Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," the so-called gay cowboy movie, is coming your way. And as the apparent front-runner for 2005's Best Picture Oscar - not to mention a likely box-office hit across the country - it's not going to be easy to ignore.

"Brokeback," which has grossed $15.1 million in a limited release, was one of four pictures to score nominations from both the Writers and Producers guilds yesterday. Those guilds provide the first inkling of how actual filmmakers - as opposed to critics, talk-show hosts and other fast-draw opinionators - assess the best of the year in movies.

If "Brokeback's" double kudos aren't alarming enough for the cultural "sky is falling" crowd, the gay-author movie "Capote" and George Clooney's anti-Joe McCarthy film, "Good Night, and Good Luck," were two of the other double honorees.

In a bit of a surprise, Paul Haggis' "Crash," an episodic measure of Los Angeles' current racial temperature, also rose to the top of the writers and producers lists.

But the biggest surprise of the day was the failure of Steven Spielberg's well-reviewed political thriller, "Munich," to get a nod from either guild. If "Munich" is shut out by the Directors Guild and Screen Actors Guild in their scheduled announcements today, its former front-runner status is going to be a distant memory.

In any case, this year's Oscar race figures to be the most provocative election since Bush vs. Kerry - especially if "Brokeback Mountain" goes the distance and wins. America's heartland loves the Academy Awards, but the image of two cowboys riding into the sunset holding hands on Oscar night is the stuff of frontier nightmares.

Nevertheless, there is evidence that "Brokeback" may break down the resistance of red staters to at least the possibility of true same-sex romance. Ang Lee's film, adapted by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana from Annie Proulx's 1997 New Yorker short story, is that rare four-hankie movie that also has men dabbing their sleeves.

The question, in regard to its ultimate box-office success, is whether enough people will give it a chance outside the metropolitan centers and their surrounding suburbs.

As of Tuesday, "Brokeback" had sold $15.1 million worth of tickets in 269 mostly blue state theaters. Tomorrow it goes on the road, testing the conservative waters and adding another 200-plus theaters in Southern cities like Charlotte, N.C.; Lexington, Ky., and Baton Rouge, La., and in the Western towns of Tulsa, Okla.; Boise, Idaho; Bozeman, Mont., and Anchorage.

A studio spokesperson says the producers are encouraged by the advance buzz from red state critics. "Brokeback" has won the Best Picture award from critics groups in Florida, Dallas/Fort Worth, Las Vegas and in the state of Utah (the last presumably using a secret ballot).

According to exit polls, "Brokeback's" audience started as women in their 30s and now is about evenly split along gender lines. Straight men may be leaving shoe-leather skidmarks on the way into the theaters, but they're going.

Like "Curb Your Enthusiasm's" Larry David, who voiced his tongue-in-cheek objections to "Brokeback" in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, I felt that "cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat" to make me watch a pair of range riders steam up a pup tent.

But I've now seen the movie three times (twice with my wife, if you have to know) and it is one of the most devastating Hollywood love stories of all time.

If it wins the Oscar on March 6, it won't be for the reason most detractors think - that it's decadent Hollywood promoting the gay lifestyle - but for the sanest reason of all: because it's the best movie.

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