by SARAH ROWLAND

“When I first read Annie Proulx’s short story, I cried at the end. I couldn’t get it out of my mind, and it’s only 30 pages long. So there was no doubt in my mind that it could be a movie.”

Director Ang Lee is talking about what originally inspired him to make Brokeback Mountain, the most talked about love story to hit the big screen this year. That first read was more than five years ago. But, as he recalls, the epic tale of two young ranch hands who meet and fall in love while herding sheep continued to haunt him throughout the production of Hulk.

“When I finished making that, I asked my producer James Schamus rather bitterly, ‘Whatever happened to that film? How did it turn out?’ He said, ‘Nobody’s made it yet,’” recounts Lee, who’s calling from New York. “So I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t miss the opportunity again.”

Enter Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. Both are devastatingly beautiful as the star-crossed lovers, but it’s Ledger who’s really blowing people away on the festival circuit. As a rowdy rodeo cowboy, Gyllenhaal’s character has the benefit of emoting verbally. Whereas Ledger ’s character, a quiet, Wyoming loner, is forced to swallow the pain and shame of a socially unaccepted love. Yet, he expresses more internal torment with a few grunts and a couple of tobacco spits than most actors can with 10 pages of dialogue. Which is surprising, especially for those of us who have found him to be an overrated wanker in films like Lords of Dogtown. And we’re not alone. Even Lee had his doubts.

“I was scared that he couldn’t pull it off,” he says. “I mean, he’s obviously a good actor. But I had never seen him carry a movie the way I needed him to here in terms of anchoring that western mood with layers of macho aggression and melancholic vulnerability. After a week or two, though, I felt very secure with him.”

Conquering colorado

Ledger’s Oscar buzz, combined with winning Best Picture at the Venice film fest, has resulted in nonstop press for Lee since last September. So it’s no wonder he’s been inundated with the same repetitive questions. For instance, when reporters aren’t asking how “brave” does Lee think his heterosexual leads are for taking on gay roles, they’re asking if he’s worried about the right-wing reaction in Middle America. For the record, both issues are of little concern to him.

“Actually, from the get-go I was more concerned about how the gay community would see it. I mean it’s a story about gay lovers, yet nobody asks me if I’m concerned about what gay people think.”

That’s not to say he wasn’t a little anxious about premiering his homo on the range romance to a sold-out Colorado theatre. But it turned out that walking the red carpet in the red state was one of the best screenings Brokeback has had so far.

“It was a very warm reception,” he says. “They were riveted. They chuckled. They laughed. And usually when I do a Q & Aon stage, about a third or quarter of the audience will leave, but hardly anyone left. So it turned out to be a lesson for me not to stereotype people.”

Taming the wranglers

He’s also had a change of heart about shooting in Alberta.

“At first, I was afraid to go there because it’s not Wyoming,” he says. “I like to shoot where it’s supposed to happen, especially when it’s material that is foreign to me to begin with. That way I don’t have to worry about authenticity because the local culture nourishes me. And I wasn’t sure that I could get that in Calgary. But it ended up being a great experience. It really is the best place to make westerns.”

This could have something to do with the fact that Cowtown is our own little version of Texas, complete with a healthy dose of gun-totting, right-wing homophobes.

“Yeah, some of the wranglers and teamsters could be a little tough on the subject matter,” says Lee. “When I interviewed the male wranglers and told them it was a gay love story, some of them would say grudgingly, ‘Yeah, I guess I can work with that.’ But incidents like that didn’t happen very often. And for the most part, I had a great time filming in Canada. I found it to be a very relaxed and peaceful place.

Brokeback Mountain opens Friday, Dec. 16

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