Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 American romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee. Adapted from the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx, the screenplay was written by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry. The film stars Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Michelle Williams, and Randy Quaid, and depicts the complex emotional and sexual relationship between Ledger and Gyllenhaal's characters in the American West from 1963 to 1983.