Why 'Brokeback' lost

NEW YORK -- We chatted about it, joked about it, argued about it, spoofed it. "Brokeback Mountain" was everywhere in our popular culture -- yet it lost the big Oscar it was supposed to win.\nWas there a "Brokeback Backlash," or was "Crash" just the worthy contender that came on strong in the final Best Picture stretch? There were as many theories offered Monday as there are "Brokeback" parodies on the Internet.\nOne theory was that despite the hoopla, the endless late-night monologues and the clever imitations, people (Academy voters, that is) didn't really love the soulful saga of two gay cowboys -- and perhaps even felt uncomfortable with its themes.\n"Sometimes people pretend to like movies more than they actually do," said Richard \nWalter, who heads the screenwriting program at UCLA's film school. "But this film wasn't really that good. What it tried to do was great, sensational. But what it actually accomplished wasn't so great. You can't really buy the love story."\nFilm critic Kenneth Turan, writing in the Los Angeles Times, said the problem wasn't with the film's quality. Rather, he said, "you could not take the pulse of the industry without realizing that this film made people distinctly uncomfortable.\n"In the privacy of the voting booth ... people are free to act out the unspoken fears and unconscious prejudices that they would never breathe to another soul, or likely, acknowledge to themselves. And at least this year, that acting out-doomed 'Brokeback Mountain.'"\nGay activists did not \nnecessarily agree.\n"I don't think it has anything to do with the subject matter," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest national gay rights group. He noted that "Brokeback" and "Crash" both dealt with "tough issues like indifference and intolerance."\n"I was certainly disappointed," Solmonese said. "But I would trade that Oscar for all the positive conversations that this movie spurred between parents and their gay children, or between employees and their gay co-workers. That impact transcends any accolades."\nSome people focused on the demographics of the typical Academy voter: older and city-dwelling. Author and "Brokeback" co-screenwriter Larry McMurtry said he thought that was key to his film's loss.