Brokeback Mountain Author Disses All It’s Fans
I have to admit that Brokeback Mountain was a disappointment to me when I finally got to watch it. I watched it all the way through because it was filmed in the city I live in. And because of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, of course. But, there are fans of this movie that are loyal to what it stands for.
The author of the book, Annie Proulx, says that she is constantly bothered by fans of the movie. She says,it’s “the source of constant irritation in my private life” because people are constantly writing her to tell her how the story should have been told.
“There are countless people out there who think the story is open range to explore their fantasies and to correct what they see as an unbearably disappointing story. They constantly send ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites of the story to me, expecting me to reply with praise and applause for ‘fixing’ the story. They certainly don’t get the message that if you can’t fix it, you’ve got to stand it.
“Brokeback Mountain has had little effect on my writing life, but is the source of constant irritation in my private life.”
I can’t believe that she would complain about people paying attention to her writing. I thought that was every author’s wish. She got one of her books made into a movie, she should be grateful to her fans.
[Image by WENN]
POSTED BY: Taylor Blue
Related Posts
DROP A COMMENT BELOW
yeah, i’d be pissed too if someone was telling me how to REWRITE the story that was turned into a MOVIE! if it wasn’t good enough, it would never even be discussed. they aren’t fans, they are critics. critics are free range. i totally disagree with the title of your post.
To writers it is a sacrilege for someone to intrude on the world and characters they created. It is one thing to chew over things and say to your friends or spouse, “I would have had xy and z in it… I would have done pdq differently. It is quite another to write it all down send it to the author and expect applause. I totally get her.
That being said, I almost threw up my hands and screamed when watching the recent Batman flick. Here we had this mesmerizing villain. He is finally captured and they say, “We found nothing on him… no DNA, no background, nothing.” *what?*
“Well what a lazy pack of writers you are.” I thought. Give me a backstory!
Hopefully Heath created one for himself. The compulsive tongue darting he did is a symptom of tardive dyskenesia, an incurable condition brought on by psychiatric drugs, even SSRI’s. Working backwards, it would make sense that he had been a psychiatric patient at some point, probably with neuroleptics. Such drugs destroy the neurons that control movement, and they cause brain damage. Then, more. What was his story? Was he raised in foster homes? A doctor’s son? What?…
Still, am I going to write to the writers? No. RIP Heath Ledger. He was brilliant with what they gave him, which was two dimensional. Imagine if they had given him even a little bit more, but that was the writer’s job.
If it’s the fan fiction that bugs her she can always ignore it… she doesn’t have to read everything. I think that any person wants to rewrite a movie. What about Titanic…I would have liked the story to be different. And in The City Of Angels…I would make that different. I just think people want to change things…
Hi Taylor Blue. You have such interesting posts, I often find it’s yours I end up commenting on. Cheers.
*Pondering… people want to change things…fan fiction*
To an artist, there is an inviolable quality to art. It is. It is not considered a compliment to an artist to have someone send them a new version of their art. Imagine if someone sent Da Vinci a changed copy of the Mona Lisa with a beaming smile. That would probably upset him greatly. He painted it over twelve years. It is not to be a fan.
It is the artist’s job to create, and the audience’s job to appreciate, or not, but not to seek to change it. Such people are too afraid to create art themselves, and then want to make the artist bow down before them with a bastardization of their own work. It’s bizarre. Don’t expect them to appreciate, or you cannot pretend to understand artists at all.
One of my favorite films is ‘The Mystery of Rampo’. It is a Japanese film from 1994. It is the best most vivid illustration of what it is like for a writer to write. It is not to tap tap out a manuscript, it is far more surreal, like an opium dream. You enter a world you created and which then becomes familiar over days, months, or years. You encounter and enrich (make more real) people who then surprise you, taking on lives of their own and doing things you don’t expect.
You exist in a twighlight zone where the line between the mundane world and this other world is very fine. It becomes an alternate universe. Virginia Woolf used to get very depressed at the closing of a book, because it was to close the door on a world she knew so well, and a life, lives; the lives of these characters.
You can share this world and your language with others, but a writer’s life is a very solitary existence. They are very quiet, and at the same time, they are the creator of worlds. They often develop things over years. Believe me, they don’t want someone to send them a changed version of their work! I think I might be physically sick, certainly insulted and furious if I experienced such. That work represents a world in their minds, and while virtual it is real, with well worn tracks. And it is theirs.
If anything at all, writers want to hear that their work touched people, made them think, inspired them in their lives or work, etc. They don’t want a changed version of their story to read. How narcissistic of such ‘fans’. They can hardly be called fans at all.
Thanks for saying that you like my stories…I like reading your comments.
You may be right too…but doing a job as I do, writing everyday sometimes people tell me how things might have been to. It’s a part of being a writer. May be that’s why I find it such an insult to writers.