Up until now, I've assumed that Ennis and Jack were both nineteen when they first meet on Brokeback in the summer of '63. Indeed, the timeline I created for Brokeback partly depends on this assumption. The assumption was based on the short story:
""It would be Jack Twist's second summer on the mountain, Ennis's first. Neither of them was twenty."
Earlier today I was revisiting an interview that Ang Lee had with Charlie Rose a few days before the movie's initial release. At one point, Charlie Rose asks Ang Lee to outline the story for him and in so doing Ang says that it's a story about "two ranch hands - one age of 20, one 19" - who first meet on Brokeback Mountain. Ang Lee's specificity puzzled me until I went back, not to the short story but to the screen play. There, in introducing Ennis, it's stated that he is "about twenty". Jack, on the other hand is quite definitely described as "twenty". So it looks as though Ang and presumably his actors had decided to make Jack slightly older than Ennis with Jack at twenty and Ennis nineteen.
Does it matter if Jack is that bit older than Ennis? As Ang Lee is so specific about the difference in their ages when he's introducing them, it seems that it mattered to him. Maybe he perceived Jack as slightly more "experienced" than Ennis not only in having been on Brokeback the year before but in other matters as well. Any thoughts on this?
Clearly, when I have the time, I should revisit that timeline. Some alterations will probably have to be made, if it's to be, as I intended, a timeline for the movie rather than the short story.