What the studio did was brilliant, actually. They knew they'd get the arthouse and gay movie-going audience anyway, by word of mouth. That audience was almost automatic, given the subject matter of the film. Re-positioning the film as a romance, in order to appeal to more mainstream audiences...
Found this comment in Andrew Sullivan's blog column today: "I saw Brokeback Mountain over the weekend, and I can see why it will have a broad appeal. Although it's about gay cowboys, which most people cannot directly relate to, it's also about a man being trapped in a marriage when he would...