Fun with Harv and George? The success of Brokeback has Hollywood dusting off long-stalled gay projects, from the Harvey Milk story to the romantic comedy The Dreyfus Affair.

Whether you found it a life-altering touchstone, a good cry, or even a major snooze, there's no question that Brokeback Mountain is filmmaking's financial success story of the year. It's one of the few offerings a DVD-besotted public is anxious to run out and see in theaters. As the first full-on gay romance to break through the niche-market ceiling it's got Hollywood's gay-shy moneymen taking notice.

"The success of Brokeback Mountain is not about a public hunger for gay stories, but that the sociocultural resistance to them is wearing away," says out producer and director Alan Poul, whose credits include Six Feet Under, My So-called Life, and three Tales of the City miniseries. "Moreover, its success creates an atmosphere of receptivity for movies in which people of the same sex show visible [physical] affection."

Comparing Brokeback to 1993's Six Degrees of Separation--in which "they had to [show] just the back of Will Smith's head, because he wouldn't kiss another actor"--Poul adds, "I hate to say we're measuring success in such small strides, but if the taint is gone from the male-male kiss because of Brokeback, then that's a big breakthrough."

If, as the song in Casablanca goes, "a kiss is just a kiss," even if it's between two men, then Brokeback's river of greenbacks could wash away the logjam that's kept any number of gay-themed projects trapped in development hell. Novelist Patricia Nell Warren is again touting the cinematic possibilities of her track-and-field romance classic, The Front Runner--which Paul Newman famously considered, then reconsidered, bringing to the screen two decades ago, A more recent victim of turnaround, the gays-in-baseball comedy The Dreyfus Affair, once linked to director Betty Thomas and star Ben Affleck, may be taken out of mothballs too. And that's not to mention the inevitable movie of the hit gay baseball play Take Me Out.

But there's a downside to Brokeback fever, as indicated by producer Lee Levinsen's remark to a Los Angeles Times reporter that "it's going to help us in the sense that we are going to reach out to a heterosexual star for the gay roles." Not great news for out gay actors like Peter Paige, Chad Allen, Portia Di Rossi, Craig Chester, Alec Mapa, Robert Gant, and Wilson Cruz.

Maybe a producer with clout might not be so chary, especially one who's been through the mill with gay projects, Out producing team Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have been trying for 15 years, with a variety of collaborators, to make The Mayor of Castro Street, gay journalist Randy Shilts's account of the wildly colorful life and tragic death of gay politico Harvey Milk.

"We're going to make it with Bryan Singer directing," says Zadan, whose multitasking skills find him prepping the movie version of the musical Hairspray at the same time. Zadan credits the long-awaited (and still pending) green light from Warner Bros. to the clout that out director Singer has earned from his X-Men films and this summers Superman Returns. "But if you couple it with the heat coming off Brokeback, it just moves things along that much quicker. The planets are aligned."

Zadan's had the planets align for his projects before. "When we did Chicago, no movie musical had been made for the big screen in years," he says of the Best Picture Oscar winner for 2002, which he and Meron executive-produced. "Now people are making musicals again. The last mainstream gay movie from Hollywood was Philadelphia. With Brokeback a hit, the same natural pattern will follow."

And Poul has an idea to bring the revived musical genre together with Brokeback heat. "You know this biography of [gay disco icon] Sylvester by Joshua Gamson that was just published [The Fabulous Sylvester]? I've optioned that together with [out producer-director] Rob Epstein, for him to produce and me to direct. It's still in the very early stages." He's also working on a biopic of gay baseball player Billy Bean (with--surprise!--Zadan and Meron) and a fourth Tales miniseries, Babycakes, for Showtime.

Indeed, Poul's pitching of projects for both film and cable TV underlines a vital reality of making gay-themed projects: The big screen remains rarefied terrain. Many hope to climb that mountain; few succeed.