Exploring Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain was originally published in the New Yorker in a slightly shorter form on October 13th 1997. It would go on to win the National Magazine Award in 1998 and 3rd place in the O. Henry Prize. The longer version of the story appeared in the short story collection, Close Range: Wyoming Stories.

As a shorter piece of fiction, it was perfect for screen adaptation. Author and screenwriter Larry McMurtry said in an essay that: “I was the more stunned when I read ‘Brokeback Mountain’ because I realized it was a story that had been sitting there all my life, fifty-five years of which have been lived in the American West.” He described the writing as “Spare, wire-fence prose that is congruent with the landscape itself, and with the struggling, bruised speech still to be heard today across the north plains.“

Of course the story went on to become a famous film, though it took years. A story about ‘gay cowboys’ was not exactly Hollywood fare.

Author background

Annie Proulx was born in 1935 and wrote her first story at the age of 10 while sick with chicken pox. She has a B.A. and an M.A. in history.

In her essay, Getting Movied, she wrote: As a student of history and a writer of fiction my interest has focused on social and economic change in rural communities – Vermont, Newfoundland, Texas, Wyoming. I am something of a geographical determinist, believing that regional landscapes, climate and topography dictate local cultural traditions and kinds of work, and thereby the events on which my stories are built. Landscape is central to this rural fiction.

Birth of a story

Great story ideas often have simple beginnings. Brokeback Mountain was born when Proulx noticed a middle-aged man in a Wyoming bar who appeared to be watching the younger men playing pool. She noted something in his expression, a bitter longing, that made her think he might be ‘country gay’. This in turn led to her wondering what it might be like for a man like this in rural Wyoming.

A few weeks later, the author listened to a homophobic bar-cafe owner ranting on about two ‘homos’ who had come in the night before for dinner. If the regulars had been in that night, ‘it would have gone badly for them’.

Brokeback Mountain was built on the back of these experiences, the plot following two young country boys in a homophobic environment who also suffered from internalised homophobia themselves.

She chose the sixties as the time period which would give both characters the right background and experience. The characters were also not cowboys as such, though they longed for the cowboy life. Instead, they herded sheep (an animal looked down on by real cowboys), while neither later went on to be top hands. Even Jack’s rodeo riding never landed him success. Screenwriter McMurtry saw Jack and Ennis in the long American tradition of doomed young men, also seen in the likes of The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises.

Proulx would write the story over a period of roughly six months, going through more than sixty drafts. She did most of the ‘writing’ when she was driving. One curve in the road became the place where Ennis’s parents died in the story. The scene where Jack and Ennis meet up and kiss after four years came to her when she was driving past a cement plant of all places. To perfectly capture the scene where Ennis holds Jack and rocks him back and forth, she played a piece of music over and over. It was a very difficult scene to write and she wanted to nail it.

The story had several working titles before she settled on the final one: “The Pleasures of Whiskey Mountain,” “Bulldust Mountain,” “Swill-Swallow Mountain,” and “Drinkard Mountain”. They don’t seem quite right now. Brokeback Mountain was the right choice.

Location

Time and place are central to Brokeback Mountain. From the characters’ dialect (including Jack’s switch to some Texan pronunciations later), to their impoverished backgrounds, their direct interaction with nature and the mountain, and the social attitudes of their time.

In her essay Movied, Proulx talks about the importance of location. The mountain itself would force the two men together. It would also represent the happiest time of their lives. Their infrequent meetings in the following two decades would mostly take place in the wilderness. Away from the prying eyes of townsfolk, they could be themselves.

Weather is also important – the wind blows through the opening section of the story, where an older Ennis wakes up in his trailer, about to move on to a new location, but warmed by the dream he just had of Jack.

Prose Style

Brokeback Mountain is written in a compact and spare style where a single sentence can travel a long distance.

They were raised on small, poor ranches in opposite corners of the state, Jack Twist in Lightning Flat up on the Montana border, Ennis del Mar from around Sage, near the Utah line, both high school dropout country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life.

This is just one example of Proulx’s style, squeezing a lot of information into a single long sentence of several lines.

The story’s POV is also omniscient, though mostly seen from Ennis’s perspective. We get comments about the characters that could be the author or another character’s thoughts – such as when Joe Aguirre hires the two and after giving them their instructions, we’re told after his speech: Pair of deuces going nowhere.

Usually omniscient is best avoided, but it doesn’t seem to interfere with the narrative in this case.

Aftermath

The film was immensely popular and Proulx particularly felt Heath Ledger was the perfect Ennis. But the film would also trigger a huge amount of fan fiction, some of it quite explicit. Proulx would later claim she regretted writing the story owing to the manuscripts she received. Fans, usually men, would rewrite the ending, offering a happier outcome or even a new relationship for Ennis. This frustrated the author who felt the fans were missing the point of the story. It was not about Jack and Ennis but about destructive rural homophobia. Given the subject matter and period, a happy ending would be out of place. It would also miss the entire point of the closing lines of the story:

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it you’ve got to stand it.

Conclusion

Simple ideas can lead to powerful stories. Brokeback Mountain is a perfect example. I recommend the book below which includes essays from Annie Proulx herself as well as the two screenwriters. The full story and the screenplay are also included.

Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay.

If you want to check out more of my posts of authors and writing, you can click this link:

Masterlist of IndieCat Blog Posts.

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