Categories: Public
The Lift
Great to hear you have firsthand experience with the country in the film--lucky. The scenery is such a critical element of this film, especially when it is contrasted with Ennis succession of desperately dingy apartments and the brittle glitter of Jake's house.
Yes, but that's just fired them up. :)
Well, they identified themselves as cowboys, not as sheepherders.
Having grown up in the west and worked a memorable summer herding cattle in rugged high range country, living off the land in a remote log cabin w/out electricity and other amenities, I can say with some knowledge that if they could have found work with cattle, they would have not have herded sheep. Sheep herding was work done by immigrant labor, primarily Basques at that time. That's how low their status and prospects were, that they, American boys, had to settle for herding sheep.
[And, yes, I have notes for a story based upon that summer.]
Proulx lives in the country she wrote about: her story was keenly observed and thoroughly researched. It brought back s-o-o many memories of place and period.
Pretty sure they were sheepherders... probably originally from Oklahoma :) (Sorry, living in Texas, gotta say that)
Truly inspiring comments dpg. Many thanks.
Almiiitey,
It seems to me this a story about a couple's struggle to dare to love despite all the emotional hazards and very real physical dangers. In that sense, it's a variant of the classic Romeo & Juliet template of star-crossed lovers. As is the story of "Brokeback Mountain". The short story was written by one of America's finest short story writers, Annie Proulx, adapted for the screen by 2 of the most respected and connected people in Hollyweird, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. And they couldn't get the script produced for 7 years!
It acquired the tagline of "a story about gay cowboys" -- it was very difficult to come with a logline with a hook that would get the script read, let alone produced. Because, among other things, the heartbeat of the story is emotional while loglines are supposed to be about actions.
I scanned loglines for "Brokeback Mountain" at sites like RottenTomatoes and IMDB and they utterly fail to capture the emotional hook of the story. Can a logline do that? I find the standard formula for loglines problematical when it comes to stories like "Brokeback Mountain" whose dramatic essence is relationship and emotion -- the "B" and "C" stories, so to speak, not so much an "A" story.
And the standard formula may be problematical for your story. Be that as it may, Larry McMurtry, wrote that "I was stunned when I read 'Brokeback Mountain' because I realized that it was a story that that had been sitting there all my life...waiting in the patient distance for someone to write it." Likewise, as I read your logline and your remarks (particularly about the death of the gay boy) I am stunned: I think this story has been sitting out there all your life...waiting in the patient distance for someone to write it.
fwiw
