‘Brokeback Mountain’ Writer Recalls Clint Eastwood Moment That Foreshadowed Oscar Loss

There’s been lots of unfair snubs in the Academy Awards’ history, but Brokeback Mountain’s Best Picture loss remains a viral discussion subject two decades later.

The movie, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as two American cowboys suddenly falling in love with each other in 1960s American West, infamously lost an Oscar to Paul Haggis’ Crash, stirring a dispute about the voters’ homophobic views.

However, for Brokeback Mountain’s co-writer Diana Ossana this wasn’t exactly the moment she knew the movie wouldn’t get the ceremony’s most important award anyway.

Clint Eastwood Helped Diana Ossana Predict ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Oscar Loss

Ossana, who co-wrote Brokeback Mountain’s screenplay with Larry McMurtry, has recently recalled the exact moment she realized that the movie was about to lose an Oscar for Best Picture despite having won at other major ceremonies previously.

Several weeks before the ceremony took place, Ossana was at a party for the nominees held at the house of Paul Haggis, the director of that year’s Best Picture winner Crash. Clint Eastwood was also there, and Ossana was eager to meet one of her favorite directors of all time.

However, the encounter had an unexpected turn even before Eastwood and Ossana were introduced to each other.

“Paul started walking me over and he goes, ‘Diana, I have to tell you, he hasn’t seen your movie.’ And it was like somebody kicked me in the stomach. That’s when I knew we would not win best picture”, Ossana revealed in an interview with The New York Times published ahead of Brokeback Mountain’s 20th anniversary.

Diana Ossana Says Homophobia Is to Blame for ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Oscar Snub

Even though the movie remains a beloved story and one of the best films of the 2000s right now, things were quite different twenty years ago, and the Academy might have had the issue as well.

After winning a Golden Globe and BAFTA for the best picture, Brokeback Mountain was the most probable winner at the Oscars ceremony too, so, as Ossana noted, there’s no way there can be a different reason for losing the award rather than mere homophobia.

“The theaters were all packed because everybody was so curious about this movie. And when the sex scene between the boys came on, you’d see some people got up and left, but not very many. At the end of the film nobody would leave. They would just sit there nailed to their seats until the lights came on, and there would be people crying”, the writer said, highlighting that she specifically traveled to numerous theatres across the US just to see audiences’ reaction to the movie.