James Dean

It's a sign of old age I'm sure: the books and films which affected me deeply as a teenager have stayed with me and are vivid in my mind, yet ask me about a film I saw 6 months ago, and, unless it really blew my socks off, I can hardly remember it at all. Is this form of amnesia truly due to aged braincells? Or is it down to the fact that one remembers what one is moved by, and due to my advanced years and having been buffeted and weathered by life and experience, I've evolved into the cynical and sarcastic old bint that I am. Consequently it takes an awful lot to affect me these days, and even more to impress.

I can still taste the despair of Jude the Obscure which I read on holiday in Spain at the age of 16. Around the same time I was rocked to the core at my first viewing of Rebel Without a Cause. Although made in the 50s I totally identified with the teenage angst and feeling of alienation that that film conveyed. I'm still in love with James Dean. I'm still in awe of his astounding method acting and intrigued by the stories that turned him from awkward mortal into untouchable golden demi-god.

There's something about the man that just radiates light for me. The shy smile, the awkwardness, the passion. Given the subject matter of RWAC and with hindsight I now understand why it hit a nerve, one which still resonates to this very day. I first discovered the James Dean films when my parents and I relocated to London from the depths of the countryside. I was culture-shocked and resentful at having been uprooted. I made no effort to make new friends, maybe as a coping mechanism for the heartache I was experiencing at being wrenched away from my clan. The Everyman Cinema was virtually on my doorstep. In RWAC I discovered my feelings mirrored and portrayed right there on film. My inarticulacy and frustration, my feelings of being a misfit and misunderstood, the despair & despondency in my family's inability to understand me were all played out by JD's characters one way or another in all three of the films. In RWAC Jim Stark (Dean's character) was considered off the rails, and I was thought a belligerent 'handful'.This period seemed to last forever, but couldn't have been more than a few months. 

In those days the Everyman Cinema was not the chi-chi champaign chain it is now. It was a large single-screened, dusty chic auditorium with uncomfortable seating, a proper rep/art-house that sold flap jacks and wagon wheels in the foyer. It had a little kiosk box attached to the outside, green and wart-like. On Saturdays the wart cocooned a gorgeous film school student who sold the tickets with a lightbulb smile and easy banter. I hid away there and I learnt a lot about film in just a few months. Hitchcock, Cocteau, Dali, Scott, Scorsese even (with a little help from the student), and the James Dean films. 

Slowly London began to appeal, the vintage poster shop in Brewer Street was visited and for a while I sought refuge in the dead past, one that couldn't break my heart. James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Steve McQueen, John Lennon plastered my bedroom walls. I'd go to double bills of 'Rebel Without a Cause' and 'East of Eden' and also 'Giant' which at some three hours long was usually shown on its own. Hardly communicating with my parents at all at that time, it was of course Rebel that I couldn't get enough of. The styling, the look, but mostly the story and JD. If shipping existed back then, I'd be writing dark dark stories about Jim Stark and Plato that would make your hair stand on end.

The queue of fifties throwbacks waiting to go in to the films wound up the Vale with girls in leggings & ponytails and boys in red jackets. All identified with Jim Stark. You can still see that same rockabilly tribe in Camden which has evolved only very slightly over the years, it's the same tribe that spawned Amy Winehouse. Yep I created a small 'Camden roll' for myself, nothing like a beehive and wore wound up bandanas alice-band like in my hair. I stuck to the black clothes I still predominately wear today, with a black eye-liner tick and a Gauloise or Gitanes placed strategically between deep red lipstick. Ha ha. I'm laughing now! Silly, silly me! I loved dressing that way.

Time has dulled my feeling for RWAC only slightly and as it churns up feelings I'd rather forget it is now East of Eden that I'll watch to bask in Dean's glory. It is a true masterpiece taken from the last part of a much longer book bringing to life the struggle between two bothers for the approval and love of their father. There are many biblical references and some wonderful photography.  I love the scene in the funfair where Cal (Dean's character) and his brother's girlfriend take a carousel ride together. It is awkward and uncomfortable and famously Dean is said to have not gone to the loo for a day to help convey the discomfort. I just love that!

The best Dean story of course comes from the great Alec Guinness. One night Dean pulled up outside an LA Restaurant in the new Porsche he'd just had delivered which he was going to race in. Someone introduced him to Guinness who later said he'd no idea where the voice came from, but out of the blue he found himself warning Dean not to drive the car, or else he'd be dead within a week. If only Dean had listened to the wisdom of Obi-Wan. A week later he died behind the wheel of the Porsche in an horrific car crash on his way to the race. The first live fast, die young icon.

So many other stories surround Dean's personal life. His affairs with complicated women, and other men and the occult. Back then it was all so taboo and unspoken for fear of reprisal. What a shame. Thank goodness we live in a time where whatever floats your boat goes (well it does in my book anyway). The man was only 24 when he died, what a supreme tragedy. Sometimes I wonder what would've happened had he lived... would he have hit the boards and become an Olivier type or gone down the sadder, but no less great Brando route? Who knows.

When I thought Eoin Macken was suggesting he was filming a remake of EoE I was indignant and afraid for my beloved film. However, I was relieved to find this is not the case at all, he has only drawn from some of the elements of the book for his film Cold.

Funnily enough I now live right next door to the Everyman Cinema and strangely I'll soon be working on the dialogue editing on 'Cold'. Somehow I already know the film, the music and the whole experience is going to impress me and stay with me for a long time. It's funny how life goes round in circles, like some weird carousel.