The crash you heard late Sunday night was not only Jack Nicholson announcing the best-picture Oscar winner. It was the sound of lots of closet doors slamming shut in a huff. ''Brokeback Mountain," the so-called gay cowboy movie, lost to ''Crash," a drama about the shrieking, teary, hateful, and guilty people who refuse to stop running into each on the streets of Los Angeles.
Some movies are born political, and others have politics thrust upon them. Poor ''Brokeback Mountain" was such a movie. Ang Lee's adaptation of Annie Proulx's short story was not out to attack us with a statement. It really is just an unhappy love story that happens to have enormous social relevance because its protagonists are two men. Yet the movie's biggest supporters may have turned an otherwise innocent film into a cause that got on voters' nerves. The dialogue became quotable, and the poster was mocked, lessening the emotional seriousness and making for a once-in-a-lifetime pop-culture phenomenon.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/03/07/hollywood_isnt_being_straight_with_gay_community/
