Brokeback Mountain , The Ang Lee Interview – Tim Gaskin

Ang Lee, the award-winning director of such films as “Sense and Sensibility”, “The Ice Storm”, “The Wedding Banquet”, “Hidden Dragon, Crouching Tiger” and most recently “The Hulk” is in San Francisco talking to Gloss magazine about why he was inspired to direct his second film with gay content. He says calling Brokeback Mountain a gay-cowboy film doesn’t do the material justice. He asserts, "It's really just a great American love story." And it’s arguably the must-see gay motion picture since “Making Love”, the 1982 film starring Harry Hamlin and Kate Jackson.

Brokeback is based on the short story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx and is the story of Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), two ranch hands who, in the summer of 1963, are hired to herd sheep on Wyoming 's Brokeback Mountain . Separated from the rest of the world their brief friendship develops, almost by accident, into a fierce sexual relationship.

The director says if you look closely there are little traces of tempting. “I planned little hints here-and-there. A look, a denial, like we all do in life; without a trace. But when you think about it, you go back a second time, the nudity, the bathing in front of each other, and the pretending not to notice.”

Lee says he was moved by the total devotion the young actors conveyed during the love scenes. After blocking out the first sex scene the director instructed the actors to be one-hundred percent dedicated to the material. He adds, “I didn't care how they did it, but they had to really care. They had to zone into it and use whatever they have to understand and believe in the attraction, chemistry and sexuality and go from there. They're smart, talented and still have that innocence. You just want to capture that.”

When summer ends the two men separate and discover that their feelings for each other are stronger than they expected. For twenty-years they live apart, seeing each other only on rare camping trips, trying to hold on to the innocence and beauty of that first summer on the mountain.

Lee says the film is about feelings of love and loneliness that anyone can relate to. “As cowboys they live a lonely existence, but they find each other. “They fall in love for all the reasons that men and women fall in love.

Love is love, essentially,” he asserts. “We put limitations on it that keep us in a comfort zone. If you open yourself to the story, you will discover that it's not provocative. This is the kind of connection people dream about making with another human being. Everybody has a Brokeback. If we're lucky, we get to go there.”

Lee's passion for the story is based on a simple principal: "I believe this is very possible, that it is true, that it's human. In doing art you must borrow from some experience. It is the key for acting, and if you don't believe in the character, who will? Whether the audience is the gay community or the straight world, you must invest that kind of belief."