Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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438 of 449 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Women hold their own in this worthy adaptation of a gay love story, December 21, 2005
This little volume contains Annie Proulx's original short story version of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN as it appeared in The New Yorker in 1997 along with the screenplay to Ang Lee's film by Larry McMurtry (The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment) and Diana Ossana. The screenwriters retained much of the spareness, tension, and overt and threatened violence of the original story. They even incorporate much of Proulx's unfilmable descriptions in between the characters' speeches (perhaps as cues for method actors). The biggest change from story to screen seems to be the expanded roles of the women in the men's lives--the wives, girlfriends (created from whole cloth), and Ennis's daughter, Alma Jr. This seems justified, given that the story takes place over twenty years, a period in which both main characters, Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, carried out a spotty love affair but constructed their public lives according to more conventional mores. Ennis's love of his daughters is, we feel, genuine and not a substitution or consolation prize. And the fact that she can see her father's loneliness only adds to the pathos of his situation.
Each writer contributes an essay about their experience bringing this story to the big screen. Proulx's "Getting Movied" was especially thoughtful and generous. The volume would have been nicely served, however, had Ang Lee contributed an Introduction. If you're a movie credits geek, this book concludes with the entire closing credits, including the sheep wrangler and bear trainer. Also includes 8 pages of black and white photos from the film.
A nice souvenir for anyone who loves the movie and wants to study it more closely.
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296 of 308 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerfully moving, adds to the film; includes insightful essays from the writers, December 24, 2005
Both the short story and screenplay are likely to move you to tears, make you feel like somebody's pulling your guts out hand over hand a yard at a time, as Annie Proulx writes of Ennis. They can also make you treasure love more. Proulx's prose is pure poetry. The screenplay is one of the best I've read -- a terrific read and a faithful adaptation and expansion. It's fascinating to have them side by side, to see how certain characters and events were fleshed out, how for example a single sentence [about a terrible misunderstanding of Jack's, for those who know the story] became a tear-jerking three-page sequence of scenes. The story, script and movie all add depth to each other, like three tellings of the same tale that emphasize different shades. If you're interested in delving deeper into the lives and loves of these characters and the starkly beautiful honesty of this world, buy this book. In addition to the story and script, the book includes three eloquent essays by Proulx and each of the screenwriters, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. These offer a good deal of insight and color to the story and whole development process, from Proulx's germ of an idea for a short story to the screenwriters shepherding the project for years, to each of their reactions to the final film. Fascinating and powerful. Strongly recommended.
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88 of 89 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Art of Transforming a Compelling Short Story Into an Equally Resonant Movie, January 5, 2006
Ang Lee's powerfully moving cinematic translation of Annie Proulx's masterful short story, "Brokeback Mountain", is obviously turning into a cultural phenomenon. So much so that not only is there the inevitable movie tie-in book (actually the original short story bound in a new softcover with the movie poster), but there is also a much-deserved resurgence in sales for her 2000 short story collection, "Close Range", which provides the broader context for "Brokeback Mountain" (it concludes the book). With the increasing success of the film in its smartly planned roll-out, we now have the story-to-screenplay tome. This would seem like overkill were it not for the fact that Proulx's original story is a remarkable piece of sparingly written fiction and that Lee's film, thanks to screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, is a wondrously faithful translation of her vision.
Through a series of narrative ellipses, Proulx presents a palpable love story about two ranch hands, Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, who meet and become obsessed with one another. First published in the New Yorker in 1997 and greeted with much acclaim, the story is less about coming to terms about the characters' sexual proclivities and more about their inability to act upon those heretofore untapped emotions toward a greater happiness. Even though both men marry and have children, neither can fully acknowledge the love they feel toward each other because of the steep price that their love carries and they can only express themselves privately for more than twenty years. Suffice it to say the story is stunning in its preciseness and evocation of the contemporary West, but on first read, it hardly beckons a screen treatment.
Yet, if anyone can do it, the reclusive McMurtry has the credentials given his masterworks as both novelist and screenwriter - "Lonesome Dove", "The Last Picture Show" and "Terms of Endearment". With his longtime writing partner Ossana, the obvious challenge was expanding Proulx's story without getting verbose and compromising the emotional tone or integrity of the core story. The final script is 110 pages long, and it is a testament to McMurtry's and Ossana's talent that only one-third is taken up by the original story. Their approach was to take Proulx's words verbatim and augment many of the narrative ellipses, the most obvious opportunity in adding dimension to the women in the two men's lives. It is fascinating to read how the wives, Alma and especially Lureen, transform from background figures into vivid characters with their own unspoken feelings in the screenplay. The other significant aspect that resonates is how the script captures what Proulx painted in words about the landscape and the silent moments among the characters. Reading the wondrous screenplay makes me appreciate the effort it takes to visualize a story that was meant to be left to the imagination.
There are also three essays included in the book - individual accounts by Proulx, McMurtry and Ossana. What comes across clearly is how they all have strong synchronicity about the final screenplay. Proulx's essay, "Getting Movied", is the most interesting in that she tells us the genesis of the story through years of subliminal observation in her adopted home of Wyoming. It apparently started when she saw an old ranch hand in a bar packed with good-looking women, yet he was only watching the guys in a furtive fashion. This image so affected Proulx that she counted back from his age and decided to set the story in the 1960's when he would have been a young man. She ruminated on the themes of rural homophobia and the internalized challenges of gay men in these areas. It's obvious that Proulx tapped into something deeper and that McMurtry and Ossana have been able to make even more tangible.
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