Gay Moviegoers Tip Their Hats to a Love Story

"Brokeback" pushes the boundaries on two fronts: It's a Hollywood romance, but with gay men; it's a gay film, but with broader, more universal themes.

"They can call it whatever they want to call it; just don't call it a 'gay cowboy love story.' That's upsetting to me," says Paul Pecoriano, 35, an actor and waiter who works in the XES Lounge in Manhattan -- that's SEX spelled backward, in case you missed it. For months now, he's heard one too many recycled jokes about the film, the most popular being that it ought to have been called "Bareback Mountain" -- "bareback," in gayspeak, is a word for unsafe sex.

"It's a love story, period," says Pecoriano.

It's a "sweet and gentle and touching and well-observed" film, says Michael Musto, a columnist for the Village Voice. He adds that if the film accomplished anything -- if it truly lives up to the groundbreaking, landmark status that film critics and gay rights groups have bestowed upon it -- it's shown that a "gay love story is as banal as a straight one."

"That is a measure of achievement," says Musto. "Now we just have a love story that hits a lot of formulaic points that happens to be between two guys."

The film made Peter Luger, 40, think back to 1978's "Same Time, Next Year," with its romantic tryst between Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn. "That in itself maybe tells us that, gay or straight, a love story is a love story," says Luger, who caught an early screening here last week.

But back to that herd mentality business -- the pressure, the expectations, the lobbying, the near-bullying, "be-there-or-be-a-bad-gay" attitude of it all.

If you go on opening night at Loews Dupont Circle (it'll also be at the Landmark Bethesda Row), you're likely to spot Scott Shumaker and 40 to 45 of his friends, most of them gay men, who are all planning to see "Brokeback" Friday night. Shumaker, a self-described film buff and "definitely a gay-film buff," he says, organized the gathering, which will move afterward to Halo, the popular bar on P Street NW, for a post-movie wrap-up. The 33-year-old graphic designer says most everyone's big question will be: Can a straight director and two straight actors make an authentic gay movie?

Judging from the reaction so far, authentic enough.