|
 
BY HYDIE CHEUNG (alltimerebel@yahoo.com)
DECEMBER 10, 2004
It took me a while to get to interview Mr. Al Weisel, one of the two authors of the latest Rebel book Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without A Cause (the other author is Mr. Lawrence Frascella). Of course I was the one to be blamed, because I was forever postponing the interview due to family issues. Mr. Weisel has been very understanding and patient during the process. I am grateful for his cooperation.
Mr. Weisel is a regular contributor, freelance writer, and editor to magazines like Rolling Stone, Us Magazine, Premiere, and The Washington Post. He has also conducted interviews with many legendary celebrities such as Lauren Bacall, Johnny Cash, and Francis Ford Coppola. It is indeed an honor to have Mr. Weisel here to discuss some of the most interesting aspects of our beloved film Rebel Without A Cause. So here it is--an interview with Al Weisel.
Q: What motivated you and Lawrence Frascella to begin writing this book? How and when did you two first get together intro writing this book?
AW: It's a movie we both love and we knew the 50th anniversary was coming up. We were surprised that no one had told the story before and the more we looked into it the more we realized it was a story that really needed to be told. We have actually known each other for quite a few years. We both used to write for Us Magazine (before it became Us Weekly) and then at CDNow so even though this is our first collaboration we knew each other pretty well before we started. It took us about a year to write the book and we started writing it about two years ago.
Q: When did you first see Rebel Without A Cause? Do you remember your first impression on the film? Did it make an impact on you at the time and throughout your life? What was your favorite scene?
AW: I saw the movie when I was a teenager and I had a Rebel poster on my bedroom wall. I don't remember clearly the very first time I saw it because it was so much a part of our culture by that point that it seemed to always be there. I think it had an impact on me even before I actually saw the film.
I think my favorite scene is the chickie run, especially the moment between Jim and Buzz share a cigarette and Jim asks, "What are we doing this for?" and Buzz answers, "You got to do something." It's a really surprising moment, not what you would expect at all. It's so poignant and so accurately sums up the recklessness and aimlessness you feel when you're young (and even not so young). Even though in one sense Jim and Buzz are rebelling against society, they are at the same time conforming to what is expected of them, going through rituals that they realize they don't believe in but feel powerless to stop. I think that's something that all rebels wrestle with. The chickie run itself is such a powerful metaphor, and I think it's fascinating how it came to symbolize the Cold War. I've always found the chickie run to be kind of shocking and I wondered if such things really happened or if it was something invented by Hollywood. So it was also interesting for me when we discovered that there were many accounts of kids actually doing this around the country at the time.
Q: At the time when Rebel came out, the general American society was still rather conservative. The film was banned in many towns across the country. Through your research, do you know how the parents and adults view the film, and how about the teenagers?
AW: Although America seemed conservative at the time there was a lot going on under the surface. Rock and Roll was just about to explode, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat that year launching the modern Civil Rights movement, women were rebelling against their roles, gays were beginning to form a movement, a month before Rebel was released Alan Ginsberg read his poem Howl for the first time, Lolita was published that year--so there was a lot going on. I wonder if it's a time like right now, where conservatives are in power but there seems to be a lot of discontent in the air. At the time many parents were frightened or baffled by the film and a lot of the reviews were surprisingly mixed, many of them criticizing how the parents were portrayed. But kids responded to the movie immediately and it was a box office hit.
Q: Some people associate Holden Caulfield's red cap in Catcher in the Rye with Jim Stark's red jacket in Rebel Without A Cause. From your research, is there such association? What do you think?
AW: Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951 and we wondered if it had any influence on the movie. However, we couldn't find any evidence that it did directly although it is probable that people were aware of it at the time. None of the stories we heard about the origin of the red jacket mention Holden Caulfield so I think that is probably just a coincidence. It is something we looked into though.
Another book people associate with Rebel is Jack Kerouac's On the Road. In David Dalton's Mutant King Bill Gunn claims that Dean read On the Road, but it was actually published two years after Dean died. However, Kerouac was a big fan of Rebel and he and producer Jerry Wald (who tried to produce a movie based on Robert Lindner's book Rebel Without a Cause in the 1940s) were going to make a movie of On the Road and actually talked about modeling Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty on Jim and Buzz in the film.
Q: You mentioned the two characters in On the Road named Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. It seems very obvious that it is Rebel-related with names like Sal and Dean. To your knowledge, what is this story about? I am just curious.
AW: Jack Kerouac's On the Road is one of the great classics of American literature and one of my favorite books. It's an autobiographical novel about Sal Paradise's friendship with the charismatic Dean Moriarty and the trips they take across the country. In one famous passage from the book Sal explains his attraction to Dean like this: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes 'AWWW!'" I would say that's a pretty good description of James Dean, too. The characters in On the Road are based on Kerouac's friends: Sal is Kerouac; Dean is Neal Cassady, who later ended up driving the bus for Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, the subject of Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; Carlo is poet Allen Ginsberg; and Old Bull Lee is William Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch. Kerouac wrote the book in three weeks on one scroll of teletype paper in 1951 but it wasn't published until 1957 (although some chapters appeared in magazines earlier) so it is doubtful that either the film Rebel Without a Cause inspired the book On the Road or vice versa. However, both the book and the film captured something that was happening to young people at the time and I think whatever similarities there are between them have to do with the fact that they were just so attuned to what was going on around them.
Q: What were some of the most surprising or shocking facts you discovered throughout your research?
AW: I think in general we were amazed by how much was going on behind the scenes that spilled into the movie--the auditions that turned into gang fights, all of the raging hormones, the generational conflicts between the young and old actors. Nicholas Ray, James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo were all such fascinating people. Nicholas Ray was a charismatic, tragic figure who didn't seem to have many limits in his personal life and then filtered everything into his art. The scandal with his wife and son is still pretty shocking. Natalie Wood had an incredible amount of determination and will and I think it's quite admirable how she was often able to triumph over her own limitations. And at a time when people were still shocked by the Kinsey reports she certainly was no Puritan. Dean also seemed to have a voracious appetite for experience and a never-ending curiosity. He also seemed to be constantly pushing himself to experiment in his art and to expand his world view, though he seemed surprisingly unresolved about his sexuality by the time he died. And it's hard to believe Mineo was so young when he played Plato, too young even to realize what he was feeling, and yet his performance is so accomplished. And the way he eventually came to terms with being gay and looked back proudly on playing what he called "the first gay teenager in film" was an interesting reflection of what a lot of people went through at the time.
Q: In the 2001 TNT movie, James Dean, it shows the filming of the scene where Jim Stark throws his father to the ground and chokes him. In the biopic, it shows that James Dean was so in the moment that he continues to choke Jim Backus even after the director yelled cut. Did this actually happen during filming? (from Julie)
AW: We never heard this story and after Dean yelled at Ray for yelling cut during the knife fight scene when he actually got cut by a knife, it's doubtful that Ray would have interrupted Dean in the middle of a performance again. Backus said that Dean was very careful not to hurt him and though what Dean did was a big shock to him Dean didn't become so lost in the moment that there was any risk to Backus, according to him. But the idea that Dean got very into his role and it often spilled over into real life is true. Although that film probably comes closest to telling Dean's story accurately, and James Franco does a great job, it does have a few inaccuracies, such as showing Nicholas Ray with an eyepatch years before he actually wore one.
Q: When Jim talks to Judy between their houses before the first day of school, he says the line, "Life can be beautiful." This is a line in the movie Sunset Boulevard. Since the mansion used in Rebel is the same as in Sunset Boulevard, and since he says it in a mock deeper voice, was this an ad-lib by James Dean in homage to the movie? (from Julie)
AW: "Life Can Be Beautiful" was the name of a radio soap opera that was popular at the time. The line is not an ad-lib but was in Stewart Stern's original screenplay. Stern confirmed to us that it was a reference to the soap opera.
Q: A lot of scenes were reportedly cut from the film or toned down to pass the censors, such as there was too much sexual innuendo, a marijuana reference, etc. What scenes were too racy that they had to be cut from the movie?(from Julie)
AW: Many lines and scenes were trimmed rather than cut out entirely. Probably the biggest cut was the opening scene where the gang stomps a guy, which was cut because it made the gang seem too violent and unsympathetic. Natalie Wood's favorite scene in which she implies she's been around but never been in love was cut but so were lines where she and Jim imply they are virgins. A kiss between Jim and Plato, though apparently discussed at one point, was never filmed. The "marijuana reference" wasn't actually a reference to marijuana at all, just to smoking cigarettes but it was cut because the censor thought it could be inferred that they were talking about marijuana. In England cuts were even more severe, including much of the knife fight and Buzz's scream as he goes over the cliff. What's really amazing, however, is how much Nicholas Ray was able to get past the censors and keep in the movie.
Q: In the film, Buzz calls Jim Stark "toreador" several times, including the chickie run scene and the knife fight scene, where he also calls him "toro". Was this added because James Dean was in real life, such a bullfighting fan? He had written a script entitled, Toreador which he had passed on to a writer friend for advice. (from Julie)
AW: The bull-fighting references are in the original script by Stewart Stern and he put them in there because he knew Dean loved bull fighting. He also put the "Mooing" scene from the planetarium in there as a reference to the mooing contest they had the first time they met. Stern says that the more he got to know Dean, the more Dean began to influence the character of Jim Stark.
Q: When Jim Stark is brought in to talk to the police officer in the beginning of the movie (right after the camera pans from Plato, and while Jim discovers Judy's compact) he is humming a famous old classical tune. Was this an improvisation from James Dean? (from Julie)
AW: Dean improvised that. He learned a lot about music from Rebel's composer Leonard Rosenman. While he was preparing for the scene where he hits the desk, he listened to Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," which was a record that Rosenman had given him, and that is also what he is humming in that scene.
Q: Was James Dean's imitation of the Mr. Magoo voice an improvisation? Was it planned? Was Jim Backus flattered, or did he help him with the voice? (from Julie)
AW: Dean improvised that, too. He got the idea when he was in a movie theater and Backus and his wife came in after it had already started, stumbling around in the dark, and Dean did a Magoo impression. On the set he and Backus would sometimes do dueling Magoos. The Warner executives weren't too happy with Dean's Magoo impression, however. They asked him to change it to a Warner character like Bugs Bunny.
Q: Reportedly, in addition to her affairs with Nick Ray and Dennis Hopper, Natalie Wood also slept with James Dean during filming. Was the rest of the cast aware of this? Was this another way for Natalie to further distance herself from her parents and good girl image, or did she really have feelings for James Dean? (from Julie)
AW: Natalie had a big crush on Dean that started when they worked together on the television drama "I'm a Fool." But Dean wasn't that interested in her. He dismissed her as a Hollywood child star and sometimes taunted her. But he began to warm up to her as shooting went on, especially around the time when they were supposed to do their love scene together. Most of Wood's and Dean's friends don't believe they had an affair, but Dean reportedly told his friends he did sleep with her once--to settle a bet about whether it was possible to make love in a Porsche.
Q: When Jim gives Judy back her compact, he says, "You wanna see a monkey?" The first time I saw the film, this line immediately links me back to the film's opening title with the toy monkey. Is this just a coincidence, a common slang at the time, or is there an association to the toy monkey?
AW: This line was not in the original script but was improvised by Dean. It was something fathers said to their children when they showed them a mirror, and there is something very touching and affectionate the way Dean says it to Judy here. It's probably just a coincidence that Dean makes a reference to a monkey here, although he may have had monkeys on the mind. This scene was shot the day after the opening scene with the toy monkey was shot. For a humorous take on the monkey references in Rebel, look for the monkey icon on the pages of our website www.livefastdieyoungbook.com and click on it.
Q: I see that Jim Stark is really built around James Dean's personality in Stewart Stern's version. Did other writers (i.e. Shulman) do that with Jim's character in pervious versions too?
AW: Shulman did that to some extent although he and Dean did not get along that well (which was one of the reasons he didn't work out) so Shulman wasn't as close to Dean as Stern. However, Shulman did work into the script some of Dean's personality. In Shulman's script, for example, Jim is interested in photography and classical music, and Shulman was reportedly inspired by the fact that Dean was also interested in photography and classical music.
Q: The film credits Dennis Stock as being Dialogue Supervisor. What was his job? Since he knew and had already photographed James Dean, did Dean get him the job? (from Julie)
AW: Dialogue supervisor was a job they usually gave to people when they just wanted to give someone a job on a film. He is supposed to make sure the actors are saying the words in the script but there wasn't a whole lot of concern with that on this film so he didn't have a lot to do. Stock says Nicholas Ray really hired him because he knew he got along well with Dean and thought Stock could keep him in line. Also he thought Stock could take photographs, which would give the film more publicity. You can see ten of those photographs, some of which have never been published before, in our book.
Q: In the scene when Jim first met Judy outside his house, before Judy joined the gang, she said, "I bet you're a real yo-yo." What does it mean? Where did the line come from? Was it part of the improvisations?
AW: Natalie's friend Jackie Perry told us that she once was once talking to Ray about her boyfriend and she said, "He's a real yo-yo." He asked her what it meant and she said, "It means he has a real up and down personality." The line appears in Stern's original script. Whether Ray told Stern about it or Stern heard it somewhere else, I don't know. It's also possible that Natalie used to say it and that she improvised it while they were still working on the script. Stern collected slang that he heard from Frank Mazzola and other people and used some of it in the script. And Ray was always encouraging everyone to add their own lines or say lines in their own words to the script to make the film more authentic.
Q: Are there more interesting facts you have in hand, that you didn't put in the book? If there are, would you mind sharing some of them here?
AW: Well, it seems like we put just about everything in the book that was interesting. We didn't reveal the identity of the person who allegedly raped Natalie Wood, but I'm afraid I can't tell you that for legal reasons. One of the things we didn't have room for was what happened to some of the people we wrote about after the film. Frank Mazzola became an accomplished film editor, who worked on Performance, starring Mick Jagger, and Peter Fonda's film The Hired Hand, which I recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it, especially for Frank's wonderful montage sequences. Corey Allen became an Emmy-winning director and directed episodes of Hill Street Blues and Star Trek: The Next Generation, including the pilot episode. Jack Grinnage starred as Ron Updyke, on Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Jack Simmons became wealthy selling real estate and hung out at Andy Warhol's factory. He once got Warhol a castle as a place for the Velvet Underground to rehearse. Tom Bernard also became very successful in real estate. Beverly Long became a prominent casting director. Steffi Sidney became an accomplished producer and worked on the Dinah Shore Show for many years. James Baird, who played Natalie’s little brother, is still working as a high school teacher. And Stewart Stern won an Emmy for his screenplay for Sybil and also wrote screenplays for The Ugly American starring Marlon Brando, and two films starring Joanne Woodward and directed by Paul Newman, Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams and Rachel, Rachel (which got him an Oscar nomination). I highly recommend those films, too.
Related links:
- Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Make of Rebel Without A Cause
- Al Weisel - Freelance Writer
Back to Top
Back for More features
|
