'Brokeback Mountain' Is an Undisputed Classic

“It was a laughing stock—the ‘gay cowboy’ script.” That’s how producer James Schamus remembers the reputation surrounding Brokeback Mountain as it first started making the Hollywood rounds in the late 1990s. An adaptation of Annie Proulx’s lauded short story, the screenplay by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry had long been languishing in development limbo by the time Schamus, then best known for producing the films of Ang Lee and Todd Haynes, acquired the rights in 2001. “A producer who shall not be named, but who’s currently on a rehabilitation tour, let the rights lapse,” Schamus says. (He presumably means Scott Rudin, who’d briefly backed a version of the movie to be directed by Gus Van Sant.) “But every single possible variation on this thing—everyone passed. And so the option lapsed.”