Jake - 'when they come together, I do think they make a circle'

A beautiful wedding at the weekend - complete with tables decorated with packets of love heart sweets - puts me in mind of a post dedicated to the love between our two cowboys Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar. Not least, because this was not a love with a happy ever after and it was not a love that was celebrated and toasted with glasses held high by joyful friends and family, brought together with that sole purpose.


This interview and feature on Brokeback Mountain comes from Pride on Screen and the gay and lesbian radio magazine This Way Out. In addition to audio clips from the film and its soundtrack, it also features interviews by Steve Pride with Ang Lee, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. A main theme is why Ang went with his choice of actors as well as the reaction of all three to having the performances called 'brave and daring'. And of course, the subject always returns to love and what the audience should take away from the story of Jack and Ennis.


So this is what Jake has to say, along with selections from Heath and Ang.

Jake: 'I thought that Ang would want to cast me as Ennis and Heath as Jack, just because I felt like Heath was more outgoing and you're used to Heath being a kind of active, less passive presence, you know, and somewhere in my mind, naively I guess, I thought that. And when we were cast opposite what I thought, I realised that Ang recognised in both of us something that I don't think either of us saw necessarily and that want to always kind of push forward and progress and change things was something in Jack that I felt like I really had too. And that the amount of words he says, I think, it's sort of the same thing in a different way. They're like ying and yang, you know, and when they come together, I do think they make a circle.'



'Heath and I talked a lot about - I find a lot of - just in Heath - in his own nature, I feel like Heath carries his heart on his shoulder. He's the kind of guy who's always protecting himself in different ways. But he's really a sensitive guy and whether or not he's talking or he's not talking, I think you can sense that from him always. And I was just playing with that. I saw that and it was like a friendship that we had as actors that was somehow translated into the movie.'


On whether or not Jake was 'brave' to take on the role of Jack Twist: 'All we were doing was servicing a story. You know what I think is really more courageous is people who are trying to be intimate in their real life and who are up against the real things. We were just making a movie for two months, when we played characters, and I think it's a time when more people are open to this than it might seem.'



Heath's response to the same question is, in hindsight, extremely powerful and not a little upsetting, and you must listen to it yourself. But he starts off by saying that 'Fire fighters are daring and brave - we're acting.' He's safe, not harmed and alive.


Ang says that it would have been easier if he had selected two gay actors for the roles 'but I have to go with my best choice.' 'I think Heath is a great anchor man for the western theme and Jake should be a romantic lead so I just go for the best possible choice.'


Finally, what Brokeback Mountain means to Heath: 'For me, it's a story of how love transcends all - the environment you're born in, the opinions of generations before you, ie your family, your parents, your father - and how love is stronger than opinions that are installed in you as a child and you can break down these barriers. And just the power of love.'



Pictures from the Brokeback Mountain Venice photocall, courtesy of IHJ.'