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

[Fran]

Round 955!

Another Movie Round



The ABCs Game is going to still at the movies!

Each post will include an unplayed word
as well as the full name of a movie.

[Fran]

Although he actually prefers living out in the middle of nowhere, Ennis accommodates Alma's request and moves the family to a small apartment in Riverton.

[memento]

Here, McMurtry and Ossana discuss the film's auspicious beginnings, the struggle to get it on the big screen and its ultimate mislabeling as simply a "gay" film.

AfterElton.com:  What initially attracted you to Proulx's short story?
Ossana:  "It was the writing and the feelings it gave me.  I think Larry felt the same way."
McMurtry:  "It was a great story of the West that hadn't been written.  We wanted to be part of bringing it to a wide audience."

AE:  Tell me about the seven-year process of trying to get this movie made, with several unsuccessful attempts at casting and landing a director.
McMurtry:  "Diana is very tenacious.  Once she starts something, she doesn't let it go."
Ossana (laughing):  "It's a blessing and a curse!  When I first read that story back in '97, it was instantaneous, pretty much, my sense of how powerful it was, that this is a great story that should be out in the world in a major, major way.  It had the power to touch many people.  You know how when you read a great piece of literature or see a film that really moves you?  You want to tell people about it. You want them to see and feel the same things you felt.  That's pretty much what I felt.  I had to just demand that (Larry) read it.  He doesn't read short fiction because …"
McMurtry (interrupting):  "I don't write it.  I can't write it, so I never have learned to read it, either."
Ossana:  "He read it, and he thought it was wonderful.  We optioned it from Annie and wrote our script.  I knew it would be difficult, but we believed in it so strongly, and the material was terrific.  We felt very lucky to be a part of it.  I don't know.  I couldn't let it go.  I guess I maybe became a little bit obsessed with it.  It was a struggle.  There were moments when I felt some discouragement or frustration, but I never lost belief in the potential of this.  Never, never.  Not once did I doubt it.  Larry, at one point said to me, 'This is a great script.  It will find it's way, Diana.'  And it did.  Maybe I was a little naïve at first.  I thought somebody's going to see that these are really great parts for actors.  This is something that will stretch their talents and challenge them.  I think they all saw that, but Larry's belief is that their agents or representatives just dissuaded them."

AfterElton.com

[Meryl]

Alma cringed at Ennis's violent reaction to her accusation that his fishing trips with Jack were nothing more than a tall tale.

[southendmd]

Ennis was sometimes disappointed with the Basque's deliverance of groceries, as he often omitted some expected items.

=Special Birthday Wishes!= Fran and Sandy

Unlike Jack and Ennis, I hope you get everything you desire!

[memento]

"Crammed together -- and tipsy -- in a tent one night, Jack absent-mindedly draws Ennis’ arm around him as he sleeps. Ennis reacts so violently to this advance it’s as if he’s fending off a chemical reaction in himself, a combustive brew of internal paradox that propels him to fight off Jack’s touch with a ferocity equaled by how frantically he unlatches his own belt buckle and shoves Jack to the ground."

-- Violet Glaze, Baltimore City Paper    

=aside= Fran

[Fran]

"Though Brokeback Mountain's progressivism isn't daring when compared to something like Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Whity, the film is very much a milestone for a mainstream Hollywood production. Lee and co-screenwriters Larry McCurty and Diana Ossana haven't corrected the western so much as they have shown us its backside. In essence, what was subversively hinted at in Howard Hawks's Red River and Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar has been brought to the fore, with an intense preoccupation for the heartbreaking tumult that registers on the faces of its lonesome doves."

-- Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine  

=reply= Paul, Sandy
Thanks for remembering my birthday.
 

=special birthday wishes!= Sandy
May this be your best one yet!

[southendmd]

When Aguirre spied on the boys with his big-ass binoculars, the look on his face showed he was entering Sodom and Gomorrah.

[memento]

Jack traveled the highways and byways from Childress to Riverton in order to see Ennis.

=reply= Fran and Paul
Thank you for the birthday wishes.

[Fran]

Annie Proulx used the idiom "putting the blocks to" in her short story Brokeback Mountain:

Ennis said he'd been putting the blocks to a woman who worked part-time at the Wolf Ears bar in Signal where he was working now for Stoutamire's cow and calf outfit, but it wasn't going anywhere and she had some problems he didn't want.