After Elton Interviews Producer James Schamus One Year Later

[Lynne]

http://www.afterelton.com/people/2006/12/schamus.htm

An in-depth 3 page candid interview - well worth your time to read, I promise.
-Lynne

[Penthesilea]

The page is down right now. It says they do a server upgrade and it will last a few days till the site will be up again.
I'll try again in a few days.

[David]

D'oh!

   I don't suppose anyone saved the article and could cut and paste it here? 

[Lynne]

Site is still...down - first one to catch it up - post it all here, please!

[David]

Lynne, 

It is posted in the Chez Tremblay area  here on BetterMost.   

[Toast]

Here's the complete interview:

Interview With Brokeback Mountain (Producer James Schamus)
by
Michael Jensen, Editor
December 14, 2006


James Schamus

One year ago this month, Brokeback Mountain opened in New York City before gradually opening across the country. After breaking box office records in New York, Brokeback went on to gross $83 million domestically (more than double that worldwide) and won more Best Picture and Director awards in America than any other film in history. Indeed, Brokeback Mountain is arguably the most honored film of all time. To celebrate the anniversary of Brokeback Mountain's release, we recently spoke with Brokeback's executive producer and the CEO of Focus Features, James Schamus.

AfterElton.com: What can you tell me about the director's cut of Brokeback Mountain?
James Schamus: It's not even really a director's cut. … The changes really are very minuscule. They're going to package in some … featurettes about the music, the reception of the film. What you saw [in the theaters] was the director's cut. It's what Ang wanted.

AE: That's good to hear.
JS: Yeah. They wanted to put in some deleted scenes. There was a discussion about deleted scenes, but quite frankly, as Ang said, “The reason I deleted them was because I wanted to delete them. So why would I put them in the DVD?” [Laughs.] That's a pretty good point there, Ang!

AE: There was probably a certain faction of the audience hoping for an alternative ending.
JS: Well, yes. You know my joke is that in the sequel, Heath will go to New York and become one of the Village People. [ Laughs.] That's a whole other different movie.

AE: It's just so sad that so many straight men wouldn't see the movie. I hadn't thought about this when I saw Brokeback, but what would director John Ford have said about Brokeback Mountain?
JS: Ang did not want to put the film in the western category. He knew the film was about the West, and he knew if he overstudied westerns while he was preparing it, he would be stultified a bit and getting into a genre he wasn't interested in, because [Brokeback Mountain] is not a “western” per se. But it is about people of the West and men of the West.

So he is very aware of westerns, and we watched a lot together. And what he wanted was a movie that was, I think, stylistically a little different. You know, there are a lot of main wide shots, and [in] Brokeback he doesn't punch in a lot. When he does, it's usually very specific, and it's a very simple course of filmmaking.

AE: It also seems very much a movie about class.
JS: Thank you! No one talked about that. A few people did. But in terms of general culture, I think because of the gay love story there was really very little discourse saying “ Jeez, you actually don't see a lot of movies about working-class people, historically.”

AE: Absolutely.
JS: It's almost like a law saying you're not allowed to do it. So thank you for saying that, because we always knew why it wasn't being discussed. … There is a whole other part of this [film] that gets teased out that has to do with the relation of class.

AE: Well, even through the prism of gay issues, it seems like Jake, since he has more money, is able to think outside the box about having a different kind of life, whereas —
JS: This is exactly right.

AE: Heath is in such a small world that he can't really see outside it. Unless you have a certain amount of economic freedom, you can't really think of those things. If you're willing to comment at this point, do you have a sense of how Brokeback is going to fit in cinematic history?
JS: I honestly — I make 'em, you tell me …

AE: As an artist, how hard is it for you to make your movies and then divorce yourself from the public reaction? Brokeback is especially pertinent to me in that sense because gay men felt such a sense of ownership and had such a strong reaction to so many aspects of the film. So I wonder if you're able to say, “Oh, that is interesting,” but not actually let negative things seep in.
JS: Well, it can't help but. I think it depends on how and under [what] circumstances. I'll never forget by the time the DVD came out where the ads … were 15-second spots. This is long after the Oscars and all the hoopla. Everybody knew what the movie was, but they were doing these spots which were really Jake and Anne Hathaway, Heath and Michelle Williams, and all this kind of romantic [thing]. People would say, “Wow, what are you trying to do at this late date? Fool people into thinking [it's not gay]?” I was like, “Are you kidding? Are you out of your minds?” I didn't cut those ads, but I understand the appeal was this statement [to straight women]: “We're in love with beautiful gay men. Oh, my God.”

AE: Interestingly, I remember coming across the small but vocal gay segment that sometimes would say, “I'm not that interested in Brokeback Mountain. It doesn't seem gay enough.” These were people who wouldn't see it for different reasons than certain straight men wouldn't see it. Did you come across any of that?
JS: I did a little bit. I honestly believe this as a filmmaker: There is no such thing as a 100 percent politically correct work of art. No matter what it is. If you're dealing with issues of any kind — if you're trying to get your imagination to the next level — you're going to be messing in politically incorrect ways with politically incorrect things.

So when you hear an attack like that, you can be dismissive and say, “Well, they're just writing us off and they're so wrong and we're so good, and I'm so politically correct and you don't understand.” But that's not actually an appropriate response. What you want to say is “OK, they see something in there that is actually rubbing against stuff that won't show how good I am. And I want to see where the friction is, because that is an interesting place to be psychologically and artistically and politically.”

Let's put it this way: Ten years ago if we had made Brokeback, especially the intellectual elite in the gay community would have hated it. They would have [hated it] because the narrative closure is tragic. We kill the gay person for being gay, and therefore we “ spake ” in a closing- off of political possibilities for that subject. Because when we were making the movie, I was very aware of the fact that this is a tragic test, and therefore has a punitive closure on at least one of its characters, if not both of them. Although there is that hint … at the end, [where] I feel there is an emotional opening that says, “Wow, this gave me access to love because I now accept that is my relationship, that this is who I am.” Even if it is literally in a closet.

AE: I wanted to ask you about The Wedding Banquet.
JS: You know, we were very proud of Wedding Banquet. I can tell you on Ang's behalf that was the scariest moment of our professional lives, ever. You have to understand when we made The Wedding Banquet, queer cinema was the way you represented gay culture. There was no Will & Grace and any of that stuff. It didn't exist. So we made this movie which was a screwball comedy. Again, we did the same move in that we took a classic Hollywood genre, and we queered it. We made the film and we had a screening for GLAAD, and Ang was convinced that 550 angry gay people would band together and kill him before the screening.

AE: Why?
JS: Because it was light. It was mainstream. It was not angst-filled, and he's not gay. How could he do something with gay characters at the center of the story? All these things. He was very nervous. At the end of that screening, when 550 hundred people literally stood on their chairs and applauded for 10 minutes, he [Ang] was weeping. He was crying.

AE: It seems like a movie like Brokeback truly is a cultural milestone that reflects a change in society, but since the movie spoke so clearly to gay men and women, is there a way to reach straight men through art like this?
JS: One of the ways is to ignore them as we did in everything we did. We ignored any objection. We simply didn't hear it. When all the homophobes came out in the first few weeks of the release, all the blah, blah, blah on the talk shows, you'll notice something. Or maybe you didn't. We never showed up. We never debated.

AE: I did notice. You guys stayed away.
JS: Right. We never gave them the berth to frame a conversation with us, ever. You didn't see me on O'Reilly. You never saw any spokespeople for this movie when there was a homophobe around. Their strategy, of course, was that this film would tank anyway, so, “Ha ha ha. Have you seen it? No. Ha ha ha. I wouldn't!”

Well, guess what? A month later we knew we would drive a huge gross from our core audience. We knew women would come out, and as the grosses got bigger, suddenly they were in a bit of a quandary. “What do I do? Should I see it? Should I not? I don't have anything to say.”

Suddenly there was that kind of tipping moment where it was not cool to tell a homophobic Brokeback joke. Suddenly you had to tell nice jokes or do nice parodies or celebrate [the movie] because there was no one to argue with. I really think there is a very powerful aspect to the things you don't notice. You don't notice when the guy at the water cooler pauses and thinks, “I better not tell this joke because I realize that a lot of people have seen this movie and seem to like it, and maybe it's not safe for me to push it here.”

AE: During the voting period for the Oscars when certain people like Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine started speaking up and saying things that were hurting the movie, was there any temptation to —
JS: That all happened at the end of the voting. A lot of it was the response to [how] in the trade ads we became more and more explicit about portraying the [gay] relationship. We actually ran some front-page trade ads — literally the cover page of Variety — of the two boys, one naked holding the other, and really selling it that way. I've been told by about 500 people that is why we didn't win the award. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. I don't care. So it's an award. Whatever. But it's very interesting to see that the Borgnines and the Tony Curtises — to be honest, Some Like It Hot is pretty much our family's all-time favorite movie. To have Tony Curtis just … [Sighs.]

AE: Unbelievable.
JS: At that point in time, if it had been earlier, I think I would have dealt with it head-on. But since the voting was closing and everything, we were on a roll. The box office, everything was happening. You guys probably noticed, but nobody else noticed there was no mainstream press pick-up on those comments.

AE: None. Nobody defended it or anything.
JS: It was left to the side. If it had [hit] the L.A. Times or the New York Times, I probably would have gone after them.

AE: It hit Entertainment Weekly.
JS: Yeah, but that was already [too late]. So at that point why … you start looking like sour grapes. “We didn't get the award because …” You know, I believe in a certain kind of graciousness. Frankly, the Crash folks did a great campaign. They knew what they were doing, and they did a great job. The never went negative.

AE: Even though Crash had won nothing, and you had won everything.
JS: But that was the problem. If I could have asked, “Please hold back a little bit,” I would have. I've always been the underdog. I knew we had lost Best Picture. As soon as the voting closed, I knew.

AE: Why?
JS: Because I get feedback from the community and the publicists. I can smell it. I told everybody at the company, “We're not going to win Best Picture. You did a great job. We did everything we possibly could. There is only so far you can go.” But every year before we came in, we came in as the underdog. Every year when we haven't won, it's been OK, and then when we have won, it's been amazing. So this year [we] were going to lose. But there is a difference. When The Pianist doesn't win it's like, “Oh, yeah. Right. Like we were gonna win.”

But when Brokeback lost I said, “You're going to feel it. You're going to feel like you lost, because we did. And it'll hit you, and it'll be tough.” But you know what? This is a business and we did our best, and because, to a certain extent, we were the frontrunner, we were the one to take down. The Lionsgate guys were very smart. They isolated us and made themselves the underdog and made that work for them. What do you do? That's what I would have done.

AE: Before, you told me that you lost for essentially the reasons you made the film for in the first place.
JS: I think that is fair to say. I don't want to cast aspersions on their win as if their win was because of the politics of the film, although clearly, as you know, these older guys, these very, very old, male Academy members became, at the very end, very vocal. If we lost by one vote, we know why we lost. But we don't know how many votes we lost by, so you can't really sit around and speculate. It was a fact, no question, but you know what? Maybe next time around it won't be. So that is good.

AE: Do you think Brokeback has made it easier for gay movies to get made? Or for straight actors like Jake and Heath to take these roles?
JS: Clearly, there is no question straight actors can take on these roles any time they want now. As I said to Andy Towle, the big test is when a big hunky movie star … comes out. I think we moved the dial on that. The big test … is when the great male movie star — female too — comes out of the closet and then gets the job kissing Julia Roberts. That's the test. There's not even a test prep class for that. I think that is the next step forward.

AE: I think Neil Patrick Harris put us a little bit closer. I think that is an important step.
JS: Yes. I think so, too. I think it's great.

AE: You've certainly enabled it in all your work. Not just Brokeback Mountain.
JS: It's been an incredible journey. Really, a big part of watching the process take shape outside of our little corner has just been wonderful.

Jay Gilman contributed to this interview.



the interview is discussed in this thread:
Link to Bettermost Thread