Since its release, most audiences and critics have been praising Ang Lee, whose previous successes include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Ice Storm, and Sense and Sensibility, as being the driving force behind the success that is Brokeback Mountain, but anyone who takes a closer look at the film’s history might argue that the true auteur behind the film is Diana Ossana. Ossana is the writing partner of industry legend Larry McMurtry (The Last Picture Show, Lonesome Dove), and it was she who first read E. Annie Proulx’s short story in The New Yorker back in 1997 and brought it to McMurtry, wanting to option its film rights and adapt it into a screenplay. They did successfully option and write it, and then Ossana charged ahead as a producer, eventually attaching Lee to direct (after many other name directors had expressed interest), as well as having a hand in casting (Heath Ledger, the film’s biggest breakout performance, was her choice), post-production, and more.

“I’m a straight female from the Midwest. I read that story and was so floored by it—all I could imagine was seeing it as a film,” says St. Louis–born Ossana of reading the short story that would eventually become “the gay cowboy movie” (quote not Ossana’s) which has been enjoying end-of-the-year awards and orgasmic critical reception. Despite this acclaim, there is still a small amount of resistance from the public regarding seeing the film, presumably because it sounds like an issue film that should be targeted primarily at the gay audience. However, the film’s distributor, Focus Features, is marketing the film very strongly to middle America, no matter how Red State conservative we may seem to the coasts. When I asked Ossana about this marketing strategy, she was in full support. “People in the middle of this country are, by and large, much smarter than they are given credit for, and they are also a lot more compassionate… The tag ‘gay cowboy movie’ should not dissuade them from going to see the film. In our minds, it’s like calling Lonesome Dove ‘the story of a cattle drive.’”

Ossana met McMurtry—the only writing partner she has had for a produced screenplay—at an all-you-can-eat catfish restaurant in Tucson in 1985. In 1991, McMurtry had open-heart surgery and recuperated at Ossana’s Tucson home for a couple of years. During this time, he wrote Streets of Laredo at the kitchen counter, which Ossana went on to type up on her computer and edit. “He came to trust me, and saw that I could actually write,” says Ossana of this period in their friendship and her burgeoning career as his writing partner. McMurtry had trouble mentally overcoming the setback of his heart surgery, and refused offers from people such as Steven Spielberg and John McTiernan to write scripts for them during the time he was recuperating. Eventually, after about five such rejections from McMurtry, Warner Bros. contacted him to write a script on Pretty Boy Floyd, which he wanted to reject. “I went out and did a bunch of research on it—I had ten legal-sized pages of interesting facts about Pretty Boy, and sat down with him and said, ‘These are all the reasons that you ought to write this script.’ He was kind of amused by that, and by the time I was done reading him that list, he said, ‘OK, I’d like to write the screenplay, but will you write it with me?’” Thus began Ossana and McMurtry’s career as a pair of co-writers, with Brokeback Mountain being their fourth produced screenplay.