reasonable from me.  I had a low startle point about this, and I made a lot of phone calls .  I was repeatedly reassured that it would get closer to me eventually - there was no conspiracy at work.  It did finally play in the cities nearest me (Nashville/Chattanooga, TN and Huntsville, AL - 60-100 miles away) by late January 2006.  And March, BBM even had a 3 week stint on the smallest screen in the closest theatre to me (6 miles).

Sadly, though, I saw it completely alone once and there were never more than 20 people there for any of my theatre viewings - about 8 people was typical.  For the first few viewings, I got to see people walk on tent scene one.

-Lynne

[Shakesthecoffecan]

Karan,

I agree with Lynne, it kind of goes along with Randy Quaid sueing Focus, or whoever it was. They were advertizing it as a force of nature and not realizing what a force of nature it was. I live in an area of about 75,000, in a fairly conservative area. A local theater owner I know who is gay, I asked him was he getting it, he said he would and it would take him months because there was just not enough prints. We drove 100 mile round trip to see it, which is not unheard of because the theaters in the bigger cities are just better, more comfortable, etc.

It did finally come to my town and I did go see it, in March. By then everyone in my area who wanted to see it had already traveled out of town to see it. Others were still afraid to be seen and waited on the DVD. A local preecher claimed he was going to lead a demonstration against the movie when it opened here, but insted went on a golf trip. The only religious reaction to it I heard of locally was a local Baptist Youth group van pulled up in front of the theather, a bunch of kids got out, took a group picture in front of the poster and left. I am not sure what that means but I take it as a hopeful sign.

Now during the height of the media frenzie, the lesser educated people I encountered would say thing like this:

Conveinence Store Clerk: "I ain't gone go see no two cowboys kissing each other!"

Conveinece Store Customer: "Welll you got two gays come in here every morning and buy breakfast"

Clerk: "WHO?!?!"

I think it started a lot of dialogue, and that is usually a good thing. I did correspond with a gay guy in Riverton, Wyoming who told me he had heard Riverton was in the story but had not seen it because it did not play there.   

[ProwlAmongUs]

I live in a rural area of upstate New York, and I was amazed--and pleased--to see the film released widely here. It played for a long time in Syracuse (a small city where it did well in the multiplexes and also at one independent theater).  It showed for a time in a VERY small city ten miles from where I live and also showed for two weeks in a small college town. The fact that Colgate University is located in that town was a factor, I'm sure, for its being successful, although the audiences were NOT merely college students. (Colgate is a prestigious and expensive university with a diverse student population, so that influenced the theater there to carry the film initially.)

I saw the film in more than one theater locally, and was pleased with the response from the audience. While a few snickered or voiced some disgust, most people were fine and quite moved emotionally. I feared the movie would be laughed or booed off the screen due to the conservative nature of the area here (we're mostly Republicans and Democrats are shot at dawn, figuratively speaking). 

[Karan13]

Big thank you , for all your replies , i`m glad you all didn`t have to much trouble seeing the movie.
     I guess we do take it for granted here , how easy it is to go to the cinema , but i must admit it is quite an expensive affair these days { even though Brokeback was worth every penny }. Getting the Dvd was also easy as practically every supermarket , record shop , even newsagents , had it on their shelves.

I raced out on the release date and grabbed one , i was a little disappointed with no Directors commentry on it or deleted scenes , but i still watch it constantly , and will probably need to replace it before the years out.

Take care all xx kaz         

[Shakesthecoffecan]

I am waiting on that directors cut with baited breath. There are scenes out there, in the trailer and elsewhere that never made it to the film, and the feeling I have is there is more to the story of Jack's lynching they decided to leave out and I am hungry for that detail. I want to know what McMurtry and Ossana came up with.