Would You Rather: Ennis Del Mar or Jack Twist From ‘Brokeback Mountain’

Life often presents us with tough choices, but we’re here to help work them out. Each week, we discuss two attractive men, weigh the pros and cons, and decide, once and for all, which one we’d rather have sex with. In this week’s Would You Rather, we debate the most famous gay cowboys: Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) from Brokeback Mountain.

Tyler: At the risk of OUTING YOU, Joel: we’re both gay guys. We’re legally required to have opinions about various things, one of them being Brokeback Mountain. First of all, can you believe it came out ten years ago? That seems crazy to me — what a wild decade it’s been since Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal rolled around completely clothed in a dimly lit tent. First I want to ask you, do you like Brokeback Mountain? I kind of hate Brokeback Mountain. I know that is a controversial stance.

Joel: I’m calling the police.

Tyler: I hope they’re the fake police who strip! No, seriously. I guess I made my peace with Brokeback months ago. It’s a very pretty movie. And everyone is good in it. But I have always found that the whole love story at the center of the movie was unbelievable and kind of forced. And we didn’t even get to see them naked all that much!

Joel: Seriously, do you think this movie kicked off a trend of young gay men having anal sex in jeans?

Tyler: Is that a trend?! You know more about what the kids are doing these days. I feel like I am like forty years older than you sometimes.

Joel: I think we’d have read a Vice trend piece about it if it were a thing. But sincerely, I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this movie. I was a senior in high school when it came out, and I remember driving with my best gal pal through a dangerous snow storm in order to see it in theaters (obviously). And while I can remember feeling a lot at the time, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to sit through the movie in its entirety since. Normally, when a mood strikes, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and look up a YouTube video of Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger making out and then go back to sleep. Anyway, while I think this preamble is warranted (this is the first explicitly gay duo we’ve covered after all), let’s get on with it. Which one of these tortured souls do you want to buy a ranch with?

Tyler: Jake Gyllenhaal. Uh, I mean the one that Jake Gyllenhaal plays. Jack Twist? Sure, that one. I pick him.

Joel: I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Not that I object necessarily either, it was a pretty close race for me. There’s a lot to like about Jack Twist. He definitely seems like he’d be a lot more fun, that’s for certain. But I think if there’s one common theme in all my choices, it’s that I like a challenge! Don’t they ride bulls or something in this movie? I think I’d like Ennis, despite his weird fucking name, because he’d be like riding a really sad, repressed bull.

Tyler: If I remember correctly, Jack Twist is a rodeo… guy? Not a star, per se, but a guy who does stuff in the rodeo. So I agree with your assessment that Jack is the fun one, which is half of my attraction to him (the other half being that he’s Jake Gyllenhaal). He’s also the one, if you remember correctly, who instigates the sexual relationship with Ennis. He knows what he wants and knows how to get it. And boy, can he get it.

Joel: God, the more I think about this movie, the more I realize how much it reinforced some truly damaging fantasies about men I was harboring as a seventeen-year-old gay boy. Of course, Jack Twist is also the one who is like, “Hey, let’s just go and be gay, can we please?” While Ennis is the one who resists. But that emotional distance is sort of appealing to me in a way it probably shouldn’t be. I’d like to think I’d protest (as Jack does) but keep showing up to those fishing trips hoping he’d commit, romanticizing the chase. Until he does commit, and then I freak out and say, “Hey hey hey, this is going way too fast, I have to go to Mexico now, bye!” What I’m saying is, even though I think Ennis is sort of an emotional wreck, I am, too, and I think that we’d be two little wrecked puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together.

Tyler: Well, it’s not like Jack has it all together. He’s pining for a dude who’s too distant, and he ends up marrying Anne Hathaway. And then he keeps fucking other guys, because he can’t tame his urges despite his love for Ennis. I mean, I don’t blame him because Ennis is not exactly settling down here, but you get the idea by the end of the movie that Jack eventually tried to goose someone else in a tent and then he was beaten to death by some angry rednecks who HATE consensual sodomy.

Joel: So you want to rescue Jack from Anne Hathaway? I mean, honestly, if we had to choose who our forever beard would be, I’d probably pick Anne too. But part of what I love about Ennis is his old school monogamish loyalty to Mrs. Del Mar. Yes I realize that the entire conceit of the movie is built on his frequent infidelity, but you never get the sense that he doesn’t actually care about her. That conflict is actually something I find very endearing because I am a dumb idiot.

Tyler: I’m not an Anne Hathaway hater by any means, but I think her bad wigs in this movie are too much for me. I like Michelle Williams, too, but I would probably also cheat on her with Jake Gyllenhaal. I always found that Ennis’ problem was not that he was gay, but that he had an inability to truly connect with anyone — a man or a woman. He was a lone wolf, the strong, silent, macho man who is that perfect image of Americana (except for the fact that he sometimes would bone another guy if left alone on a mountain too long). Ennis is the traditional dude, whereas Jack is a little more progressive.

Joel: I might be making a kind of controversial statement here, but: I think Ennis really loved Jack, but I’m a little dubious about whether Jack really loved Ennis. For me it always read that it was all a sort of coincidental hook-up, of the “wow you’re really hot, I guess in the absence of Grindr you’re likely the hottest dude I’ll get to bang, so let’s move in together” variety. Whereas Ennis never even really looks at another boy. He was always there for the Jack of it all, the fun, the way Jack could get him to open up and roughhouse like a little baby calf in a field! I don’t know what calfs do! But really, I dream of meeting an Ennis and spending a long period of time coaxing him out of the closet with sense of humor, and also being okay only seeing him a few times a year. Bottom line: Jack seems needy as hell, and I would feel smothered too.

Tyler: You do make a point: maybe Ennis is just the most monogamous person of all time. Or maybe he’s a little asexual. Or maybe he just wants to chill with Linda Cardellini, which I definitely understand! Or maybe it’s just the smell of a denim shirt that really gets his heart throbbing. As someone who loves denim-on-denim, I can get down with that.

Joel: How can you look at a man who grasps Jake Gyllenhaal’s face with such ferocity and kisses him on the mouth an asexual? The moment they reunite outside of Ennis’ house (and they break poor Alma’s heart) is really the only recognizably sexy thing about any of the gay material in the entire film. The rest of their sex is so conflated with violence — which, again: I’m sort of into. Is this entire column just a cry for help from me?

Tyler: Maybe. But also I kissed many women very passionately during my college years, but that didn’t mean I wanted to have sex with them. And luckily for me, I didn’t!

Joel: Once a really mean Israeli musician backhanded me in the face really hard during intercourse, so I punched him in the jaw, and he punched me back and it was like “oh this is the truth of masculinity” and then he never called me again.

Tyler: Do you think he was more of an Ennis, then?

Joel: I honestly and truly believe I romanticized this moment in the series of unfortunate events that is my sexual past because I never really got to talk out how actually not-good Brokeback Mountain was. But if I had to choose, he did have really pretty blue eyes and seemed really repressed and self-hating, so yes. Probably an Ennis. Which means… Oh my God, I’ve already gotten my wish. It was there the whole time. What a twist ending.

Tyler: I’m still holding out for Jake Gyllenhaal, but in the meantime I guess I’ll just desperately clasp all of my denim shirts and sob.

Joel: Save a patch of denim for me, I’ll be there in fifteen.

 

PREVIOUSLY:
Tim Taylor vs Al Borland from Home Improvement
Captain America vs. Iron Man from The Avengers
Dr. Alan Grant vs. Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park
Drew Scott vs. Jonathan Scott from Property Brothers
Woody vs. Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story
Sherlock vs. Dr. John Watson From Sherlock
Peeta Mellark vs. Gale Hawthorne From The Hunger Games
Dean Forester vs. Jess Mariano From Gilmore Girls

 

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Photos: Everett Collection