After reading Annie Proulx’ s short story “Brokeback Mountain,” Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry wasted no time negotiating a deal to turn the story into a film. They wrote the screenplay in three months. The screenplay languished in Hollywood for seven years because of “agent influence,” as Osana describes it. The agents of actors exerted heavy influence in keeping actors away from “gay roles.” The two men who did take the roles did so only after director Ang Lee had attached himself to the picture.

If you are an established hetero star playing a Philadelphia lawyer dying of AIDS, as Tom Hanks was when he made Philadelphia, you might win an Oscar for your performance, and in part for your career bravery. But timing and the personality of the gay character and the tone of the movie have a lot to do with how any performance is received.

Take the case of Campbell Scott. In 1990 Scott appeared in the screen adaptation of Craig Lucas’ play Longtime Companion. It is a devastating, heartbreaking film that chronicles the decimation of the gay community in New York City and its summer playground, Fire Island, during the 1980s. Longtime Companion, a sympathetic portrayal of AIDs sufferers and their family and friends, was released before anything but fear ruled the thinking of most people about this deadly disease. And Longtime Companion has no even remotely triumphal note. When the movie ends, the disease is still ravaging its victims.

The agents warning actors against gay roles in Hollywood may have Scott’s example in mind. At least as handsome and talented as any in the “brat pack” of his generation, Scott has never become a Hollywood “star.” He has never made a “paycheck” film. He has made interesting films, the last thing agents are interested in.

I’m no conspiracy theorist. I think Campbell Scott, especially with parents like Colleen Dewhurst and George C. Scott, has made very independent choices because that’s who he is. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be held up as a cautionary tale to aspiring young hunks considering playing gay.

Campbell Scott is currently on screen in The Dying Gaul, written and directed by Craig Lucas. Sexuality issues lurk around every corner in this maddening, twisted thriller. This very unflattering depiction of Hollywood elite is just the kind of project Hollywood agents try to keep their clients as far away from as possible.

Scott plays Jeffrey Tishop, a producer. When we meet him, he is trying to buy a screenplay, entitled The Dying Gaul, from Robert Sandrich, a screenwriter played by Peter Sarsgaard. The screenplay is about the relationship between two men, and Jeffrey is willing to pay Robert a lot of money for it. There is just one catch.

The movie will be made only if Robert changes his screenplay to make the relationship between a man and a woman. Robert wants no part of this change. His screenplay was written to honor his lover who died of AIDS, and Robert is still fiercely grieving his loss.

For a guy who has made very few Hollywood movies, Scott is frighteningly good at playing all the manipulating and tempting behavior it takes to get Robert to take the money and make the changes. Sarsgaard, an actor who has played many challenging roles (the murdering, raping thug in Boys Don’t Cry comes most chillingly to mind) summons wrenching agony and guilt as he succumbs to the temptation of selling out.

Jeffrey wants more than Robert’s screenplay. He wants Robert, too. The two begin a very torrid, guilty affair. Guilty, because Jeffrey is married, with two kids. And married not to some misunderstanding nag; Jeffrey’s wife Elaine is smart, lovely and supportive. And since Jeffrey has welcomed Robert into their home, the three are good friends.

Elaine is played by Patricia Clarkson, and though at first Elaine seems gentle and naÔve, Clarkson is well equipped for what The Dying Gaul has in store for her. Elaine discovers that Robert and Jeffrey are having an affair. She doesn’t confront either her husband or his lover. At least not at first.

I don’t want to give away too many of the sharp turns The Dying Gaul takes, but I will say this: Elaine, by doing some eavesdropping on phone calls and a little Internet sleuthing, twists Robert into hideously painful knots. She torments him with information. She tracks him down electronically. She convinces him that the e-mail conversations he is sharing with a person he met in a chat room is the ghost or spirit of his dead lover.

And that is just the beginning. The Dying Gaul is set in the loveliest of worlds. All is comfort and ease, at least on the surface. The house, the clothes, the pool - it all looks lovely. Under this surface the competitiveness, ambition, greed, anger and revenge are as far from the surface as anything the movies have to offer. The performances of the three main characters are all magnificent. They get darker and darker as the movie progresses, and we follow them at the edge of our seats.

The Dying Gaul is a frustrating film. Lucas’ background in the theater is a possible explanation. The title of the film doesn’t have much to do with what happens, except that the sculpture “The Dying Gaul,” which survives as a Roman copy of a Greek original that has been modeled and copied for 2000 years, suggests the roots of the moral universe of The Dying Gaul.

What these selfish, hedonistic people bring down on themselves through their actions is Biblically brutal, the kind of tragedy imagined by ancient theatrical dramatists, not designer-clad, Pilates-sculpted, contemporary culture pushers.