Broke (my) Back Mountin’ (a cowboy) 
A very wise man once told me that the only thing you can lose in life (aside from life itself) and never get back is time. If I actually went to the Cineplex to see Brokeback Mountain I would do so knowing that 134 minutes of my life would be gone, never to return.
     So I took Samuel L Jackson’s advice from his "Academy Member's Guide to Oscars Voting". You don’t need to see a film to have an opinion about it. Unfortunately, unlike Sam I couldn’t draw upon the largesse of my household staff to review this one, but I can draw upon my encyclopedic knowledge of gay cinema.
     Co-star, Jake Gyllenhaal puckered up and kissed a man for all the right reasons - they paid him an awful lot of money. But the star, Heath Ledger is the actor’s actor; he is the man’s man. The only question is what kind of man, and what kind of actor, is drawn to Heath? Heath was born to play this role and he brings to it the tenderness and compassion of a man who’s known loneliness in the arms of a woman and tenderness in the arms of a man.
     But is this the first Gay Cowboy movie ever? Does its Academy recognition come from it being the first film of its kind to address this tender subject?
     Ang Lee’s masterful interpretation of this subject is everything one could hope from an Asian martial arts director attempting to explain in the hitherto inexplicable. It’s like walking into a Madison Avenue ad agency and asking the creative director to tell the kids that the Marlboro Man didn’t die of throat cancer but of an AIDS related illness. 
     Well Hollywood is a great deal more mature at handling these topics than it’s often credited for. One cinematic masterpiece pales Brokeback in every respect – in the compelling performances of its ensemble cast, its tender exploration of a cowboy roping in — but then setting free — his inner most feelings. And an important lead role went to a native American Indian, struggling with life on the reservation before they built the casino.
     I know what you’re thinking . . . The Lone Ranger . . . and if all the cowboys in Texas looked like Heath Ledger, the Lone Ranger might not have been so lonesome. But the masterpiece to which I refer is 1980’s You Can’t Stop The Music, the Village People’s tour-de-force that captured the imagination of movie goers while Ledger was still getting round town in a pram.
     The role of gay cowboy in You Can’t Stop The Music, is brilliantly and tenderly crafted by Randy Jones (pictured left). Jones went on to embrace his sexuality and grew from this cinematic experience by becoming an icon for a generation of his peers . . . the name Randy Jones is now synonymous with such terms as Pride and Affirmative Action.
     What has Ledger now done? He’s turned his back on his true feelings and raced off to play Cassanova . . . the most notorious womanizer since Jack Kennedy. What’s more Ledger’s version of Cassanova comes of out of Walt Disney’s studios - who'll attempt to tell the story of a great crafstman without him ever using his tools. In Brokeback Heath's spurs, saddle, whip, bridle and cow poke all get a mighty working out. Would the custodians of Walt's studio let him tool around like that in their flick?
     So Heath has gone from playing a double shot espresso cowboy to a half-decaf-soy-skim-latte womanizer? Not even the doyen of sexually charged thespians can pull off Cassanova with his tool tied behind his back (though that in itself provides some mighty powerful imagery to the more srident fans of Brokeback). Heath carries the weight of both films on his back . . . but between these two films, Cassanova and Brokeback, I pray that he’s only acting in one of them.