Q 01/05

Who directed Brokeback Mountain?

A) Ang Lee

B) Gus Van Sant

C) Pedro Almodóvar

D) Todd Haynes

Answer · why

A) Ang Lee

He had considered retirement in 2003 after two exhausting productions; the script tempted him back and won him his first Best Director Oscar.

Q 02/05

The film is adapted from a 1997 short story by which author?

A) Cormac McCarthy

B) Annie Proulx

C) Alice Munro

D) Joan Didion

Answer · why

B) Annie Proulx

She won the Pulitzer for The Shipping News and later wrote the libretto for the Brokeback opera herself.

Q 03/05

In which magazine was the short story first published, in October 1997?

A) Harper's

B) Esquire

C) The New Yorker

D) The Atlantic

Answer · why

C) The New Yorker

It won the National Magazine Award for Fiction in 1998; the two-paragraph prologue was accidentally left out of the magazine version.

Q 04/05

The story was later collected in which 1999 Pulitzer-finalist book?

A) Heart Songs and Other Stories

B) Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2

C) Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3

D) Close Range: Wyoming Stories

Answer · why

D) Close Range: Wyoming Stories

The collection version is slightly expanded from the magazine text; the other two titles are Proulx's later Wyoming collections and her memoir.

Q 05/05

Which actor plays Ennis Del Mar, the more closed-off of the two men?

A) Heath Ledger

B) Jake Gyllenhaal

C) Josh Hartnett

D) Mark Wahlberg

Answer · why

A) Heath Ledger

He wanted Ennis from the start, finding the closed-off, homophobic character more complex than Jack, and learned Wyoming and Texas accents for it.