Wyoming Inspires Heralded Movie’s Look

Winner of four Golden Globe awards, including Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director (Ang Lee), Brokeback Mountain is a film that opens in a setting that was drawn from Mr. Lee’s location scouting visits to Wyoming. The story was conceived by Wyoming resident Annie Proulx, a Pulitzer Prize winner, who finds inspiration outside her doorstep daily. “Wyoming has always been my writing place. All the fiction I’ve written, I’ve written in Wyoming. It’s the long sightlines more than anything that work for me – being able to walk out and the wheels go around and stuff comes out on the page,” she said. Proulx’s fictional short story, “Brokeback Mountain,” was set mainly in Wyoming and first appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1997.

The movie screenplay was written by Larry McMurtry (“Lonesome Dove”) and his writing partner Diana Ossana – also Golden Globe honorees. Director Ang Lee toured Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains, and much of the eastern half of Wyoming, to get a feel for how his film’s backdrops would best depict the region. “We checked around. I had that planted in my head and formulated that in Canada (where production eventually took place) – including small towns (in Wyoming). One day I was shooting some mountain peaks and they asked me what to write in the script supervising notes. I said ‘a cheap imitation of Wyoming,’” Lee remembers.

The film director spent the night at a Big Horn Mountain guest ranch outside of Buffalo and toured Wind River Mountain country near Dubois as well. It was there that he learned to snowmobile and later said the look and feel of the Wind River Valley is what he wanted to represent Brokeback Mountain. “It’s so beautiful, quiet. That’s my idea. ” Lee said.

He also spent some time in northwest Wyoming touring the Grand Teton National Park region where he found the definition of the mountain peak rocks alluring enough to bring a facsimile to bear in the movie poster and print advertising.

Lee calls his critically acclaimed film a “western saga,” in part, and it is very easy for you to make your own Western across Wyoming. Thousands of miles of national forest and park lands remain undisturbed and free of development. Nature hikes, horseback rides, wildlife viewing and wide, open space await. Pick up all the information you need by clicking “order a guide” at the top left corner of our homepage. Should you have a hankering for a ranch experience take a look at www.wyomingdra.com (the state dude rancher’s association).

While Brokeback Mountain is a fictitious place, the western (and nature) vacation experience is easily obtainable statewide in Wyoming, and is most worthy of eager pursuit.