'Brokeback Mountain' writer: 'It was never about two cowboys'

Brokeback Mountain

author Annie Proulx has admitted that people constantly “misunderstand” the meaning of the story.

Proulx’s original short story was first published in 1997, before being famously adapted into Ang Lee’s 2005 Oscar-winning drama of the same name, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and the late Heath Ledger.

In a new interview, Proulx has explained that she finds it so frustrating when people think the film is “about two cowboys,” that she wishes she had never written the story.

“I wish I’d never written the story. It’s just been the cause of hassle and problems and irritation since the film came out,” she told the Paris Review.

She continued: “But the problem has come since the film. So many people have completely misunderstood the story. One of the reasons we keep the gates locked here is that a lot of men have decided that the story should have had a happy ending.”

“They can’t bear the way it ends. So they rewrite the story, including all kinds of boyfriends and new lovers and so forth after Jack is killed. They can’t understand that the story isn’t about Jack and Ennis,” she explained. “It’s about homophobia; it’s about a social situation; it’s about a place and a particular mindset and morality.”

“I haven’t had the same sort of problem with anything else I’ve ever written. Nothing else. People saw it as a story about two cowboys. It was never about two cowboys,” she added.

‘Brokeback Mountain’ writer: ‘It was never about two cowboys’

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