“I wish I knew how to quit you,” says a frustrated Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) to his secret lover Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) in a now emblematic scene from Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain,” the celebrated gay-themed drama based on Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story.
The film was originally released in December 2005, but is back in theaters this June for a 20th-annivesary Pride Month reissue.
Jack’s sorrowful line came to synthesize the doomed love affair between the two rugged men for whom the majestic landscapes of Wyoming became a sacred romantic hide-out — the only place they were free to express desire and tenderness for each other.
But that line, and the notion of two men who embody an archetype of American masculinity falling for each other, was both parodied and memed in pop culture — often reduced to “the gay cowboy movie” — even while the film received critical raves and Oscar nominations (eight, including best picture, a prize it lost to the movie “Crash”). Arriving at a political turning point in the United States, “Brokeback Mountain” struck a chord far beyond cinephile circles.
For the film critic and author Alonso Duralde, who wrote a book about queer cinema history called “Hollywood Pride,” the film was a watershed moment for representation in mainstream Hollywood. It was distributed by Focus Features, the indie outfit of Universal Pictures, with a revered director and up-and-coming stars, which meant it could potentially have a wider reach and impact.
“Gay marriage was being battled state by state, and to me it felt like, ‘This is a movie straight people are going to see, and they’re going to weep at the end because two gay guys couldn’t get together; because society prevented that from happening,” Duralde, who worked for the L.G.B.T.Q. publication The Advocate at the time of the film’s release, recalled in a video interview.
But Diana Ossana, one of the film’s producers and screenwriters who won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay alongside Larry McMurtry, said that the industry wasn’t eager to make the movie.
“I was getting calls from people all over Hollywood telling me what a beautiful script it was, but I was getting a little bit frustrated with the praise, only because nobody would commit,” she said via video call from her home in Arizona.
She said that early on, actors’ representatives were telling their clients that it would be career suicide to take on the roles. Even after Lee came on board (Gus Van Sant and Joel Schumacher had considered directing), casting difficulties persisted until Gyllenhaal and Ledger signed on.
“I appreciated the two actors doing those roles back then,” said Lee in a video call. “When I interviewed some actors, I was just like, ‘I’m a good director and that’s a good story. They should be jumping for it.’ But you would see the hesitation in a lot of them, but these two guys, they didn’t hesitate, so I give them credit for that.”
Speaking to Howard Stern in 2015, Gyllenhaal said he was interested because Lee was directing, and more important, because “the script moved me.”
During a news conference at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival, Ledger addressed those with homophobic views by saying, “I think it’s an incredible shame that people go out of their way to voice their disgust or negative opinions about the way two people wish to love one another.”
For Lee, who won a directing Oscar for “Brokeback” and came to the film after making “The Hulk,” the production rekindled his creative impetus. “The movie was so nurturing to me. I wanted to quit moviemaking. I was that tired right before that,” said Lee. “That movie made me feel there’s a movie God who loves me and wanted me to keep contributing to cinema.”
Lee thought that making a movie like this today could be difficult not because of its themes, but because “the studios have gotten more sophisticated in how to get control, and the audience has gotten jaded.”
The director said that he had not anticipated that “Brokeback” would become a cultural phenomenon. “Once it was in the shopping malls, the backlash made me concerned, but only for a short time,” Lee said. “When people saw the movie, a lot of them just melted. That’s a wonderful thing. It helped them see the issues and have empathy and be more open-minded.”
And what about the best picture Oscar? “Stop it!” Lee said, laughing boisterously when I suggested that “Brokeback” should have won. He then said, “I think so too, but I hold no grudge.”
Ossana said that she knew the prospects were slim for taking home the big prize. Weeks before the ceremony, after Oscar voting was closed, she attended a party for the nominees at the home of Paul Haggis, the director of “Crash.” Clint Eastwood was in attendance and Ossana, a fan of “Unforgiven,” was eager to meet him.
“Paul started walking me over and he goes, ‘Diana, I have to tell you, he hasn’t seen your movie.’ And it was like somebody kicked me in the stomach,” she said. “That’s when I knew we would not win best picture.”
Ossana believed that homophobia prevented the win. “People want to deny that, but what else could it have been? We’d won everything up until then,” she said.
Duralde recalled older Hollywood legends, including Ernest Borgnine and Tony Curtis, publicly stating that they would not watch “Brokeback.” “I absolutely think that block of voters kept this movie from winning best picture,” he said.
But the movie did have a significant emotional impact on mainstream audiences. Once it received a wide release in early 2006, Ossana traveled to multiple states including Missouri, South Dakota and Colorado to witness audience reactions firsthand.
“The theaters were all packed because everybody was so curious about this movie. And when the sex scene between the boys came on, you’d see some people got up and left, but not very many,” Ossana recalled. “At the end of the film nobody would leave. They would just sit there nailed to their seats until the lights came on, and there would be people crying.”
“‘Brokeback Mountain’ proved that a narrative about queer characters could resonate with moviegoers across the spectrum,” Duralde noted, “and that queer stories can be told in a way that is honest and forthright and still be palatable to a mainstream audience.”
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