Sean had big-time problems with the movie, but the weirdest criticism was on the subject of names:
The story was inane — characters named “Lureen” and “Alma” and “Ennis Del Mar.” A gay cowboy named “Jack Twist.” Jack Twist? You’ve got to be kidding me. E. Annie Proulx lived in Wyoming, but I’ll guarantee you that if you threw a rock into a roadhouse in the early ’60s, you wouldn’t hit a single “Alma” or “Lureen” or “Ennis.” Stephanie Zacharek has a funny line about this in her review:
Their names — straight out of a boy’s adventure book of the 1930s, or maybe just the result of a long think on the front porch at some writers’ colony…
When I first read the story, I thought, ooh, great names. But then I started to doubt myself. Are the names too much? Could you really throw a rock into a rockhouse and not hit a single Alma or Ennis or Lureen? My suspicion was no. (But then, I did grow up in a town that had a resident listed as “Butts, Caressa”).
Armed with my handy reference librarian skills, I set out on a quest to dissect the heart of America’s phone listings, and here’s what I came up with:
- 839 guys named Ennis
- 583 Almas
- 63 Del Mars
- 26 Lureens (one from Bowling Green, Ohio!)
- 3 listings for a “Twist, Jack” : one in Audubon, IA, one in Catonsville, MD, and one in Jackson, MI
But the biggest kicker:
- Twist, J, Riverton, WY
Someone living under an alias?
My problem is Zacharek’s problem — these names sound fanciful and oddly pretentious, as though they were developed by creative writing majors rather than reflecting real people who might have lived in Wyoming at the time. The whole thing smacked of clever writing one might find in a small college’s literary journal, and didn’t ever have the feeling of real life.
Plus, I think naming a gay character “twist” is like naming an African-American character Mr. Blackman. Marginally offensive at worst, roll-your-eyes “do you think you’re actually being clever, Ms. Proulx?” at best.
The more I think about it, the more I dislike this film.