I just clicked on the link and it is there? Interesting article.Anyway,saved it and here it is.
Jennis.x
Annie Proulx on love, homophobia and cowboys
It took the 'Brokeback Mountain' author time to get inside the minds of Twist and Del Mar
By Sandy Cohen
The Associated Press
Pulitzer prize winning writer Annie Proulx, on her property in Vershire, Vt., wrote the short story, "Brokeback Mountain," which was made into a movie by the same name.
LOS ANGELES - Annie Proulx figured no magazine would touch her short story ''Brokeback Mountain,'' the tale of two Wyoming cowboys whose romance is so intense it sometimes leaves them black and blue.
But The New Yorker published it in 1997, and it went on to win an O. Henry prize and a National Magazine Award. Now the movie version is a leading Oscar contender, with starring performances from Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist.
In a telephone conversation from her home in Wyoming, Proulx, a 70-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner, declined to discuss the origins of her two roughneck lovers, citing an upcoming book written with screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. Instead, she spoke about homophobia, her fascination with rural life and the process of making Twist and Del Mar live and breathe.
AP: You've said "Brokeback Mountain" began as an examination of homophobia in the land of the pure, noble cowboy.
Proulx: Everything I write has a rural situation, and the Wyoming stories - in the collection Close Range, which includes "Brokeback Mountain" - did contain a number of those social-observation stories, what things are like for people there.
AP: Were you trying to accomplish something specific with this story?
Proulx: No. It was just another story when I started writing it. I had no idea it was going to even end up on the screen. I didn't even think it was going to be published when I was first working on it.
AP: You've said this story took twice as long to write as a novel. Why?
Proulx: Because I had to imagine my way into the minds of two uneducated, rough-spoken, uninformed young men, and that takes some doing if you happen to be an elderly female person.
AP: How did you feel about seeing it on the big screen?
Proulx: It was really quite a shock because I had, had nothing to do with the film. So for 18 months, I had no idea what was happening. I had no idea if it was going to be good or frightful, . . . terribly lost or sentimentalized or what. When I saw it in September, I was astonished. The thing that happened while I was writing the story eight years ago is that from thinking so much about the characters and putting so much time into them, they became embedded in my consciousness. They became as real to me as real, walk-around, breathe-oxygen people. It took a long time to get these characters out of my head so I could get on with work. Then when I saw the film, they came rushing back. It was extraordinary, just wham, they were with me again.
AP: What did you think of the portrayal by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall?
Proulx: I thought they were magnificent, both of them. Jake Gyllenhall's Jack Twist . . . wasn't the Jack Twist that I had in mind when I wrote this story. The Jack that I saw was jumpier, homely. But Gyllenhall's sensitivity and subtleness in this role is just huge.
The scenes he's in have a kind of quicksilver feel to them. Heath Ledger is just almost really beyond description as far as I'm concerned. He got inside the story more deeply than I did.
AP: Would you characterize the story as groundbreaking?
Proulx: I hope that it is going to start conversations and discussions, that it's going to awaken in people an empathy for diversity, for each other and the larger world. I'm really hoping that the idea of tolerance will come through discussions about the film. People tend to walk out of the theater with a sense of compassion, which I think is very fine.
AP: Have you gotten any response from gay organizations?
Proulx: No. When the story was first published eight years ago, I did expect that. But there was a deafening silence. What I had instead were letters from individuals, gay people, some of them absolutely heartbreaking. And over the years, those letters have continued . . . Perhaps the most touching ones are from fathers, who say, "Now I understand the kind of hell my son went through." It's enormously wonderful to know that you've touched people, that you've truly moved them.
AP: Is that why you write?
Proulx: It's not why I write. . . . I wrote it from my long-term stance of trying to describe sections of rural life, individuals in particular rural situations and places, well, first the places. That it came out this way, it just happened to touch certain nerves in people. I think this country is hungry for this story.
AP: Why?
Proulx: Because it's a love story and there's hardly much love around these days. I think people are sick of divisiveness, hate-mongering, disasters, war, loss and need and want a reminder that sometimes love comes along that is strong and permanent, and that it can happen to anyone.
AP: Do you think straight men will watch this movie?
Proulx: They are watching this movie. Of course, why wouldn't they watch it? . . . My son-in-law, who prides himself on being a Bud-drinking, NRA-member redneck, liked the movie so much he went to it twice. Straight men are seeing it and they're not having any problem with it. The only people who would have problems with it are people who are very insecure about themselves and their own sexuality and who would be putting up a defense, and that's usually young men who haven't figured things out yet.
http://www.sltrib.com/entertainment/ci_3360447 
