Intimacy

Some weeks before Christmas, well past the watershed, RAI2, one of the Italian state TV channels, showed Brokeback Mountain. Well, actually, it didn't. It showed a version of Brokeback Mountain shorn of its moments of intimacy. Brokeback Mountain without intimacy is another film entirely, and this was pointed out to the head of RAI2, who claimed it was all a terrible mistake - the bowdlerised copy had been prepared for another section of the RAI (presumably under total Vatican control) - and would be remedied forthwith. I've been told by a RAI director that it's damn nigh impossible that a film be broadcast without its having been seen by someone, but why should I doubt the word of a regime whore respected professional. If that's what he says, that must be the way it was.

We're still waiting to see the film as Ang Lee, and Annie Proulx, intended it, but who knows what the new year may bring. In the meantime, I discovered yesterday, from an article in the Observer, that Cuban state television has shown Brokeback Mountain without cuts. Cuba Libre.

Jouncing

I just found this photo on the Facebook page for Brokeback Mountain. It shows the motel where Jack and Ennis made love, or 'jounced' in 1969. Yes, I know. But why shouldn't art bleed into life a little?

Heath Ledger

I don't know how many hours I've spent talking about Brokeback Mountain. The film took us all back to the story, or to the story for the first time; Annie Proulx's wonderful story. But there was also the partisan aspect of identification. Who were you? Who would you have loved? What would you have done? On the one hand, Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal); on the other Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger). There's something not only ironic, but cruel about the names Proulx gave them. Jack Twist, who never wavered, whose love for Ennis was constant and insistent; Ennis Del Mar, who refused to adapt, sea-like, who refused to go with the flow. Giuseppe and I and our friends divided into factions, in the mildest sense. I was with Jack because I've never had any doubt that what counts is love, and let the rest go hang. But what Heath Ledger did was make the doubts of Ennis so real, and so valuable, that even the most partisan understood what it must be like to not be partisan; understood what it must be like to contain the other within oneself, as Ennis did. Jack was simple; Ennis was what resisted simplicity, for the worst and the best of motives. In the hands of a lesser actor, Ennis would have been the villain, the spoiler. In the hands of Heath Ledger, he broke my heart.

Rufus Wainwright: Going to a Town

I've always liked the idea of Rufus Wainwright. I've loved his parents for over thirty years. I think his version of King of the Road, with the wonderful Teddy Thompson, on the wonderful soundtrack of that absolutely wonderful film Brokeback Mountain is just about as cool as that song will ever get. I admire and envy a man who can dedicate a year of his life to recreating Judy's Carnegie Hall gig...

But...

I've never been able to stand his voice.

Until now.