Nov 25, 2005  |  By: KEVIN NAFF  | COMMENTS     

"BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN” IS a beautifully shot, well-acted gay movie. Maybe the best gay movie ever made. It’s moving, poignant, heartbreaking and powerful.

It features two rising young Hollywood stars who are straight, but play gay. Yes, they play gay. Not bisexual. Not confused. Not questioning or at a loss for a label. They play gay.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger are currently making the media rounds promoting “Brokeback” as a love story between two tough cowboys, but they are refusing to describe the relationship as a gay one.

Ledger, who deserves the Oscar buzz he’s now receiving for the role of Ennis Del Mar, told Time magazine, “I don’t think Ennis could be labeled as gay. Without Jack Twist, I don’t know that he ever would have come out. I think the whole point was that it was two souls that fell in love with each other.”

Ledger’s less articulate — and less talented — co-star has given several interviews making the same point.

“Like, these aren’t, in my belief, these aren’t two, like gay guys,” Gyllenhaal recently told an Australian interviewer. “These are two people who fall in love.”

The love story in “Brokeback” isn’t fleeting; it’s not a one-night stand. It’s a 20-plus year relationship that defines the lives of the protagonists. Separation drives them both to gut-wrenching sobs and spending all those years in the closet wrecks their lives.

These characters are undeniably gay and Gyllenhaal and Ledger do a disservice to this otherwise brave and remarkable film by denying the obvious. In their attempt to market the film to women as just another generic love story, they are ignoring critical elements of the story and alienating the film’s core audience: gay people.

ANOTHER MOVIE GARNERING Oscar buzz this year, “Capote,” tries to have it both ways where Truman Capote’s sexual orientation is concerned. While the film is focused on the events that inspired the book “In Cold Blood” — and while Philip Seymour Hoffman’s effeminate Capote is unmistakably gay — his partner Jack Dunphy (played by Bruce Greenwood) is treated as a neglected prop in the film.

Perhaps that was the point, that Capote’s ambition left little time for a love life, but the filmmaker’s effort to strip away any evidence of affection between the longtime couple comes across as a glaring and deliberate omission.

Unfortunately, this “straight-washing” of gay content remains all too common in American culture today.

During the past year, the obituaries of several barely closeted celebrities — singer Luther Vandross, intellectual Susan Sontag and film director Ismail Merchant among them — that appeared in mainstream publications failed to mention the subjects’ sexual orientation or whether the deceased is survived by a gay partner.

Without a doubt, gay film fans have much to celebrate this year. Cillian Murphy is winning raves for his portrayal of a transvestite in “Breakfast on Pluto,” as is Felicity Huffman, of “Desperate Housewives” fame, for her role in “Transamerica.”

“Brokeback Mountain” promises to score both at the box office and on Oscar night. Hoffman’s performance in “Capote” will likely make him a contender for best actor.

But when Hollywood portrayals of gay and lesbian life rely too heavily on winks and nods or when straight actors downplay the overtly gay themes of their material, it serves as a reminder that mainstream acceptance of these themes remains elusive.

THAT POINT WAS driven home following the recent disclosure that ABC is being sued for more than $10 million by a man whose wife was replaced with a gay man on the TV show “Wife Swap.”

Jeffrey Bedford claims he suffered “undue grief” and was “distraught” after the gay man temporarily moved into his home and assumed some, though presumably not all, of his wife’s duties.

Among the gay man’s transgressions was inviting a gay Bible study group into the plaintiff’s home, according to a report in the Muskogee Phoenix newspaper. Bedford claims he has incurred medical bills as a result of the “public humiliation” of being associated with a real live homosexual.

This extreme reaction to such a silly, inoffensive show is rooted in anti-gay prejudice and again illustrates how far gays have to go in convincing the rest of the world that we aren’t detestable creatures hell-bent on destroying the American family.

FAR TOO OFTEN, the presence of gay characters and personalities on TV and in mainstream films is limited to the stereotypically effeminate stooge (Jack on “Will & Grace,” Matt Haber on “The Adam Carolla Project”).

And when big Hollywood ...