20 years after it lost Best Picture at the Oscars to Crash, Michelle Williams still thinks that Brokeback Mountain was wronged by the Academy. In an interview on Watch What Happens Live?, Williams discussed the movie’s famous Best Picture loss and even took a dig at the movie that beat it.
“I mean, what was Crash?” Williams said during the interview.
“People were so open about it,” the five-time Oscar nominee added. “I just remember doing the junket. You don’t really get an opportunity to see a lot of grown men cry. That was the moment that I think that we all knew that it was going to be special.”
The film, which starred Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as a pair of cowhands who started a 20-year love affair while herding sheep together in Montana, earned widespread acclaim at the time of its release. At the time, Brokeback‘s Best Picture loss was considered to be, at least partially, a response to the movie’s overtly gay story at a time when Hollywood was still hesitant to embrace the LGBTQ+ community.
Ang Lee, the film’s director, told Indiewire that the movie’s gay themes meant that winning the top prize was going to be impossible, at least at the time. “Back then, [Brokeback Mountain] had a ceiling,” he told IndieWire. “We got a lot of support — up to that much. It has that feeling. I wasn’t holding a grudge or anything. It’s just how they were.”
Williams earned her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the film, playing Ledger’s wife Alma. Although it didn’t earn the top prize, Lee was honored for his direction of the movie.