TOTW 10/07: What's so funny, huh?

[Penthesilea]

Happy new week, BetterMostians  ! Hope this will be a good one for you. It will be a short one for me, because in Germany we'll have a public holiday on Wednesday - yeaaaah 
 

Before starting with the new TOTW I wanted to thank everybody who joins our discussions here. Even after all this time, and all those words written about the movie/story, there are still new things, new perspectives to be detected. What a deep and multilayered masterpiece Proulx and Ang Lee created (what else is new? ). And I just love to hear all your different POVs about various aspects of it, so thank you for sharing them with us here.

With all this serious discussions we usually have going on here, I think we could use a week of fun as a mark for the tenth TOTW . I'm aware that we already have a thread about the fun stuff in the "I love the lighter side" Forum. But I want to give this TOTW a broader range of sources. And since this forum is dedicated to the movie/story and how it affected us, I'd also love to hear funny, delighting, pleasurable, goofy, hilarious, and loveable anecdotes from your Brokeback Mountain experiences  .
 

What's so funny, huh?

Have a scene, a facial expression or else in the movie that cracks you up everytime? A line in the story which makes you smile each time you read it? A funny cinema adventure around viewing BBM? Maybe you have read a hilarious review somewhere?
Share it here with us, we want to laugh with you  .


Edit: Additional information: We have a new, small, but useful technical feature for the time the TOTW is bannered  . When you click the direct link in the banner (which always reads here) it will bring you directly to the posts which are new to you. So you don't have to scroll or turn the pages every time you come back to the topic.
Thank you Clarissa for this nice little knack  .

[Penthesilea]

I'll go first this week  .

When I saw BBM for the first time (which was the dubbed German version), I noticed the sign at Aguirre's trailer right away: "Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again". Living in Germany, I had never seen or heard of that saying before and found it hilarious. I literally laughed out loud - and I was the only one in the whole cinema  . People turned around to me, looking who's laughing so unprovoked, or some may even have thought inappropriate. Which of course made me laugh even more  .

[serious crayons]

Not to be a downer on this fun thread, but I've always found that sign interesting because, on the one hand, it's funny, and on the other, it tragically encapsulates the whole movie. Jack and Ennis "trespassed" against society's rules. One was shot. The survivor was shot again, in a sense, having to live with grief and guilt.

 

Sorry! Back to fun! Here's another sign-related one. I probably never would have realized how funny it is, if it weren't for a post someone (maybe naughtylibrarian?) wrote on the old hilarious classic "Cowboy Etiquette" imdb thread (sorry -- I wanted to post a link to that thread here, but for some reason it's not on the archive site; anybody have one?).

Anyway, the sign is the one on the wall of Ennis and Alma's apartment building -- the one that says "Laundromat entrance around front." Ennis parks his truck right below it just before going up to the apartment, in the scene where he gets Jack's postcard:

So naughtylibrarian (or whoever it was -- sorry if I'm miscrediting) gave this tip of cowboy etiquette:

"Always park directly under the 'Laundromat entrance around front' sign so everyone knows what entrance you really like using."



 

I'm pretty sure Ang did that on purpose.

[Penthesilea]

Not to be a downer on this fun thread, but I've always found that sign interesting because, on the one hand, it's funny, and on the other, it tragically encapsulates the whole movie. Jack and Ennis "trespassed" against society's rules. One was shot. The survivor was shot again, in a sense, having to live with grief and guilt.

 

 
Yep, of course you're right. The sign isn't funny for two reasons: apart fom the movie, it shows a certain mindset which is actually everything but funny, and very very foreign to us Europeans. Regarding the movie, it is everything you said, I remember the discussion(s) we had about it. Jack ends up dead and Ennis "gets shot" not only again = twice, but repeated times: at the lake scene argument (where he stood "as if heartshot" in the story), the postcard, the phone call, the mentioning of 'the other fella' by OMT, the refusal of the ashes and of course finding The Shirts (although the latter are also, or even more so, a blessing).

On a lighter note: I couldn't know all this at my first viewing.

Sorry! Back to fun! Here's another sign-related one. I probably never would have realized how funny it is, if it weren't for a post someone (maybe naughtylibrarian?) wrote on the old hilarious classic "Cowboy Etiquette" imdb thread (sorry -- I wanted to post a link to that thread here, but for some reason it's not on the archive site; anybody have one?).

Anyway, the sign is the one on the wall of Ennis and Alma's apartment building -- the one that says "Laundromat entrance around front." Ennis parks his truck right below it just before going up to the apartment, in the scene where he gets Jack's postcard:

So naughtylibrarian (or whoever it was -- sorry if I'm miscrediting) gave this tip of cowboy etiquette:

"Always park directly under the 'Laundromat entrance around front' sign so everyone knows what entrance you really like using."



 

I'm pretty sure Ang did that on purpose.

Since when do way stay strctly to a topic, huh?  So no need to be sorry bud.

Your pic doesn't show up. The cowboy etiquette saying  is funny

[serious crayons]

On a lighter note: I couldn't know all this at my first viewing.

True. I had read the story on my first viewing, and even then I didn't get the other meaning of the sign. I probably didn't get that for several more viewings, in fact.

Since when do way stay strctly to a topic, huh?  So no need to be sorry bud.

So OT posters won't be shot, hunh? That's a relief! 

Your pic doesn't show up.

Really? That's odd, because not only do I see the pic in my own post, but I see the pic in your quote of my post. Does anybody else see it?

[serious crayons]

I asked TOoP/Bruce, our astute and inestimably talented BBM archivist, whether he by any chance had a copy of the famous "Cowboy Etiquette" thread, and he produced it right away!  , Bruce! So now I can correctly identify the poster of the funny laundromat-sign line. It was spottedreptile:

Re: What nuance of Cowboy Etiquette did YOU first learn from this movie?   
  by - spottedreptile (Fri Jan 27 2006 17:41:57 )   
When parking outside your laundromat apartment, always park right next to the 'Laundromat entrance round front' sign, so everybody knows which entrance you really like to use.

Bruce has reposted the entire "Cowboy Etiquette" thread in the IMDb Remarkable Writings Rewound forum, and for anyone who hasn't seen it before, I highly recommend it. It is one of the funniest threads ever. I remember when I first read it was when I first began to feel like a true Brokie -- there I was, sitting in front of my computer in the middle of the night, cracking up over lines that I knew most people in the world would just find bewildering. Some of them still go through my mind whenever I watch the film.

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,13507.0.html

P.S. On a more disturbing note -- I can't even find any poster on the thread named "naughtylibrarian"!!!!     Where did I come up with THAT one?!?? Maybe I was thinking of poorlittleteacher, a frequent poster on that thread ... But why did it change in my memory into something more ... burlesquey? (My apologies, if there is a naughtylibrarian out there somewhere! [insert blushing emoticon here])
 

[Ellemeno]

I lighten up, hunh, several times while watching the movie because of posts I remember when I see the scenes:

- The disappearing log when Jack is talking to Aguirre
- Cassie tossing her tresses from side to side
- "If I had three hands I could" (On that one I remember henrypie posting on IMDb the little IMDb icon with the caption, "If I had three eyes I could.")
- The view of the "piece of cherry" cake in the kitchen, with its lone cherry (though I read recently of someone seeing more).
- Even the shot of the semi before Ennis jumps out, because I remember the fateful apple that got put in that scene at the beginning of our wonderful Performance Thread.

[serious crayons]

Another one for me is the boot in the fire.

[ifyoucantfixit]

       I love Jack telling Ennis lets git, unless ya wanta stand around tyin knots all day.  And that
eyebrow thing Ennis does and the funny look he gives back.
       He finds out Jack is going to be a force to be reckoned with..

[TOoP/Bruce]

P.S. On a more disturbing note -- I can't even find any poster on the thread named "naughtylibrarian"!!!!     Where did I come up with THAT one?!?? Maybe I was thinking of poorlittleteacher, a frequent poster on that thread ... But why did it change in my memory into something more ... burlesquey? (My apologies, if there is a naughtylibrarian out there somewhere! [insert blushing emoticon here])

I strongly suspect you are half-correctly remembering an IMDb user who goes by the name "The_Naked_Librarian" who posted on a number of threads when the movie first came out. 

If you search the IMDb Remarkable Threads Rewind forum, you will find a few quotes from TNL.