A Very Belated Brokeback Valentine's
Issue 1: Welcome to katie mag
This year I've really been feeling like life is coming at me, not from me, and this “newsletter" will be my attempt to carve out some space for that intentionality — to quiet my newly Severance-pilled brain, to create a space for actual writing (ugh) and push myself to try to string together more than two sentences at a time. Why use lot word when few word do trick?
Perennial starts now.
I spent my Valentine's Day breathing, sniffling, and crying with 200 other people in a dark theater re-watching Brokeback Mountain, adapted from Annie Proulx's 1997 short story of the same name. The fact that it was the first day of my period had nothing to do with it, obviously, I just love tragic gay cowboy love. It turns out New York City's hottest club for this manufactured day of communal and performative affection is the Asia Society's theater on the opening evening of Water and Oil: The Movies of Ang Lee.
Rewatching Brokeback 20 years after its release brought waterworks, of course, but also stirred much contemplation on the state of LGBT love and acceptance in society today. The dominant headlines during its release and press cycle were along the lines of "This is not really a gay love story, it's universal," to which director Ang Lee countered: "Well, it's universal because it's gay." Say that, king. The story simply doesn't work if it's about the straights, it is precisely the specificity of Ennis and Jack's taboo love in 1960s Wyoming that gives the film its emotional resonance and ability to interrogate the existential nature of love and humanity. Lee knows this. When asked by an audience member if he would go back and change anything about the film, he offered a pointed, "No."
The film is truly perfect and is firing on all cylinders — from the technical elements of landscape, setting, and costume design, to the wrenching performances of course, all the way through to the lens and minimal camera movement. In Lee's own words, after re-watching along with us on Valentine's evening, "Objectively, this movie, I don't know what's wrong with it. The movie's great. Actually, on the contrary, I thought, what have I done to deserve this movie? This movie seems to be better than me."
Getting to watch Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist fall in love, huff and gruff and fight and fuck, made me really appreciate how the film lets us live with these characters and how the full dimensions of each one are rendered with such depth and care on the screen. A hauntingly beautiful detail I picked up on this rewatch? Canned beans.
Barely into their inaugural stint on Brokeback, Jack is already complaining about being sick of the canned beans that is the staple of their diet that summer. To which Ennis says, "I can stand it." Jack replies, "Well, I can't." And that is just so damn metaphorical for their relationship — it's the story of Ennis trying to stand "it" — it being his love for Jack amidst his deep seated homophobia, it being his deteriorating marriage with the iconic Michelle Williams, it being his inability to love and care for his daughters.
Jack, meanwhile, is the exact foil to Ennis: He cannot stand the scraps Ennis gives him over their 20 year relationship, culminating in Gyllenhaal's heartbreaking delivery: "Tell you what, we could a had a good life together, a fuckin real good life. You wouldn’t do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain." Jack can't stand his condescending father-in-law's behavior at Thanksgiving. He can't stand his loveless marriage to the iconic Anne Hathaway (who auditioned for Brokeback on her lunch break while filming The Princess Diaries, reading for her part in a full ballroom gown and tiara... that's mother!) Jack never settles, he goes to Mexico to find what Ennis won't give him, he fools around with David Harbour, he doesn't stand it. He fights back. Until he meets his tragic end, and can't anymore. Jack, I swear...
Art borne from grief
In many ways, Brokeback is a dead dad movie. The only time we see Ennis's dad is in his memory of being dragged by his violent father to see the murdered body of a gay man, Earl. "Dad made sure I seen it. Took me to see it. Dad laughed about it. Hell, for all I know he done the job." Ennis's dad dies and leaves Ennis to fend for himself as a teenager, but his violent homophobia scares and scars him for life. Ennis's concept of home becomes one of physical safety, so he marries Alma and sacrifices his own emotional fulfillment. He's totally absent from his daughters' lives. While Jack's father outlives him, he is similarly homophobic and beat and urinated on Jack when he was very young. Jack responds to his father's abuse with a longing to fulfill his desires and find a home in Ennis.
While Ennis and Jack wrestle with the trauma of their fathers in Brokeback, Lee was behind the camera, making this movie as a way to process his own grief in the wake of his father's unexpected passing. Lee's father was his high school principal and didn't approve of him making movies as his career path. But after watching Hulk, his father said he liked it (dejectedly, Lee recounts), and told him to go ahead and make another movie. His father passed away two weeks later.
"So I had to make a movie," Lee said. "This was the easiest movie I made, I was half asleep. So exhausted, emotionally drained, I didn’t have a way to process my grief. So I dedicate this to my dad, it’s for him. I got to make him a movie."
Lee's approach to filmmaking
"I would say every movie, every moment I make movies, I give my best. So I have no regrets." I loved hearing Lee's perspective on revisiting your own creative work and recognizing that what is, is, and dwelling on anything you could have changed is a disservice to the person you were when you were in the process of creating.
"I cannot do better. I cannot alter it. That's the best," Lee said. "And you cannot look back and say, I can do better. No, that was the best you can do at the moment. It's happening. Everybody's there. And for people to look back and say, you could have done this and that, like, bullshit."
Lee attributed the greatness of this movie to his emotional state and inability to over-direct. "If I had energy left, I would do more and I would ruin a lot of this movie. I wouldn't have let it happen. I think a movie has a life, and a filmmaker should respect that life. You should be in awe that you are even making an movie, with awe and respect and gratefulness."
Directing the “core four”
Lee was already an accomplished and experienced director when he made Brokeback, explaining that half of the job is how you inspire actors and give them direction, but the other half is how to best portray them. "They put their heart and image in your hand. You have to make sure you capture their spirit and that's precious."
"When the is camera rolling, you watch their mental state and their spirit, there's something there," Lee said. "You want to make sure the light is right, the camera angles are right, the spirit, the breathing, and you have to sync with their feeling. However they feel it, you feel it. So when you talk to them, you're together with them. When it clicks, you just know it."
I forget how young this cast was — at the time of filming, Heath was the "oldest" at 25, Jake and Michelle were 23, and Anne was 21. Lee fondly recounted the liminal space in an actor's career where they all still had a "version of innocence" running through their performances. "That's just beautiful, all of them. Um, it breaks your heart."
Lee also talked about the importance of directing different actors in different ways. "Jake needs to talk a lot," Lee joked. "But with Heath, it's just like. That's the target. Tell him technical details, that's all he needs."
"I'd like to think I could teach them everything," he said. "But you have to see what they are."
A Western movie, but an Eastern way of seeing space
Lee referred to Brokeback as a Western movie, but with an Eastern way of seeing space. Throughout his filmography, Lee uses negative space and framing to allow the picture to reflect the inner worlds of the characters, without having to say it in dialogue. For Brokeback, Lee talked about how much he loves location scouting and the importance of nature and physical place to this story — the way nature gave them the physical space for their emotional arc and love story to bloom — putting space between them until they are forced into physical proximity and close the space between them.
"Because it's all about space," Lee said. "There are things people praise about the movie, which I think are really easy, and it probably takes a foreign filmmaker and a woman writer to see the obvious. Of course, they're all gay. The nature, all the animals, like what else? It's very natural. It just struck me as a great love story, an existential love story."
Imbued in the physical landscape are the emotional through lines of loneliness and intimacy. Lee frames the western wilderness both visually grand, but also making space for the privacy for where Ennis and Jack make love. Brokeback is their hideout, it's both a secretive place and open, and they chase after it for 20 years.
Pure cinema
This was my first time watching Brokeback on the big screen. And now, my annoying ass will never shut up about having watched it with Ang Lee himself. Physical space served the emotional arc of the film (There was one tent! There was one bed! And they were roommates!), and likewise, watching this in a theater was for me also an emotional experience anchored in a physical space. We have fewer and fewer spaces to gather in community, but "theater is still a congregation," as Lee reminds us.
I spent years chasing back to that feeling of making Brokeback Mountain, it's so whimsical. That's Brokeback Mountain to me, it makes me feel nostalgic, the sensation of films, the focus when nothing's happening, I can feel all of your breathing together. To me, that's movies, that's the movie sensation, it makes me want to cry, so thank you. It's very special to me.
The experience of watching this 20 year old film with close friends, Movie Pals, and strangers alike on Valentine's Day in a dark room on the Upper East Side, was truly a gift. Hearing the audience gasp, laugh and cry at the same moments, to experience that collective gasp when a heartbroken Alma catches Ennis and Jack in their desperate, frantic, reunion kiss, to the stifled sobs rippling throughout the theater when Ennis discovers his shirt, tucked inside Jack's in his childhood closet after Jack's death. Then hearing full blubbering in the movie's final scene when we see Ennis's shrine to Jack inside his trailer, with his shirt he took from Jack's home on display. But the order of the shirts is reversed: now, it is Ennis's shirt draped over Jack's, enveloping him in a way he was never able to do in life.
Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this.
I was getting really hung up on the important things of trying to name and brand this newsletter and define what I want this space to be. Thank you to my sister and wifey for respectfully telling me to get over myself and just write. Two months after Valentine's Day, I finally did :') Also to my other friends who've been supportive, checking in on progress (lol) and cheering me on. I appreciate you all.
So, welcome to the inaugural issue of katie mag.
“You need the eye, the hand, and the heart. Two won't do.” —Ancient Chinese proverb, allegedly, quoted to me from two white guys
I was inspired by an ancient Chinese proverb (allegedly, though my Chinese parents confirm that it seems plausible) that was cited in a screenwriting book by John Yorke and by the artist David Hockney. I'm stealing it for katie mag. Because stop Asian hate, right?
Eye: My place for recounting what I'm seeing — films, art, shows
Hand: Craft section for my writing or art projects
Heart: Essays and vignetty feelings à la Deborah Levy, or trying to be
It won't be all three all the time, but I'll use the eye, hand, and heart as a guiding principle for each issue.
Thanks for reading 🩵