Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
TOTW 18/07: Do you think classic cowboy icons like the "Marlboro Man" were proto
Brown Eyes:
I'm posting again, because while glancing through the Story to Screenplay book tonight, I noticed yet another explicit and concrete example of a reference to a historic cowboy movie written into the screenplay (at least this published version of the screenplay).
Of course this one on p. 60 has already been discussed a lot on this thread:
"EXT: RIVERTON, WYOMING: RANCH: BACK OF HAY TRUCK: DAY: 1972:
ENNIS stands in the back of a hay truck, looking much like James Dean in 'Giant.' Throws open bales of hay out to the cows.
ENNIS
Come on! Come on!"
And, this second reference actually comes right before the "maybe Texas" scene and is found on p. 70. It says:
"EXT: WYOMING MOUNTAINS: DAY: 1978:
JACK and ENNIS ride through the mountains, like Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea in 'Ride the High Country,' only more life-worn, more weather-beaten."
So, here are some images I found doing quick web searches for Ride the High Country (1962).
<img src="http://www.divshare.com/img/3843779-875.jpg" border="0" /> <img src="http://www.divshare.com/img/3843788-067.jpg" border="0" />
<img src="http://www.divshare.com/img/midsize/3843782-764.jpg" border="0" />
<img src="http://www.divshare.com/img/3843781-7e3.jpg" border="0" />
The most interesting component of the Ride the High Country reference, I think has as much to do with Randolph Scott as with the film itself. In Hollywood there is longstanding and fairly well substantiated speculation that Scott may have had an affair with Cary Grant. They Scott and Grant lived together for many years. So, again here we have an example of subtext hovering just below the surface of a famous western image.
Here's just a nice photo of Scott:
<img src="http://www.divshare.com/img/midsize/3843780-918.jpg" border="0" />
And here are two apparently, somewhat famous photos of him with Cary Grant taken at their home. I found one on Wikipedia and one on Answers.com:
<img src="http://www.divshare.com/img/3843786-20d.jpg" border="0" /> <img src="http://www.divshare.com/img/3843787-0de.jpg" border="0" />
Here's a link to the Wikipedia page about Scott (it's a very large page on his film career, his military service, etc. and then at the end there's a long section called "Rumored homosexuality"). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randolph_Scott
And, here's a link to the Answers.com page about Scott, which is almost a duplicate of the Wikipedia page in many regards, but this also has lots of nice thumbnails of many of his movie posters. http://www.answers.com/randolph+scott?cat=entertainment
Here's just a taste of the blurb from Answers.com
--- Quote ---Rumored Homosexuality
Although Scott achieved fame as a motion picture actor, he managed to keep a fairly low profile with his private life. Off screen he became good friends with Fred Astaire and Cary Grant. He met Grant on the set of Hot Saturday and shortly afterwards they began rooming together in a beach house in Malibu that became known as "Bachelor Hall."
They would live together, on and off, for about ten years, presumably because they liked each other's company and wanted to save on living expenses (they were both considered notorious tightwads).[3]
As Scott shared "Bachelor Hall" with Cary Grant for twelve years, it was rumored that the two actors were romantically involved, and that the name "Bachelor Hall" and the reported parade of women there were invented by the studio who wanted to keep their valuable actors away from any public scandal...
--- End quote ---
Anyway, just thought this was interesting. Reading the direction notes in the Story to Screenplay book is actually pretty revealing about certain scenes. And, of course it's fun to find the places where the screenplay differs (sometimes greatly) from what the finished film actually seems to show.
moremojo:
--- Quote from: delalluvia on February 20, 2008, 08:24:18 pm ---If that isn't a cowboy, I'm not sure what Proulx considers a cowboy.
--- End quote ---
I certainly agree with everything you write here, del. I was just reiterating Proulx's assertion as a means to bolster the line of thinking that Jack and Ennis were influenced by the images and stories of what cowboys were and what they were supposed to be. I do think it nonsensical to describe the two men only as sheepherders and never as cowboys, since, as you point out, Jack rode the rodeo circuit as a rodeo cowboy and Ennis did work with cattle (the very definition of a cowboy). All these things are just as evident in the original story as they are in the film.
serious crayons:
Here's what Proulx wrote in "Getting Movied":
--- Quote ---Both wanted to be cowboys, be part of the Great Western Myth, but it didn't work out that way; Ennis never got to be more than a rough-cut ranch hand and Jack Twist chose rodeo as an expression of cowboy. Neither of them was ever a top hand, and they met herding sheep, animals most real cowokes despise. Although they were not really cowboys (the word "cowboy" is often used derisively in the west by those who do ranch work), the urban critics dubbed it a tale of two gay cowboys. No. It is a story of destructive rural homophobia.
--- End quote ---
That last part has been discussed a lot, the part about the urban critics' term being unfairly reductive. But the first part is interesting, showing why Proulx distinguishes so sharply between sheep herders and cowboys. Apparently she felt it important to portray them as aspirational rather than actual cowboys.
moremojo:
--- Quote from: ineedcrayons on February 21, 2008, 11:58:32 am ---Apparently she felt it important to portray them as aspirational rather than actual cowboys.
--- End quote ---
I actually see them as both. They were both honest-to-God ranch men who subscribed to the myth of the rugged Western male.
moremojo:
--- Quote from: atz75 on February 21, 2008, 01:12:18 am ---So, here are some images I found doing quick web searches for Ride the High Country (1962).
--- End quote ---
Note the date of this film's release...one could imagine Ennis or Jack having gone to see this picture the year before their meeting.
Ride the High Country (incidentally, considered by many aficionados to be director Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece) is a melancholy, rather contemplative Western delineating the passing of an era, much as Brokeback Mountain alludes to changing economic and social circumstances. Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea were very famous and popular as old-time stars of the Western, and their double casting is widely seen as an allusion to the quiet closing of the curtain on a major genre and its influence on the wider culture. Ennis and Jack's story was unfurling when the myth of a myth was receding into history, and Brokeback Mountain could be understood as a post-Western Western, if it is approached as a Western at all.
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