Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Ennis and Old Man Twist
Aussie Chris:
--- Quote from: atz75 on May 26, 2006, 12:16:10 am ---LOL! Whoa people. This thread really is getting crazy and funny. Seriously, re-read like the last 5 posts. Now no one seems to agree on who's dead or not. And how did this end up being a discussion about inheritance and changing wills, etc.?
--- End quote ---
LOL! Hysterical I love it, but I got lost! And I thought my first reply was crazy! :D
--- Quote ---Ok, back to the question of how Ennis contacted Jack's folks. In the real film. Well, he hangs up with Lureen before asking the phone number of Jack's parents. Maybe there's an off chance that Jack and Ennis had exchanged this type of info in the past. He must have called. I agree that there's no way he would have shown up out of the blue. A postcard seems too slow.
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Well this assumes that Jack's folks even had a phone. But if they did, I doubt Ennis would have it already, after all, do we really know that he ever called Jack at his home with Lureen? I think the book says he did, but in the film it's all postcards isn't it?
tiawahcowboy:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on May 22, 2006, 09:42:00 pm ---Somewhere along the line, I think the role of economics would have entered into it. In the Annie Proulx story, the old man has a line that didn't make it into the screenplay: "I can't get no help out here." It might be interesting to see him deal with the conflict between his disdain for his son and his probable dislike of Ennis on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fact that he suddenly has two healthy, strappin' young fellas to run his ranch for him and maybe turn the place around.
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"I can't get no help out here" was a rather interesting thing for John Twist to say.
In the book, Jack father actually said that AFTER Jack's mother said, "He used a come home every year, even after he was married and down in Texas, and help his daddy on the ranch for a week fix the gates and mow and all. I kept his room like it was when he was a boy and I think he appreciated that. You are welcome to go up in his room if you want."
Mrs. Twist had mentioned to Ennis that Jack did go up to Lightning Flat to the ranch every year and help his daddy; but, his old man talked like Jack never even showed up. Jack apparently worked hard as much as he could to get his father to accept him by working with him and his father still was not pleased.
As far as the story goes, since Jack never worked for his father-in-law when Lureen's old man was alive, it probably was somewhat expensive for Jack to make a trip up to Wyoming every year to help his father. According to what Annie Proulx wrote, it was quite a while, or at least seems to be, after Ennis had Thanksgiving dinner with his daughters, Alma and her grocer husband, before Lureen's father died.
tiawahcowboy:
I think that if Jack had actually talked to Ennis about working on the John C. Twist, Sr. Lightning Flat ranch together, they might have gotten away with living in a cabin together on the ranch.
Unlike like what I have read elsewhere in other Brokeback Forums, I believe that other than the fact that they knew Ennis Del Mar was a good friend of their son, Jack, they did not have a clue as to what his exact relationship had been with their son when Ennis showed up. And, I seriously doubt they even had a clue as to what kind of relationship the guys had other than being best friends. Both of the guys in the book were very masculine and certainly were not pretty boys.
I have known many parents who were church goers and they did not have a clue about having a son who was homosexual and even had a boyfriend whom they also met. I have even heard preachers say they could recognize homosexuals and they even believed that there were none in their churches (they didn't have a clue, either).
Aside note here: Cox Cable TV is showing Brokeback Mountain on Pay Per View now. Just saw the commercial.
opinionista:
--- Quote from: tiawahcowboy on May 26, 2006, 10:50:41 pm ---I think that if Jack had actually talked to Ennis about working on the John C. Twist, Sr. Lightning Flat ranch together, they might have gotten away with living in a cabin together on the ranch.
Unlike like what I have read elsewhere in other Brokeback Forums, I believe that other than the fact that they knew Ennis Del Mar was a good friend of their son, Jack, they did not have a clue as to what his exact relationship had been with their son when Ennis showed up. And, I seriously doubt they even had a clue as to what kind of relationship the guys had other than being best friends. Both of the guys in the book were very masculine and certainly were not pretty boys.
I have known many parents who were church goers and they did not have a clue about having a son who was homosexual and even had a boyfriend whom they also met. I have even heard preachers say they could recognize homosexuals and they even believed that there were none in their churches (they didn't have a clue, either).
Aside note here: Cox Cable TV is showing Brokeback Mountain on Pay Per View now. Just saw the commercial.
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I assumed they know because Mrs. Twsit offers Ennis to go up to Jack's room and even lets him take the shirts. No person would take a couple of shirts that belonged to a friend as a keepsake, unless something else was going on. That's too personal and intimate. Besides, Jack's dad sort of hints it when rambling on about what Jack used to say. Maybe they didn't know for a fact, but they knew there was something different about Jack. Parents always know this things, it's just that some are in denial.
tiawahcowboy:
--- Quote from: opinionista on May 27, 2006, 07:43:27 am ---I assumed they know because Mrs. Twsit offers Ennis to go up to Jack's room and even lets him take the shirts. No person would take a couple of shirts that belonged to a friend as a keepsake, unless something else was going on. That's too personal and intimate. Besides, Jack's dad sort of hints it when rambling on about what Jack used to say. Maybe they didn't know for a fact, but they knew there was something different about Jack. Parents always know this things, it's just that some are in denial.
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You have to remember that the taking of the shirts activity is only in the movie, Annie Proulx didn't write how Ennis got the shirts out of the Twist house. When the location of the story changes from Lightning Flat to Signal were Ennis is at the car wash washing the Stoutamire Ranch horse blankets and after he buys a Brokeback Mountain postcard at Higgins' Gift shop, we discover that Ennis has the shirts. The "it" in the quote refers to the postcard.
--- Quote ---When it came -- thirty cents -- he pinned it up in his trailer, brass-headed tack in each corner. Below it he drove a nail and on the nail he hung the wire hanger and the two old shirts suspended from it. He stepped back and looked at the ensemble through a few stinging tears. "Jack, I swear -- " he said, though Jack had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind.
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In the book, where it states that Ennis discovered the shirts hidden in a tiny jog in the wall in the curtained off makeshift closet, it only says the shirts were hanging from a nail. It does not say they were even on a hanger. I don't think that the "jog" was large enough to conceal a shirt on a hanger.
--- Quote ---At the north end of the closet a tiny jog in the wall made a slight hiding place and here, stiff with long suspension from a nail, hung a shirt.
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