Topic: Re: Annie's Web Page

[Audrey twist]

 2:53 PM - ’Brokeback’ author says says film is source of ’constant irritation’

By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent
Wednesday, 17 September 2008

It was an Oscar-winning film lauded for its sensitive portrayal of two lovelorn cowboys and their illicit passion in America's homophobic Midwest. But despite the success of Brokeback Mountain, starring the late Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, the author on whose story it was based has complained that the tale has become "the source of constant irritation in my private life".

Annie Proulx, 73, the Pulitzer prize-winning author whose short story was made into the Hollywood film in 2005, said she had been pestered ever since by "pornish" mail sent by fans offering their interpretations of the story.

When the story was published in 1999, it was praised for its delicate handling of homophobia in the ranching country of Wyoming. But her fans feel she could have gone further in her descriptions of the love shared by the two central characters.

She told The Wall Street Journal: "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."

The film, directed by Ang Lee, received critical acclaim and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning three.

Proulx's story appeared in a collection of short stories called Close Range: Wyoming Stories, which were set in a rural landscape and detailed the often grim lives of the protagonists. "Brokeback Mountain", a 64-page novella, was the most acclaimed story in the collection.

But while Proulx might be seeking distance from her story, she returns to the region in her new collection of nine stories, Fine Just the Way It Is, based on the lives of the women on the ranches. "In a real sense, women on ranches are secondary citizens. But many, if not most, would be furious if you said that out straight, They see themselves as mythic Western women," said Proulx.

She added that this would be her last collection of Wyoming stories because she did not want her writing to become too closely associated with one region.

[jackster]

Audrey:
Can you ID where this story came from or give a link? How very sad.
I guess the old adage "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" certainly applies.

[tizi17]

i read it on afterelton today...

A few years back, Brokeback Mountain was all the rage, doing record-breaking box office for a gay-themed movie, winning countless awards (although, controversially, not that Best Picture Oscar), and finally showcasing the true talent of the late Heath Ledger, who had previously been squandering them on teen movies and horror genre fare.

 The film also captured the minds of many who seem to have taken its ambiguous ending as a starting point for a great deal of fan-fiction. Brokeback slash fic can be seen all over the internet,and ranges from heartwarming (Jack returns to Ennis and they live happily ever after, awwwww) to sensual (extended and, um, detailed descriptions of their many trysts at that mountain).

However, after hearing the recent statements from author Annie Proulx on the fan-fiction she receives, it sounds as if she may want to take a tire iron to all those aspiring writers.  In a interview with the Washington Post's Bob Hughes to promote her newest short-story collection Fine the Way It Is (snap!), Proulx describes the Brokeback Mountain phenomenon as ”the source of constant irritation in my private life”, and then proceeds (as only a writer can do) to lay the verbal smackdown on the “ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites” she is sent by overzealous fans who dare attempt to extend the story.

While these two quotes are snarky enough, they don’t do the deliciousness of the full response justice, so I’ve included it here for you:


WSJ: What effect did the success of Brokeback Mountain have on your writing life, if any?

Proulx: Brokeback Mountain has had little effect on my writing life, but is the source of constant irritation in my private life. 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. Most of these "fix-it" tales have the character Ennis finding a husky boyfriend and living happily ever after, or discovering the character Jack is not really dead after all, or having the two men's children meet and marry, etc., etc. Nearly all of these remedial writers are men, and most of them begin, "I'm not gay but…." They do not understand the original story, they know nothing of copyright infringement—i.e., that the characters Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are my intellectual property—and, beneath every mangled rewrite is the unspoken assumption that because they are men they can write this story better than a woman can. They have not a clue that the original Brokeback Mountain was part of a collection of stories about Wyoming exploring mores and myths. The general impression I get is that they are bouncing off the film, not the story. There's more, but that is enough, ok?

There you have it, folks.  In laymen’s terms, stay away from the woman’s intellectual property.  Or, if you suddenly find yourself consumed with the burning desire to continue the story of Ennis and his ill-fated Jack, send it to one of the 3,526 Brokeback Mountain fan-fiction sites, start a writing group, read it to your boyfriend in bed, but for the love of God, don’t send it to her.  She might not like it. 

[Audrey twist]

Audrey:
Can you ID where this story came from or give a link?

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=357834659&blogID=433742118

[Audrey twist]

David Lister: Stop whingeing about your fans, Annie
Saturday, 20 September 2008


Brokeback Mountain is not a film crying out for a sequel. When one of the characters has died on screen, and the actor playing the other has died in real life, then it's best to leave well alone. So it does seem odd that Annie Proulx, the author of the story on which the film was based, should be saying that she has been bombarded with ideas from people wanting to change her story. That she says the ideas are "pornish" is perhaps not so odd. The bombardment has, of course, not happened just as a result of the story published in 1999, but because of the 2005 movie, and that is why I mention the film (starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger). It is the film rather than the original story which has inspired numerous fans to tell Ms Proulx how the pornish quotient could be increased.

She's fed up with it, and was quoted this week as saying: "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."

So what sort of story ideas, pornish and otherwise, have they been sending to Annie Proulx? The new Brokeback Mountain stories on fan sites seem to range from the almost poetic "With their eyes closed, they shared an intimate moment of united longing, pain and beauty that would take a place in eternity" to the far from poetic "Your eyes are like the stars. Your touch is like the sun" to the downright opaque "They painted beautiful, plunged creative. The kingfisher, silent, did not remove his belt".

And there's the one that seems to be sponsored by a clothing manufacturer: "Everything about Jack and his jeans disturbed and tormented Ennis that summer of '63 until all he could think of or see was blue."

One fan, whose own take on Proulx's short story runs to a mere 23 chapters, sums up his opus thus: "Ennis learns that Jack is still alive from Lureen. Finds him in a hovel off the banks of Rio Brave del Norte. He learns on his way that Jack was left blind." Ah. Looks as if there could be a sequel after all.

I suppose it's easy to be either amused or, if you are Annie Proulx, annoyed by Brokeback fans trying to "fix" her story. Whether she was more annoyed by the pornish elements or by the fact that they were trying to "fix" the story at all, it's hard to know. I suspect it was the fixing as much as the porn that offended her. But I think it is wrong to mock or berate the fixers.

Writing or even just wishing for a sequel or an alternative take on a work that one loves is a fairly natural desire. Robert Altman's brilliant 1992 film The Player, a satire on Hollywood, began with a series of film pitches at a studio. One of them was from a huckster urging a sequel to the sixties classic The Graduate, as the three stars, Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft and Katharine Ross were all, then, still alive and working. Cinema audiences found this hilarious, but I thought it a terrific idea, and never understood why someone didn't go ahead and do it.

Wanting to keep a story alive is not an insult to its creator. It is a tribute. Annie Proulx has inspired these fans to want to keep her story alive. And while they would do much better, to use their creative urges to write their own stories with their own characters, they have been inspired by her to write. I think she should turn a blind eye to the pornish elements, and take it as a compliment that her story has fired so many imaginations.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/david-lister/david-lister-stop-whingeing-about-your-fans-annie-936189.html
   

[jackster]

Audrey, thanks for these very interesting Annie posts. I think I understand what David Lister is saying, but maybe he misses Annies point, her specific annoyance was "constant irritation in my private life". I don't think she is annoyed with the fact that fans write all this stuff, that's to be expected, I think what she finds unexpected and bothersome is the fact that fans keep sending the stories to her and expecting her to respond to their writing like an instructor or adviser. She's a writer not a reviewing agency. JMHO.

[ethan]

Return to the Range.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122065020058105139.html

I will just quote the last part when she was asked by Wall Street Journal reporter Robert J. Hughes what effect the success of Brokeback Mountain had on her writing life.

"Brokeback Mountain has had little effect on my writing life, but is the source of constant irritation in my private life. 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.

Most of these "fix-it" tales have the character Ennis finding a husky boyfriend and living happily ever after, or discovering the character Jack is not really dead after all, or having the two men's children meet and marry, etc., etc. Nearly all of these remedial writers are men, and most of them begin, "I'm not gay but…."

They do not understand the original story, they know nothing of copyright infringement—i.e., that the characters Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are my intellectual property—and, beneath every mangled rewrite is the unspoken assumption that because they are men they can write this story better than a woman can. They have not a clue that the original Brokeback Mountain was part of a collection of stories about Wyoming exploring mores and myths. The general impression I get is that they are bouncing off the film, not the story. There's more, but that is enough, ok? "

[jackster]

Thanks much for this link Ethan. 

[welshwitch]

I've always admired Annie Proulx, never more than for what she's said now.

[vedrana]

1.    if this topic already exist, but can not find it!
2.  if it's forbidden - feel free to remove it, if so!

I had read about Annie Prolux that she's not very happy about so many people write to her and try to suggest the different ending of the story! She finds the letters starting with "I am not a gay but I think that....!" the most annoying ( as she said in her interview)

 Although I understand her, I think that she shouldn't be angry, because: If she can't fix it, she's got to stand it!

Anyway, my question is: what would be your ending of Brokeback mountain story?

[chameau]

This was discussed here so you could read the previous posts