By NICHOLAS SNOW
I don’t believe any of us covering the red carpet arrivals for the Brokeback Mountain premiere in Hollywood, November 11, 2005, had a clue that we would truly be a part of history, helping launch a movie that would transform
the lives of countless people around the world because of its profound capturing of the cost of the closet. I had not yet seen the movie that I now hold as one of the most important ever made, conveying the deep, undeniable humanity of authentic love, as well as the justifications and costs of locking that love in the dark.
For the record, the late Heath Ledger was not at the premiere. He was in New York with Michelle Williams who was in the last stages of her pregnancy. I don’t recall that Anne Hathaway was in attendance either. You might find it interesting to note that the film achieved the sort of Triple Crown rarely seen in Hollywood – the author of the original story, the screenwriters and the director all agreed that what ended up on the screen is precisely what they had envisioned.
I’m not sure how Brokeback Mountain screenwriters Diana Ossana (Johnson County War, Dead Man’s Walk) – a producer on the film – and Pulitzer Prize winner Larry McMurtry (Terms of Endearment, The Last Picture Show) – an executive producer on the film – met the story’s author, Annie Proulx, but they did. Proulx trusted the duo and the rest his history. Many on Hollywood’s hot lists wanted to participate in the film.
“When we put it out into the world, five days later Gus Van Sant showed up at our door,” explained Ossana. About the continuing development process and the ultimate choice of Ang Lee to direct, Ossana explained that both Brokeback Mountain and Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon have in common two very key elements – they are very intimate stories that take place on vast landscapes.
Was Brokeback Mountain an easy sell for the screenwriters? No. “A lot of people expressed trepidation about it,” explained Ossana. “When I first mentioned it to our representatives in 1997, they asked me what it was about and I told them and they said, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ And I said, ‘No. Read the story, and then you’ll see I’m not out of my mind.’ As soon as they read the story, they said, ‘Great. We should do this.’”
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx, who wrote the short story the film was based on, explained, “…I have had hundreds of letters over the eight years since the story was written from men who said, ‘This is my story. You’ve told my life.’ From other men who have said, ‘This is why I left Wyoming.’ And most particularly moving from fathers who’ve said, ‘Now I know the hell my son went through.’”
“It’s a great piece of American literature,” said Ang Lee about Annie
Proulx’s original short story, Brokeback Mountain. “It’s only 30 pages long but it wrenched my guts. It’s very far away from me but it really touched me. I just love the story and I have to do it. I can’t put that out of my mind.”
Lee was very happy with his leading men, Jake and Heath. “Oh, they’re wonderful,” said Lee. “It’s scary to think how young and good they are. They’re totally pro.” Did the hunky stars have reservations about doing the love scenes? “No. They’re like, ‘tell me what to do to get into the movie,’” explained Lee. “They’re good actors. They want to do good roles.”
In a red carpet interview there are often several reporters speaking with a single star at one time. My interview with Jake Gyllenhaal was en masse, and one reporter asked the star what message he wanted audiences to take away from Brokeback Mountain. “If that were my job, then I would be the director of the movie,” said Gyllenhaal. “I just showed up to work every day. What do I want people to take away from it? I hope that they walk in with an idea, and they leave with a different one.”
They will and I did. I walked in believing Gyllenhaal was a pretty boy creation of the Hollywood star machine. I walked out embracing him as a great actor and a brave soul, although he initially turned the movie down – not because of homophobia, but because of the two-dimensional sound of a movie that is said to be about “two gay cowboys.”
“…They said, ‘uh, we have this gay cowboy script.’ And I said, ‘absolutely not. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.’ And when I learned Ang Lee was going to direct it … and the kind of passion he approaches all of his projects with, I immediately wanted to do it. And I knew that it would be about so much more than the simplification that people can kind of throw out there and laugh at…”
“You know, that’s only a suit that I think both Heath and I have been told we’ve donned later…” said Gyllenhaal when I asked him how he felt about the fact that his character in Brokeback Mountain would be a significant role model for gay youth. “It’s flattering you know. I think that it’s important that whatever somebody is, however they are, that they be accepted.”
One reporter said to Jake, “In a recent interview you said it was a compliment to be called bisexual, so you’re fine with playing gay and playing bi and all that?”
“What I think I meant to say with that,” explained Jake, “I think that this movie in particular is about kind of trying to shatter the sense of duality or
this idea of, you know, an idea of good and bad or black and white. It works within a gray area and I think that you know, sexually, I think people consider bisexuality that kind of gray area and so, I just would like – yea, whatever. It’s a very interesting place. I’m flattered to be called anything, even if it’s somebody coming up to the street and being like, ‘fuck you,’ you know, because if it bothers people or if people like it, that’s what I’m in the business of doing.”
Okay, now would someone please translate Jake’s answer for me?
SnowBiz Florida Agenda
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