The Nailed and Brokeback Blues

Jessica Biel, Jake Gyllenhaal's co-star in Nailed, has been speaking about her frustration and disappointment with a film that remains, I'm very sorry to learn, unfinished. Despite enjoying the experience of working with a director she admires immensely as well as a very impressive cast, Jessica is 'devastated' that all that hard work may come to nothing.


Roger Moore at The Orlando Sentinel reports: 'That was definitely an experience, something I could NOT say no to," Biel told me in an interview. "I am a huge David O. Russell fan. It’s just heartbreaking that so many people put so much work into this particular project only to have it sit there, unfinished. But it’s one of those things where we had no idea it would have happened. If I’d had an idea that it might happen, would I still have done it? I don’t know. Probably. I had an incredible experience with David and the rest of the cast. It made me a better actor. For all that, I’m devastated that it’s not finished and who knows when it will be and will come out. I still have my fingers crossed that something good will come of it, that it will be finished."



Jessica's not the only one, I'm sure. And good luck to Jessica in Coward's Easy Virtue.

Annie's Brokeback Blues

Annie Proulx appears in the new Spring 2009 issue of the Paris Review's Art of Fiction and, in a reprise of her comments to the Independent last September, Annie confirms that she wishes she had never written Brokeback Mountain and had never created Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar.

'I wish I’d never written the story. It’s just been the cause of hassle and problems and irritation since the film came out. Before the film it was all right.'


'In Wyoming they won’t read it. A large section of the population is still outraged. But that’s not where the problem was. I’m used to that response from people here, who generally do not like the way I write. But the problem has come since the film. So many people have completely misunderstood the story. I think it’s important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience, but unfortunately the audience that “Brokeback” reached most strongly have powerful fantasy lives. And one of the reasons we keep the gates locked here is that a lot of men have decided that the story should have had a happy ending.'


'They can’t bear the way it ends—they just can’t stand it. So they rewrite the story, including all kinds of boyfriends and new lovers and so forth after Jack is killed. And it just drives me wild. They can’t understand that the story isn’t about Jack and Ennis. It’s about homophobia; it’s about a social situation; it’s about a place and a particular mindset and morality. They just don’t get it. I can’t tell you how many of these things have been sent to me as though they’re expecting me to say, oh great, if only I’d had the sense to write it that way. And they all begin the same way—I’m not gay, but . . . The implication is that because they’re men they understand much better than I how these people would have behaved. And maybe they do. But that’s not the story I wrote. Those are not their characters. The characters belong to me by law.'


'I haven’t had the same sort of problem with anything else I’ve ever written. Nothing else. People saw it as a story about two cowboys. It was never about two cowboys. You know you have to have characters to hang the story on but I guess they were too real. A lot of people have adopted them and put their names on their license plates. Sometimes the cart gets away from the horse—the characters outgrew the intent.'


We've discussed before here the inappropriateness and the presumption of fan fiction authors sending their 'rewrites' to Annie, although, from this interview, it sounds like Annie has been troubled by another type of reader or viewer altogether, and not one that I recognise. While I fully accept that, just as Jake has (and must) move on from Jack Twist, Annie must also be allowed to continue to develop freely as a writer, separate from a short story written over a decade ago, yet I do regret that she wishes Brokeback undone. And that she blames the film. I do hate to read that she has locked the gates against Brokeback's fans and I can't help but take it personally even though one hopes she doesn't tar all Brokeback's fans with this brush of distaste. Maybe, very occasionally indeed, it is possible to write something too good.


Includes pictures from IHJ.