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Sometimes I wish A.Proulx would have written the story different. How about you?

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Penthesilea:
Sometimes I really, really wish Annie Proulx would not have written the story as it is.
Bang, there I said it! And I mean it.
I love the story and the movie. And I love my obsession with this movie. I love to be on BetterMost, to discuss the movie, to analyze, to find new thoughts about it and on and on.

After five months I still can't get them out of my head. I still wake up in the morning and Ennis and Jack are on my mind. I go to bed and fall asleep thinking about them or mulling over something I read here in the forum. Not every day, but most days.
They are always close to the surface of my mind.

That's the part I'm fine with. But:
I have enough of the heartbreak. I want a happy end for Ennis and Jack. Seriously.
Maybe we all would not be here, maybe we all would have long forgotten about this movie if it had a happy end. But sometimes I would trade the wonderful experience of this movie, of being here with you, for a happy end.
Right now I have such a moment. To be more exact: I feel like this since I saw the movie again last Sunday. I've seen it many times now. But last Sunday it hit me like it was the second time (my second viewing was much more intense than the first). There it was again: the emotional gut punch most of us know. And it didn't go away since then.

I haven't been around here for the last few days, because I've frenetically read fanfiction. Alwayas in search of a story that would bring my heart on order again. I haven't found such a story. Bad luck, most of the stories I read were sad ones. I found some with happy endings that I hadn't read before, but they were mostly too soppy for my taste.

I keep telling myself it's just a movie, just a story, just pure fiction. Ennis and Jack are not real and therefore there's no reason that Proulx's imagination, her version of the story, should be any more valid than the ones I try to imagine myself or the ones any fanfic writer wrote.

But WHY, the hell, does it have such a profund effect on me (us) then? Why does it feel so real? Why do we feel like Ennis and Jack were real? Why do we not just stop?
Again, I feel like I did at the beginning of my BBM journey: I'm so unutterable glad that you all are here too. Glad that my only fellow Brokie in RL is still as infected as I am. Makes me feel less like a weirdo.


This has become a long post and I zoned out a bit. The question I wanted to ask you is: Do you sometimes wish Annie Proulx would have written the story different? Not only as a short thought, as a kind of joke, but seriously?

jpwagoneer1964:
The more time goes by the more I appreciate the way the story was written especially in movie form. I would like a happy ending as much as anyone, given to times and location the story was I understand it more. I see why Ennis could not give in to his fears, he had good reason to be fearful.  I see Jack, who grew up more more insolated than Ennis, always the dreamer, comfortor, wanting so much more. Although a tragic ending, both Jack and Ennis treasured their relationship, and never gave up.

opinionista:
Well, I happen to like the story the way it is. And it needed no happy ending no matter how much we all wish Ennis and Jack would've been able to stay together, and live the sweet life. IMO, this is not just a love story, it's also a story about what it meant to be gay in 1963 in Wyoming, and the difficulties it entailed. I think gay people in general had it tough during that period, and some still do today in 2006, and not just in Wyoming. The story sends a strong message about it. I think Annie Proulx somehow wanted to show us the damage intolerance and homophobia can cause to a person. It can even take their lives away, both emotionally and physically. IMO if this story had a happy ending, we wouldn't have learned that lesson.

nakymaton:
I wish that Jack and Ennis, the people who are too damn real in my head to be characters in a story or on film, could have a happy ending.

But the story? If I step back and appreciate the story and the movie as art, then, well, I think the sad ending is a big part of why the story feels so powerful. If they had had a happy ending, I could have walked out of the theater and left them behind, living happily ever after. Because... I don't know why. Maybe it isn't necessary to have empathy for people who live happily ever after; maybe they just don't need the rest of us. (As if there's anything the rest of us can do about the sad ending. I mean, it's not like we can stop by Ennis's trailer and bring him half a cooked chicken and a dish of peach cobbler, is it?) But because the ending's so tragic... well, that's what makes me care so much, I think.

tamarack:
I don't watch the movie as much as I think about it because I just don't want the sadness sometimes, and the aftermath for me of my second time in the theater was also much worse than the first time, penthesilea. But no, I don't wish that Annie had written a different story.

I agree with naky that if it had ended on an up note, they wouldn't have needed us to care as much as we do. Probably there wouldn't be a BetterMost or a Chez Tremblay, and there wouldn't be many, many people making huge and not-so-huge changes in their lives because of what they learned about themselves through Jack and Ennis.

I have learned so much about what it means to be a homosexual in our society, something that I hadn't even thought about before, and have been shocked and saddened and moved to tears by much of it. I'm still changing my thinking about many things and questioning many long held beliefs and ideas, including many on the religious side of things, and it is all due to Jack and Ennis, and Annie, of course (and some of the people on BetterMost and dave cullen).

Have you really not read any good fan fiction?

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