BACK-LASH?

Brokeback Mountain earned Oscars for director Ang Lee and for its adapted screenplay, but why couldn't it convert on its best-picture nod, for which it had been a frontrunner? "Perhaps the truth is, Americans don't want cowboys to be gay," screenwriter Larry McMurtry told the Associated Press after the show. Added Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan, "Despite all the magazine covers it graced, despite all the red-state theaters it made good money in... you could not take the pulse of the industry without realizing that [the film] made a number of people distinctly uncomfortable." Not the voters for the Independent Spirit Awards, however: They named Brokeback best picture on Saturday.

TV GuideNews March 6, 2006 at 12:00 a.m. PT