Live Fast, Die Young
The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
The complete story behind the groundbreaking film Rebel Without a Cause is vividly revealed in this fascinating book as provocative as the film itself.
The revolutionary film Rebel Without a Cause has had a profound impact on both moviemaking and youth culture since its 1955 release, virtually giving birth to our concept of the American teenager. And the making of the movie was just as explosive for those involved. Against a backdrop of the Atomic Age and an old Hollywood studio system on the verge of collapse, four of Hollywood's most passionate artists had a cataclysmic and immensely influential meeting.
James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and director Nicholas Ray were each at a crucial point in their careers. The young actors were grappling with their fame, burgeoning sexuality, and increasingly reckless behavior, and their on- and off-set relationships ignited as they engaged in Ray’s vision of physical melees and psychosexual seductions of startling intensity.
Through interviews with the surviving members of the cast and crew and firsthand access to both personal and studio archives, the authors reveal Rebel's true drama: the director’s affair with sixteen-year-old Wood, his tempestuous “spiritual marriage” with Dean, and his role in awakening the latent sexuality of Mineo, who would become the first gay teenager to appear on film.
This searing account of the upheaval the four artists experienced in the wake of Rebel is complete with thirty photographs, including ten never-before-seen photos by famed Dean photographer Dennis Stock.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Frascella and Weisel's expansive overview isn't the first book to document the influential Warner Brothers classic, but it does deserve recognition for its exhaustiveness. With the first third of the book focusing on script problems, casting and unusual prefilming improvisatory rehearsals, the detailed chronological coverage of the actual filming doesn't begin until just after page 100. As Frascella (former chief movie critic of what was then Us Magazine) and Weisel (a Premiere contributor) explain, screenwriter Stewart Stern struggled to develop director Nicholas Ray's innovative idea for a film about middle-class juvenile delinquents, delivering the final script only four days before the 1955 production start. Upon revealing this fact, the book kicks into high gear, examining everything from the history and symbolism of James Dean's red jacket to Natalie Wood's affair with Ray. Dean created friction with the film's older actors, the authors say; some were taken aback by the on-set "atmosphere of improvisation and borderline anarchy." Behind-the-scenes conflicts, feuds and power plays come to life thanks to the authors' thorough research and interviews with surviving cast and crew members. Concluding chapters probe the Dean cult and the film's "enduring power." Photos.