It’s at once a perfect summary of Brokeback, and a heartbreaking reminder of the brilliant, intelligent mind we lost when Ledger tragically died in 2008. Two decades on, it’s shocking to consider how alone he was in publicly taking Brokeback seriously, even declining an invitation to the 2007 Oscars when asked to make jokes at the film’s expense. Matthew Tinkcom, professor of Communication, Culture and Technology at Georgetown University, and author of the book Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain, says that Ledger’s refusal to make fun of the film is an extension of how the film itself chooses to depict homophobia—largely off-screen, and with ambiguity.
“It poses this question of, ‘If you’re going to be uncomfortable with this, how are you going to name your discomfort?’” Tinkcom tells me. “The most conventional ways of doing that are knee-jerk, phobic responses, and the film has already anticipated those, because it’s saying: ‘You are attributing those names to this particular world that’s unfolding in front of you.’ It never happens within the film itself.”
Brokeback Mountain screenwriter Diana Ossana discovered Proulx’s eponymous short story several days after publication in a 1997 issue of The New Yorker, and she urged her writing partner Larry McMurtry to read it. (“I knew before I was even halfway through that it was a masterpiece,” McMurtry told The Huffington Post in 2015.) Gus Van Sant initially wanted to adapt their resulting screenplay, but the actors he wanted, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, all said no. (Mark Wahlberg once proudly stated that he was “creeped out” by the script when he read for Lee—who never called him back anyway.)
Ossana urged producer James Schamus to show the screenplay to Lee, who had just released Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000; though interested, he opted to make Hulk instead. It was released three years later and exhausted him, and the director briefly considered retirement. But after learning that Brokeback had still not materialized, he was drawn back in. “One day I was just asking James [Schamus], ‘How did that movie turn out?’” he told The Huffington Post. “He said, ‘No, it’s not made yet.’ So I said, ‘Huh…’” Lee considered several actors, but once Ledger and Gyllenhaal were in the same room, “There was no doubt,” he said. “They were a perfect match.”
