Author Annie Proulx: I Wish I Never Wrote “Brokeback Mountain” | NewNowNext Author Annie Proulx: I Wish I Never Wrote “Brokeback Mountain” by Dan Avery 12/29/2014 Brokeback Mountain has a legion of fans, but apparently author Annie Proulx, who wrote the short story the 2005 film was based on, is not one of them. Speaking to the Paris Review , Proulx said the film generated so much “I wish I’d never written the story. It’s just been the cause of hassle and problems and irritation since the film came out,” she revealed. Proulx says the problem is that many people misunderstand the point of the story: I think it’s important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience, but unfortunately the audience that Brokeback reached most strongly have powerful fantasy lives. And one of the reasons we keep the gates locked here is that a lot of men have decided that the story should have had a happy ending. They can’t bear the way it ends — they just can’t stand it.

So they rewrite the story, including all kinds of boyfriends and new lovers and so forth after Jack is killed. And it just drives me wild. They can’t understand that the story isn’t about Jack and Ennis. It’s about homophobia; it’s about a social situation; it’s about a place and a particular mindset and morality. They just don’t get it. I can’t tell you how many of these things have been sent to me as though they’re expecting me to say, ‘Oh great, if only I’d had the sense to write it that way.’ And they all begin the same way — ‘I’m not gay, but…?’ Pop-culture lovers have been writing fan fiction since forever, but it sounds like some Brokeback fans are actually accosting Proulx, rather than just enjoying the fantasy. “I haven’t had the same sort of problem with anything else I’ve ever written. Nothing else,” she revealed. “People saw it as a story about two cowboys.

It was never about two cowboys.” If You Liked the Film “Brokeback Mountain” … | BEYOND RIVALRY BEYOND RIVALRY If You Liked the Film “Brokeback Mountain” … I’ve posted a list of books (and a few movies) similar in style, content, and character depiction to the current film, “Brokeback Mountain,” based on a short story by E. Annie Proulx, and starring Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar and Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist. Thanks to the folks on Fiction-L for their help compiling the list. Notes: The list was compiled primarily by members of Fiction-L in January 2006. Themes of the books listed might include: men or women in love with someone of the same sex and conflicted about it bisexuality and its complexities in marriage and other relationships a character being surprised by his/her choice of lover’s gender, race, class, etc. the issues faced by a character who falls in love with someone of the same sex or someone otherwise seen as culturally inappropriate a brief, intense emotional and/or sexual relationship and its aftermath, resolution, and/or consequences over years.

GIOVANNI’S ROOM (1956) by James Baldwin [Delta, 2003, 176 pp.]: The novel is narrated introspectively and retrospectively in the first person by David, a young, white American trying to find himself in post-World War II France. Mostly through flashbacks, we follow David’s exploits in Paris, where he keeps company with the Saint-Germain crowd of homosexuals, while his official American fiancée, Hella, is traveling in Spain. The central focus is on David’s struggle with his sexual identity and his tragic romance with Giovanni, a handsome Italian bartender, whose love David ultimately rejects in a fit of self-hating and homophobic rage. (Description from The Literary Encyclopedia) A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD (1998) by Michael Cunningham [Picador, 352 pp.]: Bobby and Jonathan are close boyhood friends growing up in Cleveland in the late 1960s and ’70s.

Their relationship is both average and far beyond what most kids would consider ‘normal.’ After high school, Jonathan moves to New York City, Bobby soon follows, and they both become involved with Clare, a slightly older woman who finds each one appealing in his own way. The three make a life together. (Description from Library Journal) BETWEEN LOVERS (2002) by Eric Jerome Dickey [Signet, 400 pp.]: The story’s narrator is an unnamed successful African-American novelist based in Los Angeles, who for seven years has loved Nicole, despite the fact that she left him waiting at the altar when she moved in with another lover, the tough-spirited, strong-minded, passionate Ayanna, who is an attorney and a woman. Nicole wants them both, and their sensual and twisted journey culminates in a tragedy that changes them.

[Library Journal says that “The triangle, which becomes spiritual as well as physical, proves first destructive, then healing.”] WOUNDED (2005) by Percival Everett [Graywolf Press, 242 pp.]: Set in the beautiful harsh desert plains of Wyoming, the novel focuses on John Hunt, a widower, a successful African American rancher and horse trainer, and a cautious and careful man. He lives with Gus, his aging uncle, and briefly with a hired hand, Wallace, who is arrested for the brutal murder of a young gay man and who subsequently hangs himself in jail. The murder of the gay man leads to a hate crime rally, which brings David and his boyfriend Robert to town, and eventually David and John form an unlikely bond as John tries to deal with his own feelings about homosexuality. Jane Smiley, reviewing the book, notes that it’s the themes and not the plot that are central to the book: “how are the murderous impulses of a certain portion of the American populace, who are racist, homophobic, aggressive and well-armed, to be dealt with?

Can black horse trainers and Native American cattle ranchers and women and gay guys passing through simply keep to themselves?” ALMA ROSE (1993) by Edith Forbes [Seal Press, 322 pp.]: Set in the west, this story is narrated with calmness, simplicity, and elegance of language. Taciturn Pat Lloyd works at her father’s mercantile store in Kilgore, a small, dusty town in the rolling hills and sagebrush-covered plains of the West. Into her routine, small world comes truck driver Alma Rose, who focuses her charm and energy on Pat, and Pat’s life is turned upside down. When Alma stops coming to Kilgore, Pat carves a statue of Alma’s likeness into a hillside near the highway. MAURICE (1971) by E.M. Forster [Norton, 2005, 256 pp.]: Forster actually wrote the book in 1913/1914. It’s story of a young middle class man (from age 15 onwards) searching for his identity within a society that denies his desire to love a person of the same sex.

His first homosexual relationship with Clive Durham at Cambridge ends when Clive decides to marry. Later Maurice thinks about overcoming his sexual desires but fails, falling in love with Alec Scudder, the gamekeeper on Clive’s country estate. The novel ends happily. HOMESICK CREEK (2005) by Diane Hammond [Random House/Doubleday, 352 pp.]: The novel, set in small town Hubbard, Oregon and a follow-up to Going to Bend (2003), explores the struggling marriages of two midlife couples in Oregon: diner waitress Bunny and her car salesman husband, Hack, and Bunny’s best friend, former almost-beauty queen Anita, and Anita’s frequently drunken but loving husband, Bob, who has had a secret homosexual relationship since childhood with Warren. I SHOULD BE EXTREMELY HAPPY IN YOUR COMPANY: A NOVEL OF LEWIS AND CLARK (2003) by Brian Harris [Viking, 416 pp.]: Meriwether Lewis is a man with a propensity to brooding, detachment, perfectionism, intensity. William Clark is less complicated, a guy who just wants to settle down and have a family.

“Despite their different dispositions, or perhaps because of them, Lewis loves Clark, possibly in the romantic if not the erotic sense of the word, and Clark’s devotion, though more ordinary, is still powerful. The two men don’t quite understand each other, but only Clark has the sense to recognize that; for Lewis, Clark is another kind of ideal, forever receding” (from Salon review). THE PRICE OF SALT (1952) by Patricia Highsmith [Norton, 2004, 262 pp.]: Published under the pseudonym Clare Morgan. The riveting story of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, who falls in love with Carol Aird, an alluring suburban housewife going through a divorce. They set out across the United States, pursued by a private investigator who eventually blackmails Carol into a choice between her daughter and her lover.

THE LORD WON’T MIND (1970) by Gordon Merrick [Alyson Publications, 1995, 255 pp.]: “This novel is a liberating manifesto of the right to love whomever we please, disguised as a romantic potboiler.” Set during the World War II time period (10 years after the beginning of the Depression). Charlie and Peter are the young lovers. Charlie is more reluctant, and more closeted, and he “marries an ambitious actress in an attempt to fit in. When he can’t measure up, she exacts a lurid, biting revenge. Peter wants only to celebrate his love, and while he is more naive and vulnerable, he is also more pure, more true to himself. By novel’s end, it is the slightly coarse Charlie who is learning from Peter about human feelings” (Amazon reviewer). Sequels are One for the Gods (1971/1996) and Forth Into Light (1974/1996). THE DEATH OF FRIENDS (1998) by Michael Nava [Bantam, 256 pp.]: Mystery, part of series.

Criminal defense attorney Henry Rios is contacted when an old friend, Supreme Court judge Chris Chandler, is found murdered in his chambers. The judge’s young lover, Zach, a former street hustler and gay-porn star, appeals to Rios to protect him from suspicion of guilt, but Henry must tread carefully: Chandler’s wife, also a friend, knows nothing of her husband’s secret life; almost no one does — in fact, even Henry had never heard of this young man. What other secrets was Chandler hiding? LAND THAT MOVES, LAND THAT STANDS STILL (2003) by Kent Nelson [Viking, 352 pp.]: Set on an alfalfa ranch east of the Black Hills of South Dakota, this novel focuses on the stories of three women as it explores nuances of place, character, grief, and renewal. After losing her husband in a farming accident, Mattie Remmel discovers letters that reveal that he had same-sex lovers, which causes her to question her life and marriage, and which leads her daughter, Shelley, an insecure college student, to seek her own consolation.

Along with a beautiful, flaky, mechanical whiz of a ranch hand, Dawn, who is equally betrayed in love, and a 14-year-old runaway Native American boy, Elton, they work hard, face the threats of neighbors, and deal with the arrival of a former lover bent on revenge. AT SWIM, TWO BOYS: A NOVEL (2003) by Jamie O’Neill [Scribner, 576 pp.]: In the spring of 1915, Jim Mack and ‘the Doyler,’ two 16-year-old Dublin boys, make a pact to swim to an island in Dublin Bay the following Easter. By the time they do, Dublin has been consumed by the Easter Uprising, and the boys’ friendship has blossomed into love — a love that will in time be overtaken by tragedy. DESERT OF THE HEART (1964) by Jane Rule [Arno Press, 1975, 224 pp.]: Evelyn Hall arrives in Reno wanting only to be left alone while she waits six weeks for a painful divorce from her husband.

Once there she meets Ann Child, 15 years younger, who is a free-spirited lesbian. Soon Ann refuses to let the controlled but vulnerable Evelyn ignore the powerful emotions that begin to unleash inside her… The 1985 movie “Desert Hearts” is based on this book. MRS. STEVENS HEARS THE MERMAIDS SINGING (1965) by May Sarton [Norton, 1993, 224 pp.]: We meet Hilary Stevens, a lesbian poet and novelist, when she is 70, as she is interviewed in 1964 after she publishes a book of poetry that brings her a second round of fame; she had shocked the world in 1922 with her novel of two women in love. As Hilary answers the questions of the two reporters sent to interview her, she flashes back through pivotal scenes from her full and fascinating life, including memories of her (often female) muses. Separately, she spends time with a young man who has recently had an unhappy affair with another man and who is questioning his sexuality.

The book was made into a movie in 2004, starring Lucy Brightman as Hilary Stevens. POWER OF THE DOG (1967) by Thomas Savage, with an afterword by Annie Proulx [Back Bay Books, 2001, 304 pp.]: This novel is a western that explores misogyny, misogamy and homosexuality. Using shifting points of view, the book traces the tense relationship between two bachelor brothers, Phil and George Burbank, on a Montana ranch in the 1924-1925. Phil, “a fascinating study in western machismo, sharply intelligent and capable of merciless cruelty, masking a fiercely denied homosexuality,” terrorizes his new sister-in-law when George marries a widow with a teenaged son. CLEARCUT (2005) by Nina Shenfold [Knopf, 352 pp.]: Set in the rugged backwoods of the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s. Two men — one a rough-hewn loner, the other a gifted Berkeley dropout — are both interested in the same woman, and end up falling in love with each other. Menage a trois.

THE CITY AND THE PILLAR (1948) by Gore Vidal [Vintage, 2003, 240 pp.]: Set in the 1940s. When close friends Jim Willard and Bob Ford spend a weekend at a cabin before Bob heads off to sea, their horseplay and relaxation leads them to sexual intimacy, and “the experience forms Jim’s ideal of spiritual completion. Defying his parents’ expectations, Jim strikes out on his own, hoping to find Bob and rekindle their amorous friendship. Along the way he struggles with what he feels is his unique bond with Bob and with his persistent attraction to other men. Upon finally encountering Bob years later, the force of his hopes for a life together leads to a devastating climax” (Vintage description). This novel tells the story of a young man’s search for a soul mate, for the ideal person for him — or someone he thinks is ideal.

THE FRONT RUNNER (1974) by Patricia Nell Warren [Wildcat Press, 1995, 307 pp.]: In 1975, coach Harlan Brown is hiding from his past at an obscure New York college, after being fired from Penn State on suspicion of being gay. A tough, lonely ex-Marine of 39, Harlan has never allowed himself to love another man. Then Billy Sive, a brilliant young runner, shows up, along with two others who were thrown off a team for being gay. Harlan agrees to coach the three boys for the 1976 Olympics under strict conditions that thwart Billy’s growing attraction for him. Billy’s acceptance of his own sexuality contrasts with Harlan’s fear about confronting the pain of his past or the challenges ahead if their intimacy is exposed. ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT (1985) by Jeanette Winterson [Grove/Atlantic, 1995, 176 pp.]: Jeanette’s parents are working-class evangelical Christians in the North of England in the 1960s.

She herself is destined for the missionary field, but her high success rate of converts turns into a charismatic encounter with one girl in particular, Melanie. After being asked to publicly repent, having her demons exorcised for 14 hours, and being locked in a closet without food for three days, Jeanette pretends to repent, but continues to believe that she hasn’t done anything wrong in loving both Melanie and God. She begins a relationship with another convert, Katy. Eventually, at age 16, Jeanette quits the church and is made to leave home. At the heart of the novel is the question, do you stay safe or do you follow your heart? Similar Movies “Making Love” (1982): A young doctor realizes he is gay, which has consequences for his marriage and his life. As he begins to explore his new sexual identity, he gets involved with a commitment-phobic writer, and the movie explores issues of commitment, love, infidelity, rejection. Stars Michael Ontkean, Kate Jackson, and Harry Hamlin. Desert Hearts (1985): It is 1950s Nevada, and Professor Vivian Bell arrives to get a divorce.

She’s dissatisfied with her marriage, feels out of place at the ranch, and finds herself increasingly drawn to Cay Rivers, an open and self-assured lesbian, and the ranchowner’s daughter. The emotions released by their developing intimacy, and Vivian’s insecurities about her feelings towards Cay, are played out against a backdrop of rocky landscapes and country and western songs. Stars Helen Shaver, Patricia Charbonneau , and Audra Lindley. Based on Jane Rule’s book, Desert of the Heart. “In and Out” (1997): After being awarded an Oscar for the portrayal of a gay soldier, Cameron Drake thanks his English teacher for being his gay inspiration. Problem is, he’s not, and he’s about to be married. “The way Kline tackles sexual preference is also how one would confront the ending of a relationship, which could be what this movie is about on a smaller level.” (IMDB reviewer) Stars Kevin Kline, Joan Cusack, Tom Selleck, and Matt Dillon. “Bent” (1997): Because Max is gay, he is sent to Dachau concentration camp under the Nazi regime.

He denies he is gay and gets a yellow label (for Jews) instead of pink (for gays). In camp, he falls in love with his fellow prisoner Horst, who wears his pink label with pride. Stars Clive Owen, Lothaire Bluteau, Ian McKellen. List compiled Jan. 2006. Brokeback Mountain | Film | The Guardian Brokeback Mountain Share on Messenger Close Even after the mountain of hype and the three Oscars, it's the subtlety and delicacy of Ang Lee's western that gets you. "I hope it presents more questions than answers" is how the director puts it on a DVD interview and he's exactly right. The film never goes for the big effect or the big statement - it stays small-scale but digs deep into its characters and the effect of an enduring but forbidden love affair. Through a myriad of genres, director Lee has always shown great empathy for his characters and it's notable that Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway are given just as real and even-handed treatment as leads Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal and that stetsons are useful for hiding feelings as well as keeping the sun out of the eyes.

Larry McMurtry, who adapted his novel for The Last Picture Show, co-wrote a screenplay from Annie Proulx's short story in 1997 and stays true to its simplicity. For once, the screen is fleshing out a story I read in 40 minutes. And this affair always seems equated with an escape from dull domesticity - this is two guys comfortable in the magnificent scenery that dwarfs them (mostly Canada standing in for Wyoming) and taking their Butch and Sundance thing a stage further. In Ang Lee , who rose to prominence with his charming gay/straight comedy The Wedding Banquet, it has found the ideal director. Brokeback Mountain Brokeback Mountain Published Sat 7 Jan 2006 Issue No. 1982 Brokeback Mountain’s portrayal of a gay relationship is long overdue from a Hollywood movie Back in 1960s Iran, a favourite pastime was mountaineering. At the time, going up to the mountains was viewed by many as a revolutionary act. Here was an opportunity for political groups to meet and to organise their activity. And, under the repressive rule of the Shah, the mountains of northern Iran felt liberating.

Set during the same period, but in the west of the US, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain plays on this sense of freedom. Based on an Annie Proulx short story, this film is about two gay men who are forced to find an alternative space to exercise the freedom refused to them by society’s prejudices. Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) from Texas and Ennis (Heath Ledger) from Wyoming, two young penniless cowboys, meet for the first time when they start a summer job herding sheep among the beautiful scenery of Brokeback Mountain. High-up and isolated from the outside world we see their relationship develop as they work against inhospitable weather conditions. Then one frosty night beside the campfire, the pair knock back a bottle of whisky before sharing a tent in order to keep from freezing. But they do more than just warm up, as a lustful sexual encounter erupts initiating a whole summer of romance. When summer ends they return to their home towns. Both get married, have children and settle down. Four years pass before Ennis receives a postcard from Jack re-establishing the connection.

It isn’t long before they are back in the mountain to re-light that fire, this time under the guise of regular fishing trips. The colourful, saturated imagery of the mountainous environment provides a suitable contrast to the claustrophobic, confined surroundings of domestic life. Hairstyles and improving technology show how the world around them is changing, but their small towns are cut off from this world outside. Jack and Ennis’s sexual liberation is insular — disconnected from the sexual rebellion of the 1960s. What the two men really want to say to each other is so often implied rather than expressed directly. It demands especially realistic performances from Gyllenhaal and Hedger. Jack is more honest and determined, but Ennis, always hiding under the rim of his hat, also remains hidden from his own feelings. There is genuine fear of being “found out”, which could mean death. Indeed, a gay student from Wyoming was lynched just one year after Proulx wrote the story in 2000. Importantly, and against mainstream convention, this film doesn’t channel the blame for their predicament merely on the reactionary views of one cruel individual.

Rather it points to a social problem, to the restrictive ideas of a society that refuses to allow two people to be together however much they are in love. Article information National Social Science Association Social-Cultural and Critical Responses to “Brokeback Mountain” Wayne S. Wooden California State Polytechnic University, Pomona There is no doubt that the movie Brokeback Mountain has proven to be both a cultural breakthrough phenomenon as well as a financial success. Made for a moderate $14 million, it reported over $83 million in domestic sales, $90 million in foreign sales, for a total of $178 million worldwide. Furthermore, it reported over $40 million in video sales, and, in fact, $1.4 million in video sales occurred in its first day of release. The film was released on December 9, 2005, in a select group of theatres, going wide on January 13, 2006. The film’s closing release date was April 20, 2006, for a total release period of 133 days or 19 weeks. Its widest release was to 2,089 theaters.

Essence of the Story The film is about two ranch hands that spend a summer in 1963 tending sheep on a Wyoming mountainside and essentially fall in love. At summer’s end the men part, and over the next four years both go on to marry, have children and live separate lives. But in time, the intense affection and longing they felt for each other reunites them, and over a span of twenty years they periodically meet for fishing and hunting trips, and attempt to renew their relationship within the strictures that both they and society allow. Although both men embrace the rural life-style (Ennis del Mar wants to be a rancher, Jack Twist attempts to become a “weekend warrior”-kind of rodeo bull rider), there are personality differences between them.

As Kenneth Turan, writing for The Los Angeles Times noted, “Jack is the showier character, the livelier wire, while Ennis is somber and grounded, the boy orphaned young who never came to trust the world.” (1) As a reviewer for Entertainment Weekly noted, “Brokeback Mountain becomes their Eden, the craggy cowboy paradise from which they are destined to fall.” Over the years their story becomes a “wistful epic of longing and loss,” influenced by a “closeted culture” in which “secrecy and repression work on them in special ways.” Ennis, for instance, is deeply affected by childhood visions of a rancher who lived with a man and was killed for it, and at the end, “penniless and alone, (Ennis) becomes a shard of a man, nurturing a lost dream.” (2) Shortly after the movie opened several film critics and writers were quick to label Brokeback Mountain a masterpiece and to point out how the film paralleled other epic love stories captured on celluloid. Judith Salkin, for one, explained: When you think of the great love stories – Dr.

Zhivago, An Affair to Remember or the granddaddy of them all Gone With the Wind – the task of overcoming obstacles that keep lovers apart is at the center of those films. In Brokeback Mountain, it is society’s Puritanical attitudes and taboos about homosexuality that are the obstacles neither man can overcome. The film incorporates the beauty, harshness of human existence and desolation of a countryside, using it as a metaphor of the loves that laid waste to these men’s souls. (3) Another film essayist, Chris Hewitt, wrote: The tragedy is that these two men find a rare gift, but their own prejudices and the prejudices of the world in which they live keep them from accepting it…. Brokeback Mountain also recognizes that when you’re afraid to be yourself, it damages every relationship you have. Like the couple in The Way We Were or Romeo and Juliet, Jake and Ennis crave the simplest possible thing: love.

And, like all those other characters, they live in a world too complicated to let them have it.” (4) Film critic for Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman, noted that Brokeback Mountain “crystallized changes that were already in play” in society, adding: “Every so often, though, a film mirrors back to its audience an image so bold and mythic…(that it), in effect becomes reality.

I’d say that happened in East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, which elevated teenage turmoil into the self-dramatizing passion that would underlie the 1960s….” (5) An analysis of the film in Newsweek magazine noted that Director Ang Lee’s movie was not only a “watershed” in mainstream films, but that it was “the first gay love story with A-list Hollywood stars.” The Newsweek piece also noted that the film was not really a Western per se, “but has much to say about the mindscape of the American West, where the myth of rugged individualism works only for those who don’t break the rules, and love can suffocate in the wide-open spaces.” (6) (As an aside, in interviews reported in the press with the two male leads, Leath Hedger and Jake Gyllenhall, both men cited personal experiences in why they accepted the roles. Hedger mentioned having a gay uncle who had been ostracized as a young man by his own father for being homosexual and left Australia to live in the United States because of that rejection.

Gyllenhall spoke about his godparents as being a pair of gay men who were close friends of the family.) Director Ang Lee cited several reasons as to what really interested him in telling this story. For one, “It’s the idea of a mountain itself as an allusion to love, to affection. Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist spend 20 years trying to go back to something they didn’t understand in the first place. And they missed out on it. To me that’s everything of a love story.” (7) For another, Lee was drawn to Annie Proulx”s story, which first appeared in The New Yorker. “It was a rare piece of literature. And it does have this (feel) of the macho western, but with the gay love story….It was some new angle – to check into (the characters’) humanity.” (8) Marketing the Movie Not sure how the movie would be received by the viewing public, and concern about whether-or-not there would be a backlash against the homosexual content of the movie, distributors were uncertain at first as how to release the film. Initially the idea was to limit its release to markets in Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco.

But with the immediate strong critical acclaim and an apparent audience motivated to see the film, Brokeback Mountain soon spread to suburban outlets and larger cities across the country. One such test market, the suburban community of Pleasant Hill outside of San Francisco, was selected where it was reported that on the first day of screening, “There was a line at the box office, and the film started 15 minutes late so everyone could be seated.

Even more striking was the crowd – largely seniors and middle-aged women.” So not only was the movie selling out in the heart of suburbia, the audience appeared to be more diverse than expected, including “being older, straighter and more conservative.” Further, the movie appeared to be “not only an art-house favorite or a cultural statement or a milestone in filmmaking, (but) a bonafide hit making money in places, and with audiences, that make an East Bay movie house look like the Cannes Film Festival.” (9) According to Jack Foley, president of distribution for Focus Features which handled the overall release of the film, the movie was “a cultural landmark like The Graduate or Pulp Fiction, movies that everyone uses as a reference to a specific time period.” Foley also attributed a key crowd as being the senior matinee audience who “go to a lot of movies, and they like good movies.” (10) Use of Review Clips Typical with the marketing of newly released movies, clips from positive film reviews were used in the print media for Brokeback Mountain, of which the following are a sample. These ads ran in The New York Times: “A big, sweeping and rapturous Hollywood live story.

A film in which love feels almost as if it were being invented. Revolutionary.” Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly “Love stories come and go, but this one stays with you! Exceptional! So full of life and longing, and true romance. An epic with singular intimacy and grace…. Deeply affecting. Stirring entertainment. The best picture of the year.” Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal “Its daring, its bravery, its dead-on relevance to right now… Brokeback Mountain gets you good! A classic in the making. Four stars!” Peter Travers, Rolling Stone (11) These ads ran in the Los Angeles Times: “One of the great love stores ever filmed! A movie you can see again and again.” Larry King “The best picture of the year!” Joel Siegel, Good Morning America “Groundbreaking. A deeply felt, emotional love story that deals with the uncharted, mysterious ways of the human heart. Confidently directed by Ang Lee and featuring sensitive and powerful performances by Jake Gyllenhall and a breathtaking Heath Ledger. ‘Brokeback Mountain’ insists it is a romance like any other, and that makes all the difference.

One of the year’s best pictures.” Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times The Film’s Popularity in Small Towns One of the greatest concerns was whether-or-not the movie would play in the heartland of America, the so-called red states. According to Variety, some of the strongest audiences were in Tulsa Oklahoma; El Paso, Texas; Des Moines, Iowa; and Lubbock, Texas. Andrew Sullivan, writing for the New York Times, listed several reasons for the film’s wider-than-expected acceptance by audiences across the country. There are various themes. Brilliant marketing pitched the movie as a love story and a western, two genres well ingrained in middle American tastes. Women dragged nervous husbands and boyfriends to see a film where the women could enjoy…Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, and the men could admire the scenery. Blue state liberals felt it some kind of social duty to see the film. Gays and lesbians flocked. The media hyped the ‘gay cowboy’ movie and it generated more and more publicity, and thereby curiosity and thereby tickets.

Sullivan goes on to state that over the past 20 years there has been a cultural shift in how homosexuals are viewed in the West: “Where once they were identified entirely by sex, now more and more recognize that the central homosexual experience is the central heterosexual experience: love – maddening, humiliating, sustaining love.” Sullivan also contends that the gay marriage debate, even while failing to achieve its overall political goal, has achieved a wider goal. And that is “to humanize gay people, to tell the full, human truth about them.” This truth, furthermore, includes conservative states since the homosexual minority is not geographically limited. “Red states produce as many gay kids as blue ones; and yet the heartland gay experience has rarely been portrayed and explored (as it is in this movie.” (12) The Conservative Backlash While the overall praise for Brokeback Mountain elated liberals and gay-rights activists, some conservatives and the Christian right hoped that the film would fail at the box office.

Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America’s Culture and Family Institute, expressed concern about the film on his group’s website: “I can’t think of a more effective way to annoy and alienate most movie-going Americans than to show two cowboys lusting after each other. It’s a mockery of the Western genre embodied by every movie cowboy from John Wayne to Gene Autry to Kevin Costner.” The Christian group Focus on the Family had an article about the film on its website – headlined “Gay Love Story Carries a High ‘Ick’ Factor” – that summarized opinions of several conservative critics. Another website aimed at pointing out family fare, called the film “boring neo-Marxist homosexual propaganda” and predicted that the scene of gay sex would repel audiences. (13) Conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly – referring to himself as a “barbarian” for not having seen the film – criticized Hollywood for not being upfront about acting as a cultural trendsetter. “There is no question that many show-biz types would like to banish any societal stigma associated with homosexuality,” noted O’Reilly.

“Thus, a mainstream movie that portrays gay conduct as nuanced and complicated, as ‘Brokeback’ reportedly does, contributes to a more broadminded approach to homosexuality, a more accepting view.” (14) In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Harlaub noted how male straight men between the ages of 18 to 54 seemed resistant to seeing the movie. “I’ve been surprised by ‘Brokeback’ phobia,” stated Hartlaub,” which I’ve heard from straight male friends, relatives, this nation’s president, guys in my pickup basketball game.” Arguing that he did not think that any of these men were homophobic, Harlaub added, “I just think there’s some kind of weird latent childhood peer-pressure thing going on with this movie. It’s almost as if you’re under a spell, reinforced by years of conflicting televised gay stereotypes and manly cowboy images.” (15) The conservative backlash to the theme of movie continued after Brokeback’s release. Utah Jazz professional basketball owner Larry H.

Miller pulled the film from one of his movie theaters, stating that he was concerned about “the breakup of the traditional American family.” (16) The conservative anti-gay group, The American Family Association, reportedly targeted the giant retailer Wal-Mart when it began selling the movie Brokeback Mountain upon its DVD release on April 4, 2006. (17) Even some Latino groups complained about the movie. However, their concern was over the fact that in the short story Ennis Del Mar was Latino as was his wife as well as the ranch foreman that initially hired the two young men to herd sheep. All three roles in the film version went to Caucasians. “There are 40 million Latinos in the United States, and their numbers are growing faster than any other group,” noted one such Latino group. “Every sector of the Entertainment industry says it wants to ‘reach’ us. Given that, the lack of Latinos in a movie about Latinos is inexcusable, and it speaks to how far Hollywood has to go.” (18) The Brokeback backlash was not just expressed within America. The film was not released in certain countries because of its sympathetic view of homosexuals, including the Bahamas, and mainland China.

Other countries, such as Turkey, had age restrictions imposed on their viewing audience. Film’s Reception By Rodeo Cowboys It is difficult to truly gauge the reception of what soon got dubbed as “the gay cowboy movie” by those rodeo athletes involved in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA). In my earlier co-authored book, Rodeo in America: Wranglers, Roughstock & Paydirt (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1996), I posed the question of whether-or-not an open gay cowboys would be accepted by others on the demanding rodeo circuit to a top-ranked saddle bronc rider. His reply at the time was: “It probably wouldn’t matter. So long as they are talented and treat you with respect, they’d be treated in the same way. It all comes down to what kind of person you are.” (p. 214) Other cowboys, involved with both professional and gay rodeo, were not so sure, indicating that they used anonymous names when competing in the gay rodeo circuit. But other gay and lesbian rodeo competitors, however, stated that they preferred the gay rodeo environment.

Often they competed with the full support of their heterosexual siblings or other family members, some of whom competed in the professional ranks. They indicated that straight cowboys’ acceptance of gays and lesbians was influenced by their having gay and lesbian relatives. Ty Murray, a straight man and seven-time All-Around Cowboy for the PRCA, when asked about the content of Brokeback Mountain while being interviewed on ABC’s Good Morning America, stated: “I think it’s something that’s now just being more understood. Hopefully, this movie helps people further understand it.” (19) The Film’s Impact Upon Popular Culture Any discussion of the film would be remiss if it did not include mention of its impact upon the broader popular culture. Some even have argued that the mark the movie left on pop culture accounted for the film’s overall success with a wider viewing audience as “everyone wanted to know what all the fuss was about.” As one noted, “There come’s a flashpoint when people are talking about the same thing. In a more benign and constructive way, America is now experiencing the Brokeback breakthrough.” Time magazine noted that ‘Brokeback’ quickly became the favorite topic of late night TV talk shows.

David Letterman’s website invited fans to submit their own spoofs. Some of the winners, for instance, for “Rejected Titles of the Film” included: Okahomo, Little Bathhouse on the Prairie, and The Good, the Bad and the Fabulous! (20) Letterman also had a Top Ten list of “Signs You’re a Gay Cowboy” which included: Your saddle is Versace; Instead of ‘Home on the Range,’ you sing ’It’s Raining Men;’ Sold your livestock to buy tickets to “Mamma Mia!;” Native Americans refer to you as “Dances With Men;” You’ve been lassoed more times than most steers; Instead of a saloon you prefer a salon; and the number one indicator: You love riding, but you don’t have a horse. According to another source, there were over 1,000 movie-trailer and movie-poster spin-offs, including several playful ones of Muppet characters. Others took a decidedly political vent, with perhaps the most striking one being that of the president and vice-president in a pose similar to that of the two male leads in the film used as the primary movie poster.

In a caption titled, “Watch Your Back Mountain,” Bush and Cheney-looking characters stood posed in the great outdoors as Cheney is blowing smoke from his rifle. This appeared on the cover of the February 27, 2006, issue of The New Yorker magazine, shortly after Cheney’s shooting incident, and just before the Academy Awards. Other cartoons spoofing the film’s theme appeared in a variety of magazines. One cartoon had one cowboy handing a cowboy hat to his partner, who is sitting up in bed, who answers, “And what if I don’t want to be Jack or Ennis?” Another cartoon has two young boys walking by a movie marquee of the film, as one boy states to the other: “My mom and dad went to the movies last night and today they threw away my cowboy hat and toy six-guns.” To which the other kid replies, “Weird.” Another cartoon, titled “Brokeback Capitol Hill,” has one cowboy (labeled as a lobbyist) dancing with another (a politician) with the first stating, “You dance with them that brung you, congressman!” To which the other replies, “God I wish I knew how to quit you!” Both are lines from the actual movie.

One of the Bizarro cartoons by Piraro had two cowboys talking to each other while riding side-by-side on horses. One notes, “For ages we been wearin’ high-heeled, point-toed boots with jingly stars, big silver belt buckles with curlicue designs, & flowery embroidered shirts with pearl buttons. But it takes a movie for people to figure out we’re gay.” To which the other cowboy replies, “The hats alone shoulda’ tipped ‘em off.” This cartoon ran on July 4, 2006. (The Independence Day Weekend is referred to as “Cowboy Christmas” as the most number of rodeos across the country are held on that weekend.) Another comedic spoof which appeared quickly on a website was entitled, “Weekly Grocery Lists for Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist.” It begins with a Week One shopping list of beans, bacon, coffee and whisky. By Week Four the list has grown to include beans, pancetta, coffee (expresso grind), whiskey, and two tubes K-Y.

Finally, by Week Six the list includes: Yukon Gold potatoes, heavy whipping cream, asparagus (very thin), eggs, lemons, Gruyere cheese (well aged), walnuts, arugula, butter, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, 6 years white silk organdy, 6 yards pale ivory taffeta, case of Chardonnay, and a large tin of Crisco.” In all, according to one observer, what was remarkable about the various cultural spoofs was their lack of malice, claiming that, “Most Brokeback humor has skewed toward playful, rather than homophobic…” Even some of the movie lines have become part of the cultural lexicon. Both “’I wish I knew how to quit you’ and ‘It’s nobody’s business but ours,’ are right up there with ‘Hasta la vista, baby’ and ‘Go ahead, make my day.’” (21) Finally, the ‘Brokeback Effect’ included different websites where one could purchase such film tie-in products as shirts, sweatshirts, hats, mugs, stickers and mouse pads. Movie-inspired apparel could be purchased on EBay.

The two shirts worn by Ledger and Gyllenhaal, symbols at the ending of the film of the two cowboy’s frustrated love, were auctioned over EBay for more than $100,000. Even fashion designer Valentino acknowledged the film by having two men in cowboy jeans, leather jackets, and cowboy hats walking down the runway holding hands during his January 2006 menswear show in Milan, Italy. (22) Losing the Best Picture Academy Award Heading into the Academy Awards, Brokeback Mountain led the nominations with eight. It had already won several accolades – including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Original Song – at the Golden Globe Awards. It had won Best Picture at the BAFTA Awards (the British Academy of Film and Television Arts), Best Picture at the Independent Spirit Awards, and most of the Best Picture Awards by various national and regional film critics associations. Further, Ang Lee had been awarded the Best Director by his peers from the Directors Guild of America (DGAP). The movie, it appeared, seemed destined to win the Oscar. It subsequently did win three awards: for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Photography.

But it did not win for Best Picture, losing in what many considered to be an upset to Crash, a film about racial tension and human angst in Los Angeles. What was interesting about all five of the films nominated for Best Picture for 2005 (the others being Munich, Capote, and Good Night, and Good Luck) was that they were films with social issue themes on such varied topics as racial intolerance, terrorism, integrity in the news, and homophobia. Of the five, Brokeback Mountain was the top performer in terms of revenue generated. All five films played better on both the east and west coasts than they did in the heartland of America, a pattern that holds true for many more progressive, social message-type movies. Immediately following Brokeback’s failure to capture the Best Picture Oscar, there were several explanations for its loss. Some claimed homophobia by the Academy voters, noting that many voting members were older and more conservative, and who perhaps felt that endorsing the “gay cowboy movie” was something they were not yet willing to embrace.

(23) Others saw the ultimate winner Crash as being an actor’s movie and since actors comprised close to one-fourth (22 percent) of the eligible voters in the Academy, they likely supported a movie that had hired a range of actors (some of whom were personal friends or acquaintances). Still others claimed that Crash, with its setting in Los Angeles, appealed to the 78 percent of the 5,798 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who were eligible to actually vote in February 2006 who resided in the Los Angeles area, and who might personally relate to the film’s urban-based theme. Others pointed out that Lions Gate Films, which released Crash in May 2005, shrewdly mailed DVD copies of the movie to 130,000 guild members in December, with a campaign which reminded the viewers of how they first had felt when they saw the movie in theaters earlier in late spring.

(24) Even so, Crash failed to get a Golden Globe nomination for Best Dramatic Film, which meant that its inclusion as one of the five nominated film for Best Picture came as somewhat of a surprise to many, although one could argue that those who select the Golden Globe nominations are comprised of foreign film critics, and not the broader Academy Award members. To others, the Brokeback Mountain loss was attributed to the fact that the movie might have “peaked” too early. What with the film’s immediate critical acclaim upon release in early December, its nomination and winnings in most year-end film societys’ awards, its rapid ascendancy into a cultural phenomenon by January as the film went into wide release, the view here was that its Oscar buzz had dissipated by the time academy members sat down to cast their ballots in February. Several members of gay organizations cried “foul” when Brokeback Mountain lost the Oscar for Best Picture, launching new ad campaigns expressing their disappointment and frustration. Many gay people personally identified with the film’s story and strongly felt it was “their turn” to have a movie about their personal struggles and lives be validated which they saw a win for Best Picture as accomplishing.

Even Annie Proulx, who wrote the short story from which the film was based, expressed profound displeasure that the movie had not won for Best Picture. But in time the gay and lesbian community seemed content (or at least resigned) with the breakthrough the movie had achieved. During the annual Outfest Film Festival, held in Los Angeles in July, 2006, where over 200 short and full-length gay and lesbian-themed films were shown (from some 700 gay films made in 2005 submitted to the film festival for inclusion), the co-producers of the gay film festival acknowledged what Brokeback Mountain and other films had accomplished: In a year that saw mainstream audiences embrace queer-themed films such as Capote, Transamerica, and of course, Brokeback Mountain, one might wonder if LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-, and Transgender) film festivals are still relevant. Our response is a resounding Yes! We boldly assert that Outfest is more relevant than ever. A queer film revolution is blossoming from the seeds Outfest has been planting for decades. We have provided a platform for queer filmmakers to tell their stories for 24 years.

The fact that mainstream audiences are finally discovering that we have remarkable, particular and surprisingly universal tales to tell produces a ray of hope and stiffins our determination to keep on telling our brave, transformative stories. (25) References Kenneth Turan, “The New Frontiers of ‘Brokeback” is Vast and Heartfelt,” Los Angeles Times, 9 December 2005, p. E-1. Owen Gleiberman, “The Searchers,” Entertainment Weekly, 9 December 2005, pp. 59-60. Judith Salkin, “A Forbidden Passion: Epic Story Goes Where No Cowboy Movie Has Gone Before,” Desert Post Weekly, 15 December 2005, p. 29. Chris Hewitt, “’Brokeback’ Dilemma: Characters Fight Internal War in Unusual Love Story,” The Desert Sun, 16 December 2005, p. 7. Owen Gleiberman, “Which Movies Have Been Signposts that Indicate Our Culture Has Changed?” Entertainment Weekly, p. 82 __________, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” Newsweek, 19 December 2005, p.

67. Stefan Gruenwedel, “Into the West,” MGW, 15 December 2005, pp. 26-7. Greg Archer, “Crouching Cowboy, Hidden Gay Men,” The Bottom Line, 23 December 2005, pp. 72-5. C. W. Nevius, “’Brokeback’ Broke Out in the ‘Burbs,” San Francisco Chronicle, 28 January 2006, p. B-l. Ibid. __________, New York Times, 17 January 2006, p. B-5. Andrew Sullivan, “Gay Cowboys Embraced By Redneck Country,” The New York Sunday Times, 26 February 2006. David Crary, “’Brokeback’ Praise Elates Gay-Rights Advocates: Some Conservatives Hope Groundbreaking Film Fails at Box Office,” The Desert Sun, 19 February 2006, p. B-13.

Bill O’Reilly, “Oscar Likely to Preach to the Choir, Once Again,” The Desert Sun 19 February, 2006, p. B-13. Peter Hartlaub, “Tips For Getting Over ‘Brokeback’ Hump,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5, February 2006, p. D-l __________, “Movie Theater Owner Explains Decision to Cancel ‘Brokeback Mountain,’” Gay & Lesbian Times, 13 April 2006, p. 31. __________, “American Family Association in Spat With Wal-Mart Over ‘Brokeback Mountain,’” Buzz Magazine, 13, April 2006, p. 20. Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, “Giving the Lie to Five Oscar Pics,” Los Angeles Times, 26 February 2006, p. M-3. __________, “Macho Men in Love,” The Bottom Line, 23 December 2005, p. 14. Amy Lennard Goehner, et. al., “How the West Was Won,” Time, 30 April 2006, pp.

60-3. Neva Chonin, “’Brokeback’ Again,” San Francisco Chronicle, 26 February 2006, Calendar section, p. 16. Cynthia H. Cho, “The ‘Brokeback Effect’: Pop Culture, From Highbrow on Down, Hitches Itself to the Movie’s Wagon With Tomes, Cowboy Shirts and More,” Los Angeles Times, 1 March 2005, p. E-1. __________, “Best Motion Picture: Crash vs. Brokeback Mountain,” Time, 27 February 2006, p. 70. Dave Karger, “The Big Night: ‘Brokeback’ Looked Unbeatable Until ‘Crash’ Drove In,” Entertainment Weekly, 17 March 2006, p. 46. Kierstin Schaffer & David Courier, “Welcome From the Programmers,” Outfest Program Guide, July 2006, p. 31.

'Brokeback Mountain' in NY - Photo 1 - Pictures - CBS News 'Brokeback Mountain' in NY Next Actor Heath Ledger gestures to photographers at the New York premiere of "Brokeback Mountain" on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005. The film tells the story of a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy who meet and fall in love in the summer of 1963. The movie, which opens Dec. 9, also stars Jake Gyllenhaal. Credit: AP Director Ang Lee arrives at the New York premiere of his latest film "Brokeback Mountain" on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005. The film premiered Nov. 29 in Los Angeles, the day it was named a best-picture nominee for the 2006 Independent Spirit Awards. It won the Golden Lion Award for Best Picture at the 2005 Venice International Film Festival. Credit: AP Award-winning film director Sofia Coppola was among the guests at the New York premiere of Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005. Credit: AP Actress Joan Allen arrives at the premiere of "Brokeback Mountain" on Tuesday, Dec.

6, 2005, in New York. Credit: AP Co-stars Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger at the New York premiere of "Brokeback Mountain" on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005. The film also stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Randy Quaid and Anne Hathaway. Credit: AP Actress Joan Allen with Focus Features producer/co-President James Schamus at the New York premiere of "Brokeback Mountain" on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005. Credit: AP Actress Ann Hathaway on the red carpet at the New York premiere of her new movie, Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005. Credit: AP James Ivory of Ivory Merchant Films was among the guests at the premiere of "Brokeback Mountain" on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005, in New York. Credit: AP Pulitzer Prize-winning author and screenwriter Larry McMurtry and screenwriter/producer Diana Ossana appear at the New York premiere of "Brokeback Mountain" on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005.

They wrote the screenplay for the movie, which is based on a short story by Annie Proulx. Credit: AP Actress Michelle Williams arrives at the New York premiere of her movie "Brokeback Mountain" on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005. The film tells the story of a ranch-hand and a rodeo cowboy who meet and fall in love in the summer of 1963. (AP Photo/Stephen Chernin) Credit: AP Actress Joan Allen at the premiere of "Brokeback Mountain" Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005, in New York. The movie premiered the previous week in California. Credit: AP Rick Moody on Brokeback Mountain | Film | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close I first read "Brokeback Mountain", the short story on which Ang Lee's new film is based, when I was judging a short story award in 1998. It's by Annie Proulx, but I didn't know that then. The names of the writers were stripped from the works for the purposes of the competition.

The early pages of this unknown western narrative did not interest me, because I thought at that time, and think still, that the myth of the Old West, with its gunslingers and traditional masculine bravado, was stifling, repellent, and misguided. And yet I remember calling out to my wife, midway through this particular story, saying, "I'm reading this cowboy story that I thought I was going to hate. I thought the only way I was going to like it was if these cowboys had sex! And then they did!" When I imagined seeing Ang Lee's new film adaptation of Brokeback Mountain, based on a screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, I imagined the first kiss of its two protagonists. How many such cinematic kisses have we seen? Before how many western sunsets? How many happy endings in which the binary molecule of man and woman embracing rationalises the messy, blood-spattered colonisation of the western half of the North American continent and makes it tolerable anew. I thought I wanted the kiss between the two men in Brokeback Mountain to be long, sloppy and ravenous. Because I wanted this kiss to help upend this mythology of the west. But the film does even more than that.

The first coupling between Jack and Ennis does not feature the kiss I wanted. It doesn't feature any kiss. It features a lot of violent grunting and groaning, some embraces that look remarkably like fisticuffs, and some prominent use of a part of the body that reputedly got certain towns in the Old Testament flattened by God. It is hard, therefore, not to think of Brokeback Mountain as an incredibly salient political statement for troubled times. I'm sure that there are many public relations professionals right now trying to pretend that this is not the case, that this film is not an affront to certain senators from Wyoming and Texas and Utah and Colorado and Montana and Idaho, and perhaps an affront to the president of the United States himself, who comes from the state often burlesqued in Ang Lee's film. The president, I presume, will not be screening it at the White House. In truth, many things act against the prospect of success for this ambitious project. The script was kicking around for almost seven years and even a director as accomplished as Gus van Sant could not find actors who were willing to undertake it.

It was budgeted at a level so thrifty that it's a miracle it looks as stylish and painterly as it does. This was likely to be a famously unproduced movie. And yet here it is. In the United States, where it opened recently, Lee's Brokeback Mountain is being marketed as "a great American love story". However, just as it was impossible to know that the same director's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was subtitled, until the lights dimmed and the projectionists rolled the film, you will find this beautiful, still, melancholy cowboy movie - which concerns a fervent and furtive romance between two men in the rural American west - a bit, uh, surprising if, like many in the US, you harbour the prejudice that a great love story takes place between a man and a woman. Yes, there's no doubt that the studio that released Brokeback Mountain is keen to stay on message. And yet calling Lee's film a "gay cowboy movie", as I've heard it described, would not exactly be a way into the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of, arguably, the most homophobic nation on earth.

Of course, whether it is a "gay" movie or a "love story" is one of the interesting questions about Brokeback Mountain There is also the question of whether or not Lee's film is a genuine western. The western, in American cinema, is one of the foundational genres. It's the bedrock on which the language of film was constructed. It's the genre on which American identity was staked. Rugged individualism! Life outside the law! Manifest destiny! To tell this western as a movie is an audacious, ambitious thing. To tell this story as a movie is to tilt at the very history of the cinematic form. By and large, the narrative of Brokeback Mountain follows the outline of Proulx's justly celebrated short story, which first appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 1997. A young ranch hand in Wyoming, Ennis Del Mar, signs on to do some sheep herding in the Rocky Mountains one summer, in the process meeting another such young man, Jack Twist. The two become fast friends, and there the matter seems to rest until a night when the temperature has plummeted and they elect to share a tent.

As in the helter-skelter of Nature, which seems to unfurl limitlessly just beyond their tiny provisional shelter, one thing leads to another, after which the two spend the rest of their allotted time on Brokeback Mountain, the summer range for their flock of sheep, like lovers do. The rest of the story is told through crosscutting, as the men try to go back to their respective lives as before, unperturbed by this unbidden, unsought, yet life-changing experience in the mountains. Ennis marries the lovely Alma, and almost immediately he begins to make a botch of their union, though he manages to help raise a pair of adorable daughters. Jack, meanwhile, meets and haphazardly courts a somewhat loose rodeo girl from Texas, Lureen. He finds prosperity as a salesman of farm equipment in her father's business. Still, Jack, of the two men, is the more willing to try to pursue his secret life.

The results are not only bad, but potentially dangerous, as Ennis warns him, during one of their later semi-annual assignations: "This thing grabs on to us again in the wrong place, we'll be dead." This line is mumbled by actor Heath Ledger, in the midst of an arresting and career-defining performance as Ennis, in which his anguished taciturnity seems both consonant with some of the finest performers in cinematic westerns - Henry Fonda, John Wayne - and entirely plausible - according to a more realistic code of the cinematic west, which Lee has announced as one of his own ambitions. Ledger's Ennis Del Mar has a stark charisma that's balanced perfectly with the confusion that seems to come off him in waves. Through much of the later portion of the film he seems to be sitting alone in bars drinking, and the heartache of his predicament is so palpable as to bring tears to the eyes. Jake Gyllenhaal, as Jack Twist, provides a bit more of a challenge for those who would admire this film unreservedly.

Lee has spoken of a desire to have younger actors for the principals - since they need to age 20 years during the course of the story - rather than older actors trying to appear spry at the outset. While Ledger seems to collapse into middle age convincingly, Gyllenhaal struggles in the later scenes with his prosthetic paunch and Freddie Mercury moustache. That said, Gyllenhaal, at least to this viewer, convincingly longs for the person of another man. He moves without a cowboy's easy grace. He moves, as Jack Twist, like someone for whom the trappings of western masculinity are indeed trappings, and his youthful bravado in the early scenes on Brokeback Mountain is lovable and sweet. Proulx's story is largely told in a laconic third-person voice from the perspective of Ennis Del Mar. The accounts of Jack are mainly available to the reader through dialogue between Ennis and Jack. But in Lee's adaptation, a number of Texas-based scenes are invented for Jack and his rodeo-girl wife, Lureen.

While the Wyoming scenery of Ennis Del Mar seems sand-blasted, woebegone, and desperate, as if cribbed from the dust bowl photos of Walker Evans, the Texas scenes are hyperbolic. Lureen has four or five different hairstyles in the film, each of them excessive, and on the basis of this film it appears that no man can live in Texas without a bola tie. It's as if Larry McMurtry, unable to match the wry but stoic tone of Proulx's story, has bulked out the screenplay with additional material from his own early work. Lee is a connoisseur of good composers, having for example adorned The Ice Storm (full disclosure: I wrote the book on which it was based) with a stunning score by Mychael Danna, and done the same with the Tan Dun cello score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a composition so good that it was performed many times on its own. How then to account for the rather lacklustre guitar suite that accompanies much of Brokeback Mountain? It seems cribbed from a CD of earnest finger-picking that one might find shelved at Starbuck's.

This score too would play at the mall, between the smooth jazz numbers one often hears there, and perhaps it is meant therefore to relax those who might have trouble relaxing. Yet Lee's adroitness with sound editing is such that the real score to Brokeback Mountain is the sound of wind. Lee loves silences, as a filmmaker. There is, for example, a sublime shot of Ennis's wife Alma (played with aching vulnerability by Michelle Williams) after she has accidentally witnessed her husband in a violent embrace with Jack. Alma never moves and there's nothing on the audio track but room tone. The sound of wind on the mountainside appears throughout the film, like a Wagnerian refrain, to remind us of the one place that these lovers feel it is safe to do what is most human. The magnificent thing, though, that happens during the unravelling marriages of these two men, as the film hastens toward its heart-rending completion, is that you stop thinking of these men as men, or gay men, or whatever, and you start thinking about them only as human beings, people who long for something, for some kind of union they are never likely to have.

The beautiful footage of the Rocky Mountains, the stunning emptiness of that landscape, does much to encourage this transformation of the story, this metamorphosis through which we come to regard two men delighting each other sexually in the mountains as being as natural as the landscape in which they find themselves. Lee's Brokeback Mountain is a luminous, startling and sorrowful portrait of a love that truly can't be spoken of by its nearly wordless participants. As such, it is almost as affecting and classically sound as Romeo and Juliet. Therefore, it's not only important to see this film. To wrestle with its successes and mild imperfections is practically a civic duty of thinking persons, lest we should give in, the way Ennis Del Mar nearly does when he says ruefully to his beloved Jack: "If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it." · Brokeback Mountain is on release from January 6. · Rick Moody's new novel, The Diviners, will be published by Faber in January.

Question: Who wrote the short story on which the 2006 film 'Brokeback Mountain was based?
Answer: E. ANNIE PROULX