Mike Faist interview: Brokeback Mountain (The Telegraph)

The star helped reinvent West Side Story with Spielberg. Can he repeat the trick with the stage version of Annie Proulx’s beloved story?

The gay cowboy show,” says Mike Faist, rolling his eyes. “That’s how Brokeback Mountain came to be seen in Hollywood when they were trying to make the movie. Before Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal signed up, the screenwriters spent 10 years watching actors get interested then flake out because they didn’t want to be in ‘the gay cowboy show’.”

Faist, the 31-year-old American star of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (2021), shakes his head. “It’s such a shame because Brokeback hits so much deeper than that. It’s about fear and love and the limits we put on ourselves.”