Ang Lee: To me, Brokeback Mountain is uniquely, and universally, a great American love story.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx's short story "Brokeback Mountain" was first published in The New Yorker in 1997. It won a National Magazine Award, among other accolades. The story was subsequently published in Ms. Proulx's 1999 collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories. The screenplay adaptation was written by the team of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana.
Diana Ossana: In October 1997, I was in Texas staying with Larry McMurtry and some friends, one of whom had given me The New Yorker with Annie Proulx's short story. Two-thirds of the way through reading the story, I began to sob, and I sobbed all the way to the end. I was floored. Emotionally exhausted, I went to sleep, got up the next morning and read it again because I wanted to see if it affected me as much in broad daylight as it did in the middle of the night. Its effect on me was even more profound. I took the magazine downstairs and asked Larry to read the story.
Larry McMurtry: In 1997, Diana brought The New Yorker downstairs and asked that I read Annie's story. I don't read fiction much anymore, so I was reluctant. But in her tenacious way, she asked that I humor her and read it. After I was finished reading it, the first thing I thought was that I wished I had written it. It was a story that had been sitting there for years, waiting to be told, and Annie finally wrote it. It is one of the finest short stories I've read. The place, the landscape, the men and the way they speak are drawn precisely and convincingly.
Diana Ossana: He read it and said it was the best short story ever published in The New Yorker. "Well, do you think it would make a screenplay," I asked. And he replied, "I think it might." And I said, "Why don't we write Annie a letter?" And he said, "Okay."
Larry McMurtry: We wrote Annie a short letter, asking her to option the story to us so that we could adapt it for a screenplay. She responded within a week, and we launched into writing. So by the end of 1997, we had a screenplay.
Diana Ossana: We immediately optioned her short story with our own money. That's the only time Larry and I have spent our own money on an option. We wrote the screenplay in less than three months, and have been attached to the project ever since. That was how this all started. We tried for nearly seven years to get it into production. Various directors came on board at different times, and several actors wanted to be in the film, but no actors would commit. Then Focus, Ang and James became fully involved in late 2003. And now here we are.
Tim Cyr: When I read the short story, I could identify with the traits and feelings that the characters had, especially coming from a background of ranching – where everything out there is looked upon as being different if it's not traditional.
Shane Madden: Being raised on a farm, yeah, you had to hide it. It hurt to try and hide it. There were times I used to bang my head against a wall. [I read the story, and] I was losing it after the first six pages. It hit me deep inside.
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