Completely ignoring the hip, ultra-politically-correct love story at the core of the film, let's look at the 'cowboy'-ness of those involved:
The movie is based on an original story by E. Annie Proulx, the screenplay was written by Larry McMurtry, it was directed by Ang Lee, and it stars Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar and Jake Gyllenhaal as the appropriately named Jack Twist.
Annie Proulx was born in Norwich, Connecticut, and got her BA from the University of Vermont and her Masters and Ph.D from Sir George Williams University in Montreal (in Renaissance economic history, the Canadian north, and traditional China). She says she writes about "the examination of the lives of individuals against the geography and longue duree of events, that is, that time and place are major determining factors in a human life". Her short story Brokeback Mountain was originally published in The New Yorker in 1997. (According to her bio, Proulx did move to Wyoming in 1994, and says that the story "began as an examination of country homophobia in the land of the Great Pure Noble Cowboy", but has also since admitted that "I think I did fall in love with both Ennis and Jack"...)
Larry McMurtry was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, which was still mostly a cow town in 1936. (But I don't know what he was thinking. Woodrow F. Call and Augustus McCrae are undoubtedly spinning in their fictional graves...)
Ang Lee was born in Pingtung, Taiwan (and don't think that he's two years younger than me doesn't factor into my rant). His previous films include such Western classics as Wo hu cang long (aka Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), The Ice Storm, Sense and Sensibility, Yin shi nan nu (aka Eat Drink Man Woman), Hsi yen (aka The Wedding Banquet), and Tui shou (aka Pushing Hands). What got him this job was probably Ride with the Devil (which at least had horses in it) and not the Hulk.
Heath Ledger was born in Perth, Western Australia. Which sounds exotic, but is a coastal city of over a million people that doesn't have many cows. It does, however, "have more restaurants per head (of people, not cattle) than any other city in Australia"...
Jake Gyllenhaal was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of a director and a screenwriter.
Bernie Taupin was born in Lincolnshire, England. (And had quite a career songwriting with Elton John, another famous English cowboy...)
Hell, even Randy Quaid was born in Houston, Texas. (A big cowboy hat town, but not a big town for cowboys, if you catch my drift...)
Damn, now there is some range credibility, ain't there? (Barring McMurtry, of course. Though I still shake my head, wondering what Woodrow and Gus would've said...)
Just to try and confuse the issue however, the script has the two stars exchange this feckless dialog: "You know I ain't queer." "Neither am I."
(As I recall, every prison inmate I ever knew said that when he got out...)
Friends of mine who traveled through Wyoming in the mid-Sixties merely wearing long hair damn near got lynched; I can only imagine how the locals would have reacted in 1963 to cowboys acting as oddly as Ennis and Jack. (Hell, I know cowboys in Wyoming right now who'd be more than happy to lynch them. I don't approve of that sentiment at all, mind you, but some delusions can't be overcome by rational discourse; believe me, I've tried...)
Myself, as a writer (and pretend cowboy), I think it would've been a far more interesting story if the two men were in love (as human beings, rather than specifically as men), but just not physically, yet everyone else in Wyoming thought they were. (Hell, then McMurtry could've written in a gunfight or two, and I might've even gone to see it.) But it ain't my story...
As Ennis Del Mar himself says, "If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it."
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