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EXCLUSIVE "BROKEBACK TO THE FUTURE" INTERVIEW

Why talk to the cast of Brokeback Mountain when you can read an exclusive interview with the head of Chocolate Cake City, the Emerson College comedy troupe responsible for Brokeback to the Future...as first reported in Saturday's Boston Herald, and now here, only on Popular Thinking.

Troupe's spoof of 'Brokeback' takes the Cake
By Sean L. McCarthy
Last week, Emerson College sketch comedy troupe Chocolate Cake City didn't even have a Web site.
Today, the troupe is the latest Internet sensation, thanks to online fans of its mash-up movie trailer parody, "Brokeback to the Future."
"I swear to God, we put up that Web site and this video link two days ago, and I can't believe the response we've gotten," said troupe president Patrick De Nicola on Friday. "It's exploded."
From its debut on Tuesday, to BoingBoing on Wednesday, the parody bounced all over the Net on Thursday -- including YouTube, the new online video sharing site that logged more than 200,000 viewings of the two-minute clip on Thursday. Friday, iFilm.com and CNN both took notice.
"We're on a rush to put up as many other videos as we can, because we want people to know we've done more than just the trailer," De Nicola said.
De Nicola and Jonathan Ade, both Emerson film majors, took the Oscar-nominated film's story of repressed love between two cowboys and applied it to the time-traveling duo of Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd in the Back to the Future trilogy.
"We watched all three movies in one night because we were so excited," De Nicola said. "Then, the next day, we took the movies and put them on Jonathan's computer and edited them from there."
They had plenty of fodder to choose from, especially since the third Back to the Future film takes place in the Old West.
"That's when we said, 'Wow, this could really work,' " he said.
Last month, another parody using Top Gun clips paired Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer in "Brokeback Squadron."
Mark Lisanti, Defamer.com editor, wrote Thursday that Brokeback Mountain has spawned a number of parodies that simply "take another homoerotic big-screen pairing, add the wistful, lingering guitar them, add a few meaningful titles, and voila -- instant laughs.
"But then we saw Chocolate Cake City's 'Brokeback to the Future,' and all the others immediately fell away as we realized: This was the one."
De Nicola's response: "We went crazy when we read that."
In its first four years, the 18-member troupe hasn't strayed far from campus. They have a gig Feb. 12 in New York City and two April shows planned in Boston.
"That's what we're really all about this semester is getting our stuff out there, in Boston comedy clubs and elsewhere," he said.