Mountain Full of Parodies

This is the first time I've embedded You Tube onto any webpage. This has to be one of those genius ideas that you wonder didn't come any sooner.

Anyway, I'm posting yet another article on Brokeback Mountain, which is unusual, because frankly, I didn't enjoy the film as much as I had hoped. I think if I watched it again, I might like it better. Its deliberate pace, and the cheery acting of Jake Gyllenhaal, didn't quite do it for me.

But it must say something when there are a gazillion parodies of Brokeback Mountain. Think about it. Of all the other nominees up for best picture, are any of them parodied? Crash? Munich? Good Night, and Good Luck? Capote?

I mean, Capote is about a real-life gay author, but nothing has come close to the parodies of Brokeback Mountain.

The one I've included is one of the better ones. It's able to hit themes in Brokeback Mountain completely using dialogue from Dumb and Dumber, a film I haven't bothered to watch.

Let me back up. Most Brokeback Mountain parodies do two things. First, they use the rather distinctive music of Brokeback Mountain. You probably can't even recognize the music from any of the nominees, which include The Constant Gardener, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Pride and Prejudice, as well as Munich, but most people do recognize the music of Brokeback Mountain, its spare guitar piece and main theme.

The other element that you need is the way the text flashes across the trailer. Amazingly, only one trailer was ever made for the film.

It reads "It was a friendship...that became a secret...There are places we can't return...There are lies we have to tell...There are truths we can't deny". The text montage has been parodied almost as much as the opening Star Wars crawl.

I've seen some pretty bad parodies, but what makes the Dumb and Dumber genius is that it uses lines from the film, and merely reinterprets it to the basic ideas from Brokeback.

Another one that's been reimagined is a fake trailer for The Shining, which makes the Kubrick directed horror film to be about a irascible man paired up with a loveable moppet, the kind of plot that has cropped up in several films. The one that comes to mind for me is Kolya. I'm sure the are others, if I looked hard enough.

Maybe Brokeback won't win Best Picture, but given the kind of impact that it has (which is one reason it may win it) both for people who can relate to its story of secret love, but also because so many people think it's ripe for parody, this film has had an emotional impact none of the other films has had. The parodies themselves mostly focus on the homoeroticism of many films, and that guys tend to find that funnier than women.