‘Brokeback Mountain’ fans’ ghastly, pornish rewrites irritate writer Annie Proulx
”’Brokeback Mountain’ has had little effect on my writing life, but is the source of constant irritation in my private life. There are countless people out there who think the story is open range to explore their fantasies and to correct what they see as an unbearably disappointing story. They constantly send ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites of the story to me, expecting me to reply with praise and applause for ‘fixing’ the story…. Most of these ‘fix-it’ tales have the character Ennis finding a husky boyfriend and living happily ever after, or discovering the character Jack is not really dead after all, or having the two men’s children meet and marry, etc., etc. Nearly all of these remedial writers are men, and most of them begin, ‘I’m not gay but….’ They do not understand the original story, they know nothing of copyright infringement–i.e., that the characters Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are my intellectual property–and, beneath every mangled rewrite is the unspoken assumption that because they are men they can write this story better than a woman can…. The general impression I get is that they are bouncing off the film, not the story.”
Writer Annie Proulx, the original author of the short story ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The tragic gay love story was made by director Ang Lee into a surprise-hit movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal and the late Heath Ledger. The author has just published her final collection of short stories about Wyoming called ”Fine Just the Way It Is.” (The Wall Street Journal)
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