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AE:  Yes. Not long after, there’s that beautiful, tentative scene in the tent where they’re lying together, and Jack reaches over for Ennis’s arm and it’s poetic. It means warmth and comfort and it also means intimacy. 
AL: It’s also indirect. He doesn’t have to look at his face.

AE:  Right, because his back is to him. 
AL: It’s very Ennis-like. He wants it, and he denies it at the same time. That’s his character. 

AE:  It’s also Jack-like, too, because Jack is the initiator.  Then, it goes into that amazing, awkward, rough, but tender sex scene. 
AL: On top of that, felt very private about that scene.  I’m very proud of the actors.  That’s something I cannot make them do. I could suggest by blocking or talking, but they are the ones. Their body is their instrument. Their emotion is their instrument. How much they wanted to expose and be exposed is up to them. I felt I saw a private moment.  Usually, you don’t see that in love making scenes. You see beautiful ones, awkward ones,  but hardly you see private ones.  Private (ones ) are very convincing. All I had to tell them (the actors) was, if you don’t believe it, who’s going to believe it? Then they went ahead.

AE:  There’s a scene, a little later, that I call the “ropin’ and rasslin” scene, where they’re tumbling around.  It goes from that to what develops into a violent scene. 
AL: It’s very close, don’t you think so? It’s like they are nerves next to each other and you put them together and poof! It short circuits. It’s very male tensioned, as well.  It’s homoerotic tension. Especially for Ennis, fear and violence (are) co-existing here and that’s why he’s a brooding character. He has to deny his own desire.  He is a twisted and very troubled character. 

AE:  And the violence is always under the surface.
AL: He has no other way to express the fear and the need.  It’s very Western by the way (laughs). People think they’re macho and violent, but out there in the wild, they’re scared (laughs). 

AE:  When they see each other later, four or so years have passed and Jack comes to visit. It’s another one of those scenes where they shake hands and hug, and then they slam each other against a wall and the affection pours out of them.  It’s amazing, because Alma witnesses that. And that’s pretty early, because their relationship continues and Alma is aware of it the whole time, and yet she chooses to remain silent. 
AL: It’s the same thing like Ennis. Jack seems to be more aware and knowing. For Ennis and Alma, they have no word (to describe it). They probably don’t even know the word gay. There’s no vocabulary (for them) to understand what crashed their lives, how he feels. Anything he feels in the mountain is private, even though it’s wide open.  At the same time, it’s very private. Secrecy and privacy is the key to those characters. The same thing with her. She was crushed, but she doesn’t know what crushed her. There’s no comprehension (laughs). It takes a long time to develop that anger, but at that moment she just turned blank. 

AE:  It’s so powerful. Ennis make reference, at one point, to him and Jack getting together in the middle of nowhere on a regular basis.  But the idea of them living together, because of what happened when he was a kid, when his father showed him where the gay cowboy was killed, could never happen.  Do you think that says as much about where they were living - Wyoming and Texas - as it does that era – the pre-Stonewall (gay liberation) of the 1960s?  If they were in a more urban or progressive setting, would the relationship have had a chance?
AL: Yeah, if they’d moved out to San Francisco (laughs). There’s one line Ennis says, “I’m like all my life in a coffee pot trying to grab for the handle.” He doesn’t know anything outside Wyoming; the way of life and of thinking (the way we do). He just doesn’t have an alternative. This is how his character is built. 

AE:  Right. Jack tries to get him to move to Texas.
AL: Like it’s any better (laughs).

AE:  Jack’s death sequence is amazing, because it’s reported by Lureen  to Ennis in one way, but in reality he died another way. Do you think that’s a reflection of Texas, of the southwest culture telling it that way, or do you think that if they were living in San Francisco or New York the truth would have been told about the way he died, as opposed to making up a story?
AL: I don’t know for a fact, but I don’t think she wants to talk about it.  You can tell from her performance that she is definitely telling a lie, and she’s pissed that she was never in Brokeback Mountain (laughs). The other guy was, and she is bitter that she too missed Brokeback Mountain. I think that, together with his flashback, you can put things together. 

AE:  The casting is amazing.  The two leads and the two women are just amazing.
AL: They’re so young (laughs), it’s amazing.

AE:  You were very lucky!
AL: Yeah…(laughs) I was very lucky. 

AE:  Was it great to work with them?
AL: They’re young, they still listen (laughs).

AE:  I don’t know if you’ve seen this yet, but I brought a copy of the December 2005 issue of Out Magazine because you’re in the Out 100.  You and James (Schamus) are in there as straight allies. What does that honor mean to you?
AL: I’m flattered. I feel very warm at heart and accepted to be genuinely a friend.  (Recognized as having) some understanding of human conditions, and that’s just great. I’m very honored.

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