Cowboys in love and public tastes

Re “Can ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Move the Heartland?” Dec. 14

Did the writers even see the movie? There are more heterosexual sex scenes in this movie than homosexual ones. There are several scenes with women’s breasts exposed. There even is heterosexual sex between unmarried people in the back seat of a car.

The profoundly sad and moving nature of the film is what will challenge viewers, not the fact that two men are in love. This is not a political movie. The fact that The Times ran a story on the film with reviews from the Family Research Council is sad. Stop inventing controversy about this great film.

TIMOTHY ECKERT

Los Angeles

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Your article gives a surprising amount of credence to the question without ever considering that films can sometimes challenge and even change public tastes as well as cater to them. The question of whether the public is ready for something is certainly relevant to the economic considerations about filmmaking, but if filmmakers, and indeed other artists, let that question rule their endeavors, many of the works that the public now considers masterpieces would not exist.

LOUIS PEPE

Filmmaker, Silver Lake

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Your article quotes Carlo Petrick of Marcus Theater Corp. as saying, “It’s not about turning people off, but the degree of interest in seeing a love story between two men, if it comes down to choosing between ‘King Kong’ and ‘Brokeback,’ people who go to the movies to be entertained will probably choose the former.”

Now, I’ll freely admit to being a sexual traditionalist (at least by California standards), but between a gay love story and a love story between a giant ape and a woman, the latter is just way too hetero for my tastes.

STEVE MILLS

Glendale