In late 2002, Lee was in post-production of his most commercially ambitious Hollywood comic book film, The Hulk, and when he was so exhausted that he was "planning to retire," longtime partner James Shams recommended a script called Brokeback Mountain.
The script has been circulating in Hollywood for years, with both Garth Van Sant (Mindcatcher) and Joe Schumacher (Phantom of the Opera) wanting to make it, but for various reasons.
Originally published in 1997 in The New Yorker magazine, Brokeback Mountain tells the story of two Wyoming cowboys who fell in love in 1963 while grazing together and continued to break the knot as heterosexuals, husbands and fathers for the next 20 years.
Although he first heard people talking about "homosexuality" when he arrived at the University of Illinois in 1978, Ang Lee is no stranger to the subject of homosexuality, and his second film, "The Wedding Feast", is about a Taiwanese gay man who cheats on his parents with a "fake marriage" in New York.
"Seeing the end, I couldn't help but cry, and I couldn't figure out why I was so moved.
In fact, everything in this story is foreign to me, but its mystery attracted me, just like Jack in the story said to Ennis: 'We are left with Brokeback Mountain.' The sentence hit me hard, and the feeling of 'once lost, you can no longer have it' A decade of love dreams forced me to make this movie. ”
However, the original author, Anne Pull, did not think Ang Lee was the right person .
"A Taiwanese who is making the comic book movie Hulk and wants to make Brokeback Mountain? I was simply shocked. ”
But after dinner with Lee in New York that included "Rocky Mountain Oysters" (i.e., fried cow testicles, which Lee didn't know what it was when ordering the dish), her suspicions were dispelled, just as she spoke highly of the screenwriters Diana Osana and Larry McMuthurer's scripts that "the plot, characters, and lines are complete," and "Ang Lee's understanding of the story and the american countryside convinced me."
In Ang Lee's view, "Brokeback Mountain" is a story about the "illusion of love", he said: "It is a theme that goes beyond homosexuality or cowboy themes, and the two protagonists are somewhat unclear about what love is, and they have spent almost 20 years trying to figure it out." ”
But Ang Lee is also deeply aware that "Brokeback Mountain" is destined to become a controversial movie, before that, few mainstream Hollywood movies feature homosexuality, let alone focus on one of the national symbols of the United States, the most manly cowboy, and just the year after the "Brokeback Mountain" novel was published, a gay college student was abused to death in Ramille, Wyoming.
As a person who tries to avoid conflict in life, Ang Lee dissects himself like this-
"Usually the protagonists of my films are afraid of offending or hurting others, which may be my nature, but on the other hand, I like to challenge and face conflicts, especially internal conflicts, because there are some problems that we can't hide. I very much hope that this is a film that will help us to understand others and finally be able to live in harmony. ”
But producer James Shams may have thought it simpler than Ang Lee.
The American, who was involved in almost all of Ang Lee's film production and screenwriting from "Pusher" to "Hulk," did not see Brokeback Mountain as a social appeal for cinema.
"I don't have time to make a movie like this! The world is looking forward to such a movie ' and so on, and I don't even feel any social pressure, but more that we can make a low-budget film and then do a good job of publicity. ”
Brokeback Mountain is Ang Lee's lowest-cost film to produce in Hollywood, and as chairman and producer of Focus Pictures, the production company of Brokeback Mountain, Shams has budgeted only $14 million for the film.
In Shams's view, "Brokeback Mountain" is more of a love movie for female audiences, and the audience he and Ang Lee envision is "35-year-old or older women who love to watch Pride and Prejudice", and even the "Brokeback Mountain" poster is a reference to "Titanic".
After a test screening at the University of Chicago, an audience member asked Ang Lee and Shams, "Is there any reference film for Brokeback Mountain?" Shams half-jokingly said, "The Dream of the Covered Bridge." The audience reacted for half a day before laughing.
Shams later said: "Like all great love movies, our primary target audience is women, and they often decide what movies their husbands and boyfriends want to watch." ”
As for the length of the film, Shams and Ang Lee also had an argument. After watching the rough cut of "Brokeback Mountain", Shams complained to Ang Lee in the theater toilet that the time was too long.
"The film is good, but the problem is, it's now making people shed tears three times and go to the toilet twice, and my goal is to shed four tears and go to the toilet once."
But the reality is far more complicated than Shams imagined.
For Ang Lee, the completion of "Brokeback Mountain" is far easier than his ambitions "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hulk", and the whole shooting atmosphere can almost be said to be happy and harmonious (except for the sex scene that made Ang Lee a little distressed, he even wrote a memorandum with 13 notes before filming, and the scene was filmed 13 times).
A year after the film was filmed, with the success of the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival and the subsequent acclaim in a series of film festivals such as Toronto, "Brokeback Mountain" began a small-scale release in the United States, and the Oscars became more and more popular.
But at that time, the attitude toward homosexuality in the United States was still conservative (Arnold Schwarzenegger, then governor of California, vetoed the same-sex marriage bill), and Brokeback Mountain caused an uproar in many parts of the United States.
A week before the U.S. release of Brokeback Mountain, Utah billionaire and NBA Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller announced that its theaters would be banned for screening on the grounds that "the film deviates from traditional families and is very dangerous."
At the same time, West Virginia also issued a ban, and the conservative media also began to attack the film, and the well-known blogger Matt Drucci posted a blog post titled "Hollywood Shocked: Cyborg Cowboy Movies Become Oscar Frontrunners";
Fox News host John Gibson joked about Brokeback Mountain for months after the film's release (after Heath Ledger's death in 2008, Gibson did not forget to ridicule and ridicule, and was scolded by the public);
Genie Shalit, a critic on NBC's "Today Show," described Jack Tweevest, played by Jack Gyllenhaal, as a "sex maniac" and then had to apologize publicly for protests from gay groups.
In addition, many conservative social groups have also criticized "Brokeback Mountain", including the homosexual films of the same period, "Capote" and "Daddy".
Even so, "Brokeback Mountain" received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and Ang Lee became the first Asian-American to win the Academy Award for Best Director, but "Brokeback Mountain" eventually missed the best picture, which also made the large number of supporters on the scene extremely dissatisfied.
Jack Nicholson, the guest of honor for best picture at the time, voted for Brokeback Mountain, and when he opened the envelope to find out that the best picture was "Crash," he said he was "simply stunned."
Afterwards, some commentators believed that the Oscars (that year) were reluctant to crown Brokeback Mountain because of homophobia, because before the Oscars, "Brokeback Mountain" had won consecutive awards from the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild and the Producers Guild, and there was no film in history in which three major union awards were in hand but missed the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Because of his starring role in "Brokeback Mountain", the 27-year-old Heath Ledger received 32 nominations including the Oscar for Best Actor, which is also considered the beginning of his acting career.
In fact, when he first came into contact with the script of "Brokeback Mountain", Ledger was hesitant about whether he was suitable to play Ennis, but his girlfriend at the time, Naomi Watts, encouraged him to take on the role after reading the script.
Not only did Ledger think it was the best screenplay he'd ever seen, but he said he should have flown to Taiwan to beg Ang Lee to let him act in the film.
Later, when someone asked him "not afraid to play a gay person", he said that he was not afraid, but worried about whether his acting skills were mature enough to correctly play a gay person.
According to Ang Lee, Ledger has a gay uncle who is a farmer with a very rough temperament, but he has been afraid of his identity for many years, and even very disgusted with homosexuality, and Ledger has taken a lot of inspiration from him.
During the filming, Ledger immersed himself in the role so deeply that Jack Gyllenhaal's improvisations drove him crazy, and his methodological performances impressed the other actors.
This is evident in the signed novel given to Ledger by Anne Prue (the original author), who signed "Dedicated to Ennis" because Prue felt that Ennis, played by Ledger, completely satisfied all her imaginations of the character.
Ledger's performance in Brokeback Hill was widely praised, with Rolling Stone magazine commenting: "Ledger's performance is a miracle, not only does he know how to express Ennis's words and deeds, he even knows how Ennis breathes, and he will make you feel that Ennis's heart is in tears." ”
Ledger's performance impressed not only film critics and audiences.
In 2008, after Daniel Day-Lewis won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor for "Blood Is Coming," he announced in his acceptance speech that the award would be dedicated to Ledger, who had just died at the time.
"His performances in 'Dance on Death Row' and 'Brokeback Mountain' were perfect and unique, and the performance of his shirt in the trailer at the end of Brokeback Mountain moved me immensely and gave me inspiration to perform."
Today, more than a decade later, gay marriage has been legally recognized in the United States, and "Brokeback Mountain" has been repeatedly selected into the "Top Ten of the Decade" film list of many film critics. The love story of "we only have Brokeback Mountain left" is still circulating.