Brokeback Mountain--the original story by Annie Proulx

[blue]

I just saw E.J.'s and Dude's replies to my comment and Grasshopper's comment. A cowboy story (or any story) would be welcome. -- And thanks for pointing it out.

Brokeback Mountain is only showing in 1 theatre in my city. One! In a major city, one of the ten largest in the USA! But at least there is one. It happens to be a theatre well known here for art films, indie films. It isn't a shabby place, either.

Yes, it truly is unfair that folks in smaller towns won't get to see the movie soon, or at all, until it hits DVD. Hang onto that thought: DVD.

Meanwhile, I recommend Annie Proulx's book, Close Range, which includes the short story; or the special edition movie tie-in of just the short story, "Brokeback Mountain" itself.

I also recommend the soundtrack CD. Many fine big-name country artists appear in the 17 tracks. I tip my hat to 'em (or I will the next time I wear it). Thanks, y'all.

[Tragic Rabbit]

The London Guardian

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featur...1675408,00.html

Way out west

What's all the outrage about a new gay cowboy movie? The American western has always throbbed with latent homoeroticism, says John Patterson

Saturday December 31, 2005

It seems that the massed forces of the American right will not, repeat not, be picketing Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, mainly since they don't want to give it any more publicity than it's getting. This is surprising, since the movie - featuring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as cowboys who while away one lonely summer by falling in love and indulging in an awful lot of grunty, spit-lubed gay sex - seems, on paper at least, calculated to cause maximum offence against America's most cherished myths and favourite movie genre. Well, they may not be boycotting it, but the fundies are plenty ready to tell us what they hate about the movie. Up in Caspar, Wyoming, home to one Richard Bruce Cheney and not far from the home of Annie Proulx, who wrote the short story the movie's based on, the local paper recently quoted local playwright Sandy Dixon (a woman) as saying, "There's nothing better than plain old cowboys and the plain old history without embellishing it to suit everybody."

And Robert Knight (manly name or what?), director of the Culture and Family Institute of Concerned Women of America (a not so manly-sounding workplace, no?), is really steamed up. "I think this shows that Hollywood can pervert anything," he told Salon.com. "Part of the enduring appeal of westerns is the display of brotherhood, unhindered by sexualisation. You often hear the phrase 'to be a straight-shooter'. That means to speak plain truths and walk easily amid the natural bonds of affection, without the distraction of misplaced sexual urges. In other words, the audience can relax. Their hero is not going to get weird on them. The western was a morality tale, so to make immorality the heart of this western is to violate the code of westerns. That's why it's not going to work. I think Ang Lee is off his rocker if h.

e thinks he can have the same commercial success with two cowboys instead of a cowboy and a cowgirl, as other movies do."

The first thought that springs to mind on hearing this drivel - after the phrase "you boring, bigoted asshole" - is who is this guy kidding? First, we might challenge him to name the last heterosexual western that topped the box office. Yup, pardner, it's been a while. Second, the western as a morality tale? Perhaps, if robbing stages, trains and banks, or gunning men down in cold blood, or massacring Indians by the tribeful can be counted as moral, or if murderous, rapacious land, railroad or cattle barons are moral figures, or if a mythic universe that characterises women as virgins (schoolmarms) or prostitutes ("showgirls") is moral, to say nothing of a genre in which male brotherhood under a capacious sky is the very highest state a man can hunger after.

What would Knight say of Stagecoach, in which wanted criminal John Wayne falls for outcast whore Claire Trevor, a union openly idealised by the film? I guess that's OK: bandit, yes; assbandit, nooooooo! What has he to say of the myriad male couples in westerns of the unselfconscious, pre-1960 era, such as James Stewart and Walter Brennan in The Far Country, constantly bickering like an old married couple, yet totally loyal and devoted to one another? And what about all those singin' cowboys, with their fancy-ass boots, rhinestone-encrusted western shirts and outrageous Nudie Cohen suits? Does he detect no shadow of "misplaced sexual urges" inherent in any of these scenarios?

Let's get real, folks. The western, America's trove of foundation myths and "morality" tales, literally throbs with latent homoeroticism. Examine the following list of cowboy-movie titles and tell me which one isn't a gay porno movie: Man Hunt, Rawhide, Little Big Man, Two Rode Together, Seven Men From Now, Heller In Pink Tights, The Lusty Men, All The Pretty Horses, The Naked Spur, Dirty Harry, Rancho Notorious, Heaven's Gate, Saddle Tramps, A Fistful Of Dynamite or Bareback Mounting. OK, the last one isn't a gay porno movie yet, but give 'em a couple of weeks. Why, even supermasculine John Wayne's back catalogue suggests the western is a tad light in the stirrups: Men Without Women, Rough Romance, Two-Fisted Law, Pals Of The Saddle, Blue Steel and, best of all, Ride Him, Cowboy! That closet door is fairly straining to open. Poor ol' Duke, don't fence him in!

Is there any wonder, given all this, that the cowboy and the Indian were two of your more prominent Village People? Despite our more despicable homophobic stereotypes, many, if not most, gay men aren't interested in girly-boys - they want manly men, hence the prominence of gay-fantasy figures such as cops, lumberjacks, drill sergeants and - giddy up, fellas - the wild cowboys of the wide open range, even if they are clad in leather chaps, 10-gallon hats and one-gallon condoms. Neither should one doubt the popularity of phenomena like gay rodeos and western-themed gay bars, even as they exist side-by-side with horrible homophobic atrocities like the brutal murder of gay student Matthew Shepard by two rednecks in, yup, Wyoming in 1998.

It's not like this should surprise us. Ever since literary critic Leslie Fiedler wrote his famous 1948 essay "Git Back in the Raft, Huck Honey", about the loud hum of homoeroticism in manly 19thcentury American literature, the eagle-eyed cultural critic has had no problem identifying subversive currents of sexual dissidence in America's most conservative and masculine genres. In (lesbian) novelist Willa Cather's stories of the Nebraska prairie in the late 19th century, you'll always come across a pair of old cowboys living and managing a farm together, something Cather calls "batching", presumably deriving from "bachelordom" and highly suggestive of naughtiness come the bunk-down hour. The prairie and the wild west were often lonely, womanless places and whether they are in jail, the navy or the armies of ancient Sparta, men without women will surely turn to one another for comfort, and never say a word about it thereafter. "I ain't no queer," says Ledger's character in Brokeback Mountain, after a full summer of happy homoerotic humping. "Me neither," replies Gyllenhaal. OK boys, glad we got that straightened out.

Until censorship began to ebb in the 1960s, however, most of this remained subterranean, unarticulated - dare we say, closeted? There were no gays in westerns because women were there to embody all the things that real cowboys thought were plain, well, faggy: domesticity, gentility, education, hearth and home, wallpaper, bathtubs, haircuts, all that gay stuff. Only occasionally was there a knowing leer in the general direction of homosexuality, such as Howard Hawks' Red River, with that wonderful scene in which gunfighters Monty Clift (in real life a closeted gay man) and John Ireland check out each other's pistol - "My, that's a nice one ..." - in the most lascivious, eye-rolling manner imaginable: you can almost picture them clutching each other's crotches somewhere below the bottom of the frame. Self-consciousness and gathering minority-awareness - along with Andy Warhol's explicitly gay Lonesome Cowboys in 1968 - changed things in the early 1970s, giving us the well-adjusted gay Indian in Little Big Man. Or Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, two bickering, totally loyal, inarguably beautiful men who toted Katherine Ross around with them almost as a sexual alibi. It's as if they're saying: "See this cutie? Don't she prove we ain't doin' each other?" Well, perhaps, fellas.

These days sexual dissidence is part of the great parade of life out west, much of whose iconography was updated and drawn closer to reality by the novels of Brokeback adapter Larry McMurtry and the movies made from them. Paul Newman's Hud, from McMurtry's Horseman, Ride By, is a nearrapist, and the most memorable line from his The Last Picture Show is surely "Liss all git us a heifer to fuck!" There's Iggy Pop's crossdressing prospector in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, the woman-as-man western The Ballad Of Little Jo, and Gus Van Sant's gender-bending Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. Brokeback Mountain is merely the first mainstream movie to centre on homosexuality on the open range, and it wouldn't be in the least controversial - it's about the self-defeating nature of love, after all, not sexuality - were America not unimaginably neurotic and puritanical about sex, straight or gay, in the first place.

? Brokeback Mountain is out Fri 6

[E.J.]

'Today' show trashes 'Brokeback'

http://www.sovo.com/blog/index.cfm?type=bl...end=1/7/06#4381

?Today? show movie critic Gene Shalit trashed ?Brokeback Mountain? today, in a review that smacked of a gross misunderstanding of the film and short story.

Shalit called the film ?wildly over praised? and referred to Jack Twist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, as a ?sexual predator.?

Shalit described the bleak scenery in the opening scenes of the film and the boredom of the two main characters. Then he noted that something remarkable happens, ?They have sex.?

Well, actually, Gene, what was truly remarkable was that they fell in love.

He then reduces Twist and Ennis Del Mar?s 20-plus year relationship to a series of sexual encounters instigated by Twist merely to satisfy his sexual appetite. Shalit implies that there is nothing of substance between the two tortured characters and completely misses the aching love story at the center of the film.

Shalit did offer some grudging praise for Heath Ledger?s performance, but the gratuitously negative review revealed Shalit?s surprising discomfort for the topic of two men falling in love, and yes, having sex.

His reaction is surprising because Shalit has written about his own gay son in an essay posted to PFLAG?s website. In it, Shalit expresses support for his son, writing, ?Many parents lie awake at night wondering if they played a role in the sexual orientation of their child. I think they should go back to sleep. Each child is an individual.?

No one is suggesting that ?Brokeback? is without flaws, but Shalit?s smackdown was so thorough and so focused on the gay sex depicted in the film that his review says more about him than it does about the movie.

Posted by Kevin Naff, Washington Blade Managing Editor

[Tragic Rabbit]

From the Los Angeles Times

MEGHAN DAUM

A breakthrough called 'Brokeback'

It's more than just a 'gay movie.' Women dig its love story because, for once, men are doing the heavy emotional lifting.

January 7, 2006

FROM THE East Coast to the West Coast (though, admittedly, not yet a lot of places in between) everyone's talking about "Brokeback Mountain." I haven't heard such constant and pervasive chatter about a pop cultural topic since Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah's couch. Lord knows, the two phenomena having nothing in common — "Brokeback Mountain" is a love story about two gay cowboys, and Tom Cruise is, you know, Tom Cruise.

So how has this art-house film, a "gay movie" whose target audience is ostensibly the small percentage of the population that identifies as homosexual, managed to insinuate itself into the hearts and cocktail-party conversations of so many heteros? It's that 51% of the population known as women, stupid!

Despite its vast Western landscapes, drunken cowboy talk and gay sex scenes (actually, straight sex gets far more screen time in this film), "Brokeback Mountain" is a thinking girl's chick flick with roughly the same hormonal balance (not to mention the same screenwriter) as that quintessence of high-quality estro-cinema, "Terms of Endearment."

I'm not talking about the obvious girl-friendly accouterments of the tough guy/tender heart dichotomy — the men's skillful horsemanship, their penchant for carrying injured lambs on their laps, the way they look in jeans. I'm talking about something much more visceral.

For all their monosyllabism, Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) are fonts of emotion. Sure, they're prone to the usual male-pattern drinking, fighting and marrying women without knowing quite what they're doing, but when it comes to their love for each other, their hearts aren't just on their sleeves, they're pinned to their foreheads.

And guess what? Chicks dig it.

It's curious to see how the Jack/ Ennis model of ideal manhood has come about just as metrosexuality — that marketing campaign for hair gel disguised as a social trend — is on the wane. A few years ago, men were being encouraged to access their inner woman by wearing turtlenecks and filling their apartments with "Queer Eye"-sanctioned Pier 1 furniture. As profitable as this may have been for cable-TV channels and the grooming-product industry, the result was a bumper crop of disturbingly aromatic men whose idea of expressing their feelings was to buy throw pillows.

"Brokeback" represents a welcome backlash to that faux male sensitivity. Instead of merely acquiring the trappings of kinder, gentler manhood, Jack and Ennis actually walk the walk. The sight of Jake Gyllenhaal crying in his truck as he drives away from Ennis (who retreats to an alley and vomits in tortured despair) is enough to make even the bitterest woman swoon.

THAT MOMENT, like so many in the film, feels like an epiphany not because of the gay context but because for once someone other than the woman is crying. Traditionally, women have done the heavy emotional lifting. We're the ones who scream and probe and force conversations about the relationship while the man stews in confusion as to whether he's feeling vulnerable or just hungry for a steak. With Jack and Ennis, however, there's no woman to pick up the emotional slack, and they're forced to experience their feelings without the benefit of female translation or analysis. In other words, they are (at least for each other) as emotionally available as it gets.

Talk about something being worth the price of admission! For women, "Brokeback Mountain" is kind of like a vacation from our own brains, at least the part of our brains that obsesses over relationships. Instead, we get to watch men express the feelings we always want them to express but often end up doing for them. The sex, whatever the brand, is incidental compared to the unprecedented purity of male emotion on the screen.

Gay men may relate to this film in more complicated ways, but from where I sat, the effect on heterosexuals seemed pretty clear-cut. To my left was my (straight male) date, who I occasionally caught checking his watch and hiding his eyes during the love scenes (though he claimed he was simply rubbing them). To my right was a woman who, when she wasn't talking back at the screen ("Say yes, Ennis! Say yes!") was loudly sobbing through much of the picture. For my part, I was just pretending Heath Ledger was vomiting because of me.

Though what "Brokeback Mountain" amounts to, in effect, is female-targeted emotional pornography, both sexes of all inclinations could learn a thing or two from it. By acting like men but emoting like women, by embodying both sides of the divide, Jack and Ennis cover all the bases of the romantic equation. This makes more conventional movie characters — male or female — seem woefully one-dimensional by comparison.

And all without buying a tube of hair gel.

[Josiah Jacobus-Parker]

It's interesting to hear that a large number of towns and cities in the US are not showing Brokeback Mountian anywhere. I saw it on saturday night with eight friends. We ended up seeing it at a late viewing of 11:15--why? Because of the four cinemas in Cambridge, it was the only screening that wasn't already fully booked by thursday night. Incidently, ten minutes after we arrived and picked up our tickets, the ticket office sold the last two seats.

We were all surprised by the turn out. It wasn't just filled with steryotyped gay men and women who love to read gay erotica. Oh no, it was packed with teenagers, elderly, men, women, gay and straight. A group of sixteen year olds arrived after we did, consisting of no less than five straight couples holding hands.

Amazingly, only two people walked out during the movie-- and no, it wasn't during the gay sex scene. It was during the scene when Anne Hathaway pulls of her top. The man left saying (and I quote), "fucking Princess Diaries," while tugging at his wife's hand.

Anyway enough about the audience.

The film itself was absolutely amazing. It had comedy, it had romance, it had heartache, confrontation, remorse... in fact, the only thing that was bad about it, was Jake Gyllenhaal's mustache (OH PLEASE DEAR GOD JAKE DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN). There is surprisingly little gay sex in the film-- in fact, hetrosexual sex takes up a much larger portion. The cinematography though was stunning, showcasing the bleak, but majestic landscape.

I won't give anything away about the movie, but I will say that the last scene was one of the most moving I'd seen in years. As the lights came back up, our whole row was crying and half of the audience were clutching tissues. I haven't had that much of a roller-coaster ride of emotions in a cinema since... god knows when!

All I can say, is it was the first time since Hero that I came out of a film feeling like I'd acutally spent ?4.50 on something worthwhile. Even if it meant I had to walk across Cambridge at 2am in the freezing cold to get home.

[Rigel]

There's a fascinating essay by Lee Harris (http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=011606D), which launches off of a discussion of Brokeback Mountain and the characters of Ennis DelMar and Jack Twist to question the very validity of labels such as "gay" or "straight," "homosexual" or "heterosexual."

An excerpt: "What the two cowboys of Brokeback Mountain were rebelling against was not being forced into normal marriage by society, but against being forced to define their humanity in accordance with other people?s ideas of what they should call themselves. They simply wanted to be treated and looked upon like men -- not as queers or homosexuals or gays -- but simply men. "

[Tragic Rabbit]

http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=1298

SANTORUM BACKS BAN ON GAY WESTERNS

Golden Globes Win for ?Brokeback Mountain? Irks Pennsylvania Senator

Three days after the critically acclaimed film ?Brokeback Mountain? won Golden Globe awards in four major categories, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn) called for a constitutional amendment banning gay westerns.

?We cannot sit idly by and watch ?Brokeback Mountain? sashay into the mainstream of American culture,? Mr. Santorum said on the Senate floor today. ?If allowed to flourish, gay westerns will destroy the sanctity of traditional westerns.?

He added that if the film continued to gain acceptance in the heartland, several western states might soon legalize marriage between gay cowboys.

The Pennsylvania senator explained that his proposal of a constitutional amendment banning gay westerns was not a rash decision on his part: ?I only reached this decision after watching ?Brokeback Mountain? ten, maybe twelve times.?

Mr. Santorum added that it was ?unconscionable? that the producers of the film had cast an actor as ?hot and sexy? as Heath Ledger as one of the gay cowboys, since ?he only makes the gay cowboy lifestyle seem more enticing.?

In a sign that Mr. Santorum may have more constitutional amendments to propose, he said that he was also ?very concerned? that Hollywood might someday produce a remake of the film ?Benji? featuring ?man on dog sex.?

?I am going to be extra vigilant on this issue,? Mr. Santorum said. ?If there is a remake of ?Benji? featuring man on dog sex, I will be waiting in line for a ticket on the very first day.?

Elsewhere, the Supreme Court voiced support for assisted suicide, and model Kate Moss voiced support for career suicide.

[Rigel]

The "cowboy story coming on" mentioned by Grasshopper above has been written, and it's one of the best things Grasshopper has written (and given the other things he's written, that's high praise indeed!). An amazing gloss/variation on Annie Proulx's story, set 40 years later, written from the heart, and less tragic.

The story (9 chapters plus epiogue) is called "Promises to Keep" and is available at:

http://www.iomfats.org/storyshelf/hosted/grasshopper/

--Rigel

[The Pecman]

I'll throw my two cents in only because nobody else has raised this point yet.

Brokeback Mountain is not a very good movie, nor is it a great movie. I think it's a very sad, tragic, depressing movie, and not the kind of film I'd like to see twice.

Nobody wins, everybody loses, and I'm not even sure anybody learns anything from their lessons about life. I also found the ending (after the death of one of the characters, whose name I'll omit for those who haven't yet seen the film) to be long and boring and terribly drawn-out -- at least 15 minutes longer than it needed to be.

As far as I'm concerned, the only newspaper columnist who has the right take on Brokeback is noted bisexual gossip writer Liz Smith, who pointed out how negative, violent, and bleak the movie is. I found the film to have a lot more in common with The Last Picture Show, another film about the lives of sad, hopeless people in a sad, hopeless small western town.

My second nitpick with the film is technical: the moment the first sex scene ended, I turned to my longtime partner and said, "well, this movie was definitely written and directed by straight people." No two guys instantly have anal sex in 1 minute without any prep, foreplay, lube or nothin' -- unless it's a prison rape scene. And the guy on the bottom is gonna make a helluva lotta noise. I found this to be totally, ridiculously unbelievable.

Lastly, I had a big problem with the whole flashback thing (again, I'll omit the details) involving one of the character's death. My problem with it is that it was presented in a very ambiguous, blurry, non-specific way, almost to where we weren't sure what we were seeing. Was this supposed to be fact? Was it how another character imagined the death? Was it in reference to the previous deaths mentioned earlier in the film? To me, without a specific close-up of the dead character, it feels very muddled and confused. (Critic Roger Ebert, who I often agree with, cited the same thing at the end of his review.)

The bottom line is, this ain't a movie that's gonna make straight people like or understand gay people more. It might make them feel sorry for us, or wonder how "tortured" and "anguished" we are in a straight world. But I don't see a lot of positive things about it. It's a total downer.

1982's Making Love is more my idea of a decent gay movie, and it still has its share of sex, romance, drama, conflict, and emotion. I think it's a much more powerful film, but undoubtedly Brokeback is going to make much more money. And I'll predict right now it'll win at least Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and (I hope) get Jake Gyllenhaal a statue for Best Supporting Actor. (Some support! Sheesh!)

[Tragic Rabbit]

Well, I agree with Der Pec. This view hasn't won me any new friends, btw, how're you doing with this viewpoint Your Pecness? I've learned to, when asked, say it was a 'fine film and a beautiful short story'.

I've seen it once, will probably get the DVD at some point, but the way you are pissed on by saying anything that isn't rave reviewing is downright scary. Gay or straight, people don't want to hear anything except how brave, noble, magnificent and stunning the film was. And what an unforgettable romance. What's so sad in the story is how powerfully effected Jack is by one hug he can't forget for twenty years, yet somehow can't get the two of them together in a way that makes him happy. The film lacks a lot of the nuance of the short story's writing, that's one big drawback and possibly voice-over narration (like in A River Runs Through It) could have preserved some of that. Still depressing as hell, though, not uplifting, etc.

If you try to list HAPPY gay romances, you get your head pummelled metaphorically. I was removed from two gay listservs for reprinting a more realistic review (LA WEEKLY, posted above) and saying I agreed with it, that plus real life reactions have made me stop talking about what I really think. Doesn't seem worth it.

But yeah, it's depressing, says more about hets than gays, and is a long, long way from the most romantic relationship I've ever seen on film, gay or otherwise. I've seen Making Love, it's very romantic, so is Torchsong Trilogy and dozens of others. Matthew Broderick's meeting and romance in TT is something you'll never forget, so achingly sweet and lovely. The Way We Were makes me cry, but Brokeback Mountain didn't.

I was also, like Der Pec, disturbed by the abrupt and unlovely way they went after the first sex scene, the story wasn't quite so abrupt or one-sided and it did have a sort of rape feel to it in the film. Yet...hundreds of thousands of gay men and straight women are, apparently, going to see this over and over and over, all while singing its praises to the skies and stocking up on Kleenex. They're singing off-key, if you ask me.

But, as I say, I generally keep this unpopular opinion to myself.

Tragic Rabbit

[blue]

I've read the awesome but sad short story and read several reviews of the film, enough to know it's worth seeing, but not the best (gay) film ever. -- Even so, I'm gonna go see it.

Pecman and TR, you're only right to call 'em as you see 'em, and the reviews do match yours.

Removed from a listserv for that? Narrow minded. Maybe they thought the "posies" clashed with your cowboy hat?

[The Pecman]

Well, I agree with Der Pec. This view hasn't won me any new friends, btw, how're you doing with this viewpoint Your Pecness? I've learned to, when asked, say it was a 'fine film and a beautiful short story'."

Well, I've told a few friends at work I was put off by the film's overwhelmingly negative tone, and I also think the film is very poorly edited. On the positive side, I'd say it's very well-photographed, and the art direction goes a long way to emphasize the bleak, stark homes, streets, and buildings of small Western towns during this period. But the script is suckaroonie. (That's a technical term, meaning, "it sucks.")

Really, when you throwaway all the gloss, what you have is a one-note film that says, "gee, gay people sure have to suffer a lot, especially when society won't let them be who they really are." And that pisses me off.

Shit, towards the end of the two cowboys' relationship, it's the fucking 1980s, for chrissakes! You can't tell me by then they can't just divorce their wives, hook up together and move to a more gay-friendly town. Maybe this is a simplistic ending, but it's far more satisfying than what we have here.

On the other hand: I'm troubled by Gene Shalit's review. He obviously didn't get the film at all, and he's 100% wrong in much of what he says. No way did I ever get the impression that Jake Gyllenhaal's character was "a sexual predator." He's just a horny 20 year-old guy who's thinking with his gonads, as many people that age do. I think it's fair to say that Gyllenhaal's character was maybe 50/50 in terms of being gay, while Heath Ledger was more 90/10 (only 10% gay). Maybe if Heath had never met Jake, he might not have ever had the chance to act on that 10% that was part of him.

Last comment: I think the main reason some gay people are reacting positively to Brokeback is simply because at least it's one very visible film about gay relationships. Even those who, like me, find fault with the film have to confess that having some kind of award-winning presence in the media is better than being invisible. But this is not the kind of movie that's gonna make young, impressionable gay teenagers want to come out of the closet and be happy with who they are.

[Rad]

I was surprised when i read Anne Proulx' original story. It seemed that she didn't exactly painted the picture of two handsome guys (like Jake and Heath :D ) but two ordinary guys.

Cheers!

Rad

[blue]

Yes, that's part of the point of Annie Proulx's short story: They're two very ordinary, very repressed guys in a very macho-minded and homophobic place. In the short story, neither one is really handsome or educated or articulate. They both have trouble dealing with who they are and how they feel, about much of anything, much less that they might love a guy or want to have sex with a guy.

Hmm. They "should" or "shouldn't" have done this or that, in the story? Well, Ms. Proulx had the characters go through the story she wanted to tell, which pointed out human fallibility on all sides. Perhaps that's the point, that we're none of us perfect, or that we should always strive to be better than we usually let ourselves be. -- Oops, but that's also moralizing or putting a motive into her story that may not be there.

[colinian]

When all of the pre-release hype started about the movie, I was at our local library and saw on the "Featured" shelf this rather thin book of short stories by Annie Proulx, recognized her name, saw that it contained "Brokeback Mountain", and checked it out. I didn't much like "Brokeback Mountain" or the way she writes. When the movie finally opened, my BF and I saw it. I liked the movie, a lot.

The script is an amazingly accurate transcription of the story, but the movie is much better. I think it's because the movie has an element that's missing from the story: emotion. The way Jack and Ennis look at each other and don't look at each other when they are together, and the relationship of Ennis and Alma and how it changes when Jack comes to visit, conveys emotion that for me wasn't in the words on the page. IMO, this is a story that's much better as a movie than as a book.

Colin