How Clint Eastwood foreshadowed controversial Brokeback Mountain loss at the Oscars
The film's writer doesn't hold a grudge over its loss.
Brokeback Mountain’s co-writer has revealed the moment she released the much-lauded gay cowboy drama wouldn’t win the best picture Oscar in 2006.
Despite the accolades and praise it had garnered up to that point – including four Baftas and four Golden Globes – and going into the evening with eight nominations, the movie was destined to lose the night’s top prize.
The 78th Academy Awards also became infamous as the film chosen instead was Crash, now often cited as one of the worst candidates to win best picture.
In a new interview to mark the upcoming 20th anniversary of Brokeback Mountain’s release, producer and co-writer Diana Ossana agreed that she felt her film should have won instead but insisted she ‘hold[s] no grudge’.
Ossana also revealed she knew before the Oscars that Brokeback Mountain wouldn’t triumph in that category after attending a nominees’ party after Academy Awards voting had already closed – and learning a personally disappointing piece of news.
The event was held at the home of Paul Haggis, co-incidentally the director of Crash, and also attended by Clint Eastwood, who the previous year had enjoyed success at the Academy Awards with Million Dollar Baby.
As a fan of Unforgiven in particular, Ossana was particularly excited to meet Eastwood.
Its co-writer revealed that an a possible encounter with Clint Eastwood convinced her the film wouldn’t win the top prize at the Academy Awards (Picture: Vera Anderson/WireImage) Eastwood made his name as as a star in the western genre, including the Man With No Tame trilogy directed by Sergio Leone (Picture: Silver Screen Collection/Getty)‘Paul started walking me over and he goes, “Diana, I have to tell you, he hasn’t seen your movie.” And it was like somebody kicked me in the stomach,’ she recalled while speaking to The New York Times. ‘That’s when I knew we would not win best picture.’
Eastwood is, of course, famous for making his career in westerns including his TV breakout role in Rawhide and the Man With No Name trilogy of spaghetti westerns he made in the 1960s with Italian director Sergio Leone.
Although Eastwood, now 95 and still working, moved into directing as well as other movie genres, he still opted to make several of his own western films over the years like High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider – and Unforgiven.
Brokeback Mountain did still go on to scoop best director, best adapted screenplay and best original score at the Oscars.
Brokeback Mountain writers Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana pose with their Oscars for best adapted screenplay with Ang Lee, who won best director for the movie (Picture: Getty)But Ossana, who co-wrote the picture with Larry McMurty based on Annie Proulx’s short story, believes that homophobia contributed to the western’s defeat in the main category.
‘People want to deny that, but what else could it have been? We’d won everything up until then,’ she added.
Ossana also remembered seeing first-hand how the film had resonated with audiences once it received a wide US release in early 2006, for which she travelled to states including Missouri, South Dakota and Colorado to witness reactions in cinemas.
Comment nowWhat do you think of Brokeback Mountain?Comment NowEarly on in the process while she was struggling to get the film made, Ossana said that actors’ agents were telling them it would be ‘career suicide’ to take on either of the roles that stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal eventually signed up for.
However ‘the theaters were all packed because everybody was so curious about this movie’ Ossana shared, as she saw the dramatic impact it had on cinemagoers.
‘When the sex scene between the boys came on, you’d see some people got up and left, but not very many.
‘At the end of the film nobody would leave. They would just sit there nailed to their seats until the lights came on, and there would be people crying.’
Brokeback Mountain raked in over $178million (£129.6m) worldwide on a budget of only $14m (£10.2m), and remains one of Focus Features’ highest grossing movies, beaten only by 2019’s Downton Abbey movie, stop-motion Coraline and recent horror remake Nosferatu – which pipped it by less than $2m (£1.4m).
Metro has contacted a representative for Clint Eastwood for comment.
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