Why not read the original short story by Annie Proulx?

[Jack_ME]

Hi Donna and Iris and all,

I know just what you both mean. I saw BBM last afternoon for my 10th time. Went with a friend of many years...but we had had a falling out about 6 0r 7 years back and although we would meet in the same social circle of aquaintances and be friendly there, this was the first time he and I spent time together just the two. This was his second viewing. I was pleased he asked to see it with me. He knew I'm really taken with the whole experience and I feel it also affirmed that he trusted me emotionally, as the film really knocked him for a loop on his first viewing and he was a bit nervous to see it again. And it knocked him for a loop again! But it was nice to be able to comfort him just by my presence and then we discussed the film for about 4 hours! (Had dinner too)

I've brought hom tonight "Monster's Ball". I had not seen it, but I had heard that Heath's character in this film is in some ways similar to Ennis, so I'm curious to watch it. I also brought home "Ned Kellley" with Heath and Orlando Bloom, and I got a film, recommended by the video store gal, called "Lovely and Amazing" with Jake. Last week I watched "The Good Girl" and "Donnie Darko" with Jake and previously I had watched "Brothers Grimm" with Heath.


Honest to betsey I never even heard of either of these guys before Brokeback! I'm not that up on my pop culture!
Actually I'm really glad of that, because part of the powerful impact BBM had on me was that I ONLY saw the characters, since I had no clue who any of the actors were!

(side note, my video store is the best in the universe. No lie! It's a single locaton created way back when by a film affecionado, and he employs only other film buffs, and he stocks the most esoteric and fantastic stuff along with the usual new releases etc. It's amazing how many film titles he has in this store, for it's size! Thousands of titles! This comment is just a plug for the wonderful result of following one's interests. which this fellow did)

Well off to supper.

This thread seems to have drifted off topic! Not sure how we handle that. Maybe Phillip can move it to another location? Or maybe it doesn't matter.

Jack in Maine

[Aussie Chris]

Honest to betsey I never even heard of either of these guys before Brokeback! I'm not that up on my pop culture!
Actually I'm really glad of that, because part of the powerful impact BBM had on me was that I ONLY saw the characters, since I had no clue who any of the actors were!

Hey Jack, just on the subject of Jake and Heath before BBM, the thought of whether I would have a different opinion of BBM if I didn't know their work so well also crossed my mind.  Especially when I think of Donnie Darko since before BB, DD was my #1 favourite film.  In some ways, DD managed to capture how I see the world, at least in terms of being a bit of a disestablishmentarian.  I was therefore a little worried that I would somehow see "Jack" in "Donnie" or vice versa, but to my pleasant surprise I easily separate these characters.  It is only when I watch BBM that I see Jack and Ennis.  Maybe it's a testiment of their acting, or Ang Lee's direction, but I'm always completely transported into the world of BBM.

Before BBM the only film of Health's I really liked "10 things I hate about you", which I think was his first role in the U.S.  I haven't seen Monster's Ball but just about everything else Heath did between "10 things" and "Brothers Grimm" left me thinking what a waste of a movie ticket.  Clearly he thought the same thing and he has said as much in a number of interviews.

Jake on the other hand has always been one of my favourites ever since Donnie Darko.  He's always great and I've loved just about every film he's been in (except maybe for Day After Tomorrow and Jarhead).  If you get a chance check out Moonlight Mile.  It's a bit of a slow burn, but Jake's at his Indy best in it.

Congrat's also Jack on rekindling your friendship, what a lovely way to do it over our cherished film...

[bbm_stitchbuffyfan]

After hearing some of you guys nit-picking about differences between the story and the book, I must disagree. While it's true that certain mesmerizing aspects of the short story (such as "lil' darlin") were left out, the movie was very faithful to the book. It's remarkable, to me, how accurately the dialogue, characters, and mood is presented in the movie in comparison to Proulx's book. I do wish some of the scenes were in the movie as well but I do think, overall, the movie was a remarkably faithful adaptation. This thread has compelled me to go read the book right now.

Both works of art are beautiful and excellent.
 

[juneaux]

Both works of art are beautiful and excellent.
 

I wholeheartedly concur!   

[Aussie Chris]

After hearing some of you guys nit-picking about differences between the story and the book, I must disagree. While it's true that certain mesmerizing aspects of the short story (such as "lil' darlin") were left out, the movie was very faithful to the book. It's remarkable, to me, how accurately the dialogue, characters, and mood is presented in the movie in comparison to Proulx's book. I do wish some of the scenes were in the movie as well but I do think, overall, the movie was a remarkably faithful adaptation. This thread has compelled me to go read the book right now.

Both works of art are beautiful and excellent.

Was I one of the nit-pickers?  I agree, in fact I'm astounded that a short-story could be made into a screenplay and then into a film pretty much unaltered.  Has that ever happened before and worked as well?  Harry Potter comes to mind but I wouldn't say it worked as well?  In BBM, just about all of the dialogue is there, the nuances, the gestures, everything.  In my earlier posts I was just commenting that I was grateful that the film retained a subtlety that could have easily been lost with a lesser director.  So I'm right there with you on my gushing praise for both works of art.  They both give me pleasure in different ways, but in my heart they both are simply the story of Jack and Ennis.

[TJ]

I have been distracted by involvements in other forums not even connected the "BetterMost" ones and I forgot that I started this discussion thread back in March.

Reading Annie Proulx's original story, Larry McMurtry's & Diana Ossana's co-authored screenplay and watching Ang Lee's movie is like reading Matthew, Mark and Luke in the Bible, which are called the "Synoptic Gospels," but reading them one at a time before comparing them. All three gospels are basically the same in a way but there 3 different tellings of the same story. Two of the authors were Jews and one, Luke, was a Greek. Then, theres the Gospel According to John and it has quite a bit of things that are not in the other three gospels.

Since I initially posted the first message in this thread, I have seen lots of still pics online which seem to imply that some of the stuff which was in Annie Proulx's story and/or in the McMurty/Ossana screenplay could have been in the movie but was left out.

While the screenplay and the movie had Ennis hitching a ride to Signal with a semi-truck driver, the book has him driving his own truck there. I have seen still pics of Ennis and Jack wearing the very same shirts and jeans the wore in Aguirre's office and they are leaning against a GMC pickup which we see that Ennis drives later in Riverton. But, the truck is parked on the grassy area between the highway across from Aguirre's trailer and the railroad track.

On one of the BbM forums which likes to brag, in words to this effect, that it is better than any other Brokeback Mountain Movie forum on the internet, quite a few stated that they did not like the book at all but enjoyed the movie very much.

And . . . , some people on that forum said that while they the movie, they disliked the fact that the music for the movie was either real country music or the sound track was country & western music influenced. But, the music genres in the movie go along with what is in Annie Proulx's story . . . (and even with what is in the screenplay, too).

[FuzzyChanny]

Was I one of the nit-pickers?  I agree, in fact I'm astounded that a short-story could be made into a screenplay and then into a film pretty much unaltered.  Has that ever happened before and worked as well?  Harry Potter comes to mind but I wouldn't say it worked as well?  In BBM, just about all of the dialogue is there, the nuances, the gestures, everything.  In my earlier posts I was just commenting that I was grateful that the film retained a subtlety that could have easily been lost with a lesser director.  So I'm right there with you on my gushing praise for both works of art.  They both give me pleasure in different ways, but in my heart they both are simply the story of Jack and Ennis.

BBM is a LOT shorter than any of the Harry Potter books.

[Front-Ranger]

In my case I read the story in 1997, and saw the movie nearly 10 years later. I was glad that Lee excised the cruel treatment of Jack from his father because the excellent performance of John Twist said it all. But I missed some of the dialogue of Ennis that Lee/Ossana/McMurtry cut out, because the movie made Ennis into much more of an unattainable object of love and made Jack's situation so much more quixotic and heartbreaking. I even feel anger towards movie Ennis for leading Jack on through the reunion when he had no intention of following through. Ossana and McMurtry made the perfect decision to flesh out the supporting characters and women while leaving Jack and Ennis pretty much true to their story characters. In the story to screenplay book, McMurtry said something about short stories being more adaptable to film as opposed to long novels, where you had to spend most of your time figuring out what to cut.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I think somewhere Annie Proulx once said something like, "You can't have Ennis without Jack," and you sure can't have this movie without the short story.

At one level, that's obvious: No story in the first place, then no movie to be made from it. And what astonished me most about the film at my first viewing was how faithful it was to the original story. Even the characters created by McMurtry and Ossana to open up the story, sometimes (as in the case of Cassie) based on less than a complete sentence of Annie Proulx's original prose, were entirely plausible and worked very well.

I understand the position that the film and the story are two different works of art, but I still feel that anyone who refuses to take the story with him or her in attempting to understand the film does himself or herself a disservice, because sometimes in the dialectic of comparing the two, enlightenment can be found.

Someone on this thread mentioned Annie Proulx's essay in Story to Screenplay. I also heartily recommend Diana Ossana's essay in the same book. I found it very helpful in formulating my own conclusions about the movie.

[TJ]

I hope this area of the forums is a place where I have a right to voice my opinion without people telling me that I have to right to one because I am not from the big city or another country like in other forums not connected with bettermost.net. In what went on in those other forums, I was reminde of the country singer, Toby Keith, who claimed that the Dixie Chicks ladies did not have a right to freedom of speech because he wrote songs and they didn't.

In some cases, the screenplay writers (SW) took what was merely mentioned and created one of more scenes based on that.

Why the SW people decided that Jack Twist would be hired by his father-in-law makes no sense at all.

In the book, when Jack complained in 1967 about getting no financial help from Lureen's NO NAME father in the first place. Jack did not even work for the company until after the man who hated Jack's guts was dead.

Consider the ages of Jack's son when he is talked about in the book. The boy is 8 months old when he is first mentioned and then the next time Jack talks about him, he is 15 years old and has a learning problem.

In my opinion, if the screenplay writers had actually really been true to the original story, they would not have merely tried to keep the "spirit of the story" by adding their own spin to it.

In a Time Magazine interview, Larry McMurtry admitted adding women to the story because he likes women and think women understand men better than men understand themselves.

I have observed that while some women have special gifts when understanding some things about men, most of them really have little understanding when it comes to men who are exclusively homosexual in their sexual orientation. I have met heterosexual women who were professional therapists and the reason they had an understanding of gay men was due to what they learned mostly from a gay brother or son.