"Brokeback Mountain" signalled a milestone in independent American filmmaking. Based on the popular short story by Annie Proulx and directed by the Taiwanese born Ang Lee, "Brokeback Mountain" situated a love story between two men at the heart of American mythology, spectatorship, and film genre. The film offered both an independent and queer revision of the conventions and clich's of the Hollywood melodrama as well as the western through its studied exploration of the sexuality, repression, and desire of two contemporary cowboys. This book explores the film's central drama of sexuality through key ideas in film studies and offers an overview of Focus Features as a hybrid company that operates across both the mainstream and independent cinema sectors.