We’d wake up and make breakfast for each other, and hang out. Gyllenhaal calls it an “old-school way” of making everyone a family: “ It’s why we are all still close - not just bonded by the success of the film, but bonded by the experience. “A lot of times people would want to have fun and joke about it, and he was vehement about being serious, to the point where he didn’t really want to hear about anything that was being made fun of.”Īs the cast and crew recall, the intense emotions on set were aided by Ang Lee’s decision to house them all together in a remote campground. “He was extraordinarily serious about the political issues surrounding the movie when it came out,” Gyllenhaal says. In his co-star Jake Gyllenhaal’s memory, Ledger hated the way the movie was turned into a meme - “the gay cowboy movie” - which he felt diminished its resonance. As expected, it’s full of loving remembrances of the late Heath Ledger, who, besides being one of the best actors of his generation, comes off like an absolute mensch. For the tenth anniversary of Brokeback Mountain’s release, Out has an oral history of the film.
