OSCAR-winning Brokeback Mountain screenwriter Larry McMurty has died at 84. A spokeswoman for the family confirmed his death, but did not yet give a cause. McMurty wrote more than 30 novels and collections of essays. He also composed 30 screenplays, including Brokeback Mountain. He went on to win an Academy Award for the classic screenplay […]
OSCAR-winning Brokeback Mountain screenwriter Larry McMurty has died at 84.
A spokeswoman for the family confirmed his death, but did not yet give a cause.
McMurty wrote more than 30 novels and collections of essays. He also composed 30 screenplays, including Brokeback Mountain.
He went on to win an Academy Award for the classic screenplay in 2006, one year after it was released.
McMurty later won an Oscar, and walked on stage to accept it in cowboy boots.
Despite being involved din numerous classics, the author found his biggest success in Lonesome Dove.
The 843-page novel was about two retired Texas Rangers who drove stolen cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana.
The book won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and was later made into a television mini-series.
Back in 2017, McMurty sold two typewriters used to write the novel for a huge $37,500.
McMurtry had said he “just decided that it would be fun” to sell the typewriters at auction, “and I actually have too many typewriters.”
While writing the tale he kept one typewriter in his hometown of Texas, and the other in Washington DC.
The author was also a bookseller for 50 years, and owned Booked Up, in Archer City, which is one of America’s largest bookstores.
At one point, it occupied six buildings and held around 400,000 novels.
Following the news of his passing, one reporter wrote: “He redefined the Texas myth with novels like Hud & The Last Picture Show then circled back later in his career with Lonesome Dove & showed he could master that form as well. A sad day for Texans.”
