Brokeback Mountain

So, it's Monday night and I'm sitting here at work, for the fourth day in a row, because I scheduled myself to work six days in a row. I know, crazy! What was I thinking? Well, at least tonight, I'm making time and a half since I'm working on a holiday.

I've done absolutely nothing this weekend apart from work, watch the entire first season of Grey's Anatomy (I'm totally obsessed), and see Brokeback Mountain finally. Wow, what a great movie and so terribly sad. I still can't believe that the screenwriters took a 14 page shortstory from the New Yorker and turned it into a two hour movie. I have to say it blows my mind.

And Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are so perfect as Jack Twist and Ennis Delmar. You totally believe that these two men love each other, but they can't admit it, nor can they break free of their lives and live openly. It just hurt my heart watch the mess the two of them make of their lives during the course of the movie.

I felt sorriest though for Ennis because at least Jack wants to take the chance, to live openly together but Ennis can't open himself up, not even to his wife or his kids. Not to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet, but when he goes to visit Jack's parents, and he sees that Jack had kept the shirt that he first wore when they were together for the first time on Brokeback Mountain, you can't help but feel his pain.

I almost felt numb when the movie was over, it was that powerful.

I've been reading Dwight Swain's book on characterization (if you don't have it, you should), and watching the short piece on the Grey's Anatomy DVD, what he talks about hit home to me. Shonda Rimes said that she wanted the characters on Grey's Anatomy to be people that everyone wanted to hang out with every week, and I really feel that when I watch the show.

It's what I hope to convey in my fiction, people who you want to take a journey with, that make you laugh, and cry, and get angry with when they do stuff that pisses you off.