Moviefone: Why did you decide to tell this particular story?

Ang Lee: I thought it was a great American love story and a great piece of Western literature by Annie Proulx. I read it four years ago, right before I made the 'The Hulk.' James Schamus, my creative partner, said "This is something special." I read the short story and got tears in my eyes. Gay ranch hands in Wyoming are a subject very far away from me and probably the world. It's very unfamiliar; it's extraordinary. After 'The Hulk,' I kept thinking about the story. It’s only 20 pages, but it still stuck in my head. I think curiosity and my admiration for the writing was the main reason I made the film. I liked the idea of Brokeback Mountain as a metaphoric allusion and not just a real place.

MF: Some people have said that your movie will tarnish the image of the cowboy, the Marlboro Man. What do you think?

AL: The Marlboro Man doesn't have love; he only has cigarettes.

MF: Do you think American audiences are ready to see such a high-profile gay love story?

AL: I don't know. Some will be ready, and some will not. I couldn't wait for the whole world to be ready, or else I would never have made the film. I'm sure there will be areas where the movie won't be popular or even shown, but I still had to make it. People will decide for themselves.

MF: What made Jake and Heath the best actors to play Jack and Ennis?

AL: They’re good young actors, and I had made the decision to pick younger actors and have them play older, as opposed to the other way around. Heath and Jake are among the very best in their age group. They had no problems with the subject matter and wanted to be in it. Heath is a great anchorman for that tough, Western conservative macho image. In the meantime he provides the vulnerability and the hint of violence that is always present in Western literature. Jake on the other hand is the romantic lead; that classic romantic figure. He reminds me of the Paul Newman and Montgomery Clift-like matinee idol. He's the romantic, the dreamy one of the two. They are so opposite of each other that it works.

MF: How would the movie have been different if you had cast two openly gay actors?

AL: That probably would have been a lot easier for me. But we wanted to get the best actors, not the best gay actors. If the choice were between two equally as good actors who were gay and two who weren't, I'd have to go with the ones who were gay, but that was not the case.

MF: Did the budding off-screen relationship between Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams affect how they acted?

AL: If anything, it made them better. They support each other very much, and they are both incredibly professional and serious actors. We benefited from their relationship. It made them very focused and happy to work on the set. In one incident, we had to shoot Michelle's character seeing her husband kissing another man, so she wanted them to do it for her, so her reaction would be natural. Even though we had finished shooting that kissing scene, they had to do it again for her. She could ask, because they were in a relationship.

MF: What about Anne Hathaway? She's best known as a princess to American audiences. Were you afraid people wouldn't see her as mature enough?

AL: I didn't see those films, actually, so I didn't know. She did the best reading, and it was the most convincing of the actresses we saw. She had to do the phone scene when she talks to Ennis, and she perfectly captured the anger, resentment, loss and poignancy of the moment. Plus, I can totally see her as a wealthy Texas princess.


MF: What other movies influenced your style for 'Brokeback Mountain'?

AL: Well, the Western movie and the gay love story was something new, so there was a shortage of role models for the film. There has been implied homoeroticism in Westerns before, but not head on. In some ways 'The Last Picture Show' in terms of how it was shot was an influence, and that screenplay was also written by Larry McMurtry. And in some ways I took a few cues from 'Ride the High Country' and 'The Misfits,' but there's no direct homage to anything. A gay Western love story was rare territory -- part romance, part documentary about life in the West.

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