Annie Proulx tells the story behind "Brokeback Mountain"

Annie Proulx figured no magazine would touch her short story "Brokeback Mountain," the tale of two Wyoming cowboys whose romance is so intense, it sometimes leaves them black and blue. But The New Yorker published it in 1997, and it went on to win an O. Henry prize and a National Magazine Award. Now the movie version is a leading Oscar contender, with starring performances from Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist.

In a telephone conversation with the Associated Press from her home in Wyoming, Proulx, a 70-year-old Pulitzer Prize–winner, declined to discuss the origins of her two roughneck lovers, citing an upcoming book written with screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. Instead, she spoke about homophobia, her fascination with rural life, and the process of making Twist and Del Mar live and breathe.

AP: You've said "Brokeback Mountain" began as an examination of homophobia in the land of the pure, noble cowboy.

Proulx: Everything I write has a rural situation, and the Wyoming stories, in the collection Close Range, which includes "Brokeback Mountain," did contain a number of those social-observation stories—what things are like for people there. It's my subject matter, what can I say?

AP: Were you trying to accomplish something specific with this story?

Proulx: No. It was just another story when I started writing it. I had no idea it was going to even end up on the screen. I didn't even think it was going to be published when I was first working on it because the subject matter was not in the usual ruts in the literary road.

AP: You've said this story took twice as long to write as a novel. Why?

Proulx: Because I had to imagine my way into the minds of two uneducated, rough-spoken, uninformed young men, and that takes some doing if you happen to be an elderly female person. I spent a great deal of time thinking about each character and the balance of the story, working it out, trying to do it in a fair kind of way.

AP: How did you feel about seeing it on the big screen?

Proulx: It was really quite a shock because I had had nothing to do with the film. So for 18 months, I had no idea what was happening. I had no idea if it was going to be good or frightful or scary, if it was going to be terribly lost or sentimentalized or what. When I saw it in September, I was astonished. The thing that happened while I was writing the story eight years ago is that from thinking so much about the characters and putting so much time into them, they became embedded in my consciousness. They became as real to me as real, walk-around, breathe-oxygen people. It took a long time to get these characters out of my head so I could get on with work. Then when I saw the film, they came rushing back. It was extraordinary—just wham—they were with me again.

AP: What did you think of the performances by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal?

Proulx: I thought they were magnificent, both of them. Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist...wasn't the Jack Twist that I had in mind when I wrote this story. The Jack that I saw was jumpier, homely. But Gyllenhaal's sensitivity and subtleness in this role is just huge. The scenes he's in have a kind of quicksilver feel to them. Heath Ledger is just almost really beyond description as far as I'm concerned. He got inside the story more deeply than I did. All that thinking about the character of Ennis that was so hard for me to get, Ledger just was there. He did indeed move inside the skin of the character, not just in the shirt but inside the person. It was remarkable.

AP: Would you characterize the story as groundbreaking?

Proulx: I hope that it is going to start conversations and discussions, that it's going to awaken in people an empathy for diversity, for each other and the larger world. I'm really hoping that the idea of tolerance will come through discussions about the film. People tend to walk out of the theater with a sense of compassion, which I think is very fine. It is a love story. It has been called both universal and specific, and I think that's true. It's an old, old story. We've heard this story a million times; we just haven't heard it quite with this cast.

AP: Have you gotten any response from gay organizations?

Proulx: No. When the story was first published eight years ago, I did expect that. But there was a deafening silence. What I had instead were letters from individuals, gay people, some of them absolutely heartbreaking. And over the years, those letters have continued and certainly are continuing now. Some of them are extremely fine, people who write and say, "This is my story. This is why I left Idaho, Wyoming, Iowa." Perhaps the most touching ones are from fathers, who say, "Now I understand the kind of hell my son went through." It's enormously wonderful to know that you've touched people, that you've truly moved them.

AP: Is that why you write?

Proulx: It's not why I write. I had no idea I was going to get any response of this sort. I wrote it from my long-term stance of trying to describe sections of rural life, individuals in particular rural situations and places, well, first the places. That it came out this way—it just happened to touch certain nerves in people. I think this country is hungry for this story.

AP: Why?

Proulx: Because it's a love story and there's hardly much love around these days. I think people are sick of divisiveness, hate-mongering, disasters, war, loss; and need and want a reminder that sometimes love comes along that is strong and permanent, and that it can happen to anyone.

AP: Do you think straight men will watch this movie?

Proulx: They are watching this movie. Of course, why wouldn't they watch it? Straight men fall in love. Not necessarily with each other or with a gay man. My son-in-law, who prides himself on being a Bud-drinking, NRA-member redneck, liked the movie so much, he went to it twice. Straight men are seeing it, and they're not having any problem with it. The only people who would have problems with it are people who are very insecure about themselves and their own sexuality and who would be putting up a defense, and that's usually young men who haven't figured things out yet. Jack and Ennis would probably have trouble with this movie.

AP: Do you think Jack and Ennis will come back?

Proulx: They're not coming back. There's no way. They're going to stay where they are. I've got other things to write. (Sandy Cohen, AP)

Reader Comments

These comments are reproduced as written by visitors to this Web site. They have not been edited for content, grammar, or spelling. The viewpoints appearing here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of advocate.com, The Advocate, or its affiliates.

Name: Allen
Date posted: 2009-04-19 7:59 PM
Hometown: Wytheville, VA

Comment:

I have not read the short story but watched the movie once only. I was so tear-drained by the end of the movie that I have no tears left to shed. This movie mirrors my life so closely that it is uncanny really. Married, two wonderful grown-up kids, most wonderful wife in the world whom I dearly love but still there is the other love of my life. Same situation for him. Living here in the depth of the Bible Belt, we cannot even acknowledge we know each other in public for fear of the absolute condemnation and probably even the violence it would bring. When will the world learn that we cannot help who we fall in love with - male or female?

Name: William Michael
Date posted: 2009-01-12 7:11 AM
Hometown: Melbourne Australia

Comment:

I came across the story first published in the New Yorker in 1997 when I leafed through my partner's magazines collections in his garage a few years ago. I read it through once, but was immensely touched and overwhelmed by Annie Proulx's terse writing style, but rich in emotion and poignancy. It tells a thwarted and torrid love affair of two cowboys in the rural Wyoming. Through Annie's writing, I can feel the frustration, the pain and the heartbreak of the two men, whose love towards each other was so raw, innocent and intense, but came to a tragic end due to the circumstances and the time when love between men was forbidden and condemned. I re-read the story several times since then, but every time I read it, the emotion wrought through the story is still intensely strong, immediate and palpable. I feel a lump in my throat. The critically acclaimed movie directed by Ang Lee with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist is highly recommended.

Name: Stuart Filler
Date posted: 2008-08-25 10:32 AM
Hometown: Birmingham MI

Comment:

I started to read Annie Proulx's "Tits Up in a Ditch" in the June 9-16, 2008, New Yorker and read it to the end. Today, I was looking for an address for her for no good reason ("whom," not "who"). My son wants me to see "Dark Knight." I try to avoid Hollywood movies. I suppose I am a homophobe inthe classic sense someone defending against his latent homosexuality but loke to think I have been in recovery for many years. I don't read much fiction either, but am lkiley to read "Brokeback Mountain" and am likely to peek at or view the film some day. This morning, I woke up remembering our 1947 summer in Laramie in the faculty barracks with the coal stoves and iceboxes. They got us cowboy hats and cowboy boots and guess enjoyed themselves. It was my idea to take home a piece of the flat, yellow and red flowering cactus and plant it by our barracks door. It is no coincidence, comrades, that I have a two foot potted tuna in my living room sixty one summers later. Stuart Filler

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