SincereSami
|
For one man, Brokeback Mountain is a personal journey. By Neil McMahon.
Advertisement
AdvertisementWhen Heath Ledger read the script for Brokeback Mountain, he knew he had a friend reflected in its pages. "I've just read this script," Ledger later told his mate, Adam Sutton, "and it sounds a lot like you". It was a film about a gay cowboy, and the actor was right - Mr Sutton knew more than a bit about the subject.
That was New Year's Eve 2003 in Sydney, and Mr Sutton was celebrating with Ledger, Ledger's then girlfriend Naomi Watts and their families. He had met them a year earlier while working as a wrangler on the set of Ned Kelly, and though they didn't know it then, the actors were seeing in a year that would transform them - Watts was to get an Oscar nomination, while Ledger would take on a role that many would have baulked at. A best-actor Oscar tomorrow could confirm the wisdom of the gamble.
But there is more to Brokeback Mountain than Ledger's elevation.
As Hollywood's first grand gay love story, it is a tale that gives expression to the lives of men such as Mr Sutton, who find catharsis, redemption and reflection in its shadow.
"The movie put me at ease in a way," says Mr Sutton, a horseman from the Hunter Valley who was on set for part of the filming. "And I hope it . . . takes the burden off a lot of country people's shoulders to know that they are not alone with that thought. It does happen."
He's talking about being a gay man in the bush and alone and not knowing what to do with any of it, an anguish Ledger captures in his performance. Mr Sutton cried watching the film, as well he might. In his world of cowboys and rodeos, of stereotypes scarred in the earth, you couldn't be gay, and if you were, there was punishment. It could take the form of violence, of the kind that claims the life of a character in the film, or crippling self-hatred and denial.
Mr Sutton's worst day came in 1994. Ten months earlier, he had been out drinking near the family property. While driving home, he took a corner and lost control, collecting an oncoming car. The young man in it died. A culpable driving charge followed, to which he pleaded guilty, and the day before he was sentenced he saw only one end to the agony. He was 19. He had known he was gay, or at least different, since primary school. Whatever his curse, he believed it could find neither expression nor acceptance. That alone tortured him beyond apparent resolution, and now a man was dead. Jail the next day was a certainty. He thought there was nowhere to go.
*************************************************************
Have a great day to you ALL.
Sami 
|
