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New movie 'James Dean' creates interest in actor

TNT's new movie, "James Dean" offers a quirky lead performance but succeeds in creating interest in the actor with the accident-shortened career.

ROB HEDELT •   Rob Hedelt's archive •   E-mail Rob Hedelt

Date published: 8/5/2001

By ROB HEDELT MOVIE FANS who saw and remember the real James Dean may be bothered by his quirky portrayal in tonight's movie on TNT about the star labeled "too fast to live, too young to die."

But those of us who came too late to witness the meteoric rise and fall of the brash anti-hero of "Rebel Without A Cause" will largely be intrigued about this young actor who's now a cultural icon.

"James Dean," at 8 on TNT, tells the story of the sad, emotional actor who channeled his own pain into the roles he brought to life on the big screen.

As Dean, James Franco breathes a peculiar kind of life into the actor shown to be a tortured soul.

Dean, whose motorcycle-riding, bad-boy roles blended into his real life as an adventurer and party boy, became known for his blue jeans, his dangling cigarette and a characteristic slouch.

Franco turns that slouch into a bending, turning, stooped posture that make him seem stranger than he might have been.

But every now and then, he flashes a pose or a face that seems to catch the James Dean look that still turns up on posters or movie stills.

It's in the little moments when Franco conveys the hip, cool intensity that burned up the celluloid in Dean's short, three-movie career that filmmaker Mark Rydell ("On Golden Pond") seems to have connected with this legendary success story.

Because most viewers know that Dean's career was cut short by a tragic automobile accident when he was just 24, they're ready for the unhappy ending.

But many viewers, especially those like me who missed his original career, will be interested to learn what made this legend such a smoldering cauldron of emotion.

In the hands of Rydell, who also does quite a star turn portraying film studio head Jack Warner, the film flows smoothly from Dean's emotional performance in his first film, "East of Eden," into his troubled youth.

This film--saying that much of the story was based on fact, and that the rest was an educated guess--shifts from a tearful father and son scene in that film to the strained home life Dean grew up with.

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Date published: 8/5/2001