Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Short story - scene placement
bbm_stitchbuffyfan:
You know... I've done my share of misleading interpretations in my days of Brokeback viewing...
This is slightly off-topic but why do you think they didn't mention the abuse in the movie? Possibly, a lack of importance? The movie is wonderful without it but I'm curious to see how they would've worked that in.
TJ:
--- Quote from: Shuggy on April 27, 2006, 10:03:54 pm ---David Indiana's discovery of the meaning of a line in the film (reported at IMDb BBM) has reminded me of something:
It's just occurred to me why the scene of Jack being abused as a boy by his father occurs where it does in the short story. Ennis remembers it as he's going up the stairs to Jack's bedroom. If he had remembered it before he went to Lightning Flat, he never would have gone.
We don't seem to have a place for discussing the short story...
--- End quote ---
Here is a quote from the pages of the stand-alone book about that scene:
--- Quote ---So now he knew it had been the tire iron. He stood up, said, you bet he'd like to see Jack's room, recalled one of Jack's stories about this old man. Jack was dick-clipped and the old man was not; it bothered the son who had discovered the anatomical disconformity during a hard scene. He had been about three or four, he said, always late getting to the toilet, struggling with buttons, the seat, the height of the thing and often as not left the surroundings sprinkled down. The old man blew up about it and this one time worked into a crazy rage. "Christ, he licked the stuffin out a me, knocked me down on the bathroom floor, whipped me with his belt. I thought he was killin me. Then he says, 'You want a know what it's like with piss all over the place? I'll learn you,' and he pulls it out and lets go all over me, soaked me, then he throws a towel at me and makes me mop up the floor, take my clothes off and warsh them in the bathtub, warsh out the towel, I'm bawlin and blubberin. But while he was hosin me down I seen he had some extra material that I was missin. I seen they'd cut me different like you'd crop a ear or scorch a brand. No way to get it right with him after that."
--- End quote ---
Ennis had that memory flashback when he heard Jack's father speak the 2nd time after Mrs. Twist invited Ennis to go upstairs to see Jack's room.
I like the book version better where Mrs. Twist interrupted her husband during his speech and that was like she was not going to agree with anything her husband said about Jack. To some of us who read the book, we get the feeling that what Mr. Twist said in response to Jack's ashes NOT being given to Ennis (to take to Brokeback Mountain) was said that way because there weren't any to begin with. And, Mrs. Twist, being a Pentecostal, refused to lie and changed the subject so that she would not have to say anything about the scheme. I say "lie" because even Ang Lee said in an interview that Lureen was lying to Ennis when he called her.
Shuggy:
--- Quote from: TJ on April 29, 2006, 07:50:11 pm ---
--- Quote from: Shuggy on April 27, 2006, 10:03:54 pm ---It's just occurred to me why the scene of Jack being abused as a boy by his father occurs where it does in the short story. Ennis remembers it as he's going up the stairs to Jack's bedroom. If he had remembered it before he went to Lightning Flat, he never would have gone.
We don't seem to have a place for discussing the short story...
--- End quote ---
Here is a quote from the pages of the stand-alone book about that scene:
--- Quote ---So now he knew it had been the tire iron. He stood up, said, you bet he'd like to see Jack's room, recalled one of Jack's stories about this old man. Jack was dick-clipped and the old man was not; it bothered the son who had discovered the anatomical disconformity during a hard scene. He had been about three or four, he said, always late getting to the toilet, struggling with buttons, the seat, the height of the thing and often as not left the surroundings sprinkled down. The old man blew up about it and this one time worked into a crazy rage. "Christ, he licked the stuffin out a me, knocked me down on the bathroom floor, whipped me with his belt. I thought he was killin me. Then he says, 'You want a know what it's like with piss all over the place? I'll learn you,' and he pulls it out and lets go all over me, soaked me, then he throws a towel at me and makes me mop up the floor, take my clothes off and warsh them in the bathtub, warsh out the towel, I'm bawlin and blubberin. But while he was hosin me down I seen he had some extra material that I was missin. I seen they'd cut me different like you'd crop a ear or scorch a brand. No way to get it right with him after that."
--- End quote ---
--- End quote ---
While it would have been excellent symmetry to have shown that Jack had been abused as Ennis had, it would have interrupted the flow to have put that scene there, and it would have been desperately difficult to get from Ennis's recollection into Jack's thoughts. It would also have been very hard to have conveyed the meaning of the scene without showing a) a man's penis b) a boy's penis c) pissing, all of which would have bumped the film into R territory.
One way to get around that would be to have shown Jack telling the story to Ennis earlier, possibly with a flashback of Jack's then, which wouldn't have had to be so explicit since Jack could explain it (just as we heard Ennis explaining his flashback), and then have Ennis pass the bathroom (upstairs?) and HEAR some of that scene in flashback, though it would still be a problem how Ennis concluded from that that it was the tyre iron.
TJ:
--- Quote from: Shuggy on April 30, 2006, 08:10:29 am ---
While it would have been excellent symmetry to have shown that Jack had been abused as Ennis had, it would have interrupted the flow to have put that scene there, and it would have been desperately difficult to get from Ennis's recollection into Jack's thoughts. It would also have been very hard to have conveyed the meaning of the scene without showing a) a man's penis b) a boy's penis c) pissing, all of which would have bumped the film into R territory.
One way to get around that would be to have shown Jack telling the story to Ennis earlier, possibly with a flashback of Jack's then, which wouldn't have had to be so explicit since Jack could explain it (just as we heard Ennis explaining his flashback), and then have Ennis pass the bathroom (upstairs?) and HEAR some of that scene in flashback, though it would still be a problem how Ennis concluded from that that it was the tyre iron.
--- End quote ---
I agree that the screen writers could have chosen an earlier time in the movie with Jack was with Ennis and Jack told him about his father pissing on him. In an earlier scene, it could have been more detailed; but, when Ennis had that memory in the book, they could have a quick short flashback by Ennis remembering that just before he went up the stairs to Jack's room.
In the book (that's what I call the original published in book form short story), Annie Proulx described the 2-story house as having only 4 rooms, two down and two up. And since Jack was almost always "late" getting to the bathroom, more than likely the bathroom was downstairs as an add-on to the house. I have seen houses made like that. (My family did live in a house like that in the country but, it did not have an indoor bathroom, only an outdoor toilet.)
Another reason for the bathroom to be on the ground level was that it would have been cheaper to use less plumbing and since Jack's bedroom was tiny, more than likely the upstairs bedrooms were more likely attic bedrooms. Here in Oklahoma, USA, we have referred to houses with attic bedrooms above the ground floor as 2-story houses, even the one we lived in.
In the USA, the movie was given an R rating. Adding the pissing scene, with Jack talking about it would not changed the rating which it was given. They could have done that without actually showing Mr. Twist's uncircumcised penis, too. Jack could have just done a voice-over of the telling of it. The movied did not actually show Ennis and Jack having sexual intercourse; because, you really don't see a penis in the movie (other from a distance in then skinny-dippin' scene).
Many things from the original story were ignored by the screenplay writers which I think were important to the story. Two of them were the fact that Ennis drove his own truck to Aguirre's office in Signal (the place where K. E., his brother, lived) and the fact that the trailer where Ennis tacked the postcard and hung the shirts on the trailer wall was at the Signal, Wyoming Stoutamire ranch. The real story begins with Ennis getting ready to move off the ranch because it is being sold and the the narrator flashes back to Ennis reporting to work at Aguirre's office in Signal, to bring the reader up to date as to why Ennis had the dream and why he had the shirts.
Shuggy:
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.
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