Wait a second, they are ranchers now?
I haven’t seen the movie yet but I intend to…but isn’t it really a chick flick?
Wait, now you’re saying they herded chickens? This movie is all over the map!
It’s a chick flick in cowboy drag, which is also my one-line review of Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo. So it’s part of a long-established Hollywood tradition.
I think so. I’ve seen it twice and both time the audience was mostly women (that and senior citizens, oddly enough). It’s a “bring-the-Kleenex” movie.
Good Lord! I thought it was just rated “R”!
Yeah, I think to most of us urbanites, a big Stetson hat just screams ‘cowboy’, whether the the man wearing it herds cows, herds sheep, or sings in a band.
I guess that’s part of the whole “let’s see if the grass is greener on the other side” symbolism.
But seriously (Oh, who am I kidding), don’t most ofthe Ameican sheepherders wear cowboy hats anyway? Maybe it’sa sense o “you’re just s sheepherder becuase you haven’t found the right cow yet”.
I saw it Saturday and noticed the same thing. Women was obvious and I didn’t think twice about the seniors – living in East Mesa, it’s sort of expected this time of year. But now that I think back on it, there were an awful lot of 'em.
DD
I thought it was called Anyone For Ennis?
Featuring the haunting ballad “I Wish (I Knew How to Quit You)” and the rousing showstopper “Spit!”
Isn’t it: I wish I Knew How to Quit Ewe. 
Hmm. I thought that was in the upcoming made-for-TV movie, One Man’s Struggle: The Hal Briston Story.
[sub]I’m so sorry. But it was only a matter of time![/sub]
All this talk of a title for a Brokeback Mountain musical, and nobody thinks of Oklahomo?
I’ll be over here…hiding.
How about A Pair Of Chaps?
Yeah. You herd one sheep, just one lousy sheep, and what do they call you? 
Woolgatherer?
Cowboy is more a cultural description than a professional one these days. As it happens, these guys are cowboys in both senses of the word, but even if they were only sheep herders and tractor salesmen, they are clearly cowboys in the MORE common, cultural sense of the word.
Maybe he’s a monogamous gay man? I think if a man falls in love with one woman and true to her his entire life, we wouldn’t say he’s “hard to classify” or “fell in love with someone who happened to be a woman.”
I think Ennis is just plain old gay. His relationships with women are desultory at best. He isn’t good at making emotional connections with them and is never really “in love” even with Alma. We see that the only time he’s ever happy is when he’s with Jack. Ennis is stone gay, he just represses it a lot more and is more afraid of being found out.
And there’s also that little sexual peccadillo he has with women…