The day finally arrive. The Jeffco sheriff finally released Eric's journal, and close to 1,000 other pages from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and Eric's father, Wayne Harris.

There is an AP story here, which oddly focuses on some passages that were already public. (I guess they had not kept up to date):

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/07/06/columbine.records.ap/index.html

The Rocky Mountain News has a story here:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4825673,00.html

You can read the full 1,000 pages here, in a pdf (it's 32 MB):

http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/pdf/900columbinedocs.pdf

I have been reading through it and there's a lot of interesting stuff in there--much of it I had seen, but some I had not. It pretty much follows along the lines I had been led to believe.

I don't want to say too much here, because I'm developing all these thoughts for my book, but it's fascinating to see how Eric can take nearly any assignment--or any little inspirational phrase in his day-timer--and make it about death and murder.

Eric's journal--which he referred to as The Book of God in the Basement Tapes, is on 84-99, with more diagrams and budgets immediately after.

His budgeting for his bomb-making is one of the things that really startled me the first time I saw it. I was just in disbelief that he was so cold and calculating about it. (Not that inventorying the # of targets in the commons each minute is not more horrifying. I guess that came out early and I was used to the idea. When I first saw the budget, I was just flipping through it and spotted that and realized what it was and just gaped.)

---

Unfortunately, it looks like The Basement Tapes may never be public--though the contents have been widely reported. The sheriff refused to release them, and the attorney for the Denver Post--which brought the lawsuit--said yesterday that they would not appeal. What a shame. Perhaps some future sheriff will release it.

---

FYI, the Rocky's archive of recent Columbine stories is here:

http://cfapp2.rockymountainnews.com/archives/sections/news/columbine/

I've been loving this Boondocks TV series.  

Makes me kinda squeamish sometimes, though. If this were written by a white guy, it would have been cancelled after one episode, and any TV executive involved in greenlighting it fired in disgrace.

But it's freaking funny.

And . . . how do you say this without sounding REALLY white . . . ? I'm understanding better.

Thought I understood the race stuff pretty well. Not well enough, apparently.

So I'm loving the show, for a whole lotta reasons. But the Nigga Moment episode--officially titled "Grandad's Fight"--that one was just too much. Grandad gets beaten up by a mean old blind man, and humilated for it. Everyone involved is black, including the narrator, who tells us and grandad about twenty times that it's just a nigga moment--where two niggas find themselves in a situation where they find themselves driven to act stupid, and it always ends badly.

Halfway through I literally felt like I was going to throw up. And all i could think was: I don't care how black the writer is, it's still freaking racist.

And I sure felt racist chuckling at it. And it was hard not to, it was funny. But good lord. Man, did I feel dirty.

I turned it off, but didn't delete it from the tivo.

Came back about a month later and decided to finish. More nigga nigga nigga, dumb niggas, stupid niggas, Goooooooood!

But finally, the episode climaxes with gramps and the blind guy in a rematch that ends horribly, followed by a mini riot among the crowd gathered to watch. Riley--the angry (eight year old?) grandson who set up the whole disgusting fight and took bets and charged admission and then instigated the riot to get the hell out of there when it went sour--stands back, looks at the mostly white crowd acting like idiots, and says, ruefully, "niggas!"

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Wow. Nicely done. Almost sounds heavy handed describing it now, but it sure lured me in. And enlightened me, too. And not just about white people, but about us, too. And the whole idea of niggas. Or one crucial nigga idea, at least.

This is the first show in ages that makes me feel like a nerdy white guy, and/or a white-guilt kinda guy. Discomforting, because I thought I was way past all that, but I guess that means I wasn't.

And it's funny as hell.

(FYI, It's on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Sunday at 11, I read at one point, but I have no idea. That's what your tivo is for.)

Watched Brokeback Mountain last night. Wow. Just about perfect.

Every bit as moving as the short story, and then some. They really fleshed out the characters, and I empathized with them more strongly. Enough that I'm not angry at Ennis anymore. I totally understand why he did it. How he thought he had to.

The problem with preconceptions is that it was hard not to sit there in the first half hour thinking, "Heath Ledger is doing fine, but 'a revelation'? Not quite getting that." (And there was plenty of quiet time to think.) But by the end I had forgotten all about that, and I was just in awe.

And Jake. Jake was just a joy to behold, every moment he was on screen. He really was. And that was his job--that was his character. And what a wonderful character to light up this movie. Would have been so much darker and flatter without him.

The women were great, too, and I'm so glad their characters were fleshed out. The book focuses on two lives ruined, but you get a powerful sense here of it tearing up all four. And to a lesser extent, hurting the daughters as well. Michelle Williams, in particular, is heartbreaking.

Oh, God, speaking of heartbreaking. My favorite scene in the book, hands down, was the reunion on the landing after four years--where they were so overcome with seeing each other, they grabbed each other and kissed passionately in broad daylight.

It was just as powerful on film, but topped by several others. I guess that says something extraordinary right there. The far-and-away best scene of one of the most beloved stories I have ever read, was bested about three times in the film. Would hardly have thought that possible.

The second night they get together out on Brokeback was . . . well, like nothing I've ever seen before, but only in the sense that I've never seen it with men. Picture one of the all-time great romantic moments on film, and then imagine it finally challenged by something just as beautiful, complex and tender with two men. Finally. First time ever ever ever I didn't have to imagine a stand-in for the woman up there.

It was just amazing. They had "gotten together" in a late-night drunken situation that Ennis was completely unable to deal with in the morning. Or the next evening. He tells Jake he's not queer, that it was a one-time thing and that's that. But he can't stick to it. When he comes into the tent, he's completely at war inside. Trying desperately not to do it, but his heart begging him to finally accept what it feels. It is so hard for him, his struggle is so palpable, and Jack is so perfect with him. God me balling again just remembering.

And their last climactic scene together and what comes after: that is just so intense, slammed me in the skull so hard so many ways one after the other after the other.

Just devastating.

And I'm not going to say a whole lot here, but I do believe Heath's finest moment comes when Ennis visits Jacks parents and gets some news from his mom. What he doesn't say. What he works so hard to hide. God. That poor, poor man. How can you possibly blame that guy?

---

So a strange thing happened to me after the film, while Ang Lee was interviewed onstage. (Streaming video and a news story on it here -- Thanks Mark. And FYI, Annie left early from the book signing, so I missed here. Didn't talk to her or Ang. Damn. But they sat across the aisle from us, and during the credits I got a chance to at least walk over and thank Larry and Diana for doing such an amazing job. They really fleshed this incredible story out.)

So the interview was great. To listen to him is to know you are in the presence of a true artist, whatever you think of this particular film. (Or The Hulk.) Late in the discussion, the Denver Post critic brought up they gay question a couple times, dealing with the gay issue, the gay this the gay that. It was oddly jarring for me. So weird to hear it called a gay film or a gay love story or gay anything. For the last two hours, I had just been lost in an exquisite love story.

I know, I know, I have scoffed right here about people saying it's not a gay film: What! It's two men in love having sex. That's called gay. The entire story revolves around the forbiddenness of their love--because it's gay--the whole tragedy is centered on the problem of the men being gay.

Yeah, I have said all that. And it's all true. In that sense, it is a gay film, in two distinct and crucial ways. But I'm now seeing the other point of view, too. It's also an aching love story between two people who just happen to be gay.

The other great romantic movie of the decade--Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind--was also a gripping love story of two people fighting desperately both for and against their problematic love for each other. But it wasn't a film about a memory-erasing device was it? That was just the vehicle, the problem to present for these two people to fight madly for the love being ripped away from them.

Exactly the same thing here.

All I know is, that in spite of knowing full well for the two-plus hours that it was the revulsion of homosexuality that was driving these two tragic lovers apart, I truly forgot about it being a gay thing. The love story was just too intense. It didn't matter what was driving these two guys apart, it was just about the intensity of the love between these two guys.

So I was literally startled to hear her using the gay word while I was still basking in that afterglow. Maybe because the concept of "gay love" is offensive to some part of me that is sick of hearing it distinguished from "love." It's exactly the same. For two hours I had not been watching gay love, I had just been watching love.

It didn't feel like a gay film. It just felt like home.

---

Update:

You guys kept adding so many comments (thousands), that long after this post, we started a whole Brokeback Mountain Discussion Forum.

And for links to everything imaginable, see our Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide.

This is kind of cool. Salon is celebrating its tenth and anniversary and every day the past week they have been highlighting their top stories from a single year.

I did most of my work for them in 1999 and 2000, and two of my stories made the list each year. The lists for 1999 & 2000.

From 1999, they picked two of my Columbine stories:

”I smell like the presence of Satan”
Is Littleton's evangelical subculture a solution to the youth alienation that played a role in the Columbine killings, or a reflection of it?
By Dave Cullen

Inside the Columbine High investigation
Everything you know about the Littleton killings is wrong. But the truth may be scarier than the myths.
By Dave Cullen

And in 2000 they featured, this two-part series on one of the last bastions of blatant discrimination toward gays in America. (I hate to call it a "gays in the military" story, even though it technically is, because that has phrase has like the mind-numbingly tired politico piece I specifically wanted to avoid):

Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t fall in love, Part I of II
A rare peek inside the lives of gay military officers, a world filled with staggering sacrifice, loneliness and glass ceilings.
By Dave Cullen

A heartbreaking decision, Part II
Gay officers must choose between personal happiness and the careers they've spent years building.
By Dave Cullen

As anxiously as I've watched the Brokeback film project develop, undevelop and redevelop over the years, I had never actually read the story. I guess because I missed it when it first came out, and then I wanted to see it as a film first.

(Book-first rarely works out well. By design/length books are nearly always far deeper and more complex, and the film never lives up. But I can appreciate a great film, and then go read the book for added/different levels of complexity. Almost always better that way. And I really never expected it to take this long.)

But then, on a Sunday almost exactly two months ago, something happened to change all that. Oddly enough, it started with Katrina, and my self-imposed exile for my book project.

So I'm finally, belatedly going to share how the story bowled me over when I read two months ago, why I got obsessive about it, and also my one big problem with the story. (Which I've since mellowed on.)

This is exactly how I experienced it that day (almost; a few small edits). an email to a couple straight friends composed late at night, September 4, 2005:

something odd happened today. a few things, starting with the hurricane, but ending with annie proulx.

and i wanted to get some opinions on it, especially from straight people, so i'm sending this to a few of my favorite literary friends, who whoops, i still have not thanked for all the help and insight getting started with faulkner last month. (who is now seriously threatening nabokov as my most idolized writer, merely on the basis of "As I Lay Dying," which amazed me more with every passing page, and which gave me several crucial insights about my own book, including the fundamental organizing principle. but that's not what i came here to talk about.

i was feeling kind of guilty about the hurricane. i hardly paid attention all week. brought to a head something i'm really struggling with now, this immersion/estrangement thing. i get so involved in politics and events, so worked up that i don't get any work done. so i've had a few stern talks with myself about turning all that off for awhile and being with my own project. letting the world spin around its axis without me for awhile. but then i leave for four days, and bam! the gulf coast is a hell on earth and i've ignored them and feel guilty. (because i could have made it all better if i had just paid attention? hahaha. guess not. and yet ...)

so i heard these vague rumblings late in the week that n.o. had not in fact dodged the missile, and then i heard from my friend ile down there, who told a blood-curdling story that apparent the rest of you had all been following all week, and i've been frantically trying to catch up in the few days since. so i needed something today to pull it all together for me, so i went to the new york times of all places, because frank rich is there, and his column did exactly what i needed it to, and then . . .

of course my eyes couldn't dart past the tiny little film section of the front page without taking a peek, and what were the chances i would not be absorbed by the headline: "Cowboys in Love . . . With Each Other"?

for reasons i couldn't entirely remember, i have kept myself from reading Brokeback Mountain for at least five years, saving it for the variously rumored film projects. (is that pathetic? a writer who deems the book less worthy than the film? but in this case--when we're talking about mass cultural impact, heath ledger and jake gyllenhaal trump annie proulx by a country mile.)

so i knew the times piece was going to give away too much, and i needed to avoid it, but i couldn't make myself. and when ang lee described himself crying at the ending--MINOR SPOILER ALERT; MORE AHEAD--of the two shirts hung side by side--well, five years out the window, i drove right to borders and came home with a copy.

(of course that was just the last straw. long painful spring and summer with my family over the gay stuff. a weird second coming out phase nobody ever told me was coming. they were all so accepting at first--or were they? on the surface yes, and do they want to, yes. but still, the idea of their brother actually making out with a guy . . . gives them the shivers. and they communicate it in so many subtle ways they're not even aware of, and i wasn't either until it all came to a head this past month, with a sad little coda last night at my parents' 50th wedding anniversary dinner. so let's just say i was primed.)

during the drive, i remembered why i originally put off reading it, before even the first rumors of a movie. annie proulx. i had to read Postcards during grad school and it bored the crap out of me. never finished it. don't know whether it was her or me not ready for her, but she left me with a very bad taste, and i was sure she was not up to the task of the kind of first great popular gay love story.

well, she was. really, really amazing. broke my heart, as intended. with a few glaring flaws here and there, but who cares?

i was really curious how it read to straight people, though. how much of it was great storytelling, and how much was it ripping me up over my own life slipping away without getting this damn love thing down?

and then annie surprised me at the end. she was definitely too heavy-handed with the tire-iron idea throughout, but the ending (hmmmm. i guess i'm assuming you've read it. i always assume i'm the last literate person on earth to get to any of the really good stuff), i was shocked at how off it felt. if ang lee had remembered correctly, that would have been an amazing ending, with the shirts hanging there together. but then there's a break, and then two paragraphs in a very different tone, with ennis having nightmares about his lover getting bludgeoned to death with the tire iron.

it took me just about a minute to figure out why that felt so wrong. then i realized it: only a straight person (or a sympathetic lesbian?) would write that ending. she thinks she NEEDS the tire iron to make this a tragic story. or perhaps that she really wanted to boldly address the worst horror of gay life: death at the hands of a tire iron. amazing. she had ALREADY addressed the worst horror of gay life, and she didn't even realize it. at least for homos today. (or in 1997.) i don't know one single gayguy worrying about the tire iron. and nearly every gayguy i know is struggling with his love life. even now that we can couple up, we have no idea how to do it. we're so freaking damaged by the time we make it out, and we have no women in our relationships to do most of the relationship work and . . . and we're just a mess.

but even in the time she set the story--or for thousands of years before--i do believe 99.9% of the homos in the world were successfully avoiding the tire iron. it's what they GAVE UP to avoid it, that's been the tragedy of gay life. her story completely nails it. THAT is the tragedy here.

and most of her instincts were dead on. brilliant to set her story over a 20-year period vaulting right past stonewall. these guys COULD have escaped their prison, and one of them wanted to, but ennis never had the guts to do it. he lives to tell the tale, but he's the most tragic figure here. she doesn't seem to grasp that. she thinks her dead character is the tragic one, but he gave it his best shot and failed; it's her other guy who did himself in.

part of her clearly seems to know that--she wrote the freaking story that screams it. but she didn't seem to fully grasp it. she feels the need to impose this other, physical tragedy, as if the other one wasn't enough.

that's what i found kind of offensive when i got to the end, even before i could grasp what was angering me. that that wasn't enough. i don't think most straight people get that, do they? that you can take all the tire irons out of the picture, you can take the work discrimination out of the picture, we can stop fearing for our lives for our jobs, for any of that stuff, but if we still can't find the love we crave . . . that's a tragedy too.

and that's ACTUAL one most of us are living with, by the way. (or at least a handy excuse for goofballs like me who just can't manage to bag a man. heeheehee.)

but it was still a wonderful story.

how odd that we needed someone other than a gayguy to write it for us. i'm sure hundreds, thousands, endless number of gay love stories have been written by gayguys for gayguys--wasn't leaves of grass a big sloppy gay lovefest? another classic i've never gotten close to--but we needed an outsider to yank it out of the romance genre, and make it palatable. we needed annie proulx and ang lee and heath ledger and jake gyllenhaal. god, i pray the movie is so wonderful straight people are forced to hear about it all through the oscar race and some of them actually go out to see it. or perhaps just the idea or the ad-campaign images of those two will be enough to get some people over the shudders of the idea of two guys kissing.

but i'm really glad i read the story. definitely opened up something inside of me. if only we had any of the quirky, oddball, intellectual gayboy hotties i'm looking for out here in the hinterlands. heheehe. maybe once i finally get my ass out to ny next year i'll find that boy. i hear tell they grow a lot of them out there.

---

Note: I have since eased up about the tire iron. I still think my point is correct, and that she doesn't seem to (get? trust?) how tragic the story already is. But so what. I'd actually forgotten all about it. (Seriously.) The strong stuff stuck with me, the flaws faded away. I still adore that story. Tugs at my heart every time I think about it.

Update:

You guys kept adding so many comments (thousands), that long after this post, we started a whole Brokeback Mountain Discussion Forum.

And for links to everything imaginable, see our Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide.