A weird Brokie

[serious crayons]

So I'm taking a play-writing class, just for fun. Tonight, the teacher was talking about dialogue, and I asked whether she found a difference between what works well as dialogue on stage vs. what works well on paper, as in novels and short stories. The teacher was attempting to answer, when suddenly one of my classmates jumped in to comment.

"Take 'Brokeback Mountain,'" she said. "The original story is almost exactly the same as the movie. The dialogue is the same. You know, sometimes the book and the movie are really different, but not in this case at all. I saw the movie first, but when I finally read the short story, I couldn't believe it -- it was exactly the same, almost word for word."

I was astounded. I don't think of them as being "exactly the same" at all. Oh, the settings and characters and themes, stuff like that, are the same. But the dialogue?? There are parts that match, of course, but overall they're quite different. And of course the movie has a lot of plot that's not in the story. To me, the two are different enough that for a long time my reactions to the two were really unmatched, and it took me a while to reconcile them.

I wasn't sure what to say. I was glad my classmate is a fan of BBM, and I certainly didn't want to lecture her or publicly correct her. I also didn't want to confess to being a Brokie in this setting, didn't want to reveal that I'd seen the movie 20 times and read the story probably about 12. But I felt like I had to express my views.

So I said, "That's funny! I had exactly the opposite reaction. I feel like they're really pretty different. I have a book with both the short story and the screenplay, and I actually find a lot of differences."

Does that seem tactful? Do you think the story and movie -- particularly the dialogue -- are exactly the same? What would you have done in this situation?

[Brown Eyes]

LOL, that's awesome K!  Maybe you should just talk to her about it at some point outside of class.  It might be fun.  And, boy, I bet she had no idea that she'd made that observation about BBM in the presence of one of the moderators of Open Forum in addition to countless days and weeks analyzing BBM on imdb (and all your viewings, etc.).

Sometimes I just feel overwhelmed when someone happens to bring something up that I have a huge interest in or connection to (like BBM or Bowie).  They become such huge topics, it's hard to know where to start even beginning a conversation.  I also often feel myself getting almost automatically defensive (even if the tone of the new conversation seems positive).  

Maybe she's on another Brokie forum like EJ or DC.

And, anyway, yes, I do find her sense of the film and story being so equivalent in terms of dialogue a little odd.  I recall Larry and Diana mentioning in interviews that they tried to fit in as many aspects of the story into the screenplay as possible... but I've always taken that as a bit of an abstraction or that they took quite a bit of artistic license with that concept.  Sometimes they seem to fit details from the story in obliquely or as suggestions in the film sometimes in different spots from where they appear in the story. I know there are good examples of this, but I'm too sleepy at the moment to elaborate.  Maybe the tone of the dialogue is similar, but the film has a different feeling to me in many ways.  And, clearly Larry and Diana had to invent a ton of the dialogue (in addition to filling out whole characters.. like Cassie).  It might be fun to look up that old "Synergy" thread somewhere around here about the dynamics between Larry, Diana, Annie, and - maybe Ang is thrown into that thread too.

Or, maybe you should whip out the old STS book!  There are definitely interesting threads here about the differences between that published version of the screenplay and what we actually see in the film.  So, there are differences in all 3 major iterations of BBM (story, screenplay and film).

[Ellemeno]

It's hard to admit, but it's been a long time since I've read the short story, but my memory is that most of the dialogue in the short story did make it into the film.  But whatever - you've got yourself a locaBrokie, K.  I think you two should tawk.

And superawesomatic that you are in a playwriting class.  Give us plenty of notice on when to buy our plane tickets for opening night.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Does that seem tactful? Do you think the story and movie -- particularly the dialogue -- are exactly the same? What would you have done in this situation?

I think it was a very tactful response. I wouldn't say the dialogue was "exactly the same," but I still remember how astonished I was the first time I saw the film at how much dialogue came directly from Annie Proulx. I had on purpose re-read the story shortly before I saw the film, so Annie's writing was fresh in my memory when I saw the film. My impression has always been that the dialogue was more faithful to the source--the story--than is usual for a movie, but, at the same time, I see so few movie adaptations of books or stories that I could be completely wrong about that. For example, I have no idea how the amount of dialogue in Brokeback Mountain that was taken directly from the story might compare to  how much dialogue was taken from the story in a film adaptation of a John Grisham novel.

[Marge_Innavera]

It's hard to admit, but it's been a long time since I've read the short story, but my memory is that most of the dialogue in the short story did make it into the film.  But whatever - you've got yourself a locaBrokie, K.  I think you two should tawk.

It might have been the dialogue that gave her the impression of the short story being almost identical to the film, especially, if she'd seen the movie only once.

I saw the movie and then read the short story, and the differences really seemed to stand out, especially the physical descriptions of Ennis and Jack, and the last scene.  But memory is a funny thing. The first time I saw the film I could swear I "remembered" snippets that weren't in there; maybe there was something like that happening?

At any rate, the response was a tactful one.  Would she consider visiting here, or DC?  Or reading a few of the excelelnt essays that have been published?   Or.....  Damn, there's so much by now, who knows where to start?

[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]

Proulx's story is quite unsentimental and pitiless.

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.