Brokeback Mountain a hit in Red States!

Andrew Sullivan with a great opinion piece on Brokeback Mountain from the London Sunday Times.

Something odd happened between the elite’s assessment of the heartland and the heartland’s assessment of Brokeback Mountain. No, it’s no The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. But of all the Oscar nominees it has racked up by far the biggest domestic grosses so far: more than $70m at the last count (compared with, say, $22m for the superb Capote). And that’s before the potential Oscar boost. More interestingly, it’s done remarkably well in the middle of the red states.

O’Reilly’s Montana? In the 85-year-old cinema in Missoula, Montana, the owner told the media: “It’s been super every night since we started showing it.” The movie did even better in Billings, a more conservative city in the state.

According to Variety magazine, some of the strongest audiences have been in Tulsa, Oklahoma, El Paso, Texas, Des Moines, Iowa and Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock is the place George W Bush calls his spiritual home and may well be the site for his presidential library. Greenwich Village it ain’t.

Please read the whole thing...