At San Francisco’s big gala Oscar Party/AIDS fundraiser last night, the crowd was horrified when “Crash” beat out “Brokeback Mountain” for Best Picture last night (here’s the full story in the San Francisco Chronicle).   I’m sorry, but I am so glad that the Oscars are over, just so we can be done with the whole “Brokeback” hoopla. 

If you listen to the folks at the SF party last night, “Brokeback Mountain” all at once “brought Americans together over issues of homophobia” and yet when it didn’t win, it was “an outright sign of homophobia in our country.”    So, the Hollywood elite is apparently homophobic now.   Right…..

This was supposed to the "Year of the Gays" at the Oscars.  The "gay" films did win major awards:  Best Actor (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Best Director (Ang Lee), Original Score and Adapted Screenplay. 

But the whining over "Crash" is ridiculous.  They’ve either not seen "Crash" or they think that addressing racial intolerance is passé.  Apparently, in San Francisco, homophobia trumps racism.

We all know that Hollywood is very focused on making movies that tell us how we should all live (while they make millions of dollars, yet can’t seem to afford birth control or have the ability to find their way up the aisle before giving birth).  Because of Hollywood’s constant lecturing to the rest of us on how we should think and vote, it is just silly to think that the Academy’s voting had anything to do with homophobia.  In the end, it is about filmmaking.

But you can’t help to acknowledge the impact "Brokeback Mountain" had on society.  We have a brand new word for gay among straight guys in :  "brokeback."  As in, "You want a Lemon Drop instead of a Sam Adams?  That’s very brokeback."

Finally, I don’t hear Jewish people crying because Munich didn’t get any awards.  In the end, people just need to remember that movies are entertainment.  As much as Hollywood thinks that they can change society with their films, for most of us, movies are about a bucket of popcorn, a huge Diet Coke and two hours of escapism. 

This entry was posted on Monday, March 6th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.