Brokeback Mountain had its first screening on this day in 2005. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
The movie went on to win director Ang Lee an Academy Award. The story of two cowboys whose relationship develops while they are tending cattle, and the impact it has on their later lives, won three Oscars. Alongside Lee’s award for Best Director, the film also won Best Original Score for Gustavo Santaolalla’s music and Best Adapted Screenplay for writers Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana.
The film received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Heath Ledger, Best Supporting Actor for Jake Gyllenhaal, Best Supporting Actress for Michelle Williams, and Best Cinematography for Rodrigo Prieto.
The film is based on a short story by author E. Annie Proulx, first published in 1997. Several directors attempted to adapt the story before it was ultimately brought to the screen by Ang Lee.
Originally, Gus Van Sant was attached to the project. He hoped to cast Matt Damon as Ennis Del Mar and Joaquin Phoenix as Jack Twist. Damon later said that, having recently appeared in the films The Talented Mr. Ripley and All the Pretty Horses, he felt he could not take on what he described as a “gay cowboy movie.”
When the film was released in late 2005, it became a major commercial and critical success. The movie also sparked discussion about how the characters should be understood, with some viewers describing them as straight, gay, or bisexual. In an interview with Details magazine, Jake Gyllenhaal said he considered the characters to be two straight men who fell in love.
In 2018, the film was added to the U.S. Library of Congress National Film Registry after being deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
Several years after the film’s release, E. Annie Proulx said she regretted writing the story because readers continued to send her fan fiction featuring alternative endings, imagined sequels, and revised 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 during the 1970s before moving into glamour modelling. She also appeared as an extra in the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only.
Following her appearance in the film, the British tabloid News of the World publicly revealed that she was transgender. Cossey had transitioned in her early twenties, and prior to gender-affirming surgery doctors discovered that she had an intersex variation. She shared her personal story in her 1982 autobiography I Am a Woman.
In 1985, she had another moment in the spotlight when she appeared in two music videos for the band The Power Station. The supergroup brought together John Taylor and Andy Taylor from Duran Duran, along with singer Robert Palmer and Tony Thompson, the drummer from Chic. Cossey featured in the videos for their hit singles Some Like It Hot and Get It On.
Cossey campaigned for transgender rights and spent more than seven years pursuing legal recognition through a case that reached the European Court of Human Rights.
Although her challenge was ultimately unsuccessful, the campaign helped draw attention to the legal barriers faced by transgender people in the United Kingdom. Legal gender recognition would later be established through the UK’s Gender Recognition Act 2004.
Cossey published her second autobiography, My Story, in 1991. The following year, she married a Canadian engineer, and the couple later settled in Georgia in the United States.
This post was first published in 2021, and has subsequently been updated.
