That is a great point you brought up. If Ennis had been a more sympathetic character rather than the constant a-hole he was to his wife and other women, then more viewers would be willing to vote for the movie (and Heath Ledger for best actor). I'm sure there may have even been some gay people--many of whom have great, lasting platonic relationships with women--that may be offended by the movie's portrayal of its lead character as such a jerk and wouldn't want his character to be representative of a gay stereotype.

It'd be pretty much as much of a shock as with Brokeback Mountain, to those who care about the Oscars. Would there have been such an outcry? I don't think so because there would be no homophobia to blame. Blaming antisemitism would be kind of hard after The Pianist's and Schindler's List's wins.

The fact is that most of the Academy voters are actors as far as I know, so it interlaps with the SAG quite a bit. The same SAG that gave Crash a win and didn't give a single one to Brokeback Mountain despite four noms.

Another truly great point brought up by someone earlier is that Crash had a HUGE cast which was friends with half Hollywood obviously. Certainly that helped the votes as well.

There is ALWAYS a first time. Star Wars lost to Annie Hall despite tremendous support from technical guilds and a huge nominations number as well as a huge box-office. Annie Hall had only five noms. Star Wars already broke one precedence in its year by getting so many noms despite being a fantasy flick. Annie Hall "put the things the right way".

The Sting won despite a Golden Globe nom for Best Picture. It did have the guilds, though. Twenty five years ago, Best Picture was won without a Best Editing nom. Etc.

Sometimes unusual things simply happen. This will go down as another one and in the upcoing 100 or so years of Oscars it will happen again, I assure you of that. It's not even like BBM actually lost Director as well. It won that. That is already quite a statement.

Also...Crash has been nominated in all the guilds and has won the SAG ensemble. BUT...the Golden Globes didn't even give it a Best Picture nomination. So is the HFPA racist?

Oh and by the way, essentially Brokeback Mountain was The Notebook with gay people (mind you, I really liked The Notebook so that is not an insult).

And Crash was Magnolia sans frogs.

And since Magnolia is a good film, I consider that a compliment as well.

My point is that it's useless to describe the films with reference to previous titles.

Had Brokeback Mountain really been like The Notebook with gay people, then it would have been more of a crowdpleaser and I think it would have won the Oscar. But this film was hurt from Ang Lee's tedious direction, poor camera shots (the outdoor scenes were incredibly pedestrian), the lack of a feel-good ending, and also unlikable qualities of the lead characters (there's a reason we never see any scenes where Rachel McAdams hurts/breaks up with the guy she was with when choosing the other guy at the end). Brokeback was really an anti-The Notebook with an unhappily ever after message.

Well, it'd be hard to imagine an Oscar-y realistic happily ever after romance between two gay cowboys in the 60s/70s, hehe.

Your point was taken, considered and dismissed.

i cant believe notebook was just compared to brokeback mountain or the other way around but...

so question: it was obviously close race with probably just a few votes separating crash and mountain, i'm guessing. it's also not a secret that everywhere you go there will be some homophopic people. and that those people would not have voted for the movie because of its subject matter. so if it weren't for that i think the possibility of the outcome being different would be at the very least strong and maybe likely. so while i agree that maybe some people out there just liked brokeback mountain better regardless of their feelings for homosexuality...if the difference was made by homophobia, then it's really not hard to see why people would say brokeback mountain lost because of it?

Saying that Brokeback Mountain is The Notebook with gay characters has no relation to its performance at the Oscars. It's completely irrelevant. The West Side Story is nothing but a reincarnation of Romeo and Juliet, yet it did marvelously well at the Oscars.

My statement was rather about how *deserving* it actually was in my opinion, not how the Academy saw it.

On that very note...West Side Story didn't deserve it either (unless the compeition was very very VERY weak which I don't remember).

Nathaniel has disputed this contention very well in his article. Magnolia also had a huge cast, so were many other films in the past 77 years, and none of them were helped to a huge degree where they actually won. It definitely isn't the reason that pushed Crash over Brokeback.

Also my contention with Munich was that it would never have lost.

I still contend that there hasn't been anything close to this statistically. We have had upsets before, but not to this degree. Just look at what each had won and see the discrepency.

There are definitely people who voted differently from what they voted before. I don't think I can state that enough. Whether it's because homophobia, getting tired of the frontrunner, friends' influence, campaigns, etc., we dont know, but to think homophobia didn't contribute to the result is naive, because all other factors had happened before, and they combined were never able to overthrow a frontrunner.

And if it did, Sideways, The Full Monty, The Birdcage, Gosford Park, etc. would've won as well.

Things happened for the first time during the Oscars. Everything happens for the first time. I think it is very off to put homophobia as one of the reasons out there as a fact just BECAUSE we don't know. We can only have opinions and mine is that it most likely didn't play a role.

As for Magnolia etc. often the film in concern is not even nominated for Best Picture.

Also, never to forget is the huge RACE ISSUE and while a gay film has never won before, I believe it is QUITE a while ago, a movie about racism in the US won as well...


BTW, in some thread there was a breakdown of who the Academy's voters are (like how many actors among them, how many directors etc.). Can anyone provide me with this breakdown again?

AMPAS is pretty guarded with their stats, but Oscarwatch has a list from 2002:


AMPAS Breakdown (2002):
5,803 Total voters

1,298 Actors
465 Producers
433 Executives
403 Writers
416 Sound
365 Public relations
366 Art directors
372 Directors
366 Members-at-large
307 Shorts
241 Music composers, lyricists
239 Visual effects
222 Film editors
182 Cinematographers
128 Documentarians

I blame them...for everything!

Looking at these, I don't know why one'd assume that anyone would have needed to change their vote in order to enable Crash's win. That seems reaching. I'll try some calculations later.

What about The Aviator then, if having a huge cast is so important. Every actor in that movie, even in cameo appearances, is a star. And it had the tech supports too, why didn't it win then? Is Eastwood's connection that big? Things are never that simple.

Meh. I still think the gay thing pushed it to the loss. Crash would've came close anyways, but this pushed it over.

The thing that is hard to believe though is that they chose Crash even though it created such polarized opinions and even after the producers feud.

Yes, the issue for Brokeback was controversial but at that point, it was the safest thing to do to vote for it.

I don't get it. I seriously try not to care and think that I'm better than consuming myself with this mind-numbing media distractions, yet I'm still affected by it. It gets me fired up everytime I think about it.

And you know I'd say that two indicators of a Crash upset were the SAG and no Editing nom for Mountain, but then again, the Academy sent such mixed messages. If there was more Crash support why didn't it get more nominations or Brokeback less.

Even so, Brokeback won the Score in which it was not the front-runner but the underdog. Such a win would signal it had widespread support. But then it loses Cinematography.

Nothing about the Crash win makes sense.

Certainly not, it is part of the reasons. Much like in The Aviator's case, I bet the two frontreunners ended up quite close to each other in terms of votes, just that M$B prevailed and BBM didn't.

Crash's another advantage is the big ISSUE thing. The Aviator didn't have that. Then of course the push from Ebert (is he homophobic too now?) and Oprah. The screeners. The fact that some people (like me or Ebert and certain others) simply liked Crash more.

As I said, does not nominating Crash in the Globes makes the HFPA racist?

No. The same way a critic is not homophobic for panning Brokeback. But if Crash had won EVERY AWARD under the Sun, wouldn´t a BP loss sound fishy to you and everybody else?

Two funny facts:

- Until now, no movie that had ever won the Producer's, Directors and Writer's Guilds awards had ever lost the Oscar for Best Picture.

- BBM got the most Oscar nominations, received the golden Goble for best drama, and won the DGA. In the last 57 years, 26 movies did that. They all won the Oscar. Except one. Brokeback mountain.

Of course, things happen for the first time. But It had to happen with the first "gay movie" which had a chance to win in History. You can call it coincidence. I have said and will repeat that I don´t think It was the only, not even the main, factor. But to think that It had nothing to do with it, is too naive for my taste.

You forgot to mention that BBM also had the biggest gross.

As I said, things happen for the first time and to consider that homophobia played a role as a FACT, now that is naive.

I took a look at the breakdown of the Academy voters and while they do overlap with the guilds, I see no reason whatsoever to assume that anyone has changed their vote later on like xiayun assumes. Consider that everyone in the Academy votes for Best Picture. Consider that by far the largest part of the voters are actors. Consider that BBM lost everything at SAG and we do not know by how much. Consider that Crash also got a fair amount of votes at the other guilds (see its Editing win). Consider that we don't know at all how the Documentarians, the Shorts, the Public Relations people have voted so far. Ever heard of COINCIDENCE? The fact that BBM won all those awards gave it amazingly great odds, but didn't really guaranteed anything if you look closer at the breakdown of voters.

You can not say It was a factor as a FACT. You can not say It wasn´t, either. You don´t know, I don´t know, everything is pure especulation. Only that 77 years of FACTS are on the side of "There was something else this time".

Facts: It won everything, It had the most nominations, the bigger box-office, it was the most talked about movie. There were no precedents for a loss.

Again, coincidence has to happen with the first gay film who had a chance to win BP. Coincidence had to happen while reports of academy members not watching the film and Tony Curtis saying him and others like him wouldn´t vote for such "thing" and without even seeing it. With Universal president, Tracy Sneider, saying she had to drag some of his male executives to watch the film.

Coincidence... yeah, right.