Dear Annie:
In your March 11th, 2006, Op-Ed entitled "Blood on the red carpet", which appeared in The Guardian newspaper, you defended your work of love, "Brokeback Mountain", and made some strong accusations against all those who helped make that movie the surprise failure at this years Oscars. First, thank you Annie for choosing blood as your body fluid of choice for your Op-Ed, obviously, considering the theme of "Brokeback Mountain" there was a more obvious choice. I found it humorous and ironic that you called the winner of the 78th Oscars "Trash" instead of "Crash", its title; ironic because your piece of garbage, "Brokeback Mountain", could have easily been named Trash and people would have assumed that the title had some relevance to the quality of the movie and its theme.
You wrote: "We should have known conservative heffalump academy voters would have rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture. Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good." Well true enough that's what we on the political right in America call the Hollywood elite, "conservative heffalumps". By the way, for the great unwashed out there, a heffalump is a fictional character from the Winnie the Pooh stories, and is suppose to be an elephant, which is also the symbol of the Republican Party. So Annie, let me get this straight, you think American cowboys are gay and the Hollywood elite are conservative Republicans. Well predicated on your world view you're right, "Brokeback Mountain" should have been named, by the Oscars, the best movie of the year and perhaps of all time.
The sad reality is this, with more media hype that I have ever seen for a movie, your classic, "Brokeback Mountain", only had mediocre sales in America theatres, because it is a mediocre movie. Hollywood to its credit did not cave to the lobby that wanted this movie to succeed for its social content, and that is why your movie failed to live up to its hype.
Author’s bio: Gutheinz is a former military intelligence officer and aviator and a retired NASA Office of Inspector General senior special agent. He is a criminal defense attorney licensed by 10 courts to include the United States Supreme Court; and a college instructor for both the University of Phoenix and Alvin Community College. He holds 6 degrees and 8 teaching credentials. He is the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency Career Achievement Award. He is the past top graduate (Honor Graduate) from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center's Criminal Investigators Basic Course. His prior writings include: In Search of the Goodwill Moon Rocks, Geotimes Magazine; There Will be a Day After Tomorrow, SpaceDaily.com and Hizb-ut-Tahrir is a Scary Group that Needed to be Outlawed, The Conservative Voice.
