Audience Laughter During the Gay Scenes in Brokeback Mountain?

Bleh. My audience kept laughing at things that weren't funny during Brokeback and it really pulled me out of the powerful undertow of the story. Stuff like the first time Ennis and Jack sleep together and then when Ennis' wife catches them together.

I will kill them all...

When Alma catches them kissing, people in my audience gasped.

But no laughers. A couple walked out like 95% of the way through the movie, though. It was during the scene where Alma Jr. comes to tell Ennis about getting engaged. It couldn't be because they were offended at that point, but it was just weird.

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The nervous laughter almost always comes from the most closeted, the ones who claim to be heterosexual but are obsessed by homosexuality.

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The first two times I saw it, people laughed a little bit when Alma sees Ennis and Jack kissing, but more reacted with that foreboding "oooooh." People laughed a little bit here and there, but it was short laughter, more at the irony of things, than laughing because it was weird or gross or uncomfortable, etc.

The third time I saw it, there were these girls who must've been Jake Gyllenhaal fangirls, or something, but they cracked up through ANY remotely sexual scene in the entire movie. When Jack puts Ennis' arm around him during their first night together in the tent, they didn't just giggle for a second and go "aww" like some people do -- they CRACKED UP for like five f*cking minutes over it, and completely ruined the mood. They were so immature, and so irritating.

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This is why I made sure that I saw the film the morning it opened at the Grove in L.A. with an audience that I knew would be ready for the film. I really feel bad for people who have to suffer through the ignorance and stupidity and immaturity of these idiots. No wonder more and more people are choosing to see movies on DVD. Just a few people in an audience can ruin it for everyone else.

There was also lot of gasping at my theatre in conservative Middletown, NY. The nice sized crowd averaged around the age of 65. I was probably the youngest person there! I'm happy to say that everyone behaved and no one left.

I get annoyed when the audience will laugh at the most inopportune times. Just chalk it up to ignorance. I remember people giggling when someone was dying. I wish I can rent the theater myself.

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The biggest laugh reaction our screening had was when Ennis flipped his wife over in bed - and I was laughing right along with everyone else.

I'm finally seeing it today, so now I'll be curious to see how my audience reacts.

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I find that moment one of the film's most complex and dangerous, artistically. As is the dish washing scene with Alma, long after their divorce, when she confronts him about the fishing trips. The rage in Ennis is not depidcted in PC terms, played out only in ways that make him look "manly," and gets directed at inappropriate people. I respected the filmmakers decision not to soft pedal his flaws and contradictions. But I suspect the kisses and Alma (and Quaid) spot the unguarded moments will always get laughs, due to the power of the story. After all, this is a movie about the price paid for secrecy and lies. The story turns, necessarily, on the moments of reveal -- and an audience will always respond to plot turns. We can complain, but that's why we sit together in a theater -- for the communal experience.

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Updated On: 1/22/06 at 10:39 AM

I really feel bad for people who have to suffer through the ignorance and stupidity and immaturity of these idiots.

Thus spake the man who has been regaling us with the box office totals on a frequent basis so that he can demonstrate the success of the film and how "important" it is. These stupid, immature idiots certainly must be responsible for a good portion of those millions taken in thus far.

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Great points, Auggie.

And I think I personally would make a distinction between audience response that doesn't necessarily match your own reaction and audience members who consciously exhibit behavior outside the experience of the movie. If someone laughs and you don't, that doesn't mean it's inappropriate, it means you have different emotional responses. If someone is going beyond just having whatever visceral reaction they're having to the film (ie - making comments, and then reacting to their own input) then that I would find inappropriate.

As an example, the scene where Jack confronts his father-in-law during the holiday meal. I had a very deeply upset reaction to that scene, because it touched a nerve for me personally - I was almost shaking from sense memory. However, owing partially to the almost slapstick presentation and partly to the identification with the trodden upon finally taking a stand, I absolutely understood that many in the audience laughed and literally cheered at that moment. I didn't think their reaction was inappropriate just because it didn't match my own experience.

The laughter that is occurring at various parts in the film may be for a wide variety of reasons (ie - nervousness) and I think it's a little condemning to ascribe overly negative thoughts to something that might not deserve them. And I really don't think it necessarily makes anyone an 'idiot'.