Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: nakymaton on September 08, 2006, 12:42:24 am ---(The relevations in the Twist household are in a different order in the story, too -- Jack's mother tells Ennis he can go up to Jack's room before Jack's father talks about Jack's plans to bring first Ennis, then the ranch neighbor to Lightning Flat. So in the story it isn't clear whether Jack's parents know the shirts are hidden in Jack's room, or that Ennis takes them with him.)
--- End quote ---
I think the film script is a real improvement here. I can't resist repeating myself, but I've written elsewhere that if you watch really close, you can see that Ennis's lower lip is quivvering after that revelation about the ranch neighbor from Texas. Whatever else is going on, in the film Jack's mother, intervening just at this moment, is telling/giving permission to Ennis to go up to Jack's room to cry in peace and privacy, so he can keep his dignity and self-respect by not breaking down in front of Jack's father. (And when we see him enter Jack's room, Ennis's left cheek is wet). I think this is brilliant and very touching. Jack's mother is really being a mother to Ennis here, too. Frankly, this was one of my inspirations when I wrote my fanfic, "The Grieving Plain."
dly64:
I found an interview with Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana regarding the "peeing" scene in the story:
MW: There were some moments from the short story that didn’t make it into the screenplay or film, in particular Jack’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) recollection of a painful childhood experience with his father. Was there any particular reason for the omissions?
DO: Any omissions from the short story to the screenplay were dramatic choices. Most of what is in the short story is contained within the finished screenplay, although when we actually scripted the short story, it only amounted to about a third of the final script. We had to imagine and create the scenes that we added or fleshed out, meaning, essentially, that we had to create two-thirds of
Doesn't help a lot ... but gives a little insight.
mvansand76:
--- Quote from: nakymaton on September 07, 2006, 12:34:21 am ---But it isn't Jack's death that's the surprise, or at least, it isn't the biggest surprise. It's the discovery of the love we had missed noticing all along.
And those shirts were there, all along, in the second sentence of the story.
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Oh, God, that is why I love the short story so much! I noticed this too, the second time I read the story, Annie is such a genius, because she doesn't mention the word love once and yet, every page holds a hidden secret treasure that tells us so much about Jack and Ennis and their love for eachother. Thanks so much for this!
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: dly64 on September 08, 2006, 08:59:28 am ---DO: Any omissions from the short story to the screenplay were dramatic choices. Most of what is in the short story is contained within the finished screenplay, although when we actually scripted the short story, it only amounted to about a third of the final script. We had to imagine and create the scenes that we added or fleshed out, meaning, essentially, that we had to create two-thirds of
Doesn't help a lot ... but gives a little insight.
--- End quote ---
She kind of dodges the question about the peeing, don't you think? She talks about fleshing out the story, which obviously they did a lot of (brilliantly, I might add). But Diana never explicitly refers to leaving out the peeing scene, maybe because she didn't want to sound critical of Annie.
Frankly, I think the main reason the peeing part is left out is that it would be so gross and horrifying, for the reasons Mel mentioned, that it would ruin the whole scene. Not to mention that it would require full frontal nudity, or something close to it, of a guy who looks like John Twist (shudder) and a four-year-old kid. Pretty unfilmable, I would imagine.
Jeff Wrangler:
I expect you're right about the unfilmable, Katherine. Pretty difficult to fit into the film's narrative flow, too. It's Ennis's reminiscence of Jack's reminiscence, making it, what, two removes from "present action"? It might have been confusing to the audience, too. Remember how some people were confused by the dozy embrace flashback?
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