Author Topic: Timeline for the last scenes  (Read 9607 times)

Offline ednbarby

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Re: Timeline for the last scenes
« Reply #20 on: May 14, 2006, 07:26:04 am »
Silk, you don't thinking the ranch neighbor was a reference to Randall? Realistic or not, I've always assumed that meant that Jack had given up on Ennis and turned to Randall as a potential co-rancher.

I can see what Silk's saying on this.  Jack had given up on ever running the ranch with Ennis, and had given up on ever having what he wanted with him.  But I can see him bringing up Randall in that way to his Dad more out of self-defense than out of really intending to do it.  I see John as chastising him, like, "What - no more talk about Ennis Del Mar, now?" and him muttering something like, "To hell with Ennis Del Mar.  And anyway, I got another friend wants to come up here, now.  Rancher down Childress.  Sick a his wife like I am..."
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Offline silkncense

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Re: Timeline for the last scenes
« Reply #21 on: May 14, 2006, 08:55:45 am »
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you don't thinking the ranch neighbor was a reference to Randall?

Sorry - wasn't clear.  I do believe that the 'ranch neighbor' is Randall.  I just don't think Jack, in his heart, really wanted to bring Randall to Lightning Flat. 

We know he did not show interest in Randall @ the dance, either @ the table or while on the bench.  I feel he initally saw him only as another "Mexico" type encounter.  Although he may have developed a stronger feeling for him over the approx five years, he still said to Ennis, "Sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it".

I just don't believe, despite the huge disappointment of August (and all the other disappointments through the years), that Jack went from that statement to giving up totally on Ennis & deciding to move Randall in w/ him.    Esp. after Ennis collapsed and Jack, presented with the perfect opportunity (Get the f... off me) instead forced Ennis back into his arms and reassuringly said, "It's alright, s'alright" yet again.

Also, for me, when Jack said, "Damn you Ennis" - it was more of a, 'I was just about to tell you I'd had enough...and you took my resolve.'  Same with the last look.
"……when I think of him, I just can't keep from crying…because he was a friend of mine…"

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Timeline for the last scenes
« Reply #22 on: May 14, 2006, 10:13:39 am »
Sorry - wasn't clear.  I do believe that the 'ranch neighbor' is Randall.  I just don't think Jack, in his heart, really wanted to bring Randall to Lightning Flat. 

We know he did not show interest in Randall @ the dance, either @ the table or while on the bench.  I feel he initally saw him only as another "Mexico" type encounter.  Although he may have developed a stronger feeling for him over the approx five years, he still said to Ennis, "Sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it".

I just don't believe, despite the huge disappointment of August (and all the other disappointments through the years), that Jack went from that statement to giving up totally on Ennis & deciding to move Randall in w/ him.    Esp. after Ennis collapsed and Jack, presented with the perfect opportunity (Get the f... off me) instead forced Ennis back into his arms and reassuringly said, "It's alright, s'alright" yet again.

Also, for me, when Jack said, "Damn you Ennis" - it was more of a, 'I was just about to tell you I'd had enough...and you took my resolve.'  Same with the last look.

Oh, I get it. In that case, I agree with everything you say.

TJ

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Re: Timeline for the last scenes
« Reply #23 on: May 14, 2006, 08:24:53 pm »
The timeline for one of the last editions of the adapted screenplay almost fit what I consider the timeline of Annie Proulx's original story.

I find it quite irritating that avowed heterosexual Larry McMurtry, who brags about women understanding emotion better than men do, had to add a "Cassie" and a "LaShawn" (or Lashawn) to the movie when people who might be them only took up the LIMITED amount of text below in the original story.

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Ennis said he'd been putting the blocks to a woman who worked part-time at the Wolf Ears bar in Signal where he was working now for Stoutamire's cow and calf outfit, but it wasn't going anywhere and she had some problems he didn't want. Jack said he'd had a thing going with the wife of a rancher down the road in Childress and for the last few months he'd slank around expecting to get shot by Lureen or the husband, one. Ennis laughed a little and said he probably deserved it.

And, IMO, a guy named "Randall" or whatever does not even need to be in the story. I would rather believe that Jack's "rancher neighbor," whom Mr. Twist talks about at Lightning Flat was a single man who had no ties with any woman.

And using the book's timeline and the way that Annie Proulx writes the story, Jack is physically in the very same shape as when Ennis saw him in May 1963. I just prefer to say that Jack is alive and as well as can be expected due to his being all banged up riding those bulls in rodeos. I just say that Jack in his "Let be, Let be" flash back (which, according to the book, took place after Ennis and Jack were together) decided that while he could not quit loving Ennis Del Mar, he would just move on with his life and find a man who was willing to have a life with him.

And, using the fact that Lureen was lying through her teeth about the accident, bookwise, along with the fact that Ennis NEVER saw any container with ashes in them when he did go to Lightning Flat (not even in the movie), Mr. John C. Twist, Sr. was lying about Jack, too. Jack's mother, since she was a Christian, refused to go along with the lie about Jack's passing. In fact, in the book after Jack's father first responds to Ennis's volunteering to take Jack's ashes to Brokeback, Mrs. Twist ignores him and changes the subject about how she kept Jack's room and Ennis was welcome to go up and see it.

Then is when the story continues here with Mr. Twist speaking again:

Quote
The old man spoke angrily. "I can't get no help out here. Jack used a say, 'Ennis del Mar,' he used a say, 'I'm goin a bring him up here one a these days and we'll lick this damn ranch into shape.' He had some half-baked idea the two a you was goin a move up here, build a log cabin and help me run this ranch and bring it up. Then, this spring he's got another one's goin a come up here with him and build a place and help run the ranch, some ranch neighbor a his from down in Texas. He's goin a split up with his wife and come back here. So he says. But like most a Jack's ideas it never come to pass."
   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.
 

Notice how he started his next speech with "I can't get no help out here." That sentence was left out of the movie's dialog. I think that it is important to Ol' John's self-centered stud duck attitude.

John C. Twist, Sr. is the STUD DUCK in the original story. Ain't no man named "L. D. Newsome" in the original story.




Offline silkncense

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Re: Timeline for the last scenes
« Reply #24 on: May 15, 2006, 09:47:28 am »
TJ -

You're saying that Jack is alive & living somewhere with the ranch neighbor? 

That he simply walked away from Ennis w/ 'no little word?' 

That John Twist, Lureen, etc are covering up this fact?  And this is based on what Annie wrote?

I have to say I totally do not see that in either the book or film.  And as an aside, the scriptwriters had to extend the action in the movie since it was based on a mere 11 page shortstory in the New Yorker and that alone would not translate to a 2+ hour movie.   

Also, do you have an issue with the fact that "heterosexual"(s) Annie Prulx, Larry McMurtry, and Diana Ossana wrote the story/screenplay?  You have made a point of their being heterosexual repeatedly.  And if you do, where have they failed? 

Or is it that men can't write women characters and women can't write male characters?  Or writers shouldn't write what they have no personal experience with?  I am not understanding your repeated references to this.

« Last Edit: May 15, 2006, 10:41:43 am by silkncense »
"……when I think of him, I just can't keep from crying…because he was a friend of mine…"

TJ

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Re: Timeline for the last scenes
« Reply #25 on: May 15, 2006, 08:27:15 pm »
Oh, I think that real men who are normal and have been properly raised by great parents can talk about emotion and understand emotion as well as women can. I just found it odd that Larry McMurtry who writes about women with emotions who talk about emotions in his own novels gave that reason for adding women to the screenplay adaptation. Any man who is a writer and cannot show, talk, or write about emotion himself would have few or no female characters in his works.

I have had two different courses, each in separate institutions of higher learning, related to the study and criticism of literature. The one at Northeastern State College (Tahlequah, Oklahoma) which I took as a grad Education student was an English course called "Literary Criticism. The one which I took at Oral Roberts Universtity (Tulsa, OK) when I was a graduate theology student was called "Interpreting the Bible" and was commonly called "Biblical Hermeneutics." While the literature in each course was about different areas of study and different types of literature, the basic hermeneutic principles/rules were the same for both classes. "Hermeneutics" refers to the critical study of any kind of literature. 

Considering the fact that Lureen's book character was very much like her father's, I would say that that Lureen might have volunteered to lie for Jack if he would get lost as far as her own life was concerned. After all, it was a loveless marriage and Jack had only married her in hopes to get financial help from her father so he could continue to be a bull rider.

While the movie Lureen has a little tear, the book Lureen "was polite but the little voice was cold as snow" when she talked to Ennis on the phone. I think that the reason she only suggested that Ennis go up to Lightning Flat was due to Ennis asking if Jack's folks were still there. (That phone call is the only time Lureen is quoted in the book.)

She could have been 100% correct in that Jack had wanted his ashes scattered up on Brokeback Mountain and he could have had that written down in will. Jack was not a person who told everybody every little thing about himself. He never told Ennis that he wanted him to go up with him to work on the Twist ranch; he only spoke to his father about Ennis and him doing that.

I read what Ang Lee said, in an interview, about Lureen lying to Ennis on the phone before I even saw the movie.

Jack's father never uses the word "ashes" in his talking in the book. Mr. Twist uses "he" when he talks about the family plot and Jack.

Oh, I have no issue whatsover with Annie Proulx and her writing the story. She has always been completely open about her heterosexual orientation and her attempt to understand what a closeted homosexual who would be a cowboy in Wyoming would go through because of the homophobia in Wyoming. (I need a proof-reader to help me be sure I wrote that correctly. I hope the reader understands what I mean.) And, Annie Proulx sometimes used subtle hints of things which were not exactly like characters in the book thought they were. (The "no instruction manual needed" was used as irony in the first night in the tent scene in the book; because Ennis already knew how to have sex with another guy. The reason for Ennis's evidence of the clear slick also shows that Ennis had been sexually aroused during the deepened intimacy scene in the book's narrative.)

IMO, what happened outside of wherever Ennis was during the story could have been shown as scenes with a narrative "voice-over" telling what was going on.

When Ennis talked about what he saw when he was about 9 years old, no one in the flashback scene even talked.

Offline delalluvia

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Re: Timeline for the last scenes
« Reply #26 on: May 15, 2006, 08:46:38 pm »
Interesting POV TJ, don't agree with the Lureen lying for Jack thing, but interesting nonetheless.

It is difficult for a member of one sex to write about another.  Some do it better than others, I imagine Proulx had her hands full not only writing about the opposite sex, but about characters who did not relate well to women.

Offline silkncense

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Re: Timeline for the last scenes
« Reply #27 on: May 16, 2006, 09:19:28 pm »
I think a great writer can write from any point of view.  Literature would be in a sorry state otherwise.

And, although I have not studied "Hermeneutics" - I still think your interpretation is not logical within the sense of the story. 

To each their own, however.
« Last Edit: May 19, 2006, 10:08:34 am by silkncense »
"……when I think of him, I just can't keep from crying…because he was a friend of mine…"