Jake Gyllenhaal Splains ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ Again

Although I’ve never been fond of the way book publishing and Hollywood have always ignored and dismissed openly gay authors and actors, I’ve never held it against movies like Brokeback Mountain. And this post is not a rant. The world was a very different place when that film (and book) came out and we all thought very differently. Legal same sex marriage was still a far off dream for us. The Bush family still controlled the Republican party and we didn’t even know who Barack Obama was back then. The world, indeed, has changed.

BM was the only mainstream gay content we had and most of us were just thrilled to get it at all. I remember the discussions. I was covering LGBTQ bloggers back then for a web site called, BestGayBlogs.com, and there was a big division between gay people who supported BM and those who were insulted by it. This discussion is still going on today. 

And it’s still interesting to read comments from straight actor, Jake Gyllenhaal, all these years later.

Never once does Gyllenhaal mention that it might have been questionable for him to play gay face, or that this might have been the beginning of the discussion on cultural appropriation, as we know it today. But then again, no straight white male actor ever mentioned that it might have been questionable to play Asian face in the earlier days of cinema.

You can read the rest here.

NBC Cancels Will and Grace

Will and Grace is another good throwback example of what times were like for gay people in the 90s. I never watched it much back then because as a gay man I couldn’t identify with any of it, but I have read all the comments and opinions.

Will & Grace, which ushered in visibility for LGBTI people (primarily gay men), premiered in 1998. It lasted for eight seasons, before NBC brought it back for a revival in 2017.

It did bring visibility to gay men, and many of us were thrilled about that because we’d never had that before, but it also came with a long list of flaws.

You can read the rest here. I would have loved to have seen a spin off of Will and Grace starring Sean Hayes in 2017. Now that would have been in keeping with how times have changed, and an openly gay actor would have been able to carry his own TV show for a change. Apparently, Hollywood doesn’t agree.

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