A quotation from Annie Proulx?

[Jeff Wrangler]

Friends,

I've been searching through my files, hard copy and electronic, trying to find a particular quotation from Annie Proulx. She is said to have said that she would not write a sequel to Brokeback Mountain because Jack is dead, and you can't have Ennis without Jack.

I thought I had the source of that quotation somewhere, but I cannot find it to save my soul. Can anyone help me out?

Much obliged, pardners! 

[moremojo]

I know nothing about the sequel reference, but I believe it is in the "Getting Movied" (correct title?) essay, in the STS publication, where she states that you can't have Ennis without Jack. Do you remember both references appearing in the same statement?

Edit: I amended "Getting Storied" to what I believe to be the correct "Getting Movied" (sorry, don't have the book in front of me).

[Jeff Wrangler]

Thanks, Scott!

That's one place I haven't checked, because I didn't think that's where it was, but my memory isn't the best. I know that in "Getting Movied" she discusses the responses she's received to the story, and her own response to seeing the movie, but I was thinking she had made the comment in an interview, or something.

Also possible my memory is confounding two separate statements.

Anyone else?

Jeff

[opinionista]

Here it is Jeff:

Recently posted to the magazine's website: Annie Proulx's October 13, 1997, short story, which inspired the film. (Update: The magazine's taken down the link. Copyright conflicts? Profits to be generated from sales of the story-to-screenplay mini-book? But a commenter saved the day—the link above is now to Outspoken Clothing, which is bravely hosting the story itself. Thanks, commenter and host!) Proulx talks about writing it in the L.A. Times:



Proulx, 70, in town recently for the premiere of Ang Lee's film adaptation of "Brokeback Mountain," says that while she was "blown away" by the movie, she doesn't welcome the return of Ennis and Jack to the forefront of her consciousness.

"Put yourself in my place," the author says. "An elderly, white, straight female, trying to write about two 19-year-old gay kids in 1963. What kind of imaginative leap do you think was necessary? Profound, extreme, large. To get into those guys' heads and actions took a lot of 16-hour days, and never thinking about anything else and living a zombie life. That's what I had to do. I really needed an exorcist to get rid of those characters. And they roared back when I saw the film."

The story bubbled forth from "years and years of observation and subliminal taking in of rural homophobia," says Proulx, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Shipping News," was also adapted for the screen. She remembers the moment when those years of observed hatred began taking form. It was 1995 and Proulx, who lives in Wyoming, visited a crowded bar near the Montana border. The place was rowdy and packed with attractive women, everyone was drinking, and the energy was high.

"There was the smell of sex in the air," Proulx remembers. "But here was this old shabby-looking guy…. watching the guys playing pool. He had a raw hunger in his eyes that made me wonder if he were country gay. I wondered, 'What would've he been like when he was younger?' Then he disappeared, and in his place appeared Ennis. And then Jack. You can't have Ennis without Jack."

Proulx didn't think her story would ever be published. The material felt too risky; Ennis and Jack express their love with as much physical gusto as any heterosexual couple, and it happens in full view of the reader, without any nervous obfuscation. The backdrop is that wide expansive West that bore forth John Wayne and the Marlboro Man — but here the edges of the mythos fray, and the world becomes chilly and oppressive.

The story was published in the New Yorker magazine in 1997, and screenwriter Diana Ossana read it one night when she couldn't sleep."It just floored me," Ossana says, speaking after a screening of "Brokeback Mountain." She ran downstairs to show it to her writing partner, who happens to be Larry McMurtry ("The Last Picture Show," "Lonesome Dove") and suggested they turn it into a screenplay.
...
The movie, like the story, does not pull any punches. The sex is just as graphic, the critique of rural homophobia just as angst-ridden and raw. Proulx doesn't pretend to know how the movie will play with audiences, but she likes that her message will be broadcast through such a popular medium.

"There are a lot of people who see movies who do not read," Proulx says. "It used to be that writing and architecture were the main carriers, permanent carriers, of culture and civilization. Now you have to add film to that list, because film is the vehicle of cultural transmission of our time. It would be insane to say otherwise, to say that the book is still the thing. It isn't."


In the Southern Voice, more about the hard ride between story and screenplay:


“I recognized immediately that this was a story that was a work of genius,” says McMurtry...“And I wondered, why didn’t I write it? I’ve been there in the West my whole life.”

Before the end of the year, the two had optioned Proulx’s short story with their own money, but waited in vain as directors and stars came and went on the project. Gay filmmaker Gus Van Sant was attached for a while, as was fellow gay auteur Joel Schumacher.

Actors who saw the screenplay would tell Ossana it was the most beautiful script that they’d ever read but then, a few months later, would strangely distance themselves from the project.... Continued.

http://emdashes.blogspot.com/2005/12/original-brokeback-mountain-online.html

[Jeff Wrangler]

Thanks, Natali!

You're a peach!   

Jeff

[moremojo]

"But here was this old shabby-looking guy…. watching the guys playing pool. He had a raw hunger in his eyes that made me wonder if he were country gay. I wondered, 'What would've he been like when he was younger?' Then he disappeared, and in his place appeared Ennis. And then Jack. You can't have Ennis without Jack."

I know we shouldn't necessarily see the old gentleman in that Wyoming bar as a stand-in for Ennis, but he certainly inspired Ennis for Annie, and indirectly even inspired Jack ("You can't have Ennis without Jack.") The old man eyeing the young men from across the room might suggest that Ennis, in his older years, bereft of Jack, might have hungered for male intimacy from someone other than Jack...not necessarily for who they were in themselves, but perhaps because he sought some glimmer of Jack's memory in their features. It's a melancholy thought, but a profoundly and recognizably human one, and endows our perception of Ennis with added compassion.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I know we shouldn't necessarily see the old gentleman in that Wyoming bar as a stand-in for Ennis, but he certainly inspired Ennis for Annie, and indirectly even inspired Jack ("You can't have Ennis without Jack.") The old man eyeing the young men from across the room might suggest that Ennis, in his older years, bereft of Jack, might have hungered for male intimacy from someone other than Jack...not necessarily for who they were in themselves, but perhaps because he sought some glimmer of Jack's memory in their features. It's a melancholy thought, but a profoundly and recognizably human one, and endows our perception of Ennis with added compassion.

Possibly mixed in with some mourning for his own lost youth, too (shit, that happens to me now. ...), as well as for his lost "Jack," whoever he may have been.

[serious crayons]

Thanks for posting that, Natali. I had read parts of it elsewhere, I think, but not the whole thing. I thought this part was particularly interesting:

"Put yourself in my place," the author says. "An elderly, white, straight female, trying to write about two 19-year-old gay kids in 1963. What kind of imaginative leap do you think was necessary? Profound, extreme, large. To get into those guys' heads and actions took a lot of 16-hour days, and never thinking about anything else and living a zombie life. That's what I had to do. I really needed an exorcist to get rid of those characters. And they roared back when I saw the film."

Whenever I think of writing something fictional involving characters who are very removed from me, in terms of demographics or background, I always figure it would be too hard to get into their heads. So I usually write first-person nonfiction stuff. But I guess I always assumed that for the authors who do write that way, it just comes kind of naturally; they're empathetic enough to understand that other foreign POV intuitively. It's fascinating to hear what a struggle it was for her to make that "imaginative leap." She's a better writer than I am, of course, but it gives me hope ...

[Jeff Wrangler]

Now, I just need to find a quotation from Annie Proulx refusing to write a sequel. ...

[moremojo]

Possibly mixed in with some mourning for his own lost youth, too

I feel this is very much the case in the film when Ennis regards his makeshift shrine, gingerly touching the postcard that embodies that lost, youthful summer. In a way, in his heart, I think he will always see Jack as that beautiful blue boy of 1963, who melted his heart and transfixed his spirit forever.

[nakymaton]

In a way, in his heart, I think he will always see Jack as that beautiful blue boy of 1963, who melted his heart and transfixed his spirit forever.

Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams, Jack as he had first seen him, curly-headed and smiling and bucktoothed, talking about getting up off his pockets and into the control zone, but the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out and balanced on the log was there as well, in a cartoon shape and lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity. The spoon handle was the kind that could be used as a tire iron. And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.

Not quite so beautiful in the story, but still melting his heart and transfixing his soul.

Of course, it's the short story, so the pain has to be in there too, because that's just the way the story works.

[moremojo]

Of course, it's the short story, so the pain has to be in there too, because that's just the way the story works.

And horror, too...the image I am left with here of Ennis's life seems hellish. Without the softening factor introduced by the italicized prologue (absent from the original publication in The New Yorker), the story becomes a nightmare of almost unbearable sorrow.

[David]

 To get into those guys' heads and actions took a lot of 16-hour days, and never thinking about anything else and living a zombie life. That's what I had to do. I really needed an exorcist to get rid of those characters. And they roared back when I saw the film."

Hmmm,  don't we all know that feeling!!

[David]

Now, I just need to find a quotation from Annie Proulx refusing to write a sequel. ...

I recall reading the refusal, though I couldn't tell you where.   She again repeated how difficult it was to get the characters out of her head, and that she couldn't go back there again.  Or something to that effect.

[moremojo]

It was 1995 and Proulx, who lives in Wyoming, visited a crowded bar near the Montana border.

It just occurred to me that this nameless Wyoming bar has become sacred ground of no little significance. It was the scene of the first flash of divine inspiration, and saw the shades of Ennis and Jack gain refuge within Annie's mind and heart. If others knew the location, it would become a locus of pilgrimage as charged and meaningful as any other in Wyoming, or any of the Alberta sites associated with the film.

Our fellow member shakestheground plans on hearing Annie speak in North Carolina in the near future. He asked others to post or PM him if they had any particular questions they would like addressed to the author, assuming that he is able to meet and speak with her. I think I will submit this one, however trivial it might appear to some: What was the name and more precise location of that bar, and if possible, what was the exact date of that fateful 1995 visit?

[nakymaton]

I swear I've read the name of the bar somewhere before. (Maybe it was in the thread about the Casper "Equality State" conference?) I do remember that it's supposed to be in Sheridan, Wyoming.

Edit: Yes, the post was in the Casper viewing/talk thread. adrian.delmar said it was the "Mint" bar. So maybe we should ask Adrian where he heard that.

[moremojo]

I do remember that it's supposed to be in Sheridan, Wyoming.

Thanks, Mel! Just knowing that much makes a world of difference.

[Artiste]

Jack is NOT dead!

That is not the case....

since we are lead to believe that he is!!

Hugs!