Broken in Two

[southendmd]

A nice summation! But what does it have to do with "Broken in Two"? 

I'll venture a guess:  at one point, Jack plays a bar of "He Was a Friend of Mine" on his out-of-tune harmonica.

[serious crayons]

I'll venture a guess:  at one point, Jack plays a bar of "He Was a Friend of Mine" on his out-of-tune harmonica.

Ah! Good one -- very subtle. But would Jack even be familiar with a Dylan song the year after it came out? Would Wyoming radio stations even play music by Village folkies? Or is that one of those things that the characters don't notice but Ang wants us to notice?

By the way, I looked up the Dylan version on YouTube, then clicked on a link to the Willie Nelson version in the right rail. I glanced down at the comments and this was at the top:

My20GUNS 2 years ago
When I heard this at the end Of Brokeback Mountain, i started to cry, and I sat through the entire credits sequence, almost no movie is capable of doing that.

Frostbitt 9 months ago
I watched this in the Theater and have not seen it since. Perhaps someday I will revisit it. I was to heartbroken. When he visited the family and got the shirt out of the closet, I had a lump in my throat that hurt and my eyes steamed. This film was very powerful indeed. Someday, someday, I will revisit it. but not yet.

Alexis Han 5 months ago
My20GUNS I cried so hard all through the credits sequence as well
 

Then I looked up HWaFoM on Wikipedia. It seems Dylan did not write the song (its origins are a little hazy in the description, but definitely Western). "The version recorded by Willie Nelson was used in the film Brokeback Mountain and inaccurately credits Bob Dylan as the songwriter," says Wikipedia.


 

[southendmd]

Yes, the song--at least the tune--goes back to at least the 30s.  I once found a recording of "Shorty George", an early version of HWaFoM.
So, perhaps the tune was very familiar to cowboys.  Kinda like Ennis humming "The Streets of Laredo", before coming on the bear.

A little aside:  an early version of the screenplay includes directions for various old Western songs to be placed in particular scenes.  The titles often cleverly related to the action, one way or another.  Of course, I can't think of one right now...  I did take notes once.  They are all different from what ended up in the film--like "It's So Easy", D-I-V-O-R-C-E", etc.

In Tucson, I asked Larry about it.  He said that, while there were musicians in his family, the music was Diana's contribution!

[Front-Ranger]

A little trivia about Bob Dylan that I gleaned. It turns out that Dylan does NOT come from Dylan Thomas. So, who inspired Bob Dylan's last pen-name?

[southendmd]

A little trivia about Bob Dylan that I gleaned. It turns out that Dylan does NOT come from Dylan Thomas. So, who inspired Bob Dylan's last pen-name?

"According to Daniel Mark Epstein in his biography, "The Ballad of Bob Dylan," the switch from Zimmerman to Dylan began back when Dylan was 17 or 18.

As the front man for of his rockabilly-blues garage band, The Golden Chords, Bobby Zimmerman was the typical James Dean-posing rocker, playing high school talent shows and trying to impress the chicks. Even at that young age, Dylan had an amazing natural sense about the importance of image for entertainers. He groomed himself accordingly: it was all about the look and the appeal. Paramount to all, was the name.

At the time, wrote Epstein, “He was a great fan of Matt Dillon, the sheriff of the television series "Gunsmoke." In 1958, he confided to his high school sweetheart [Echo Helstrom] that he planned to devote his life to music, adding that 'I know what I'm going to call myself. I've got this great name—Bob Dillon.' That was how he told new friends to spell his (assumed) last name. He also told them that Dillon was his mother's maiden name (it wasn't), and that Dillon was a town in Oklahoma (it isn't).”

With the name Dillon fully intact, Epstein goes on to assert that the spelling shifted to Dylan in Dinkytown. Bob began plumbing the depths of world literature, “reading the poetry of Pound and Eliot, Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg; the novels of Kerouac and William Burroughs and Dylan Thomas, rebaptizing himself Bob Dylan.” "

https://www.thoughtco.com/how-bobby-zimmerman-became-bob-dylan-1322036

[Jeff Wrangler]

A little aside:  an early version of the screenplay includes directions for various old Western songs to be placed in particular scenes.  The titles often cleverly related to the action, one way or another.  Of course, I can't think of one right now...  I did take notes once.  They are all different from what ended up in the film--like "It's So Easy", D-I-V-O-R-C-E", etc.

Did it have anything to do with permissions?

[southendmd]

Did it have anything to do with permissions?

Don't know.  Possibly. 

I think I might start a new thread and include Diana's original music choices, from the 2003 screenplay.

[serious crayons]

the spelling shifted to Dylan in Dinkytown. Bob began plumbing the depths of world literature, “reading the poetry of Pound and Eliot, Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg; the novels of Kerouac and William Burroughs and Dylan Thomas

Good to know that he acquired his worldly reading habits in the neighborhood bordering the campus of my alma mater. Amanda and her friend Ashley visited there about a year ago to see a band they like that was playing in what used to be a movie theater.

Would reading Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg and Burroughs, let alone Kerouac, be that exotic in 1959, though? That would be like a college student today reading David Foster Wallace or Thomas Pynchon or Cormac McCarthy -- or me reading Tom Wolfe or Joan Didion in the late '70s -- intellectually stimulating for sure, but hardly "plumbing the depths of world literature." More like "books that were popular among smart college students of his day."

I tried reading On the Road when I was in my mid-20s and wound up throwing it across the room. It's one of those books you have to read when you're really young or forget it.

[Front-Ranger]

And a belated happy birthday to the man himself! But, since Bob Dylan is living life backwards, he can celebrate his birthday today too-- ("I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.")

[serious crayons]

And a belated happy birthday to the man himself! But, since Bob Dylan is living life backwards, he can celebrate his birthday today too-- ("I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.")

I saw a movie in which that happened to Brad Pitt ("Benjamin Button"). It ends sadly, though, with the protagonist a baby who no longer recognizes his lifelong friend, a woman who was his romantic partner for the brief period their ages coincided.