They’re herding sheep, not cattle. Technically, this is a gay shepherd movie. Pudding is not required.
Me, too…so I Googled it and found that he was originally named Marion Robert Morrison, but his parents changed his middle name to Michael upon deciding to name their second son Robert.
Heh heh.
Man, are the people I talk to IRL gonna get sick of hearing that.
I take it they’re not Greek shepherds, then? 
Dang, until I read that article I never realized that merely attending a showing of Brokeback Mountain would turn me teh gay. Near thing, that.
Oh, yeah, and then there’s this:
Jeepers, so what was the main course?
Roger Friedman has proof that Truman Capote swallowed? Fascinating.
Maybe he could do a special programme on that. During primetime. On Christmas Eve.
I’m sure it would be a ratings winner.
I think we can bank on the certainty that nearly every conservative talking head will say something offensive about Brokeback Mountain between now and a week or so after the Academy Awards.
Michael Medved was spouting crap on the subject yesterday. He went directly from the predictable dribble about how Brokeback Mountain is a transparent effort to advance the gay agenda by “normalizing” homosexuality (assume this is a bad thing, I guess) to whinging that the movie is morally bankrupt because the protagonists are portrayed as sympathetic, and yet are selfishly engaging in adultery and ruining a marriage. What about that poor woman?
Aaaargh! Geez, Michael, did you ever consider that if (shock, horror!) homosexuality was accepted as “normal” in 1960s Wyoming, the fella wouldn’t have been pressured into a sham marriage?
You know, I think my sister will relate to this movie really well. She married a roughneck. A big, strong guy who worked the Alberta oilfields. A real man’s man. Storybook wedding. (Very churchy – his ultrareligious mother wouldn’t have it any other way. Besides, how nice to married by your new brother-in-law, the minister!)
Unfortunately, after the marriage, not so rosy. He was a bit… distant. Sex was infrequent. They tried for kids to fill the void, and soon had two beautiful daughters. But hubby was still quite remote. He went out a lot.
Long, predictable story made short, as soon as his mother died, he came out of the closet and they got divorced. My sister wasn’t thrilled, and the kids weren’t either.
I used to have a friend from Montreal who, despite being the single gayest person I’ve ever met, had a son and a really bitter ex-wife.
So, Mr. Medved, don’t bitch about the “normalization” of homosexuality while you’re simultaneously crying crocodile tears for the poor women of the world who’ve played unwitting beards for closeted gay men. Why the fuck do you think that happens? Can you imagine feeling such pressure to fit in that you’d cohabitate with and grit your teeth and have sex with someone of the gender you’re not attracted to? Or do you think people who do this just enjoy messing with people’s heads? Put yourself there: Commit to a man, live with him, and submit to sex with him as much as you absolutely have to. Then, after eight or nine years of either sneaking around or really repressing yourself, spring it on him: “Ha! Dude, I’m totally heterosexual! You’ve been punk’d! Later, gator.”
Naw, you probably wouldn’t do that. You’d probably need a lot of outside pressure before you’d commit to a fake homosexual relationship in order to keep up appearances. Like, a considerable lobby of people actively promoting the idea that heterosexuality is nasty. Maybe fuckwits on the radio who take every opportunity to spout off about it. “That Angelina Jolie movie where she’s attracted to Antonio Banderas is just another example of the straight agenda being crammed down our throats!” And if, god forbid, you should happen to fall in love with someone, why, it’d be wrong, and a terrible betrayal of Our Cherished Values.
Sorry, that’s ranty, but dammit, I wish we lived in the Twilight Zone and pricks like that would just naturally find themselves in perfectly ironic circumstances.
You whoosh me, sir. You whoosh me to the quick.
I agree there was an element of hypocrisy in Wayne’s rhetoric during Vietnam.
I don’t agree it’s correct to call him a shirker of duty, though — UNLESS you personally believe that every able-bodied person, or every able-bodied man, has a duty to join the armed services in times of armed conflict. Without that belief, saying that Wayne shirked his duty is itself a hypocritical action.
Words mean what they mean. “Hypocrisy” means something, and it applies to Wayne. “Shirking duty during WWII” means something, too, and it DOESN’T apply to Wayne.
Not to mention that the slightest knowledge of Capote’s sex life would tell anybody he did not go after young men. Most of his lovers were his own age, many of them were fathers (he had major daddy issues) and with the exception of one kept boy (who was in his 20s- and a father) he had a brief liaison with none were noted for their looks.
John Wayne’s Playboy interview reads like a jaw dropping timepiece. Even in a sitcom appearance as himself on Maude he expressed that he was a chauvinist, and said repeatedly most blacks should not be allowed to vote just yet. I think what would bother him more than anything about Brokeback Mountain is that it features two actors who each can play a variety of characters in other movies rather than the same swaggering macho idiot whether they’re appearing in westerns or as a Roman centurion or as Genghis Kahn. I’m also guessing had he lived he would have had the highest rated show on Fox/
During WW2, they did join up. Hundreds of Thousands of them. They signed up with flat feet, poor vision, lots of things that made for a “less than perfect” soldier. I’m sure many of them had wives and kids too. I’ve heard and read stories that the Duke wanted to. I can surely ask then, why didn’t he. Plenty of other actors did. Jimmy Stewart even became a general eventually. So why not the “greatest American of all”? I don’t think it was cowardice at all, Wayne had a lot of physical courage. I thnk it was his career that held him back. During Vietnam, a lot of people weren’t given any choice (the draft) between war or career. During WW2 there was a draft too, but a very large number of people volunteered.
But back to the OP. Who knows or cares what the Duke’s opinion would have been about Brokeback Mountain? I suppose he wouldn’t care either, since he did work with gay people in Hollywood, such as Montgomery Clift. These people may have been “closeted” from the public, but I doubt that those in the movie biz were clueless. Apparently, “teh gay” didn’t matter to him, since as far as I know, he never said anything for or against it.
This makes me wonder how John Wayne got along with black, gay Roscoe Lee Browne when they were making The Cowboys.
Well, I don’t watch “Lost”, but I’ll take on the Duke with six-guns at dawn* if it means that the winner is the object of Rodriguez amorous attention. Who cares if she can act!
*In my favor is that the Duke is dead. However, given my lack of knowledge of firearms, we’re about equal
While it would surprise me to learn that he’s straight, I don’t think Browne has ever officially come out. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t openly gay in the 1960s/early 1970s so Wayne wouldn’t have known, and since he seems intelligent and cultivated it’s doubtful he would have expressed his racism.
Of course Wayne was a notorious charmer
Dennis Hopper said that Wayne would harangue him for hours if he was in a mood on his low opinion of American youth and their “hippie” ideals. He associated Hopper with the group when they worked together long before Easy Rider was made and afterwards when they would run into each other on the social scene.
Amongst the mental midget set who think that Greeks are only interested in sodomy is the belief that the one thing that can pry a Greek from some one’s ass is the possibility of humping sheep. There’s an old joke that goes: What was the battle cry of the Greek who fought in the Falklands War? Save the sheep!
I think you could argue (I am not sure I would) that Hollywood does have a tendency to glamorize extra-marital affairs (a tendency, certainly not an absolute). However, I don’t see what this has to do with gay versus straight at all.
Even John Wayne’s best friend and mentor, John Ford, seemed to have lost a little respect for Wayne because he clung to his deferment while young men all around him were being drafted into service. There’s a strong sense, in the bios that I’ve read, that Wayne signed up for Ford’s unit (!) as a way to get back into Ford’s good graces, but ultimately was not able to go through with.
With an all-volunteer army, not volunteering is not shirking your duty. However, when all able-bodied men are being mandatorily inducted into the armed forces, to actively take advantage of one of the available exceptions is more ambiguous, in my view.
Here’s a newsflash: no, they won’t.
I don’t think that this particular article was pit-worthy. A lot of stupid, homophobic shit is being said about Brokeback Mountain, but I like this Foxnews movie reviewer and he just isn’t actually criticizing the movie. This reviewer is like the real-life version of The Onion movie critic and uses colorful language. If John Wayne was a racist hippie-hater, then somehow thinking that he was a homophobe too isn’t something that stretches my brain too far. The only actual “gossip” regarding the movie itself was that it was great.
He could charm anyone. I saw a video of him, when he went to some big university. The initial reception was somewhere between meh and lukewarm. By the time he was done, they loved him. He was smart, witty, and well spoken. He was able to make fun of himself, something many people can’t do. Not quite the loudmouthed aggressive type at all. So yes, he was a charmer.