Author Topic: My passion for BBM - the ultimate (so far) story  (Read 6583 times)

Offline luigival

  • Brokeback Mountain Resident
  • ****
  • Posts: 189
My passion for BBM - the ultimate (so far) story
« on: April 18, 2006, 04:12:09 pm »
Further to most of my threads on IMDB having gone lost, courtesy of some damned troll, I found it necessary to recreate part of my lost thoughts on the peaceful pages here at Bettermost.
So, if you don't mind, I'll try to recreate how my passion for this story began.
Part 1
For me it all started on the evening of Saturday, Sep. 17, 2005. I was having dinner at some friends, and while chatting over a nice meal our landlady very briefly mentioned the fact that, quite surprisingly, the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival had gone to an unknown “gay cowboy” movie. Sign of the times: these days all the good family values have gone lost, was the subliminal text that I read in her speech and eyes! I didn’t say much on the subject, not knowing anything on Brokeback Mountain nor Annie Proulx, but somehow – and I can’t understand why – the following day I found myself actively browsing the internet in order to gather the most information on what was now becoming a rather inexplicable form of obsession. Soon I had located some info on the plot, the short story, the director and the actors. Jake Gyllenhaal: how do you spell that name? Heath Ledger: who’s ever seen that one? Really: I had never heard about them as their movies, so far, hadn’t been that much well received in Italy in order to grant their names “household” status.
I subscribed to IMDB on the following monday, Sep. 19, and soon tried to locate more and more information on this story which was becoming more and more intriguing as time passed: I had the feeling that somehow, and in more than one sense, this story had similarities with my own life experience, and I felt a strong feeling of relationship with those two souls.
Within one week, through Amazon, I had ordered Close Range, the book which contains Brokeback Mountain as the final short story, and as soon as it had arrived, it had been devoured. What I read was so painstakingly beautiful that I felt the need to re-read it over and over at least three times in only a few days, each time better understanding the passages and the hidden feelings that Annie Proulx had so beautifully been able to put on paper through her sharp and focused writing.
A number of passages had simply blown me awa. In particular I loved the closing phrase: There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it you’ve got to stand it. Now that I knew the book, and in my mind I had already created my own characters, based upon Annie’s depictions, I was definitely ready for the next thing: seeing something closer to reality.
But the movie was still a long way to go, at least for my needs.
Browsing thouroughly through the net, I was able to notice that BBM was coming to Italy towards the end of January, 2006. Too much waiting and I simply couldn’t waste all that time. Solutions? Well, I just happend to be planning a short vacation in NYC and ChiTown at the beginning of December, and by chance BBM was going to be officially released in the Big Apple on Dec. 9.
Great, then: my vacation would have been highlighted by the vision of BBM, right on its first day of going public. That morning it was snowing a lot in NYC, and I remember walking Broadway from the Penn Station all the way up until reaching the Loews Theatre at Lincoln Square. I was there at around 10.15am and yes, BBM was there. All the tickets for the evening viewings had already been sold, but there were still places available for the 11.15am viewing, the first “commercial release”. Even better! I could be among the privileged earlybirds to see it...
- end of part one (to be continued, if you liked it)
They were two friends of mine

Offline sparkle_motion

  • Brokeback Got Me Good
  • *****
  • Posts: 432
  • Stacey.
Re: My passion for BBM - the ultimate (so far) story
« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2006, 04:29:16 pm »
Quote
if you liked it
I like.
...then you ask me about Mexico and tell me you'll kill me for needing somethin' I don't hardly never get.

Offline luigival

  • Brokeback Mountain Resident
  • ****
  • Posts: 189
Re: My passion for BBM - the ultimate (so far) story
« Reply #2 on: April 18, 2006, 04:53:37 pm »
Quote
if you liked it
I like.
Thanks a lot: I greatly appreciated that. Just give me sometimes - it's quite late here and I'm tired - and come back in a few days for the second part of my BBM story. Buona notte!
Luigi
They were two friends of mine

Offline fernly

  • Brokeback Got Me Good
  • *****
  • Posts: 392
Re: My passion for BBM - the ultimate (so far) story
« Reply #3 on: April 21, 2006, 02:44:02 am »
luigival,

Liked it too...more please.
on the mountain flying in the euphoric, bitter air

vkm91941

  • Guest
Re: My passion for BBM - the ultimate (so far) story
« Reply #4 on: April 21, 2006, 03:08:13 am »
Quote
if you liked it
I like.
Thanks a lot: I greatly appreciated that. Just give me sometimes - it's quite late here and I'm tired - and come back in a few days for the second part of my BBM story. Buona notte!
Luigi

Sweet Dreams my friend we'll be looking forward to the next installment in your story.

Offline luigival

  • Brokeback Mountain Resident
  • ****
  • Posts: 189
Re: My passion for BBM - the ultimate (so far) story
« Reply #5 on: April 22, 2006, 09:12:05 am »
Dear all,
here's the second part of my own BBM story:

I’d say the Loews theatre was almost 70% full, with a good mix of viewers. As soon as the movie began, it was as if I was seeing scenes I had already seen before, only enriched by the magnificence of the landscape, the masterful directing and the beauty of the actors – and I refer not only to the two main characters, but to their wives, children and most other players in the movie as well: I found almost everybody playing in BBM either beautiful or handsome -. Truly, almost every scene on screen had been meticolously recreated according to what Annie Proulx had imagined, and all the added items fit so perfectly that I couldn’t have imagined anything different.
I greatly enjoyed the public reactions along the development of the story: there were laughs at funny events - especially at the scene when Aguirre spots the two guys “fighting” after the second tent scene -, and you could feel the sorrow when things began to go the sad way.
After all the titles and both “The Wings”, “He was a friend of mine” and “The Maker makes” had finished, people slowly began leaving the theatre, and you could feel how anybody there had been touched by the movie. You didn’t see tears around, but you felt people had been deeply hit.
I left as well, with a strange sensation in me: I had liked it greatly, though I missed a part of the dialogues - not being a native speaker - but overall I was feeling a strange form of confusion. Was I expecting to be moved as much as to cry? Maybe, but it hadn’t happened. Was what I had seen a faithful reproduction of my own experience? Not really, though there were similarities, as along my life there had been periods when I had been feeling an exceptionally strong attraction - mostly intellectual, but I don’t deny it had been physical too - for a very good friend of mine, in circumstances not too different from those described in BBM. But life makes you review your thoughts, reposition your priorities, decide what can be right or wrong - maybe? -, and that had been a number of years before. So what? In the last few years I had been quietly living my single existence filling it with lots of different interests, so why should I care too much about an old story.
Overall, was I happy with my life in general? Yes, no doubt. Well, ehm, maybe...
I left, continuing my journey through NYC, and not thinking much - or perhaps trying not to think much - about BBM. The following day I arrived in Chicago and at a point, while walking in the city centre, the whole story began to resurface in my mind in all its powerful beauty and tragedy. In a few minutes I was swept away, unable to think to anything else but to this classic and tragical story of impossible love. Why? This was the first time I was experiencing the phenomenon I now call the BBM long-distance effect. It never hits me immediately after the viewing: on the contrary, after having seen it I feel somehow relieved, but after a few hours, or on the following day, and often for a number of days afterwards, I feel wrecked, as if the soul of the story has somehow subsided into my brain and worked out a slow chain reaction on my neurons...
Well, useless to say, the following days were a series of emotional ups and downs, with thoughts on the story continuously resurfacing along the day. I had never imagined a movie could harm me lke this. All too soon I was back to old Europe, glad for both the vacation and for having had the privilege of having been one of the first viewers of what I had now elected as my all times favourite movie.
But BBM fever, that Leslie Nicolls has so well depicted in one of her great posts, had hit me so deeply that I was now feeling the need to know more about the movie, the author, the actors and so on. Above all, I was beginning to feel the sensation that I had actually known both Ennis and Jack, as if they were two real friends of mine. I bought the Italian translation of the short story, in order to better understand a number of passages that still were not completely clear to me, and became an aficionado visitor as well as a poster at IMDB. Please note that I had never, never been posting anything on the internet in my previous 45 years of existence.
Christmas was now approaching, and BBM was now being released throughout the U.S.A. and England, but for the Italian public it was still a long way to come, its release date having been announced as January 18, 2006. And how long would it have been before it could reach the town where I live? Could I wait such a long time without seeing BBM again?
- end of part two, soon to be continued -
« Last Edit: April 22, 2006, 04:30:51 pm by luigival »
They were two friends of mine

Offline Aussie Chris

  • BetterMost Supporter!
  • Brokeback Got Me Good
  • *****
  • Posts: 613
Re: My passion for BBM - the ultimate (so far) story
« Reply #6 on: April 22, 2006, 09:45:20 am »
Argh!  End of part 2???  I'm hanging on your story here luigival.  Beautifully written and riveting.  I can't wait for the next installment.

Salivatingly yours, Chris.
Nothing is as common as the wish to be remarkable - William Shakespeare

Offline luigival

  • Brokeback Mountain Resident
  • ****
  • Posts: 189
Re: My passion for BBM - the ultimate (so far) story
« Reply #7 on: April 22, 2006, 09:50:37 am »
Thanks Chris,
will do my best to continue my BBM saga soon. Luigi
They were two friends of mine

Offline Front-Ranger

  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 30,288
  • Brokeback got us good.
Re: My passion for BBM - the ultimate (so far) story
« Reply #8 on: April 22, 2006, 01:10:30 pm »
I can't wait for the Italian chapter! The Western is always being reinvented and coopted for the good by the Italians and now by the Asians. It's too bad if the Italians don't recognize BBM as having Sergio Leone among its progenitors.
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline luigival

  • Brokeback Mountain Resident
  • ****
  • Posts: 189
Re: My passion for BBM - the ultimate (so far) story
« Reply #9 on: April 23, 2006, 09:38:38 am »
And here we are with part three or, the first Italian Chapter:

I had to, though, and I did eagerly wait to see it in my own language, in the meantime continuing to visit the IMDB site, often posting there.
January came, and BBM started to flourish on Italian cinema screens in major cities, as expected, generally being quite well perceived by the public, though without much talking about it.
It happened that I was planning to go to Catania, Sicily, on January 27, for a business meeting. A quick check made me aware that on that day BBM was being screened in two different cinemas there. Well, this was beginning to present itself as a non-missable opportunity: watching BBM in Sicily could have been somewhat of an interesting ethnical experience.
Having finished working at around noon, and my flight home leaving at 10.30pm, I had plenty of time for getting into town, leisurely strolling until 5.30pm, in time for the first show.
The theatre was an old one - seemingly built in the sixties - in a back street in the old area of the city, and quite a big one with a seating capacity of more than 800 in the viewing room allocated to BBM. I was there by 5.00pm, as soon as the theatre had opened, and to my surprise I was the only one sitting for the first ten/fifteen minutes. I was feeling quite a strange sensation and could actually choose and change any place I wished, finally opting for a central seat giving me the best possible viewpoint of the screen. Only then a handful of other viewers slowly came in: a couple, two singles, and two very chatty ladies in their mid-sixties.
The two ladies took their seats two rows behind mine and continued incessantly talking quite loudly for the remaining 15 minutes that were left before BBM actually began. After 10 minutes I already knew almost everything about their family’s average income, their more recent health problems and their relatives status: very interesting! They were two of those “very much” traditional Southern Italian ladies, who meet on weekends at the cinema, and love gossiping about the neighbours’ behaviour and so on, so I was truly amazed when I heard one of them questioning the other: “Di cosa parla ‘sto film?” (What does this movie talks about?), the reply that came being “Non lo so! So soltanto che ha vinto il Leone d’Oro a Venezia, e quindi deve essere un bel film” (Don’t know! I only know it won the Golden Lion at Venice, so it has to be a good movie).
Jeez! So these two ladies who were probably even afraid of pronouncing the word “gay” had ended up unknowingly at seeing the most debated wide-release movie in recent times. I felt this was going to be really an interesting ethnical experience!
At 5.30pm the viewing started, and while the story unrolled I could still hear from time to time the two ladies chatting behind me, although much more quietly, now.
BBM was great, even though dubbed in Italian. True, you lose a part of the emotions when a movie is dubbed, but Italy has a long-standing tradition of great movie voices (quite often very fine actors themselves) and this applied to the Italian voices for Ennis and Jack too.
After the first tent scene, the two ladies completely stopped talking. Ang Lee has opted for quite a shocking approach to the beginning of the love story between the two guys, a real initiation ritual to a “new life” which always takes by surprise the first-time viewer, and that was even more accentuated in the case of these two ladies, who were now probably questioning themselves about what could possibly go on afterwards.
During the short interval between the two parts (in Italian theatres movies are still usually cut in two, allowing for a two/three minutes break), no comments were there to be heard.
As for me, I loved this viewing: at the last meeting scene I didn’t cry, but happened to feel misty eyes, the images of that desperate final hug and those of hopeful and young Jack contrasting so much with the bitter looking of a much more mature, and disillusioned Jack, being too much to bear.
Too soon BBM was over: time to leave.
Nobody in the theatre was speaking, and the two ladies looked quite proven and wrecked.
I’m sure the spirit of BBM had hit and got them good as well.
- end of part three, tbc –
« Last Edit: April 23, 2006, 02:12:14 pm by luigival »
They were two friends of mine