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Brokeback Mountain faces law suit

Brokeback Mountain

Story by Jack Foley

IT’S been showered with critical praise and accolades but now Oscar-winner Brokeback Mountain faces a law suit now that one of its actors has decided to sue the studio and producers for $10 million (£6m).

Randy Quaid, who plays the rancher who hires Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) to tend his sheep on the Wyoming mountain where they fall in love, claims he was underpaid for his supporting role in the ‘gay western’.

A lawsuit filed on Thursday (March 23, 2006) in Los Angeles Superior Court alleges that the film’s producers tricked Quaid into appearing in the movie for what was “effectively a donation of his time”.

The actor has accused the filmmakers of “falsely representing it [Brokeback Mountain] as a low-budget, art-house film, with no prospect of making any money”.

Focus Features, a specialist branch of Universal Pictures, has been named in the legal action along with Focus co-presidents, James Schamus and David Linde.

Quaid is particularly aggrieved because the film, which cost about $14 million to make, has since grossed an estimated $160 million at the world-wide box office, fuelled by its controversial subject matter and awards recognition.

The lawsuit builds its case by pointing out that Quaid, himself an Oscar nominee for a supporting role in The Last Detail, has a history of working at reduced rates in “experimental, non-mainstream” movies for the sake of art.

Quaid dropped his customary seven-figure fee plus a percentage of the box office gross and appeared in Brokeback Mountain for only a nominal fee after being convinced that the film didn’t have much commercial potential.

He was subsequently dismayed to discover that, “from day one”, it was clear the film wasn’t being made on a low budget and that it would receive a global release.

What’s more, an estimated $30 million has been spent on promoting the film to a worldwide market, according to the suit.

A spokeswoman for Focus declined to omment on the law suit on Friday.