Author Topic: Short story - scene placement  (Read 7492 times)

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Short story - scene placement
« Reply #10 on: May 03, 2006, 11:25:13 am »
It seems to me that the screenwriters drop a hint towards Jack's abuse scene when he says, much earlier "Never could do anthing right by him, anyhow" more or less.

If nothing else, at least between that line and Jack's telling Ennis that his father had never come to watch him ride bulls in the rodeo, we know that Jack and his father did not have a good relationship. Perhaps the film makers felt that was sufficient.

It interests me, though, to think that the action of Ennis's father in practically forcing his two little boys to view the desecrated body of the murdered rancher would probably also be taken as "abuse" today. So you can say that both our cowboys had abusive fathers.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline maggiesmommy GayLee

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Re: Short story - scene placement
« Reply #11 on: May 03, 2006, 11:49:16 am »
something resonated with me about the scene with Ennis and his brother and the faceless father taking them up to see the rancher...

i have a grandson who is a twin..they are like night and day..one is the "jock" mr cool...(they are 13) "manly man" stuff...the other is "different"..more feminine, gentle, extremely intellegent and just a lovley boy...we are very close...but the differences in them is very obvious....
now, given the fact that Ennis' father was a pure redneck homophobe...do you think maybe Ennis, as a child, was "different" like that...becasue it is my firm belief that you are BORN gay just like you are born with green eyes...and maybe his dad saw that in him, and took the kids up there to scare Ennis "straight" so to speak?? notice how his huge hands are on their small necks..he is squeezing their necks, and it looks to me like a threat, that's what will happen to you if.....you can feel all the unsaid things in that scene and i felt afraid for Ennis
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Rather the Moments that Take our Breath Away

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Re: Short story - scene placement
« Reply #12 on: May 03, 2006, 12:21:20 pm »
Forgive me if I am repeating myself here.

In the book, when Ennis is talking about his brother and sister and he is with Jack up on Brokeback Mountain, he says his sister was married and lived in Casper. But, he only said that his brother was in Signal.

I am a middle son. My older brother, Lewis, was more like an Ennis in a way in that he did get married after he was 23 years old.

Lewis married the only gal that he had ever dated and he was already 23 when he met her when he was going to automotive school in another state (the rest of the family was in Oklahoma). It would be too off-topic to go into detail in regard to what my late mother thought about how he got hooked up with her in the first place.

Up until that time, it seemed that Lewis took every opportunity possible when it came to sexual contact with guys. We have a cousin, Edwin, who is the elder son of Dad's brother who was 6 months older than Lewis. When we would go out to the uncle's, Edwin and Lewis very often would take off to a place on the property where the folks could not see them so that they could get their hands on each other. After Lewis was 18 years old, he lived at the uncle's a number of times and he slept in the very same bed as Edwin. My older brother passed away in Sept. '88 a few days after his 48th birthday. He was born with heart problems.

Unlike my brother, I dated girls and women when I was in the closet; and did so until after I was 35 years old.

When I was teaching in a suburb of Joplin, MO, there was an identical set of twins which were in the high school and attended the same independent Pentecostal church that I did. While they were identical in looks, one was more interested in sports and the other in music. But, both of the were equally talented when it came to singing. Both of them went to college and after they were graduated, one became a high school PE teacher/coach and the other became a piano teacher, giving private lessons.

The artistic literary license taken by the screenplay writers and by Ang Lee sometimes gets completely away from various parts of Annie Proulx's original story.