Close Casting Calls: Joaquin Phoenix & Mark Wahlberg In Brokeback Mountain

By Matthew Pejkovic

What Happened? The late great Heath Ledger and the always impressive Jake Gyllenhaal broke hearts and caused controversy as forbidden lovers in the gay cowboy romance, Brokeback Mountain. But they were not producer, James Schamus, and director Ang Lee’s first choice to portray Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist. That honour belongs to Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, and while the off-screen friends enjoyed working together in The Yards, the idea of playing gay lovers just did not appeal. “I met with Ang Lee on that movie; I read fifteen pages of the script and got a little creeped out,” said Wahlberg. “It was very graphic, descriptive…the spitting on the hand, getting ready to do the thing. I told Ang Lee, ‘I like you, you’re a talented guy, if you want to talk about it more…’ Thankfully, he didn’t.” No doubt Lee could tell that Wahlberg and Phoenix were not the cowboys that he was looking for, and their loss was our gain, with Jake Gyllenhaal and especially Heath Ledger turning in exemplary turns. But then again, if only we could experience Wahlberg asking Phoenix to say hi to his mother after Brokeback time is done…

Would It Have Worked? Just how Phoenix and Wahlberg would fare as tortured lovers would be anyone’s guess. Granted, they are talented actors, and Phoenix playing Ennis to Wahlberg’s Twist could have been an interesting experiment. Yet what is certain is that with Marky Mark and Johnny Cash in the saddle, we would have missed one of the finest performances of our time in Ledger’s conflicted portrayal of a man at a loss with who he is and what he wants. At this point, Ledger was getting his carer back on track after a string of duds, and the critical acclaim for Brokeback Mountain gave him all the momentum that he needed to nab the seminal role of The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.