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A weird Brokie

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Monika:
I saw the movie before I read the ss, and I remember being very surprised how similar they were, and how much of what was in the film was in the original story, given how short the ss is. There are differences of course, but I have always thought that the two are very similar, so I understand her reaction.

Mandy21:
Well, I've watched the movie, literally, more than 200 times, but only read the short story twice.

The movie leaves me with hope, and I give the credit for that to Ang Lee.

The book leaves me with sadness, somehow.

But I think it's great that you're taking this class, K, and I hope you get in to even greater discussions with this newfound friend.

louisev:
I think that there are several memorable things in the film that ARE in the short story.  And it is those memorable things that made it into the reviews and stick out for viewers which give people the impression of the two complementing one another.  But a huge amount of the story is written by McMurtry - the entire Cassie portion of the story - screenplay only, the entire motel dialogue has been reworked to cut out Ennis's refusal to leave his wife and move in with Jack - that is deferred to a scene that does not exist in the story, and Annie Proulx herself was unhappy about it until she saw the director's cut and reconsidered it.  The reunion kissing scene is quite similar, the dozy embrace scene, quite similar,the "quit you" confrontation has much of the same dialogue (not all)  and several of the events on the mountain including the first tent scene are quite exact.  But those are just highlight areas.  The whole Thanksgiving thing at Jack and Lureen's does not exist in the story.  However, it is a tribute to the screenwriters that they did manage to get the flavor of Annie Proulx's story. I remember having a great resistance to the concept of Brokeback the film as a "love story" because it does not really come across that way in the short story at all, and that is how it first hit me.  Proulx's story is quite unsentimental and pitiless and the film brought another whole perspective to the story that would not have been there without a reinterpretation.

Jeff Wrangler:

--- Quote from: louisev on June 23, 2010, 10:33:18 am ---Proulx's story is quite unsentimental and pitiless.

--- End quote ---

As are most of her short stories, if not all of them, I believe. (I've never read her novels, so I can't comment on them.)

serious crayons:
Thanks for the comments, everybody!

BTW, I didn't really intend to title this thread "A weird Brokie." LOL. I was going to say "A weird Brokie encounter" or something like that. I must have been in the middle of trying to figure out how to word it, then jumped up to make dinner or something and accidentally posted it as is! I didn't mean to imply that the woman in class is weird, or even necessarily a Brokie, for that matter. I'M the weird Brokie.

Anyway, I just skimmed through the story again to see how much of the dialogue matches. I would say that much of it IS pretty close, with many lines from the short story transferred intact to the movie. Except for the motel room scene, which is very different. We've often talked about how there's "Movie Ennis" and "Story Ennis" -- a lot of the differences between the two come up in the motel scene. And of course there is tons of dialogue written for the movie that doesn't appear in the short story.

I think last night in class those two things were going through my mind -- the differences in the motel-room conversation, and the fact that the movie contains so much material that wasn't in the story. But now, having reread it, I can see her point, too. A lot of the conversations are very close. So if you're familiar with the movie, then read the story, I can see where you would recognize a lot of lines and be amazed by that. What threw me is that she seemed to be saying the movie is pretty much an exact duplication of the story, which I don't think is true at all.

I also agree with Louise (and others) who say that the moods of the two are very different. "Unsentimental and pitiless" is a good way to describe the story. Whereas McMurtry/Ossana throw many a bone to those of us who like our tragic tales of rural homophobia to be a little bit, well, more romantic.

Maybe, as a peace offering (just in case she took offense at my disagreeing with her point) I will bring the book to class next week and ask if she'd like to borrow it. In a nice way, I mean. Not a "Hey bitch, you might want to compare those motel-room scenes and check out the Cassie character" sort of way.

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