'Brokeback' makes smooth transition from page to screen

By William Porter
THE DENVER POST
Friday, December 16, 2005

A funny thing happened on the way to filming "Brokeback Mountain," which opens today in Austin amid a swirl of Oscar buzz and critical hosannas. It was nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards Tuesday, including Best Picture.

Contrary to what occurs with so many literary properties that are turned into movies, this tale of a 20-year love affair between two cowboys, drawn from an Annie Proulx short story in "Close Range: Wyoming Stories," has resulted in a pitch-perfect Hollywood film that scrupulously honors its origins and finds the author delighted with the experience.

In an industry that often treats literature as a pile of pretty words that interferes with blowing things up, the page-to-screen transformation of "Brokeback Mountain" amounts to something of a holiday miracle.

"The joinery is seamless in this," Proulx said with a laugh at a recent roundtable discussion at the Starz Denver International Film Festival. "I've come to the point where I feel I wrote what they wrote."

That the "they" includes Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Lonesome Dove" and an old hand at screenwriting, plus novelist Diana Ossana, helped. (The two were in Austin earlier this week for a screening of the film to benefit the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund.) But it underscores the difficulty of transforming books into movies in a way that satisfies all parties, particularly authors.

Proulx, not enamored with the film version of "The Shipping News," her 1994 Pulitzer-winning novel, wasn't betting the ranch that "Brokeback" would fare any better.

"This was the kind of story that Hollywood had been avoiding for a hundred years," Proulx said. "It would take great acting, and it would depend on landscape — and landscape would be the first thing to disappear."

As it turns out, the movie abounds with great acting, and the Wyoming landscape is the finest Alberta, Canada, can produce.

Directed by Ang Lee, the film explores the 20-year relationship between Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, two Wyoming stockmen who fall in love in the summer of 1963. These are rather inarticulate men, and Proulx's dialogue, ferried intact to the screen, is choked and muted.

"If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it," is about the sum of Ennis' limning of thwarted love in the American outback.

"Brokeback Mountain's" journey from page to screen wasn't arduous, but it was fortuitous.

Proulx's story first appeared in the Oct. 13, 1997, issue of The New Yorker. As literary luck would have it, that autumn a copy of the magazine was perched by Ossana's bed on a night when she had insomnia.

Ossana, the script's co-writer and McMurtry's longtime writing partner (the two participated in the film festival session), read the story and was floored.

It wasn't just the wrenching plot and tragic characters, Ossana also was struck by the leanness of the prose. Proulx is a master of understatement, given to rock-ribbed nouns and vivid verbs. In her work, adjectives show up about as frequently as grandma's wedding china.

"It was so visual that I immediately began to see it in pictures," Ossana said.

She corralled McMurtry, who told her he didn't read short fiction. McMurtry is no snob; he views the short story as a desperately difficult form. "The only thing harder than a short story is a lyric poem," he said. "The reason I don't read short stories is because I never could write them."

Ossana prevailed. McMurtry read "Brokeback Mountain" and proclaimed it the finest short story he ever read in The New Yorker, which is akin to Sandy Koufax calling Roger Clemens the best pitcher he ever saw in a World Series.

"Only twice in my life have I read something that I wish I'd written myself," he said. "It was a screenwriter's opportunity of a lifetime — a great privilege."

He and Ossana contacted Proulx, who splits time between Wyoming and Denver. They raved about the story and vowed to put up money to get it to the screen. Proulx agreed to let them develop a script.

McMurtry and Ossana drafted a literal scene-for-scene, phrase-for-phrase rendition of "Brokeback." The 60-page result was too thin for a feature film, where the script-to-screen ratio typically tracks at about a minute per page.

Proulx suggested they develop some domestic scenes not found in the story, fleshing out the protagonists' wives and home lives. The resulting script was shopped around amid industry speculation that a "gay cowboy film" would never fly. Actor Joaquin Phoenix was keenly interested, and so was director Gus Van Sant. But Lee wound up helming the film, which stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Many readers expect, even demand, that a film drawn from a book mirror the reading experience, McMurtry noted. "It usually doesn't."

And sometimes the reading experience is so linked to the aesthetics of the prose — Faulkner and Proust come to mind — that a book defies efforts to turn it into film.

McMurtry knows this from experience. In 1972 he published "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers," a novel full of wry wit and Lone Star swagger that seemed tailored for big-screen success. Fourteen scripts later, a movie has yet to be made. "That book is very appealing to Hollywood, but ultimately its humor is in the writing," he said.

But with this adaptation, everyone is delighted with how things turned out.

"I was lucky in having two extra-fine writers who understood the place, the landscape and the people," Proulx said. "When I saw the film for the first time, they roared up from the screen and back into my head in a way I didn't think was possible."

Proulx calls the script a "complete thing," and ladles on the sort of praise Wyoming ranch folk hold dear.

"It said what it had to say and then shut up."