Turning The West Upside Down

By now you have certainly heard about, and maybe even seen, "Brokeback Mountain," the story of two ranch hands who fall in love on a summer sheep-herding job and then have to hide their relationship from society's disapproving gaze.

But when people hear who co-wrote the film's screenplay -- which by the way is up for an Oscar -- lots of them seem to say, "Larry McMurtry? Wait a minute, Larry McMurtry is the guy who writes about the traditional old West," CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Rita Braver ponders.

"They're just wrong about me, not much more to say to that," McMurtry responds.

But McMurtry, author of 41 books and scores of screenplays, is the son of a cattle rancher, and known for his skill at observing and communicating the very essence of the American West.

"Well, I've lived in the West 55 of my 70 years. I've traveled to every part of the West -- most parts of the West many times. I mean if you spend 55 years in the region and you have any smarts at all, you pick up a few things," McMurtry says.

Things that he put into his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "Lonesome Dove," the epic story of two former Texas Rangers on an arduous cattle drive, became a top-rated TV miniseries.

His novel "Horseman Pass By" about the struggles between a rancher and his willful son, was made into the film "Hud."

"And the Last Picture Show," for which he wrote the novel and co-wrote the screenplay, is a 1950s coming of age story in a hard-luck Texas town.

Unlike most of his best known work, "Brokeback Mountain" is not McMurtry's original creation. It's based on a story by writer Annie Proulx and it was first spotted by Diana Ossana, who co-wrote the screenplay with McMurtry and also co-produced the film.

McMurtry describes his relationship with Ossana as one of friendship and business. Ossana agrees, adding, "Yeah, we're the best of friends and long-time friends."

Such good friends that when McMurtry was recovering from heart surgery in 1991 and came to visit Ossana in Tucson, Ariz., "He didn't leave for 2 ½ years. He just all of a sudden said, 'I can't go. I can't be alone. I need to stay here.' And I said, 'Fine.'"

Ossana, whose daughter Sara is McMurtry's goddaughter, had recently retired from her job as a law firm administrator. An amateur writer herself, she was heart broken to see that McMurtry was unable to work.

"All he did was sit on the couch and stare at the mountains and I said, 'Enough is enough' to myself. We've got to get him back out into the world," Ossana remembers.

Finally, he agreed to work, but only if Ossana would help. Their first project, a screenplay about the outlaw Pretty Boy Floyd, which eventually became a novel.

When Ossana is asked if she felt intimidated trying to co-write a story with an accomplished author, McMurtry chimed in, saying, "We weren't writing the Mosaic tablets, we weren't writing the -- we were writing little scenes about Pretty Boy Floyd. Ya know, it wasn't like -- it wasn't a towering intellectual experience, it's screenwriting, it's a craft. And, and I have no reason to doubt that Diana could do it very well, which she does."

Together they wrote another novel and several TV miniseries.

Then one night Ossana read Proulx's story, "Brokeback Mountain" in the New Yorker.

"I knew immediately it was a powerful story that could touch many people and I wanted to get it out in the world in some major way," Ossana recalls. "I thought we should write a screenplay. So I raced downstairs, I found Larry, I said, 'Would you read this story' and he said, 'You know I don't read short fiction.'"

McMurtry's explanation: "I can't write it. I've never written a short story."

"Right, so I said, 'But will you humor me and read the thing, okay,'" Ossana adds.

The result: "I thought it was the best story I'd ever read that addressed the American West. I thought, why didn't I write it myself. And I thought that it is a great story and it will go around the world," McMurtry says.

The pair quickly wrote Proulx to option the work for film.

"We felt that we had a very, very rare opportunity. You just don't get material like that in a normal life as a screenwriter, just once in your lifetime, maybe," McMurtry says.

The subject of homosexuality, pervasive throughout the story and film, may, on the surface, run counter to the tastes of McMurtry's fan base, though the author says he was never concerned.

Ossana says, "I just flat out asked him, I said, 'Is it going to bother you or affect you at all if some of your, ya know, fans think that this is you standing the West on its head or something.' He said, 'I've never given it a thought and I won't.'"

"It never occurred to me," McMurtry adds.

They wrote the screenplay as they always do: McMurtry working on one of his nine Hermes typewriters and just bangs away.

"You know, I have no ideas until I sit down at this machine. I can't talk abstractly about anything. I have -- don't think about it. I do it at the same time every day and whatever process I have starts when I hit the keys and stops when I get to the end of five pages," McMurtry says.

Ossana adds, "I take his five pages and I might reduce them to two three or I might expand those to eight or 10."

They finished "Brokeback Mountain" in three months, but it took seven years to get the movie made.

McMurtry and Ossana don't believe producers or directors were scared away from the film's subject, rather, actors' agents. As McMurtry put it, actors had to deal with whispers around Hollywood that a role in a gay cowboy film was "career suicide."

But everything changed when noted director Ang Lee came aboard. He already knew about McMurtry.

But it was the story and the screenplay that sold him.

"I cried and there's something twist my gut," Lee says. "And you read this screenplay, you don't doubt at 30 pages can turn into a movie. You see a movie right in front of you."

Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger signed on too, untroubled by playing gay characters.

"Not being gay, I knew that would be a challenge for me and knew that that I could use that as an advantage," Ledger says.

But everyone connected with this film insists is that it is much more than an iconoclastic depiction of love between two cowboys.

"It doesn't present any kind of agenda, any politics at all, one way or the other at all," McMurtry says. "It just says life is not for sissies."

He elaborates, saying, "Ya know, you need strength. Love is not easy. If you find it, it's not easy. If you don't find it, it's not easy. It's not easy if you find it, but it doesn't work out, it merely says, the strong survive, but not everybody is the strong and many people don't."

"Brokeback Mountain" has garnered more Oscar nominations than any other film this year – eight in all -- including best adapted screenplay for Ossana and McMurtry. They've already won the same award at the Golden Globes.

But winning the Oscar for "Brokeback Mountain" is definitely the pair's goal.

"If you compete, you wanna win," McMurtry says laughing.

Ossana adds, "But it's a, ya know, again, it would be just an affirmation for everyone who's not just everyone who's worked on the film, but in my mind sort of everyone who as seen the film, too."

McMurtry and Ossana believed in "Brokeback Mountain" despite their own manager's first reaction.

"I said, 'It's a story about, it's a doomed love between young ranch hands in 1963 Wyoming,'" Ossana recalls. "And he said, 'Are you outta your mind? Just forget about it Diana. It'll never get made.'"