The "ABCs of BBM": Round 965! (Rules in first post)

[southendmd]

Site Name: Diving Cliff
 

Travel Directions:
From Hwy 1 (Trans-Canada Hwy) take the Seebe exit, pass Bow Valley campground and turn right at the “Seebe” sign, cross the one-lane bridge, pass the convenience store on the right, and go through Seebe. Park at locked Gate 1, walk approximately 1.1 km to Gate 2, another 0.2 km to Gate 3, and finally, behind a set of railway ties, 0.2km to the crest. The site is approximately 100 yards to the left (south) of the memorial cross, near the river.

Remarks:
You did not expect a place where Jake Gyllenhaal (a double) and Heath Ledger (the real thing) frolic in the nude to be readily accessible did you? Be certain to obtain appropriate permission before visiting this site. Do not, under any circumstances, dive from the cliff.


If you crave the diving/whitewater experience, one established local rafting and cliff diving guide is Chinook River Sports, (866) 330-7238. See:


www.chinookraft.com

This site is guarded 24 hrs/day on weekends and part time during the week. The guard generally stays at Gate 1. If a guard is helpful to you, a gratuity may be in order. The (very real) memorial cross at this site reminds visitors that this is an extremely hazardous place. The danger of a concussion varies with the level of the water, which is controlled by the operation of the adjacent hydro power plant. Equally dangerous is the fierce undertow created by the hydro turbines which can start and stop without notice. Let it be!


Important:
Always obtain appropriate permission before entering private property. Under no circumstances should one attempt to dive or swim at this site without authorization and professional supervision.
 

=aside=
Some of us Alberta-bound nuts are planning a whitewater expedition near here.  Looks pretty still, eh?

[Fran]

Those hoping to pin down the exact location of Brokeback Mountain's lingering Wyoming charms will find plenty of lonesome ridges to behold and clear creeks to fish, but they won't find the actual Brokeback.  The movie's eponymous mountain is a fictional peak.  However, Proulx was inspired by the Big Horns, and director Ang Lee was inspired by Wyoming's Wind River Valley.  Lee simply moved mountains across the border.

-- Aefa Mulholland, PlanetOut.com

[Toast]

Because his last cigarette's getting low, Ennis decides to save part of it in his jacket pocket as he waits for the man at the Farm and Ranch Employment Office to show.

Location: Cowley, AB
Site Name: Aguirre Trailer
 
Travel Directions:
Corner of Osler and Railway Avenues, Cowley, 42 km west of Fort Macleod on Hwy 3 (Crowsnest Hwy).

Remarks:
The trailer and fake fence are gone, but the footings, steeple, and the parking area are quite visible. Locals recall that the crew spent more than six weeks in Cowley.

Some believe that the passing train in the opening scene was not originally contemplated until a moving Cowley train inspired Lee to create his now famous metaphor for dark lives separated by brief, brilliant, Brokeback moments.

[FindingBrokeback.Com]

[southendmd]

Location: Town Dump, Beiseker, AB
GPS:   51d 22m 55.26s    -113d 32m 40.14s
Map/Satellite Image: Google Link
Site Name: Trailer Window
 

Travel Directions:
Face the Beiseker Village Office, a former Canadian Pacific Railway station, at 1st Avenue and 6th Street, turn left on 1st Avenue and go .8 km. Turn right at the “Dump Gate” sign, go .3 km. The site is on the right, enclosed by a white wooden fence.
Remarks:
Viewing the image framed by the trailer window (often through tears), one wonders if the field and sky, with their assuring hues of green, yellow (a field of canola), and blue, are the real thing. Standing on the actual location, they seem to be. Never mind that it is next to a dump. It is the serene image that forms a fitting apostrophe to Jack and Ennis' love, which will endure for as long as the Brokeback story is told.

[Fran]

One of the major concerns of provincial officials was that Ang Lee and company might unintentionally endanger the Albertan wild sheep population if the wild sheep came in contact with any of the movie's domestic sheep.  Apparently domestic sheep carry a bacterium that can wipe out wild cloven-hoof livestock. 

Interview with Darryl Solly, BBM Locations Manager

[memento]

Location: Moose Mountain
GPS:   50d 56m 23.64s    -114d 48m 37.26s
Map/Satellite Image: Google Link
Site Name: Sheep Procession #2

Travel Directions:
Hwy 66 west from Bragg Creek to “Kananaskis Country” sign and Information Center, continue (west) 8.5 km to Moose Mountain Road, right (north) on Moose Mountain Road 7.0 km to well-marked trailhead. The trail begins at the green vehicle barrier. The site is about 0.5 km beyond the tree line to the southwest (left).

The Moose Mountain summit is 7.1 km from the parking area and trailhead, gaining 477 m. Allowing time to explore filming locations, budget a total of 4 to 5 hours for a rewarding hike to and from the vast Moose Mountain meadows, where several sheep herding scenes were filmed. Mornings generally provide the most reliable weather conditions.

The hike to the meadows is a moderately strenuous ascent. Though no filming took place above the meadows, the adventurous may wish to keep climbing to the summit using a series of switchbacks leading to a fire lookout station. Budget approximately 50 minutes for the final ascent, along slippery shale surfaces.

Remarks:
Forester Joe Burritt and his wife Dale, who for five years have spent their summers living in perfect solitude at the fire tower atop Moose Mountain, were amazed by the intense activity that took place in their front yard one morning in July 2004. Dozens of trucks, hundreds of sheep, indeed a small city, invaded their island in the sky, and, two days later, disappeared without a trace.

The Burritts, who make a 7 km mountain hike every time they leave home, welcome visitors to their magnificent perch but not into their home, which is neither a public washroom nor a watering station. Please bring your drinking water with you. Should the need arise, kindly use the same washroom facilities that were available to Ennis and Jack during their time here.

FindingBrokeback.com

[southendmd]

Site Name: Twist Ranch (Exterior)
 

Travel Directions:
Follow Hwy 9 (also known as Township Road 282) 6.5 km east of Beiseker to Range Road 252 (watch for the brown “Grande Ole West Villa Ranch” sign). Turn right (south) onto Range Road 252, go 1.6 km. The ranch is behind the overgrown thicket on the east (left) side of the road.
Remarks:
Welcome to the Twist Ranch. No other Brokeback location received the investment of time and money that the production team lavished upon this desolate farmhouse some 80 km NE of Calgary.

This is a well-hidden landmark; indeed the front is completely obscured by a dense thicket of Albertan caragana. Just as Ennis generally did, you will find it most convenient to approach from the rear. The structure, which has faded considerably since the film was made, is boarded up, albeit imperfectly.

The ranch is located on rural farmland in an area once occupied by native Blackfoot peoples. They called the region “Clear Running Water.” A deep lake, said to be filled with old Blackfoot arrowheads, is 9 km away. The Canadian Railway established a rail line here in 1883. By 1909, when irrigation canals were completed, permitting large scale cultivation of wheat, the area was homesteaded, largely by German families emigrating from Nebraska and Kansas.

The current owner of the house grew up on an adjacent farm. His family acquired the property in the late 1960s.
 

[Fran]

Site Name: Trailer Window
 

Travel Directions:
Face the Beiseker Village Office, a former Canadian Pacific Railway station, at 1st Avenue and 6th Street, turn left on 1st Avenue and go .8 km.  Turn right at the "Dump Gate" sign, go .3 km.  The site is on the right, enclosed by a white wooden fence.

Remarks:
Viewing the image framed by the trailer window (often through tears), one wonders if the field and sky, with their assuring hues of green, yellow (a field of canola), and blue, are the real thing.  Standing on the actual location, they seem to be.  Never mind that it is next to a dump.  It is the serene image that forms a fitting apostrophe to Jack and Ennis' love, which will endure for as long as the Brokeback story is told.

[FindingBrokeback.com]

=aside= Paul

[Toast]

Mountains and men.(WESTERN WANDERINGS)

.............

"It's a powerful landscape," says Sharon Dynak, the executive director of the Ucross Foundation--the artists colony 10 miles west of Clearmont, Wyoming, that provided one of Proulx's introductions to the state. "The land, the sky--it has such an impact."

The film replicates that impact by wrapping viewers in wide-screen vistas of pastures, brooding skies, and jagged mountain peaks. (Ang Lee filmed these, alas, in Alberta for financial reasons, but they are a reasonable facsimile.) In the story, you feel it via Proulx's taut, terse prose: "The sooty bulk of the mountain paled slowly until it was the same color as the smoke from Ennis's breakfast fire. The cold air sweetened, banded pebbles and crumbs of soil cast sudden pencil-long shadows and the rearing lodgepole pines below them massed in slabs of somber malachite."

What Brokeback Mountain understands is that, even in 2006, when the world wants to dream about freedom and possibility, it dreams about the West. And that Wyoming is the most Western of the West. Jack and Ennis have their summer, separate, get married, mess up their lives and the lives of other people. But Brokeback Mountain remains their touchstone: "What we got now is Brokeback Mountain," an anguished Jack tells Ennis. "Everything built on that."

"People assume it's a gay cowboy movie," Bill Sniffin says. "But it's a lot more complicated." Like Shane, like The Virginian, like Wyoming itself, Brokeback Mountain gets under your skin, makes you ask the big questions. Whom do you love? Whom will you die for? How will you make your life? At the end of the movie, a postcard of Brokeback Mountain is left tacked to a closet door. The mountain's a big place, even shrunk to 3- by 5-inch dimensions. It's big enough to inspire Ennis's dream, big enough to make you think he might achieve it. And in the end, when he doesn't, big enough to break your heart.

[memento]

Interview with Brokeback Mountain Production Manager Tom Benz

October 26, 2006

Rob: In your opinion, what aspect of securing the filming locations was the most important? The most memorable? The most scenic?

Benz: The whole film revolved around finding the right mountain setting. Even though the sheep weren't in all parts of the movie, the sheep shots were the "money" shots and that's how we established our priorities and strategies.

Dealing with the sheep had its own special challenges because domestic sheep carry a strain of bacteria which can be lethal to wild sheep. Provincial authorities would not permit us to use domestic sheep in settings where an epidemic might ensue. To make this film work with this restriction was extremely difficult, but luckily, the mountain that we found where we could use domestic sheep was the closest peak to Calgary.

In terms of which scenes were memorable for the audience, I think the scenes between Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal that showed their true merit as actors, as performers, were, by far, the most enduring. Brokeback Mountain is a film about people. As wonderful as the locations were, it was the performances that made these scenes so memorable.

I would consider Moose Mountain the most scenic.

Rob: You have said that for many filming locations, you were "first in and last out." When did you start your work on the film and how long were you there afterward?

Benz: The film was shot from May to the beginning of August, 2004. My involvement was from February to the end of September.

Rob: What was your involvement in securing and adapting locations? Which area was the hardest to acquire?

Benz: Initially I would develop location strategies. In an orderly fashion, there would be crew hired. Inevitably the work was delegated. I was responsible for the work of every crew member, which, in theory, would mean that I should be able to do it all, but obviously, there are cases where people have special expertise. There, I trust them and collaborate with them.

Moose Mountain was the hardest location to acquire because of the wildlife concerns with the sheep.

Rob: Were there any places considered by the filmmakers which were not ultimately used?

Benz: Yes, the ideal mountain peaks from Ang Lee's scouting were closer to Waterton and some almost as far north as Jasper.  In those areas we could not sequester our domestic sheep from wild sheep, therefore we were refused permission by Alberta Wildlife, and rightly so. The thing about Moose Mountain that made it ideal for our use is that it's a mountain that literally stands on its own, so therefore there is a break in wildlife traffic and the wild sheep never go to this little pimple outside of the Rockies called Moose Mountain.

[FindingBrokeback.com]