We went to a screening of Brokeback Mountain on Sunday, followed by a Q&A with Ang Lee.
Here’s a brief summary of the Q&A, with the caveat that it is repeated from memory, and all quotes are rough paraphrases…
The moderator started off by asking Lee if he minded that the film seems to be commonly described as a “gay western,” since that’s not entirely accurate. Lee didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seemed pleased that the film has been widely discussed, and he quoted an entry from a David Letterman Top 10 list of Things To Call A Gay Western: “The Magnificent Seven Inches.”
The moderator mentioned that he had done a similar Q&A with Jake Gyllenhaal, who said that Lee had spent a huge amount of time working with the actors before shooting, but that once the shooting started, nothing. “It was like you’ve been having great sex, and then you get married, and the sex suddenly stops.” Lee thought that was pretty funny. He said that he is “a control freak” during production, and he has too much to focus on in order to pay much attention to the cast at that point in the process. He does like to have a rehearsal process, although “Unlike in rehearsing for theater, you don’t actually want to bring out the best performances during rehearsal; you want to leave something for filming, so that the performances will be fresh.” To that end, Lee likes doing exercises with the actors, and discussing their characters with them, but tries not to over-rehearse the actual scenes.
A question from the audience asked why so many of Lee’s films deal with repressed emotions. “When I made Pride & Prejudice, a lot of people wanted to know how this foreign guy expected to make a film about English culture. Well, for a Chinese director, repressed English people aren’t much of a stretch.”
In response to another audience question, Lee said he had no idea how well this film about gay cowboys would play in small town America. “The meeting with the marketing people was a bit of a reversal. They were very excited about the film and wanted to show it everywhere. I was nervous and asked if we could maybe just release it in the blue states.”
I’m not sure the primarily British audience at the screening knew what a “blue state” was, but it was an interesting session.

Last April, John Rogers wrote a post about TV comedy writing jargon over at his always-excellent Kung Fu Monkey. He mentioned a technique called “the Red Dress Cut,” which occurs “when you cut directly from a character declaring there’s no way he’s going to do something, to him doing it, for comedic effect… This name comes from the way it was always described to me: a burly guy saying ‘There’s no way I’m going to get into a red dress and pretend to be your wife’. SMASH CUT to … you get the idea.”
I mentioned to him that I had always heard this technique called “the Gilligan cut,” after the TV show that used it with great frequency. John agreed that that was a more common term, and updated his glossary accordingly.
Of course, neither of us was under the illusion that the writers of Gilligan’s Island invented this technique. I’m fairly certain I’ve seen it used by Abbot & Costello as well as the Three Stooges. If you had asked me, I would have speculated that it was invented very soon after sound came to cinema. It’s hard to imagine it working on stage (where it’s rather difficult to smash cut) or in silent film (where the interposition of title cards would ruin the rhythm of the joke.)
This evening, however, I made a discovery that is going to revolutionize the burgeoning field of Gilligan Cut Historical Studies. I present to you a quote from The Pickwick Papers, first published in 1836:

“I should like to see him,” said Mr. Pickwick.
“See Serjeant Snubbin, my dear Sir!” rejoined Perker, in utter amazement. “Pooh, pooh, my dear Sir, impossible. See Serjeant Snubbin! Bless you, my dear Sir, such a thing was never heard of, without a consultation fee being previously paid, and a consultation fixed. It couldn’t be done, my dear Sir, it couldn’t be done.”
Mr. Pickwick, however, had made up his mind not only that it could be done, but that it should be done; and the consequence was, that within ten minutes after he had received the assurance that the thing was impossible, he was conducted by his solicitor into the outer office of the great Serjeant Snubbin himself.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Unless somebody can find evidence of prior art– perhaps through close examination of The Tale of Genji— I will conclude that the Gilligan Cut was invented by Mr. Charles Dickens, nearly a century before the talkies came into existence.

The only thing better than a t-shirt celebrating Snakes on a Plane is a t-shirt that allows you to be the actual plane in question.