Talking Trash About Crash

Annie Proulx is pissed off that Brokeback Mountain, the film adaptation of her short story, did not win Best Picture at the Academy Awards two weeks ago.

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. And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash – excuse me – Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline. Next year we can look to the awards for controversial themes on the punishment of adulterers with a branding iron in the shape of the letter A, runaway slaves, and the debate over free silver.

And she’s unrepentant about the rant: “For those who call this little piece a Sour Grapes Rant, play it as it lays.” Don’t you just love it when writers throw fits?