Insert "I Wish I Knew How to Quit You" Reference

I've had the Brokeback Mountain DVD for over a week. The morning the DVD was offically released the package arrived in the front office, which means that Amazon must have been eager to send it out. I unwrapped it as soon as I brought it upstairs, and left it sitting on my little coffee table thing ever since. I've read the back dozens of times, but I still haven't seen the movie. Even though I was one of the first bloggers to express my extreme pleasure that Jake was thinking about playing gay in an upcoming movie, I've yet to see it. But it didn't come to Wisconsin until late, when the marketing campaign, the bloggers, and bad sketch comedy had inundated me to the point where I had Brokeback overload, and the movie wasn't even showing in the state yet. And once the movie came to Madison, I was at home for Christmas break, where it wasn't showing, and once I returned for Spring Semester, everyone had seen it.

By now, it almost seems like a chore. I mean, I bought it because I believe in getting free shipping on all orders over $25, and I had to buy Giovanni's Room for one of my classes, and I figured it was a movie I should buy. But now, there's so much pressure on this movie, the awards, the Oscar hoopla (I thought Crash was terrible, FYI), etc. Even guys requesting hookups on gay.com are asking me whether I've seen the movie. I reread the short story for one of my classes last semester, and this time, my desire to identify with the text didn't overwhelm the fact that Annie Proulx isn't a very good writer.

That's what I'm starting to think about the movie, even though I've yet to see it: it's probably very good but very long and sort of slow (e.g. The English Patient), but the desire on the gay community and the 'allied' community to turn this into a masterpiece, in addition to all of the cultural and societal implications about the film, and how it does in Red States, and how its a cinematic watershed moment, etc etc etc, is ultimately stifling.

And so it sits there, in the pile. Waiting.



Sure, Jake bared it all in Jarhead, but not even Jake's trysts with Heath can bring me to watch the movie, so you know that the cultural/societal pressure is overwhelming, and how intimidated I am by something as silly as a movie.