That evening, I asked Larry how he would feel if any staunch Lonesome Dove fans turned against him for being involved with a film that subverts the myth of the American West and its iconic heroes. He replied that he’d never given it a thought. I told him good, I figured as much, I just needed to hear you say the words. That was the only time we ever spoke about any political implications to making a film of “Brokeback Mountain.”
Annie replied to our letter in less than a week. We optioned her story with our own money and promptly set about writing Brokeback Mountain: A Screenplay, Based on a Short Story by Annie Proulx.
Some time before I discovered “Brokeback Mountain,” I had read and was deeply affected by Charles Frazier’s luminous, heart-stopping novel Cold Mountain. Cold Mountain covers a short period of time near the end of the Civil War, but it is long, and dense with information. Larry and I are practical and unsentimental when adapting, and fairly adept at cutting a path through thickets of prose in order to shape a powerful screenplay, while maintaining the essence of character and story. We wanted to option and adapt Mr. Frazier’s fine novel. It would have been a satisfying project, and one we could have enjoyed. But Cold Mountain quickly became a best-selling literary success, and the film rights slipped away for much more than two modest screenwriters could afford.
I mention this in order to point out some differences in adapting screenplays from novels and in adapting screenplays from short stories. Cold Mountain is 356 pages long. It covers a relatively short period of time, but it is detailed and full, with many characters and smaller stories contained within a larger story. I liken it to Homer’s Odyssey: adventure after adventure confronts the hero, Inman, on his journey home from the Civil War. Imaginatively, the screenplay was nearly all contained within the novel. We would have had to be brutally economic, as concerned with carving away content as with creating structure.
“Brokeback Mountain” is the final story in Annie Proulx’s collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories. Its compelling narrative covers a substantial time period—twenty years—in thirty pages. The prose is tight, precise, spare, evocative, unsentimental and yet incredibly moving. The dialogue is specific to the time, the place, the social and economic class of the characters. It is a near perfect short story, in technique as well as emotion. And in my mind, it was an excellent blueprint for a screenplay. We could afford to option it with our own money. We did not have to streamline or condense. We had the luxury of using our own imaginations to expand and build upon that blueprint, rounding out characters, creating new scenes, fleshing out existing ones. It was such an enjoyable experience, it made me wonder why more short stories were not adapted into films.
We had a finished screenplay in three months, and sent it off to Wyoming. In a few days Annie phoned, and we spoke for over two hours. She had points she wanted to clarify, and a few corrections, but on the whole she seemed genuinely pleased with our work. I felt fortunate to have her input, because these people were born in her imagination. She and I spoke about Ennis and his stoicism, his background, his homophobic worldview, his inability to access his emotions. She talked a lot about Wyoming, its landscape, its people and their hardscrabble lives.
What she said to me in those two hours I mentally filed away. I referred back to it for the next eight years.
We sent the script to our representatives, who in turn sent it out into the world. Our Brokeback Mountain screenplay had been in existence for a year when young Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in Laramie, Wyoming. It was horrifying. It felt like an eerie mirroring of Annie’s story and our screenplay My daughter, Sara, was attending the University of Wyoming in Laramie on a basketball scholarship when they found Matthew’s body tied to a fence not five minutes from her apartment. I flew to Wyoming to be with her. While I was there, we went to visit Annie at her home in Centennial. We spent the day together, and she took us on a picnic up near the Medicine Bow. Annie was warm and welcoming, a strong, solid presence, and it was reassuring to Sara (and to me) to know she would be close by.
Larry and I continued on with our lives, such as they were, and took on work for hire, wrote screenplays and fiction. But Brokeback Mountain was still in the back of his mind, and in the front of mine. It was Larry’s firm conviction that ours was an excellent screenplay, and to his way of thinking, good work will always find its way. He is a person who does not worry about much of anything, and I am a person who worries about most everything. (By now Brokeback had acquired the reductive and spurious Hollywood tagline “a story about gay cowboys,” much as Lonesome Dove had been dubbed “a story about a cattle drive.”) Over the years, many people tried to help make the film, but it never came together. None of us imagined it would take as long as it did to find partners with the courage and passion sufficient to commit to our risky but potentially groundbreaking project—but we never doubted we could find them.
One morning I got a phone call from a producer in Los Angeles, Michael Costigan. He had been reluctant to read the screenplay, he explained, since for years he had heard it described as “that gay cowboy script.” But the night before he called, he had read it and was stunned by it. Then his girlfriend read it, and she was devastated by it. It was the best script either of them had ever read, he added. I told Michael if he wanted to be involved, there was no money to be had unless we could manage to get it made. He came on board anyway, and we soon became fast friends.
In time, we were fortunate in joining forces with Focus Features, whose copresident, James Schamus, had tried some years back to help make the film when he was an independent producer. And Ang Lee was free to direct. We spoke to Annie, who was in agreement, so negotiations began. I would be a producer; Larry and Michael would be executive producers.
After nearly seven years, Brokeback Mountain went into production in and around Calgary, Alberta, in late spring of 2004.
* * *
Film is a collaborative medium. Fiction writing, for the most part, is not. Making a film is like cooking: when all the ingredients are in proper balance, a dish can be ambrosial, but if the proportions are out of kilter, it can wind up a mess.
It is hard work to make any film, to make every film. It takes as much hard work to make a bad film as it does to make a good one, and so I was afraid of failure, too, that a film would not do justice to the story, that some how between writing the script and making a film, it would be botched beyond recognition. And yet I never once lost faith in the potential of Brokeback Mountain.
If someone were to ask me why Ang Lee decided to film Brokeback Mountain, I would say that he is intelligent, perceptive—and a risk taker. Maybe those before him were too afraid of the powerful emotions evoked by the screenplay. Maybe they were afraid of being associated with a dramatic love story involving two men who were not hairdressers or drag queens. Or maybe they were simply afraid of failing. Whenever a person sets out on a creative endeavor, whether a poem, a short story, a novel, a screenplay or a film, that person risks failure. It takes someone brave—and maybe a bit foolhardy—to take that leap. But the exhilaration that comes from achievement—in writing a singular poem, a compelling short story, a convincing novel, in constructing a potent screenplay or in making an excellent film—far outweighs any risk.
Once Ang Lee committed to direct and Focus Features obtained financing, we cast the film in short order. Each role, in Larry’s words, was cast “to perfection.” I had long wanted Heath Ledger for our film, knew in my gut that he had it in him to portray Ennis. Larry saw only his performance in Monster’s Ball, and with his keen eye and decisive manner remarked, “That young man is Ennis.”
Collaboration, as I mention above, is the key word in filmmaking. Larry and I always remain receptive to suggestions regarding scene changes or structural shifts within a script. We saw our script as a long, honest and credible extension of Annie’s writing, her dialogue, sense of time, place and landscape, but also remained open to scene and dialogue adjustments if they served the story and the cha
racters.
Ang and the studio surrounded us with a brilliant crew, experienced, talented people who had worked with notables such as Martin Scorsese, Milos Forman, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, David Cronenberg, Andy Warhol, Sergio Leone, Oliver Stone and jim jarmusch. They were from all over the world: North America, Taiwan, Australia, Mexico, South America, England, Italy. Most days I would look around and feel humbled by the talent our screenplay had managed to attract. Who was luckier than I?
Brokeback Mountain was filmed on a tight, modest budget. Every penny went toward production values. Larry and I were also lucky to be able to involve our children. My daughter, Sara, worked for five months in pre-production and throughout filming as an unpaid intern and assistant to Judy Becker, our knowledgeable and meticulous production designer, an invaluable experience for her. James McMurtry Larry’s gifted singer-songwriter son, wrote the words and music to “Water Walking Jesus,” along with his good friend Stephen Bruton.
Michael Costigan was on set with us for nearly the entire shoot. His humor and innate common sense served us all in good stead. As the days passed and together we endured rain, snow, sleet, hail, sunburn, windburn, sheep wrangling, mosquitoes, flat tires, camping out, exhaustion, answering calls of nature wherever we could find cover and four-wheeling to the remotest of remote locations, we soon came to feel like a large extended family. And like family members who live and work in such close proximity, we had our share of squabbles, but mostly we got along, and I felt happy to be working with fine people who each expressed to me how passionate they felt about the screenplay and story, and how important it was to them to make a great film.
I carried a copy of Annie’s short story with me every day on set while producing the film. Larry stayed in Tucson to write, and Annie stayed in Wyoming—but in spirit, they were with me throughout filming. Whenever I would feel exhausted or overwhelmed, I would center myself by rereading her story.
Another kind of talisman I kept close was a copy of Richard Avedon’s unflinching photographic collection In the American West. I grew up in a working-class, Irish-Italian family in Missouri. A lot of our neighbors looked like the people on those pages. Avedon’s stark, unromantic black-and-white images show men and women whose lives have been focused on the day-to-day struggles of living. Those factory workers, ranch hands, cowboys, drifters, miners, secretaries and waitresses, all ordinary folk forged and fashioned by hard places and rough times, served to inform our collective vision and overall tone for the movie.
Shooting ended in August 2004 and we moved on through postproduction. I saw rough cuts of the film, wrote detailed notes to the director and editor, listened to music cues, watched proposed trailers, viewed poster suggestions, voiced my opinions when necessary A year later, Larry and I gathered together a group of close friends and family and headed to the Loft Theatre in Tucson for a private screening of Brokeback Mountain. I was scared. I had wanted this so badly for so long, and I wanted it all to work—not just for me, but for everyone who had worked on the film, and for Larry, for Annie. I set aside everything I’d experienced since production began, wanted to see it all with a fresh eye, and hunkered down to watch a movie.
Seeing our film in finished form up on the big screen was a kind of out-of-body experience. In spite of what I already knew about Brokeback Mountain, I was not at all prepared for the emotional tidal wave that swept over me: there I sat, having lived with these characters for over eight years—they had been more real to me at times than the corporeal—and I felt as if I were being introduced to them for the first time. After the credits rolled and the lights came up, everyone just sat there. The women were crying; the men were silent. No one spoke until we wandered outside.
Brokeback Mountain is an excellent movie, raw, spare, severe. It is a true collaboration, in every sense. I could write in detail about the specifics of the visual narrative and how they affected me, but watching the film was such a visceral experience that my words simply cannot do it justice. It is all of a piece now, and something everyone must discover for themselves.
The years of struggle, the rejections, the hard work, the fear and the monumental risk have all been worth it: Brokeback Mountain the film stands faithfully beside “Brokeback Mountain” the short story.
Cast and Crew Credits
Focus Features and River Road Entertainment Present
An Ang Lee Film
Heath Ledger
Jake Gyllenhaal
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
Linda Cardellini
Anna Faris
Anne Hathaway
Michelle Williams
and Randy Quaid
Casting by Avy Kaufman, CSA
Costume Designer Marit Allen
Music by Gustavo Santaolalla
Edited by Geraldine Peroni
Dylan Tichenor, ACE
Production Designer Judy Becker
Director of Photography Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC
Co-Producer Scott Ferguson
Executive Producers William Pohlad
Larry McMurtry
Michael Costigan
Michael Hausman
Alberta Film Entertainment
Producers Diana Ossana & James Schamus
Based on the Short Story by Annie Proulx
Screenplay by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana
Directed by Ang Lee
Unit Production Managers Scott Ferguson
Tom Benz
First Assistant Directors Michael Hausman
Pierre Tremblay
Cast
(in order of appearance)
Ennis del Mar Heath Ledger
Jack Twist Jake Gyllenhaal
Joe Aguirre Randy Quaid
Waitress Valerie Planche
Basque David Trimble
Chilean Sheepherder #1 Victor Reyes
Chilean Sheepherder #2 Lachlan Mackintosh
Alma Michelle Williams
Jolly Minister Larry Reese
Timmy Marty Antonini
Rodeo Clown Tom Carey
Bartender #1 Dan McDougall
Biker #1 Don Bland
Biker #2 Steven Cree Molison
Lureen Newsome Anne Hathaway
Announcer Duval Lang
Bartender #2 Dean Barrett
Alma Jr., age 3 Hannah Stewart
Monroe Scott Michael Campbell
Fayette Newsome Mary Liboiron
L. D. Newsome Graham Beckel
Ennis, age 9 Kade Philps
K. E. del Mar, age 11 Steffen Cole Moser
Jenny, age 4 Brooklyn Proulx
Alma Jr., age 5 Keanna Dubé
Farmer #1 James Baker
Farmer #2 Pete Seadon
Alma Jr., age 9-12 Sarah Hyslop
Jenny, age 7-8 Jacey Kenny
Judge Jerry Callaghan
Jenny, age 11 Cayla Wolever
Alma Jr., age 13 Cheyenne Hill
Bobby, age 10 Jake Church
Roughneck #1 Ken Zilka
Roughneck #2 John Tench
Cassie Linda Cardellini
Lashawn Malone Anna Faris
Randall Malone David Harbour
Alma Jr., age 19 Kate Mara
Carl Will Martin
Killer Mechanic Gary Lauder
Grease Monkey Christian Fraser
Assailant Cam Sutherland
Jack’s Mother Roberta Maxwell
John Twist Peter McRobbie
Stunts
Stunt Coordinator Kirk Jarrett
Ennis Stunt Doubles Dwayne Wiley
Greg Schlosser
Christian Fraser
Tyler Thompson
Jack Stunt Doubles Shane Pollitt
Greg Schlosser
Quentin Lowry
Jody Turner
Lureen Stunt Double Skyler Mantler
Joe Stunt Double Ken Zilka
Driver Guy Bews
Barrel Racer Chyanne Hodgson
r # Dave Leader
Bull Fighter#2 Jory Vine
Bull Fighter#3 Mark van Tienhoven
Bull Rider#1 Greg Schlosser
Bull Rider#2 Dwayne Wiley
Bull Dogger#1 Shane Pollitt
Rodeo Hazers T. J. Bews
Lynn Ivall
Art Directors Tracey Baryski
Laura Ballinger
Assistant Art Director Tori James
Set Decorators Patricia Cuccia
Catherine Davis
Alberta Match Set Decorators Carrie Marklinger
Loraine Edwards
Art Department Trainee Ricardo dinger
Graphic Artist Pat Goettler
Draftsperson Corrie Neyrinck
Second Unit DOP/B-Camera Operator Peter Wunstorf
A-Camera/Steadicam Operator Damon Moreau
First Assistant A-Camera Trevor Holbrook
Second Assistant A-Camera Garth Longmore
First Assistant B-Camera Kirk Chiswell
Second Assistant B-Camera Chris Bang
Camera Trainee Kelly Strong
C-Camera Operator Alic Chehade
First Assistant C-Camera Chris Hassen
Second Assistant C-Camera Brett Manyluk
Video Assist/Playback Rob Doak
Script Supervisor Karen Bedard
Production Sound Mixer Drew Kunin
Boom Operator Peter Melnychuk
Second Boom Geo Major
Assistant Costume Designer Renée Bravener
Costume Supervisors Kelly Fraser
Christine Thomson
Set Costume Supervisor Jeffrey Fayle
Truck Costumer Supervisor Devora Brown