Topic: **Advocate Issue (Feb 28) + Interview with Larry McMurty & Diana Ossana**

[backtobrokeback]

I still don't quite see the "it was an accident" - I guess I believe Ennis too much.  But the interview didn't really settle much, except that it IS ambiguous:

Ennis is convinced that Jack was murdered with a tire iron. I don’t necessarily believe it.
McMurtry: It’s what Ennis is feeling at the moment. But Lureen’s explanation is just as good. A lot of tires blow up and kill people.
** That's not a clear answer, especially if he adds that Lureen's is just as good.  DO a lot of tires blow up and kill people? 

Do people hope Jack wasn’t murdered? What do they believe?
Ossana: We’ve been asked that [in every interview]. You can’t believe the things we’ve heard—for example, did Lureen’s father have him killed? A reporter walked up to me and said, “What really happened? I need to know.” I said, “What do you think?” He told me, and I said, “Well, if that works for you, then good.”
**She didn't answer the question, did she?

Oh, that’s the most hateful writer answer.
**Exactly.
Ossana: But even Annie will tell you it’s ambiguous to her. When you see that [flash] on the screen, we tell people that [we don’t know] what actually happened to Jack. But it’s what Ennis thinks, and he’s been set up to think that by his entire past. This was his biggest fear, that something would happen.

**Annie does agree it's ambiguous, as does nearly every person I've talked to.  Ossana doesn't know, and she kept that point ambiguous in the screenplay very well. 

**Indeed.  It's Ennis's conclusion, and he reaches it twice in the book, once in the movie.  It may or may not have happened as he imagines, but to assume that it didn't because that makes you feel better?  That's puzzling to me.  To assume that it did, because that makes you hurt 'better' is also puzzling. 

And the tragedy is multilayered. If Jack was killed that way, the guilt that Ennis must feel—maybe if he’d taken him up on it, this wouldn’t have happened. But also the fact that he’s not sure. What is more tragic than not knowing how your loved one has died?

**This is the 'it adds to the tragedy' line of thought that I personally favor, irrational as it is.

-backtobrokeback

[hidesert]

I still don't quite see the "it was an accident" - I guess I believe Ennis too much.  But the interview didn't really settle much, except that it IS ambiguous:

Ennis is convinced that Jack was murdered with a tire iron. I don’t necessarily believe it.
McMurtry: It’s what Ennis is feeling at the moment. But Lureen’s explanation is just as good. A lot of tires blow up and kill people.
** That's not a clear answer, especially if he adds that Lureen's is just as good.  DO a lot of tires blow up and kill people? 

Do people hope Jack wasn’t murdered? What do they believe?
Ossana: We’ve been asked that [in every interview]. You can’t believe the things we’ve heard—for example, did Lureen’s father have him killed? A reporter walked up to me and said, “What really happened? I need to know.” I said, “What do you think?” He told me, and I said, “Well, if that works for you, then good.”
**She didn't answer the question, did she?

Oh, that’s the most hateful writer answer.
**Exactly.
Ossana: But even Annie will tell you it’s ambiguous to her. When you see that [flash] on the screen, we tell people that [we don’t know] what actually happened to Jack. But it’s what Ennis thinks, and he’s been set up to think that by his entire past. This was his biggest fear, that something would happen.

**Annie does agree it's ambiguous, as does nearly every person I've talked to.  Ossana doesn't know, and she kept that point ambiguous in the screenplay very well. 

**Indeed.  It's Ennis's conclusion, and he reaches it twice in the book, once in the movie.  It may or may not have happened as he imagines, but to assume that it didn't because that makes you feel better?  That's puzzling to me.  To assume that it did, because that makes you hurt 'better' is also puzzling. 

And the tragedy is multilayered. If Jack was killed that way, the guilt that Ennis must feel—maybe if he’d taken him up on it, this wouldn’t have happened. But also the fact that he’s not sure. What is more tragic than not knowing how your loved one has died?

**This is the 'it adds to the tragedy' line of thought that I personally favor, irrational as it is.

-backtobrokeback 

Since there is no resolution to Jack's death, we're left with a high level of angst.  And we are left with our own theories and mine is based on the short story.  The film is the screenwriters interpretation and I'd rather work with the source material that they used. 

You're right, even Ennis has doubts about his own interpretation:

He didn’t know which way it was, the tire iron or a real accident, blood choking down Jack’s throat and nobody to turn him over. Under the wind drone he heard steel slamming off bone, the hollow chatter of a settling tire rim.

And the last sentence:

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it you’ve got to stand it.

 

[backtobrokeback]

I agree, go with the short story --- I didn't quite believe it myself until this part:

Then, this spring he's got another one's goin a come up here with him and build a place and help run the ranch, some ranch neighbor a his from down in Texas. He's goin a split up with his wife and come back here. So he says. But like most a Jack's ideas it never come to pass."

So now he knew it had been the tire iron.

Still ambiguous, sure.  But I choose to believe Ennis.

btb

[rabjr1]

[quote
Ossana: The father’s talking about Jack—“Ennis Del Mar, he used to say.” The camera turns to Ennis and you see this little faint smile on his face, ’cause Jack was talking about him. Then the father says, “And then Jack was gonna bring another fellow up here.” And you go back to Ennis and his smile is gone. That’s when he realizes there was somebody else. That hurts too. But he knows in his innards that it’s his own fault. He can’t blame Jack for that anymore. And then he goes up to Jack’s room and he finds his old shirt hanging tucked inside Jack’s, and he realizes how much that man loved him—how deeply he loved him from the get-go.

I saw that smile disappear the first time I saw the movie had to see it 2 more times to be sure.  Ossana just confirmed what I thought.  The subtle expressions in this movie speak volumes.  Again what a film.