The ‘Brokeback’ effect

Despite the buzz over all the small, politically charged films this season, there is little chance of finding Truman Capote action figures at Burger King or remote-controlled “Crash” cars at Target. Yet there are a number of academics, entrepreneurs, singers and others who have turned to one such film as the tie-in for a variety of projects.

Call it Brokeback Inc. -- and everyone wants to buy shares.

Of course, “Brokeback Mountain” -- the multiple Oscar nominee about two cowboys in love -- is not the first film to generate a flurry of interest, but it may be the quickest to do so.

“You can find volumes written about ‘Citizen Kane’ or ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ This movie has only been out for months ... the response has been almost immediate,” said Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y. “The Internet has opened up to anyone with a computer the opportunity to discuss and analyze in a way that used to be open to the very few who had access to publication media.”

William Handley, an associate professor of English at USC, and Jesse Matz, an associate professor of English at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, agree that the story of two Wyoming ranch hands has quickly become a watershed film. They are compiling a book of essays on the movie’s influence.

“There are very few films that become a cultural touchstone,” said Handley, offering Ridley Scott’s 1991 “Thelma & Louise” as an example. “With that, it was ‘How dare they show women being violent?’ At that time, it was about gender.” A book on that film, “Thelma and Louise and Women in Hollywood,” is due out this spring, and an anthology on the cultural influence of “King Kong” -- originally created in 1933 -- was published in November.

Handley and Matz are soliciting contributions from academics and nonacademics alike, including comedians and bloggers. Dan Savage, who writes a raw sex-advice column called Savage Love and is editor of a weekly Seattle newspaper, is one of a handful of writers who has agreed to pen an essay. The professors say they’d also like to get Annie Proulx, author of the New Yorker short story on which the film is based, to contribute.

Rob Latham, an associate professor of English and American studies at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, plans to use the original story, the screenplay and the film in an introductory course on sexuality he has been teaching for the last three years.

“I needed something that would center our discussions, which tend to be too abstract,” said Latham, who is also the director of the sexuality studies program at the university. “I would screen the movie fairly early in the term and use it as a way of unpacking some of the ideas we deal with.”

There are things, Latham said, his students can learn from watching the movie that would be hard to understand from reading text.

“With Heath Ledger’s performance, they see the price of repression,” he said. “You can see the physical and emotional tolls of trying to repress something that is essential to your nature. Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance shows you what you have to give up -- you have to give up hope, a dream of the life you want to live.”

Noah Tsika, a first-year doctoral candidate in cinema studies at New York University, began research in August for his dissertation on the ways moviegoers are interpreting the film. Dabrina Taylor, a lecturer in American studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, will examine how women are responding to the movie.

And lest all these academic endeavors make the film appear to be only for the highbrow, creative types are also weighing in with videos, songs, spoof posters, T-shirts and other products. Video clips from and inspired by the movie can be found on YouTube (youtube.com); some are set to music, many are compilations of favorite scenes.

For years, Willie Nelson, who sings a song on the “Brokeback” soundtrack, has been performing another song called “Cowboys Are Secretly, Frequently (Fond of Each Other),” written in 1981 by Ned Sublette. But it wasn’t until the movie came out that he decided to release the song; it debuted on Howard Stern’s Valentine’s Day show.

Rodney Stokes of Winnsboro, S.C., has written three songs inspired by the film. The opening stanza of one plays off a line from the movie: “If ya can’t fix it then you gotta stand it.” The song continues, “that’s what I say whenever nothing is going right.” Stokes hopes to release an album later this year under a label owned by Sit and Spin Recording Studio in Greenville, S.C.

Other lines from the movie have become catch phrases. “I wish I could quit you” -- a version of the film’s “I wish I knew how to quit you” -- has inspired jokes, blog entries and even a line of apparel. On BizarreTees.com, there are dozens of shirts, sweatshirts, hats and gifts -- such as mugs, stickers and mouse pads -- imprinted with the line and a logo of a cowboy hat. Within two weeks, the “I wish I could quit you” design became one of the top three sellers on the website, according to co-founder Kelly Humphrey.

Other movie-inspired apparel can be found for auction on EBay, including, for a time, two of the shirts worn by Ledger and Gyllenhaal in the film. The shirts, symbols by film’s end of the cowboys’ frustrated love, were acquired by the Variety Children’s Charity of Southern California and were auctioned off for more than $100,000 last week.

Ken Downing, vice president of public relations and fashion presentation for Neiman Marcus, said western-inspired clothing will likely get a boost from the film.

Designer Valentino gave the movie a nod by having two men -- wearing jeans, leather jackets and cowboy hats -- walk down the runway holding hands during his January menswear show in Milan.

Various parodies of the film’s promotional poster, which features Ledger and Gyllenhaal against a mountain backdrop, can be found online. Pairings include Elmo and Bert; Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and lobbyist Jack Abramoff; President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

That the movie is receiving so much attention, whether funny or serious, will “stimulate some thought about where these gay cowboys and cowgirls are and what they do,” said Brian Helander, president of the International Gay Rodeo Assn., which has about 4,000 members in the United States.

Helander said he was starting to see more people joining. And at a rodeo in January, he said, attendance was up by one-third. That increase, he said, is “partially because of the attention ‘Brokeback Mountain’ has brought to the country-western lifestyle.”

That’s the same reason Diane Shober, director of the Wyoming Office of Travel and Tourism, believes her office has been receiving so many phone calls lately (the film is set in Wyoming and Texas but was filmed in Canada). With calls “up substantially” over this time last year, Shober said, “what we’re measuring right now is the interest in Wyoming since the release of the movie.”