#brokeshack grunkles

[stanowarb2]

BROKESHACK MOUNTAIN

Art by @ficksuck for @stanowarb2; Day 9 of STANCESTIVAL

Click KEEP READING to see the original reference...

“Oh Stan!  I wish I knew how to quit you!”

You probably know the Oscar-winning 2005 movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.  If you don’t -- or if you know of it but you haven’t yet seen it -- WATCH IT!

However, did you know it was originally a short story in The New Yorker in 1997?  It makes for some magnificent summer reading.

The movie tracks the story quite closely, and -- NO SPOILERS -- the plot (at the highest level) is rather well-known.

But if you can, imagine that it’s 1997, and nobody knows what this story is about.  The author, E. Annie Proulx, had gained celebrity for her novel “The Shipping News,” and I was a fan her writing.  So when I saw there was a new Annie Proulx short story in The New Yorker I immediately say down to read it, probably the day it came out.  It started like a lot of Proulx stories: outdoorsy, full of life.  And around the 2000 word mark my jaw DROPPED.  I simply could not believe what I was reading.

This October will mark the twentieth anniversary of the story’s publication.  In 1997 LGBTQ people didn’t have anywhere near the visibility and acceptance they do today.  The TV show “Will and Grace” wouldn’t premiere for another year.  The publication of the story Brokeback Mountain was edgy and thrilling and I ran around to all my friends asking if they’d read it.  A couple years passed, and rumors circulated that a movie was in the works.  We heard Gus Van Sant would direct, and that Matt Damon and Joaquin Phoenix would star.  It seemed absolutely impossible  So when I heard Van Sant had dropped the project I thought it would stay solely on the page and never make it to the screen.

I guess I go on at such length because it’s important to remember that not too long ago things seemed impossible all the time.  Today, things seem somewhat less so.

THANK YOU FICKSUCK for both the wonderful art but also the hilarious tag line, “Love Is Relative.”