Brokeback Mountain Trivia
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69 free Brokeback Mountain trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Who was supposed to play Ennis and Jack before Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, why was it filmed in Alberta instead of Wyoming, and what did the buyer of the two shirts compare them to? This Brokeback Mountain trivia quiz has 69 free questions with answers covering the 2005 film and Annie Proulx's 1997 short story: casting and production, the plot from the summer of 1963 to the closet scene, Gustavo Santaolalla's score, the Venice, Golden Globe, BAFTA and Oscar runs, the Crash upset, the censorship fights abroad, and the opera and West End play that followed. The early questions are the ones anyone who has seen the film once will get. Later ones dig into the working titles, the New Yorker publication, the eBay auction, the Alberta locations, the takes count on the tent scene and the actors who turned the roles down. It works for a movie night, a film-club round or a pub quiz picture round with a Western theme. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the film, the story, the soundtrack, the cast and the 78th Academy Awards, and each question links to the page and sentence that supports it.
30 of 69 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Brokeback Mountain?
Ang Lee
Ang Lee directed Brokeback Mountain. Worn out by two draining productions, he was thinking of retiring when the script drew him back to work.
Q 02Brokeback Mountain is adapted from a 1997 short story by which author?
Annie Proulx
Annie Proulx wrote the story. When a composer later asked her blessing to turn it into an opera, she offered to write the libretto herself.
Q 03Which magazine first published the short story Brokeback Mountain, in October 1997?
The New Yorker
The New Yorker ran the story in October 1997 and it won the 1998 National Magazine Award for Fiction. A screenwriter who read it there within days wrote to its author asking to option it.
Q 04Brokeback Mountain was republished in which 1999 book, a Pulitzer Prize finalist?
Close Range
Close Range, subtitled Wyoming Stories, collected it in 1999 and restored the short prologue that the magazine printing had left out. Two more volumes of Wyoming stories followed.
Q 05Which two words finish Jack's famous line to Ennis in Brokeback Mountain, "I wish I knew how to…"?
Quit you
Quit you. Jack says it at the end of the pair's last trip, worn down by years of meeting only a few times a year, and Ennis sinks to his knees.
Q 06Who plays Jack's wife Lureen, the rodeo rider turned businesswoman, in Brokeback Mountain?
Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway plays Lureen, who ends up running her father's farm-equipment business. She auditioned on a lunch break from another film, still wearing that shoot's over-the-top hairpiece.
Q 07Who plays Ennis's wife Alma in Brokeback Mountain?
Michelle Williams
Michelle Williams plays Alma and earned her first Oscar nomination for it. A screenwriter who had watched her in Dawson's Creek put her on the casting list, and she and Heath Ledger became a couple on the shoot.
Q 08Which instrument does Jack play, badly, around the campfire on Brokeback Mountain?
Harmonica
Harmonica. It was flattened when his mare threw him, and Ennis jokes that a luckier fall would have snapped it in two.
Q 09What animals are Ennis and Jack hired to herd on Brokeback Mountain?
Sheep
Sheep. To cut losses to coyotes, their boss has one of them sleep out with the flock each night in a hidden pup tent, against Forest Service rules.
Q 10Which Brokeback Mountain character hires Ennis and Jack, then watches them through binoculars?
Joe Aguirre
Joe Aguirre hires them for the summer and watches the pair through binoculars; he refuses to rehire Jack the following year, remarking that they had found a way to make the time pass.
Q 11In the film Brokeback Mountain, what are the names of Ennis's two daughters?
Alma Jr. and Jenny
Alma Jr. and Jenny are Ennis's daughters in the film, though the original short story calls the younger girl Francine. The grown Alma Jr. visits his trailer at the end to announce her engagement.
Q 12Where does an upset Jack go to seek solace with male prostitutes after Ennis refuses to move?
Mexico
Mexico. Jack crosses the border and picks up a man in an alley, straight after driving north in the belief that Ennis's divorce meant they could finally share a life.
Q 13What does Monroe, whom Alma marries after divorcing Ennis, manage?
A grocery store
Q 21Which novel won one of Brokeback Mountain's screenwriters the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?
Lonesome Dove
Lonesome Dove began as a film script meant for John Wayne, James Stewart and Henry Fonda. When that film fell through, its author reworked the idea into the novel that won the 1986 Pulitzer.
Q 22Which Argentine musician composed Brokeback Mountain's score?
Gustavo Santaolalla
Gustavo Santaolalla composed the score before filming began, working from the story and a single conversation with the director, so the music could be played to the actors during the shoot.
Q 23Brokeback Mountain's composer won the Best Original Score Oscar again the very next year for which film?
Babel
A grocery store is what Monroe manages. Alma takes a clerk's job there to keep ahead of the bills on Ennis's wages, and after the divorce she marries her boss.
Q 14In which Wyoming town do Ennis and Alma settle in Brokeback Mountain?
Riverton
Riverton. Alma talks Ennis into leaving lonely ranch houses for a cheap flat above a laundry there, worried about their younger daughter's asthma.
Q 15According to Lureen, how did Jack die?
A tire exploded in his face
A tire exploded in his face, Lureen says, while Jack was pumping up a flat on a back road, and the rim knocked him out. As she talks, Ennis pictures men beating Jack to death.
Q 16What does Jack's father insist on doing with his ashes?
To bury them in the family plot
To bury them in the family plot is what John Twist insists on, refusing Jack's wish for the mountain; Jack's mother then quietly lets Ennis take the two shirts from Jack's old room.
Q 17What are Ennis's last words in Brokeback Mountain, spoken to the shirts and postcard in his closet?
"Jack, I swear..."
"Jack, I swear..." is all Ennis says, facing the two shirts on his closet door. He has hung them with his own shirt now wrapped around Jack's, the reverse of how Jack kept them.
Q 18In Brokeback Mountain, which Roger Miller hit does Jack sing along to on the radio after Ennis's divorce?
King of the Road
King of the Road is the song Jack belts along to in his truck; the soundtrack album swaps Miller's original for a cover by Teddy Thompson and Rufus Wainwright.
Q 19Which Willie Nelson recording plays over Brokeback Mountain's end credits?
He Was a Friend of Mine
He Was a Friend of Mine, a traditional folk lament in Willie Nelson's recording, plays over the end credits. The Byrds released a reworded version in 1965 mourning President Kennedy.
Q 20Which pair wrote Brokeback Mountain's Oscar-winning screenplay?
Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana
Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana wrote it. Ossana read the story days after it was published and pressed it on McMurtry, and they had a script within three months, years before anyone would film it.
Babel, Alejandro González Iñárritu's 2006 film, brought him a second straight Best Original Score Oscar, though he cannot read or write music and plays nearly every instrument on his scores himself.
Q 24Which Emmylou Harris song won Brokeback Mountain its Best Original Song Golden Globe?
A Love That Will Never Grow Old
A Love That Will Never Grow Old, with lyrics by Bernie Taupin and music by the film's composer, plays as Jack drives away alone after Ennis sends him home.
Q 25Brokeback Mountain premiered at which festival, where it won the top prize?
Venice
Venice gave Brokeback Mountain its world premiere in September 2005 and its top prize, the Golden Lion. Further awards made it the Best Picture favourite by Oscar night, when it lost.
Q 26Brokeback Mountain famously lost the Best Picture Oscar to which film?
Crash
Crash took Best Picture. The story's author hit back in a newspaper essay that called the winner "Trash", and when Academy members were polled again in 2015, Brokeback won.
Q 27Heath Ledger's Brokeback Mountain performance lost the Best Actor Oscar to which rival?
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Philip Seymour Hoffman won for Capote. Brokeback led the field with eight nominations and won three Oscars, but none of its three nominated actors took one home.
Q 28Which actress plays Cassie, the waitress Ennis dates after his divorce, in Brokeback Mountain?
Linda Cardellini
Linda Cardellini plays Cassie Cartwright. Ennis drifts away without a word, and when she finally corners him he can only mumble that he was probably no fun anyway.
Q 29Brokeback Mountain's Best Director Oscar was a milestone for the Academy in what way?
First non-white winner
First non-white winner is the milestone. The director said nothing was more remote to him than gay cowboys in Wyoming, yet the script moved him to tears; he later won the award a second time.
Q 30Which comedian hosted the 2006 Oscars, the night Brokeback Mountain lost Best Picture?
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart hosted for the first time, at a ceremony pushed back a week to keep clear of the Winter Olympics; he returned to host again in 2008.