Winning an Academy Award is hard, a Best Picture Oscar even harder. More than just making a quality film, it takes a lot of campaigning and a bit of luck. Ask Brokeback Mountain's co-screenwriter Diana Ossana. As the film turns 20 this year, Ossana reminisced about the time she realised it would not win best picture at the 2006 Academy Awards. At an event for the Oscar nominees after the completion of voting, Paul Haggis, the director of the eventual Best Picture Oscar winner Crash, introduced Ossana to filmmaker Clint Eastwood, one of the Academy voters at the time. "Paul started walking me over and he goes, ‘Diana, I have to tell you, he hasn’t seen your movie,'" Ossana told The New York Times. She later described the moment as a "kick in the stomach" and a sign that the Ang Lee directorial "would not win Best Picture."
Brokeback Mountain tells the love story of a homosexual couple (Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger), both of whom are married to women who know their sexual status. The film won best picture at many major award events, including the Golden Globes, BAFTA, Independent Spirit Award, and Critics’ Choice Award. However, Haggis' Crash won the coveted prize at the Academy Awards.
Ossana reckons that homophobia in the American film industry is a key contributor to the Oscar snub of Brokeback Mountain. "People want to deny that, but what else could it have been? We’d won everything up until then," the screenwriter said.
Recently, director Lee revealed that he does not the real reason for the snub while calling it a "love story" rather than a gay film. Brokeback Mountain earned Lee a Best Director Oscar, as well as Ossana and Larry McMurtry a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.