Having had six full months to recover from hearing Jimmy Smits deliver the line "My wife and I always wanted to adopt a baby girl!" in "The Revenge of the Sith," the Entertainment Curmudgeon was lured by the offer of free tickets and fond memories of the Marlboro Man to go "Bareback Mounting." You know--that current movie everyone's talking about and no red-blooded American male wants to voluntarily go see. The Entertainment Curmudgeon posts the following review but suggests anyone who actually plans to see the movie skip reading because the entire plot will be revealed. Actually, the entire plot is revealed in the trailer, but that's besides the point here.
For the record, let's first clear up one frequent question, as submitted to this columnist by a local fan: Did the Marlboro man actually herd sheep? I don't even recall the Marlboro man being a cowpuncher. Didn't he just kind of pose and stare off, as horses ran wild across the screen?
No, Virginia, the Marlboro Man did not herd sheep. The Marlboro Man's only job was to look Manly and handsome while smoking. In reality, the Marlboro Man, like Shamu, was a group effort. One prominent Marlboro Man died of lung cancer and his widow sued the tobacco company: http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/marlboro.htm
At any rate, the Marlboro Man lives on now as the bane of metrosexuals: http://www.newsline.com.pk/Newsdec2003/cover2dec2003.htm
The boys on Brokeback Mountain were only sheepherders for one season. They began as mini Marlboro Men, about age 19. They were both down on their economic luck. They took the mountain job for an angry white male capitalist type. The work involved taking the capitalist's sheep herd up onto the mountain to graze for the summer and preventing the 25% loss of sheep he sustained the previous year (with nobody guarding them, I guess, coyotes had their own orgy).
The evil capitalist went up on the mountain to deliver some bad news about a death in one of their families and from a distance observed the two young men frolicking together, resulting in a permanent hostile attitude on his part and refusal to hire them for subsequent years. Isn't that just like an angry white male? Was he happy to see the sheep grazing peacefully, unmolested? Nooooooooo ... he has to cop a lifelong attitude.
Tragically, the two youths were forced to go their separate ways and to marry and pursue lives of quiet desperation and reproduction until one couldn't stand it anymore and got in touch with the other after a separation of 4 years. Thereafter, they went on "fishing trips" on the mountain several times yearly. This fantasy tale was immediately ruined for one of the wives when she observed them kissing at their very first reunion. She eventually got a divorce. She was already kind of unhappy with only "getting it" aggressively from behind anyway, but she didn't quite know what to make of that until she saw her husband French kissing his best friend.
One of them now freed from matrimonial bonds, the other was eager to jump his, too, but the first one was extremely homophobic and didn't want to be known as "queer"--some trauma having to do with his father taking him as a child to see what a gang of local good old boys did to two old gents who were living quietly together in their town. "For all I know, my father did it," he muses, revealing the Freudian underpinnings of his obviously damaged psyche.
Meeting periodically on the mountain to frolic in the nude goes on for the next 20 years, at which point the more sensitive of the two, Jack, begins to make some demands because "it's never enough time." Rejected yet again, he is forced to stop in Mexico (on his way back to Texas from Wyoming) to frolic with a homosexual prostitute. Then some married guy in the town where he lives begins to make overtures. Jack is conflicted. Getting it once every six months next to a trout stream, even if from his one true love, isn't quite enough.
There is one more meeting on the mountain at which the homophobic one, Ennis, gets mad at Jack for not being faithful and they go through the "it's never enough time" argument again. Nag, nag, nag!!! "We could have had a good life together," Jack pouts. Yeah, they could have been married, then Jack wouldn't have nagged! Next thing we know, Ennis gets a postcard back marked "deceased." (They communicated about their fishing "dates" via postcards). So Ennis calls his late paramour's wife. She says Jack was changing a tire on a tractor or something and it blew up in his face and he lay there and drowned in his own blood. Ennis envisions Jack getting beaten to death, although it's left vague as to what actually happened. This reviewer suspects that Jack's father-in-law never quite got past being told to sit down and shut up at Thanksgiving. Remember, you heard that here first!
Ennis goes to visit Jack's parents to try to get his ashes to spread on the mountain, as the deceased wished. (At this point, he takes off his hat, proving the Entertainment Curmudgeon's companion's observation that "Ugly guys look a lot better wearing hats.") The late Jack's father is bitter and wants him (the half of him that the parents got, anyway) buried in the family plot. The mom invites Ennis to go up to his dead lover's childhood room. In the closet, he finds a terribly familiar and significant shirt and jacket, with a little blood spattered on the sleeve (Maybe this was from the first time he beat Jack up on the mountain before having sex with him?) and Mom lets him take it home. He hangs the outfit inside a closet door and puts a photo of the mountain over it. It's sort of like a little shrine for him to visit when he's on his 5th beer of the night.
Ennis' own daughter, who has spent the movie trying to get his attention, comes to visit him in his trailer/Jack shrine and announces her impending marriage. We know that an epiphany must have happened because Ennis first says it's roundup time and he'll be out with the herd (he has possibly graduated to cattle by this time?), but then he thinks again and mouths a line worthy of Jimmy Smits: "They'll have to get themselves another cowboy. My little girl is getting married."
Well, if the Entertainment Curmudgeon didn't get an exact quote on that very last line, it's understandable. Bad enough to repeatedly watch men riding, hunting, sheep herding, building campfires, eating beans, smoking, drinking whiskey, etc., etc. ad nauseum, but then the sex scenes were boring, too. However, "Brokeback Mountain" gave the Entertainment Curmudgeon a whole new appreciation for the nuances of cowboy lyrics. We quote here from "Strawberry Roan" by Marty Robbins:
I was hangin' 'round town, just spendin' my time, Out of a job, not earnin' a dime A feller steps up and he said, "I suppose, You're a bronc fighter from looks of your clothes." "You figures me right, I'm a good one," I claim. "Do you happen to have any bad ones to tame?" Said he's got one, a bad one to buck! At throwin' good riders, he's had lots of luck.
I gets all het up and I ask what he pays, To ride this old nag for a couple of days He offered me ten; I said, "I'm your man, A bronc never lived that I couldn't span." He said: "Get your saddle, I'll give you a chance" In his buckboard we hopped and he drives to the ranch I stayed 'til mornin' and right after chuck I stepped out to see if this outlaw can buck.
