Annie Proulx 'Wishes She Had Never Written' Brokeback Mountain

Annie Proulx, who wrote the short story ‘Brokeback Mountain’, which was later turned into an Oscar-winning movie, has said she wishes she’d never written it.

Speaking to the Paris Review, she said: “I wish I’d never written the story. It’s just been the cause of hassle and problems and irritation since the film came out.”

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The story, about two cowboys who enter into a secret sexual relationship, was originally penned in 1997 for the New Yorker magazine, after which it was included in a collection of her short stories called ‘Close Range: Wyoming Stories’, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

But it came to prominence when director Ang Lee brought it to the screen starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, winning Lee the Best Director Oscar, along with Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score.

Rather than homophobic detractors of the story, Proulx said that fans pestering her over the ending has become something of an albatross.

“I think it’s important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience, but unfortunately the audience that ‘Brokeback’ reached most strongly have powerful fantasy lives,” she said.

“And one of the reasons we keep the gates locked here is that a lot of men have decided that the story should have had a happy ending.

"They can’t bear the way it ends — they just can’t stand it. So they rewrite the story, including all kinds of boyfriends and new lovers and so forth after Jack is killed. And it just drives me wild.

“They can’t understand that the story isn’t about Jack and Ennis. It’s about homophobia; it’s about a social situation; it’s about a place and a particular mindset and morality. They just don’t get it.”

Last year, she adapted the story for an opera, but added that she considered declining that offer too.

“But then I figured that one of these idiots who loves happy endings would come along and start messing with it,” she said.

“I want to keep the story as it is. It’s a strong story and it shouldn’t be mangled into everybody lives happily ever after. Not that that could happen in an opera.”

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Image credits: Focus Features/Getty