The movie Brokeback Mountain had its first screening on this day in 2005. The film had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
The movie went on to win Director Ang Lee an Academy Award.
The love story about two cowboys spending time together tending cattle and their subsequent lives won three awards on Oscar’s night. Alongside Lee’s gong for directing, it also picked up the Best Original Score gong for Gustavo Santaoalla’s music and the Best Adapted Screenplay award for writing team Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana.
The film had been nominated for 8 awards including Best Picture, Best Actor for Heath Ledger, Best Supporting Actor by Jake Gyllenhaal, Best Supporting Actress for Michelle Williams and Best Cinematography for Rodrigo Rodrigo Prieto.
The film is based on a short story by author E. Annie Proulx which was published in 1997. Several directors attempted to bring the story to the screen before it came to Ang Lee.
Originally Gus Van Sant was attached to the project, he hoped to cast Matt Damon in the role of Ennis Del Mar, and Joaquin Phoenix as Jack Twist. Matt Damon famously told Sant, that he’d just done a gay movie (The Talented Mr Ripley) and a cowboy movie (All The Pretty Horses), so there was no way he could do a gay cowboy movie.
When the film came out in late 2005 it was huge commercial and critical success. The film sparked discussion about whether the characters should be described as straight, gay or bisexual. In an interview with Details magazine Gyllenhaal said he considered the characters to be two straight men who fell in love.
In 2018 the film was added to the US Library of Congress as a film that had been deemed as a culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
Several years after the film came out the author E. Annie Proulx said she regretted writing the story because people keep sending her fanfiction with alternative endings, imaginary sequels and alternative plotlines.
Model Caroline Cossey was born in 1954
British model Caroline Cossey, who was also known by the name Tula, was born on this day in 1954.
She worked as a showgirl in Paris and London in the 1970’s and then moved on to being a glamour model. She appeared as an extra in the 1981 James Bond film For You Eyes Only.
After her appearance in the film British tabloid News of the World outed her as bring transgender. Cosey had transitioned genders in her early twenties and just prior to her surgery doctors had discovered she had an intersex condition. She shared the story of her journey in her 1982 autobiography I Am a Woman.
In 1985 she had another moment in the spotlight when she appeared in two videos for the band The Power Station. The supergroup brought together John Taylor and Andy Taylor from Duran Duran, with singer Robert Palmer and Tony Thompson, the drummer from Chic. Cossey featured in the music videos for their huge hits Some Like It Hot and Get It On.
Cossey campaigned for transgender rights and for over seven years fought a legal battle for gender recognition that went to the European Court of Human Rights.
While initially successful the case was overturned in 1990, and the right for transgender people to legally change their sex would not be achieved until the introduction of the UK’s Gender Recognition Act of 2004.
Cossey published her second autobiography My Story in 1991. She married Canadian engineer the following year and the couple settled in Georgia in the USA.
This post was first published in 2021, and has subsequently been updated.
