Ang Lee Shares His Experience Scouting Locations for “Brokeback Mountain:” “Locations somewhat we have seen it. We have traveled through it or watched a movie. I think it was more the people. Of course, they are always nice people. They are just like everybody here, except they are nicer, and I felt guilty that I was going to do a tough movie about them (laughing). Something strikes me too, as a freshness. Sorry to say, an eccentricness. You go to a bar and just see the things that they hang up. I can’t believe the things they hang up inside and outside of bars (laughing). I don’t know how else to put it except eccentricness.”
Director Lee said it was extremely important that Brokeback Mountain itself come alive and exist as a character in the film. “In terms of landscape it should play a character in the movie. It is called ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ It is a very existential idea to make. It’s about an illusion of love. They keep wanting to go back to something they really didn’t understand to begin with when they are inside of it. And they never get it. And when they get it, they’ve missed it. I think that is the theme for me that got me hooked on.
Brokeback Mountain has to be a character itself. So, how do we treat or how do we say it so it looks manageable? So it’s not a grand Western where people disappear in it, but you use that as a dramatic element coping with characters? So it looks loveable. It’s suggestive; it’s romantic. Somehow to shoot it that way… So in a way it’s a Western, but it’s not really a Western.”
Ang Lee on “Brokeback Mountain’s” Theme of Conforming to Society: “A lot of that is in the script. We talked about conformism. The social pressures, so to speak. It’s not really visible other than the Randy Quaid character giving them a stern look. Other than that, you really don’t see society. So, it’s really what society did to them. The actors have to carry that. The repression, the mental block they are putting on themselves. Particularly, [Heath Ledger’s character] Ennis.
Another of vehicle we have to use in that non-verbal culture, in that particular time, is the privacy that you sense. Because there is a lack of or no vocabulary to understand how they feel so we are including the wives when they see them kissing. The words crush but she wouldn’t know what caused that. There is no understanding. Everything they feel is private. So, again, the silence, the performance, the way they carry on the scene. I think that plays a bigger part than you see in society because we don’t really see that. We see Texas, they are dancing. They are ballroom dancing. That is about it. Then you see the father-in-law, kind of an a**hole and ‘the boy should play football.’ But, that’s kind of minimal. That doesn’t present a threat. Oh, and the bar. What we call the ‘macho bar’ when Jake gives a wrong stare…[and] it’s the wrong thing to do. But, [it’s] quite minimum. But that’s something in the air.
I think that’s important in Western cowboy poetry, literature and therefore in the movie, is that things are in the air. They’ve got space and time. They’ve got a lot of wind. [It] drives you crazy, the constant wind. It’s in the screen the whole time. The place where we shot has the biggest wind in all of Canada, therefore the highest suicide rate in the whole nation. It just drives you crazy.”
Ang Lee on Remaining True to Annie Proulx’s Story: “Not only did I want to be loyal to her writing and I needed to do additional scenes to confirm her writing because we don’t have internal depiction, which she did most brilliantly. We don’t have that benefit. We are photography. So that tent scene, for example. I need to add another tent scene and I don’t even know if she liked it. I always had this theory that she would hate it. To confirm that they commit to the love, so it’s reasonable for the next 20 years they are going back. I think in movies, in cinema language, you have to see them committed. In a book, it’s in the writing and you don’t see it. I explained it to her in terms of hands-off. Once you make the movie, it’s your work. I explained to her, that your writing is very hard to translate into cinema and she just smiled and said, ‘That’s your problem’ (laughing).”
