Brokeback Mountain - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[cameron]

During a group appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the four principal actors expressed surprise that some moviegoers had been unsure whether Jack Twist died in the film.

[oscar]

Writer Annie Proulx sent both Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger an original, autographed copy of her story. When she signed the copy to Jake she wrote "To Jake..." but when she signed the copy she had intended to give to Heath she signed it "To Ennis". After writing out her personal message, she realized what she had done, and decided to let it be. At a private screening at Arclight in Hollywood, California, she reflected that Heath Ledger really was Ennis. She left the signed copy that way, because she had felt the actor embodied Ennis in every way she had imagined him.

[sandra]

The original short story by Annie Proulx was published in the October 13, 1997 issue of The New Yorker, without the italicized prologue which was included in the later version published in "Close Range", her collection of short stories. Diana Ossana, co-Screenwriter and a Producer on the film, read it, then asked her colleague Larry McMurtry to read the story. He refused, stating he doesn't read short fiction, because he can't write it. She persisted, however, and he ultimately agreed. McMurtry handled the marital dramas and the Western elements, while Ossana concentrated on the male relationship, McMurtry feeling that he was not up to the task of conveying that realistically. Some reports have it that Ang Lee barred Screenwriter McMurtry from the set of the movie. A spokeswoman for Focus Features, which produced it, commented: "Larry McMurtry rarely goes on sets, because he has very severe allergies." McMurtry was also in the midst of writing a novel, when filming began and ended. No one barred him from the set. Ossana was on-set during the entire filming.

[nina]

Heath Ledger was only four years older than Kate Mara, who played his daughter Alma, Jr. as an adult. (For most of the movie, Alma, Jr. was played by younger baby and child actresses. Mara only played her as an older teen, when the Ledger character is supposed to be in his 40s).

[lonnie]

The shirts worn by the two actors, that feature prominently in the film, were sold on eBay in February 2006 for 101,100 dollars. The buyer, film historian and collector Tom Gregory, called them "the ruby slippers of our time". (Referring to The Wizard of Oz (1939).) In 2009, Gregory lent the shirts to The Gene Autry National Center of the American West, a Los Angeles museum that seeks "to explore the experiences and perceptions of the diverse peoples of the American West." Their exhibition of the shirts is part of their larger attempt to examine representations of the Western LGBT experience in history and fiction.

[stephanie]

According to an interview in Premiere Magazine, Mark Wahlberg stated that at one point, he and Joaquin Phoenix were considered for the two lead roles. Although Wahlberg considered it due to his brother-like relationship with Phoenix, the script was ultimately too sexually graphic for him.

[frederick]

In a November 2010 interview on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," Anne Hathaway told interviewer Terry Gross that she actually has no idea whether or not her character, Lureen, tells the truth in the phone conversation in which Lureen tells Ennis how Jack died. Hathaway said that she shot two takes of the scene: one in which Lureen "knew what was going on with Jake's character Jack, and that he'd been cheating on me with men, and that I knew about the gay bashing," and one in which Lureen "had no idea... you know, it was a terrible accident with a car tire." Hathaway told Gross that instead of using all of either take, there were shots from both takes edited into the final movie, so she doesn't know what Ang Lee's or the editors' intentions for her character, or for the truth about Jack's death really were. She also said that she has never asked Ang Lee what he thinks the truth is, because "Ang knows the truth in his head, and it's not important to me. I actually think I get to be a part of the film as an audience member, because I don't know, because I think the ambiguity is what is the strength of that scene, and what's heartbreaking about it."

[jessie]

Director Ang Lee gave Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal copies of the book, "Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest", by Will Fellows, a book that had been mentioned by both Annie Proulx and Diana Ossana as an excellent reference source, to help them understand their characters. Noting what he learned from his reading, Gyllenhaal said, "I don't think that these two characters even know what gay is."

[tammy]

Joseph Fiennes loved the project so much that he met with three different directors, attached at various times, about starring in the film.

[ivan]

Among the actors considered for the male leads were Josh Hartnett, Colin Farrell, Matt Damon, Billy Crudup, and Ben Affleck.