Ang Lee’s latest film, Brokeback Mountain, a stunning piece of work about the unlikely and long-lasting intimate relationship between a pair of Wyoming ranch hands, is one of the most anticipated movies of the year. In my recent interview with Lee in Chicago, I was impressed with the remarkable enthusiasm and sensitivity he brought to the project.

Gay & Lesbian Times: Brokeback Mountain combines two themes that you have dealt with in earlier films – same-sex relationships in The Wedding Banquet and the West in Ride with the Devil. What made you want to revisit them in Brokeback Mountain?

Ang Lee: Well, Annie Proulx’s writing… it’s a great story. Purely, I was moved by it. I was introduced to the material by James Schamus, and he said to take a look. I got choked up when I read the short story, and then I read the script; it sounded reasonable. Of course, the realistic Western was still not quite familiar to me. The idea of the illusion of love that is Brokeback Mountain was very evoking for me, it felt existential: when the emotion lands, when they take off their shirts. So to me, it’s a great story, a great piece of American West writing. And it haunted me. I went ahead and did The Hulk, and didn’t even do [Brokeback Mountain], and it just stuck with me and refused to leave. And I felt bad about missing that, like Ennis missed his love. Gay ranch hands in Wyoming: that’s very far away from me! [Laughs] Why does it wrench my guts? I’ve got a lot of curiosity. It haunted me, and I felt bad I missed it. Fortunately enough, after The Hulk, still nobody could make it. When I realized that, I jumped into it. It was that simple. In terms of the gay theme, these two movies [The Wedding Banquet and Brokeback Mountain], are very different to me. One is a family drama [The Wedding Banquet]; a mainstream Chinese family drama, something I grew up with. So the same-sex love affair presents a problem in the family. It’s a territory [family drama] I’m very familiar with. This one [Brokeback Mountain], the romantic love story is at the center. It’s a lot deeper for me. Luckily, I’m a more experienced filmmaker, and as a person I just know a lot more.

GLT: Right, because The Wedding Banquet was just your second film.

AL: Yes. It feels quite different. In terms of Westerns, I did a pre-Western, actually [Ride with the Devil], and this is a post-Western. Actually, I want to avoid a Western, because they sort of work against us, in terms of movie conventions. The masculine part overlaps each other, and the geography certainly does. But this film has a very different aura.

GLT: Like the main characters in The Wedding Banquet, Jack and Ennis in Brokeback Mountain have to keep their relationship a secret. What effect do you think keeping secrets has on people?

AL: Well, they’re doing what their senses tell them. They’re not being totally honest and brave to their sensibility. At some point they are going to regret that they missed life; when they realize they are a bit too old to turn things around. The things you have missed, you missed. You only live once. The poignant part is that people do their best. They did their best. It’s not like if time goes back they would do something different; they’d probably do the same thing. But the regret is the same.

GLT: There is a wonderful scene where Ennis has been chasing after the startled horse that ran off with the supplies, and Jack shows up at the camp before him. When Ennis gets there, Jack says something like, “Where have you been? I come here hungry after herding sheep all day and all that’s here is beans!”

AL: [Laughs]

GLT: It’s like a wife talking to a husband in the 1960s. It’s a great scene. Do you think that that sort of lays the groundwork for their relationship?

AL: Yeah. You have to do it very subtly. Scene after scene, it gradually aims toward sex. It’s just a matter of time before they tip over [laughs] to the other side. I’m glad you noticed. It’s like, who is doing the cooking and who is doing…

GLT: It’s all about the delineation of their roles.

AL: They live together for Christ’s sake. They’re partners.

GLT: Yes. Not long after, there’s that beautiful, tentative scene in the tent where they’re lying together, and Jack reaches over for Ennis’s arm and it’s poetic. It means warmth and comfort and it also means intimacy.

AL: It’s also indirect. He doesn’t have to look at his face.

GLT: Right, because his back is to him.

AL: It’s very Ennis-like. He wants it, and he denies it at the same time. That’s his character.

GLT: It’s also Jack-like, because Jack is the initiator. Then it goes into that amazing, awkward, rough but tender sex scene.

AL: … I’m very proud of the actors. That’s something I cannot make them do. I could suggest by blocking or talking, but they are the ones. Their body is their instrument. Their emotion is their instrument. How much they wanted to expose and be exposed is up to them. I felt I saw a private moment. Usually, you don’t see that in love-making scenes. You see beautiful ones, awkward ones, but hardly [do] you see private ones. Private [ones] are very convincing. All I had to tell them [the actors] was, if you don’t believe it, who’s going to believe it? Then they went ahead.

GLT: There’s a scene, a little later, that I call the “ropin’ and rasslin’” scene, where they’re tumbling around. It goes from that to what develops into a violent scene.

AL: It’s very close, don’t you think so? It’s like they are nerves next to each other and you put them together and poof! It short circuits. It’s very male tensioned, as well. It’s homoerotic tension. Especially for Ennis, fear and violence [are] co-existing here, and that’s why he’s a brooding character. He has to deny his own desire. He is a twisted and very troubled character.

GLT: And the violence is always under the surface.

AL: He has no other way to express the fear and the need. It’s very Western, by the way [laughs]. People think they’re macho and violent, but out there in the wild, they’re scared.

GLT: When they see each other later, four or so years have passed and Jack comes to visit. It’s another one of those scenes where they shake hands and hug, and then they slam each other against a wall and the affection pours out of them. It’s amazing, because Alma witnesses that. And that’s pretty early, because their relationship continues and Alma is aware of it the whole time, and yet she chooses to remain silent.

AL: It’s the same thing like Ennis. Jack seems to be more aware and knowing. For Ennis and Alma, they have no word [to describe it]. They probably don’t even know the word gay. There’s no vocabulary [for them] to understand what crashed their lives, how he feels. Anything he feels in the mountain is private, even though it’s wide open. At the same time, it’s very private. Secrecy and privacy is the key to those characters. The same thing with her. She was crushed, but she doesn’t know what crushed her. There’s no comprehension [laughs]. It takes a long time to develop that anger, but at that moment she just turned blank.

GLT: It’s so powerful. Ennis makes reference, at one point, to him and Jack getting together in the middle of nowhere on a regular basis. But the idea of them living together, because of what happened when he was a kid, when his father showed him where the gay cowboy was killed, could never happen. Do you think that says as much about where they were living – Wyoming and Texas – as it does about that era – the pre-Stonewall [gay liberation] of the 1960s? If they were in a more urban or progressive setting, would the relationship have had a chance?

AL: Yeah, if they’d moved out to San Francisco [laughs]. There’s one line Ennis says, “I’m like all my life in a coffee pot trying to grab for the handle.” He doesn’t know anything outside Wyoming; the way of life and of thinking [the way we do]. He just doesn’t have an alternative. This is how his character is built.

GLT: Right. Jack tries to get him to move to Texas.

AL: Like it’s any better [laughs].