Dennis Hopper Books

I had not seen this movie, but I was so glad that I bought it. It was wonderful!!!!!

I found this movie utterly predictable and Dennis Hopper's performance as the town drunk only tolerable. Gene Hackman is the new high school basketball coach in basketball crazy Hickory, Indiana in 1951. He is a man with a past, although it is not as dark as it initially appears. Hopper plays Shooter, the town drunk whose son is on the seven man team. Despite his sodden brain, Shooter has a superb understanding of the game and Hackman selects him to be his assistant coach. You know immediately that Shooter is going to sober up and become a real coach. The scenes where Hackman is thrown out of the game and Shooter must take over are forced and unrealistic; Hopper is unconvincing as a person stressed out over the combination of alcohol withdrawal and having to take charge.
Even the scene when Hackman is attending a town meeting where the purpose is to decide whether he should be fired lacks a great deal of tension. It is not out of the apparent politeness of the townspeople, there is a lack of passion among all participants. This is supposed to be a town passionate about basketball and a coach passionate about the game.
I was bored throughout the entire movie and struggled to watch it through to the end.

Love this movie! I love the flavor of Indiana more than anything. Visited that state and the area they speak of many times in my youth. Great inspirational story. Just a quick note...a joke is lost in the subtitles mid-way through the semi-national game. After being fouled out of the game, Coach glares at his player, for which the subtitles read "It was for the team". The line is actually "it was Dentyne", throwing back a joke Coach said in an earlier huddle. Being deaf helps with these things! Amazing movie still.

GREAT SPORTS MOVIE! INSTEAD OF REVIEWING MOVIE, WHICH WE ALL KNOW IS A GREAT SPORTS MOVIE, JUST WANTED TO SAY THE BLU-RAY PICTURE IS A HUGE IMPROVEMENT OVER MY OLD DVD. I'M ONLY REPLACING MY OLD MOVIES THAT I LOVE BUT LOOK BAD ON MY NEW HDTV. WAS VERY PLEASED WITH THE PICTURE QUALITY ON THIS. THE ONLY DRAWBACK TO THIS BLU-RAY IS THERE AREN'T ANY EXTRAS EXCEPT FOR A TRAILER. BUT IF YOUR LOOKING FOR BETTER PICTURE QUALITY, YOU WON'T BE DISSAPOINTED.

Hoosiers DVD

I don't know how I missed this film when it came out in 1986. It is a story of a middle-aged basketball coach and his last chance for redemption. It is suppose to be loosely based on a true story (whatever that means). Gene Hackman does a great job as the coach with Dennis Hopper as a supporting actor.

Of course every body knows that all Indiana boys play basketball, just nail a basket to the side of a barn and start shooting, right? Unfortunately basketball is more than simply shooting the ball through a goal.

The movie is set in Indiana in 1951, a little before my time as a high school basketball player. It does raise some questions with me such as how much difference can a coach make at the high school level? Mine made all the difference in the world, but I was fortunate to have Coach Jerry Wayne Shelton. I suspect they can make less of a difference at the colligate level.

Highly recommended for any one who played high school basketball.

Gunner March 2008

I had not seen this movie, but I was so glad that I bought it. It was wonderful!!!!!

I found this movie utterly predictable and Dennis Hopper's performance as the town drunk only tolerable. Gene Hackman is the new high school basketball coach in basketball crazy Hickory, Indiana in 1951. He is a man with a past, although it is not as dark as it initially appears. Hopper plays Shooter, the town drunk whose son is on the seven man team. Despite his sodden brain, Shooter has a superb understanding of the game and Hackman selects him to be his assistant coach. You know immediately that Shooter is going to sober up and become a real coach. The scenes where Hackman is thrown out of the game and Shooter must take over are forced and unrealistic; Hopper is unconvincing as a person stressed out over the combination of alcohol withdrawal and having to take charge.
Even the scene when Hackman is attending a town meeting where the purpose is to decide whether he should be fired lacks a great deal of tension. It is not out of the apparent politeness of the townspeople, there is a lack of passion among all participants. This is supposed to be a town passionate about basketball and a coach passionate about the game.
I was bored throughout the entire movie and struggled to watch it through to the end.

Love this movie! I love the flavor of Indiana more than anything. Visited that state and the area they speak of many times in my youth. Great inspirational story. Just a quick note...a joke is lost in the subtitles mid-way through the semi-national game. After being fouled out of the game, Coach glares at his player, for which the subtitles read "It was for the team". The line is actually "it was Dentyne", throwing back a joke Coach said in an earlier huddle. Being deaf helps with these things! Amazing movie still.

GREAT SPORTS MOVIE! INSTEAD OF REVIEWING MOVIE, WHICH WE ALL KNOW IS A GREAT SPORTS MOVIE, JUST WANTED TO SAY THE BLU-RAY PICTURE IS A HUGE IMPROVEMENT OVER MY OLD DVD. I'M ONLY REPLACING MY OLD MOVIES THAT I LOVE BUT LOOK BAD ON MY NEW HDTV. WAS VERY PLEASED WITH THE PICTURE QUALITY ON THIS. THE ONLY DRAWBACK TO THIS BLU-RAY IS THERE AREN'T ANY EXTRAS EXCEPT FOR A TRAILER. BUT IF YOUR LOOKING FOR BETTER PICTURE QUALITY, YOU WON'T BE DISSAPOINTED.

Hoosiers DVD

I don't know how I missed this film when it came out in 1986. It is a story of a middle-aged basketball coach and his last chance for redemption. It is suppose to be loosely based on a true story (whatever that means). Gene Hackman does a great job as the coach with Dennis Hopper as a supporting actor.

Of course every body knows that all Indiana boys play basketball, just nail a basket to the side of a barn and start shooting, right? Unfortunately basketball is more than simply shooting the ball through a goal.

The movie is set in Indiana in 1951, a little before my time as a high school basketball player. It does raise some questions with me such as how much difference can a coach make at the high school level? Mine made all the difference in the world, but I was fortunate to have Coach Jerry Wayne Shelton. I suspect they can make less of a difference at the colligate level.

Highly recommended for any one who played high school basketball.

Gunner March 2008

I agree with those below who consider this Brautigran's best work. I'll add that SO THE WIND is among my favorite books of all time, fiction or nonfiction. It does take you to an absolutely singular emotional/geographic landscape. Each sentence feels like it's reeling you further and further into the truth. I first read the book when I was 23, on the advice of a friend. It blew me away. :) Still does.

From a survey of reviews of Brautigan's work here at Amazon, it seems he is lost to Gen X or whatever they're calling "youth" these days. They don't "get" him, but maybe they should avoid "Trout Fishing in America" which is supposed to be his all-time classic. The three that truly deserve a place in the canon are "The Hawkline Monster," "Willard and his Bowling Trophies" (both written while Brautigan was in the ascendant) and this one, "So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away," his semi-autobiographical elegy to a lost America; not sentimental or maudlin, but mournful and challenging. I have never forgotten the scene of Brautigan and another soaking-wet ragamuffin shooting apples with .22s in an abandoned orchard, while the rain poured. "We were Pacific Northwest kids!" he shouts with defiant joy. The terminal scene, with the couple who take their couch with them fishing, teaches that living one's dreams necessarily entails exhibiting one's "eccenctricity" (actually authenticity). Brautigan did away with himself in his 40s due to a wife who fled, along with a career on the skids and alcohol (allegedly), but readers of this book know there was more to it than those merely contributing factors. Brautigan didn't want to pick up the pieces of his self after it had been homogenized and processed as we are now, in an age where we spend so much time staring at TV sets and video screens, and being stared at in return by "security" cameras. Suicide is a terrible wrong, but this little volume shows that Brautigan did not wish to endure the torments of a 21st century-style modernity, for fear of how he would be diminished by it. I liked him for many disparate and "crazy" reasons, including the fact that he was a true Oregonian westerner, Montana transplant and disparager of everything for which Woody Allen stands. Bruatigan and Keoruac could only have been Americans...The wind has blown a lot of it away, but maybe not all.

he takes you in into his heart in this one. the lost that he feels innocense blown away the ache in its place. Its a very ERRIE placeBrautigan walks us through a vanishing america wistfuly he must recover a past thats alreay extinct. HE THINKS THRU BACKWARDS PLACE METAPHORS AND SYMBOLS OF REGRET.places like tombstones on his path to escape an unfortunate act.AS always theres the random wonder in .

he takes you in into his heart in this one. the lost that he feels innocense blown away the ache in its place. Its a very ERRIE placeBrautigan walks us through a vanishing america wistfuly he must recover a past thats alreay extinct. HE THINKS THRU BACKWARDS PLACE METAPHORS AND SYMBOLS OF REGRET.places like tombstones on his path to escape an unfortunate act.AS always theres the random wonder in .

Richard Brautigan's story of a young boy whose life is forever changed by the decision not to eat a hamburger is simultaneously sweetly amusing and heartbreakingly tragic. That this novel is out of print, especially in light of his death in 1984, is equally tragic. If you read no other Brautigan work, read this novel.

Now I know why I love California so much - this pop-up book tells it all! Well worth the money.

Even with lack of proper stereoscopic vision, due to serious lazy eye, the figures appear vivid and dimensional. The book includes a set of postcards that may be sent to taunt the less fortunate who haven't witnessed the wonders herein.

The book looks like it might just be a decorative coffee table item, but the content belies that impression. The pop-ups are fun and attractive, but the real story is in the choice of objects and the writing. The selections speak to the myth of California that was consciously created by early explorers, developers, and movie moguls but became its own reality as people migrated to the state ready to play the roles the myth-makers created for them. In exposing the history through objects and some remarkable writing by such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Carolyn See, Graham Nash, Alice Waters, Terry Gilliam, and Richard Rodriguez, the pre-mythic history and the development of a true California culture emerges...one in which the tinsel is a little tarnished around the edges, but glows as brightly as ever with its own special light.

As a California historian and author of the book: SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MISCELLANY, I found this California pop-up to be a charmingly fun novelty book to share when company comes over.

These intriguing images, which range from sun-drenched to claustrophobic, have a dreamy quality, like a silent film. The photographs capture a graciously Bohemian culture that foreshadowed 1960's counterculture, and they faintly hint at the stylish decadence of 1920's Hollywood. They depict a time when the western regions of Los Angeles were both urbane and pastoral--a time when a starlet such as Tuesday Weld could feel comfortable driving on city streets in an open convertible--a time before personal style had degraded to the level of shaved heads, jauntily oriented baseball caps, and lapses in grooming. In photo number 120, the "Sunset Strip Riot" at Pandora's Box kicks off the 1960's upheavals that would be precisely defined by Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider just three years later. This photo is shot at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights, just down the road from the Hopper residence. In the background of the photo, behind the street action, is the site of The Garden of Alla, demolished 7 years previously, and perhaps the most prominent meeting place for the graciously Bohemian Hollywood crowd of the 1920's.

You can get a excellent sense of Warhol's progress from this book. 1962 seems to have been a decisive years. Before 1962, one can see Warhol's transition from commercial artist and early experimentalism. Beginning sometime in 1962, one sees the emergence of the well-chosen, well-executed images that Warhol is known for.

It seems helpful in understanding his growth to see some of Warhol's less appealing works. Nonetheless, with a total of about 320 pages of images, there are still plenty of Warhol's bettter works to see here.

Four high-quality, significant essays about Warhol open this book. The closing includes a chronology, a "collective portrait" consisting of short contributions from many who knew Warhol well, and "Warhol in his own words", selections that reveal how insightful yet straight-forward Warhol could be.

This seems to be the single best bible of Warhol's paintings. There is a comprehensive collection of Warhol's prints available in "Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonne: 1962-1987" which seems prettier but may suffer from excessive prettiness. Warhol's trashier aspects are not apparent, nor is his experimental reach, in the prints. Both books have their appeal, but as a one source collection of Warhol's painting and critical assessments of it this Retrospective seems unparalleled.

For a good exposure to Warhol in all his diversity, "Andy Warhol: 365 Takes" by the staff of the Andy Warhol Museum is also valuable, but to focus on the paintings, this retrospective seems ideal.

This book made me look at things in a different perspective. It brakes down the origin of the mind and how it reacts to things. I think it would be very helpful to those who seek self-improvement. This would be the best guidance for all of us. Because you would make the necessary changes of your negative ways.

I just caught this on TCM. I had planned to watch for just a few minutes but I was hooked by the photography, the characters and the story. I am immediately adding this to my collection. Back in 1970, when John Wayne got the Academy Award over Dustin Hoffman, I thought an injustice had been done. I was wrong. The Oscar is awarded for accomplishment. Sometimes it's purely for acting but sometimes other elements are taken into consideration. The Academy made the right call. The history of American film would be different story if it weren't for John Wayne. You only have to watch this film to see why he is one of the greatest screen stars of all time. John Wayne is a genre all by himself.

This was one of John Wayne's best films, certainly the best of his later works. I've made people angry in the past by stating that the late Mr. Wayne was playing roles that were WAY TOO YOUNG for him and that I didn't care for them. That's not the case with this work, my only real criticism is that the movie feels abbreviated.

i have a theory or a belief or whatever.... that people i.e. actors, directors, writers, and producers in the movie business aren't as talented or as deep thinking or as visionary as they once were in this country?...for the most part people don't read and dream and express themselves and their ideas like they use to...whether it's because we are in this me/now MTV/real world/computer/ instant gratification age or whatever?...which brings me to true grit. [ kind of a weird segway uh?] what i guess I'm getting at is we just don't turn out great movies here anymore for a whole host of reasons!... i think I've said before in my prior reviews that I'm a child of the 60's and the 70's and one of the iconic figures of that time was john Wayne...the western was still a fixture at the local theater and the movies and it's stars were still for the most part bigger than life....I've seen this 1969 film maybe 20 times thru the years but never like this,...the clarity and the color and the sound are just great!...they spent a few bucks [remastering] and they did this film justice and good for them!...the way language is used and the performance of Wayne and most of the supporting cast is a real treat, and the cinematography and the whole production is first rate...as i watched this film for perhaps the 21st time i was almost like a 11 year old kid again... it's just a shame they can't write like this and have have a little artistic vision and that we don't have stars like john Wayne anymore?....I've seen glen Campbell in interviews a few times state that his acting was so bad...he made john Wayne look so good that Wayne won the Oscar in 1970 for this film!.....i think he was about half right.

I hadn't seen this movie in a number of years, but I'm happily surprised that the film doesn't come across as dated or formulaic at all. A solid Western and a classic within the genre.

True Grit is probably John Wayne's best performance, although it wouldn't be his last, even though he did win an Oscar for it. He also felt the story strong enough to entertain the idea of doing a sequel of the character, Marshall Rooster Cogburn, which is now elementary. Listening to the commentary though, it was stated that a third film was in the works and both Wayne and Hepburn were both happy to reprise their roles whenever filming began, Rooster Cogburn (...and the Lady) being the second and final.

Kim Darby as 'Baby Sister' was also very memorable. When I saw her later in Better Off Dead years later, I not only didn't recognize her, but I was convinced that I recognized her voice from somewhere, which is probably one of those truly signature film voices of all time. It's just a shame she wasn't tapped for better roles through the years to show it off.

True Grit is a incredibly well-written story, nice cinematography and hardy villains (Bruce Dern & Dennis Hopper) which makes for a well-spent two hours and eight minutes. And if you listen to the Director's Commentary towards the end of the film, despite Gary Will's biography, which is incorrect, John Wayne DOES jump over the fence.

For the record, even though he won an Oscar for this, it always seems that The Cowboys seem to be the fan favorite.

True Grit DVD

True Grit is probably my favorite John Wayne western, maybe The Shootist is a close second. It stars John Wayne as an old, rough and coarse U. S. Marshall who reluctantly helps a teenager (Kim Darby) who both won academy Awards for their roles in the movie. The Marshall helps track down the killer of Darcy's Father into Indian Territory (modern day Oklahoma). The movie is based on the novel True Grit.

Glen Campbell sings and plays a Texas Ranger who tags along.

Highly recommended for fans of John Wayne, Classic Western movies, and Cowboy movies the way they used to be made.

Gunner April, 2008

I just caught this on TCM. I had planned to watch for just a few minutes but I was hooked by the photography, the characters and the story. I am immediately adding this to my collection. Back in 1970, when John Wayne got the Academy Award over Dustin Hoffman, I thought an injustice had been done. I was wrong. The Oscar is awarded for accomplishment. Sometimes it's purely for acting but sometimes other elements are taken into consideration. The Academy made the right call. The history of American film would be different story if it weren't for John Wayne. You only have to watch this film to see why he is one of the greatest screen stars of all time. John Wayne is a genre all by himself.

This was one of John Wayne's best films, certainly the best of his later works. I've made people angry in the past by stating that the late Mr. Wayne was playing roles that were WAY TOO YOUNG for him and that I didn't care for them. That's not the case with this work, my only real criticism is that the movie feels abbreviated.

i have a theory or a belief or whatever.... that people i.e. actors, directors, writers, and producers in the movie business aren't as talented or as deep thinking or as visionary as they once were in this country?...for the most part people don't read and dream and express themselves and their ideas like they use to...whether it's because we are in this me/now MTV/real world/computer/ instant gratification age or whatever?...which brings me to true grit. [ kind of a weird segway uh?] what i guess I'm getting at is we just don't turn out great movies here anymore for a whole host of reasons!... i think I've said before in my prior reviews that I'm a child of the 60's and the 70's and one of the iconic figures of that time was john Wayne...the western was still a fixture at the local theater and the movies and it's stars were still for the most part bigger than life....I've seen this 1969 film maybe 20 times thru the years but never like this,...the clarity and the color and the sound are just great!...they spent a few bucks [remastering] and they did this film justice and good for them!...the way language is used and the performance of Wayne and most of the supporting cast is a real treat, and the cinematography and the whole production is first rate...as i watched this film for perhaps the 21st time i was almost like a 11 year old kid again... it's just a shame they can't write like this and have have a little artistic vision and that we don't have stars like john Wayne anymore?....I've seen glen Campbell in interviews a few times state that his acting was so bad...he made john Wayne look so good that Wayne won the Oscar in 1970 for this film!.....i think he was about half right.

I hadn't seen this movie in a number of years, but I'm happily surprised that the film doesn't come across as dated or formulaic at all. A solid Western and a classic within the genre.

True Grit is probably John Wayne's best performance, although it wouldn't be his last, even though he did win an Oscar for it. He also felt the story strong enough to entertain the idea of doing a sequel of the character, Marshall Rooster Cogburn, which is now elementary. Listening to the commentary though, it was stated that a third film was in the works and both Wayne and Hepburn were both happy to reprise their roles whenever filming began, Rooster Cogburn (...and the Lady) being the second and final.

Kim Darby as 'Baby Sister' was also very memorable. When I saw her later in Better Off Dead years later, I not only didn't recognize her, but I was convinced that I recognized her voice from somewhere, which is probably one of those truly signature film voices of all time. It's just a shame she wasn't tapped for better roles through the years to show it off.

True Grit is a incredibly well-written story, nice cinematography and hardy villains (Bruce Dern & Dennis Hopper) which makes for a well-spent two hours and eight minutes. And if you listen to the Director's Commentary towards the end of the film, despite Gary Will's biography, which is incorrect, John Wayne DOES jump over the fence.

For the record, even though he won an Oscar for this, it always seems that The Cowboys seem to be the fan favorite.

True Grit DVD

True Grit is probably my favorite John Wayne western, maybe The Shootist is a close second. It stars John Wayne as an old, rough and coarse U. S. Marshall who reluctantly helps a teenager (Kim Darby) who both won academy Awards for their roles in the movie. The Marshall helps track down the killer of Darcy's Father into Indian Territory (modern day Oklahoma). The movie is based on the novel True Grit.

Glen Campbell sings and plays a Texas Ranger who tags along.

Highly recommended for fans of John Wayne, Classic Western movies, and Cowboy movies the way they used to be made.

Gunner April, 2008

Wrangling teen idols to make a classic movie

If you're into movies, and classics, or more specifically, misunderstood classics, and you have any interest in James Dean, then Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel's Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause is required reading.

Of course, as a reformed "Deaner" who's read every biography about the icon, much of the information about 1950s film star James Dean, whose died in a car accident only days after completing his third movie, isn't new.
Yet when woven with biographical accounts of Rebel co-stars Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and director Nicholas Ray, Live Fast, Die Young becomes compelling reading, mostly through its swift and meticulously researched details (shown in 50 pages of bibliographical notes) that take us sequentially through the pre-production, daily shooting schedule, ups and downs and sometimes lurid behind the scenes drama that took place through the making of a pivotal film that defined the "teenager" in pop culture, and established post-war adolescent angst as a social phenomenon.

Dean, known for his moody temperament, over-the-top method acting, and palpable inferiority complex to contemporary Marlon Brando, gets his now-famous behaviors contextualized. But what has been forgotten among the piles of gossip magazines through the decades, is how Dean, working closely with director Ray, helped shape Rebel into its unique teen-focused originality.

Commentary from surviving actors like Corey Allen, who played Buzz, the gang nemesis of Jim Stark, Dean's character, offers a grounded perspective to the mythologized stories of Dean, Wood, and Mineo, who all died under tragic circumstances. Allen recounts the competitive atmosphere for camera time (Nick Adams being the biggest ham), and the choreography of the opening knife fight (originally shot in black and white, studio executives pushed to move to the then-new color Cinemascope after watching a rough cut. The entire first scene was re-shot).

The three main character's lives reflected strongly on their private lives at the time. Judy's (Wood) advanced sexuality, Jim Stark's (Dean) longing to befriend Buzz rather than fight him, and Plato's (Mineo) adoration of Stark.

Authors Frascella and Weisel, who both thank their male partners in the book's acknowledgements, are therefore presumably gay. But they show a restrained tone in laying proof to the bisexuality of star Dean, focusing on the actual events surrounding the film's subtle successes at revealing the eroticism lurking under the surface of malcontent violent kids.
It's Sal Mineo who shines when he realizes he is, in effect, cinema's first gay teenager. Never exactly in the closet, Mineo's Plato becomes an icon of shy sensitivity and undefined sexuality.

As the book winds through the travails of filming a revolutionary film under the pressures of studio executives, director Ray's own complex personal problems are no less dramatic, ranging from alcoholism to the shame of enduring an affair between his second wife, who seduced his son from his first marriage, to his illegal affair with a teenage Natalie Wood (who was also having a sexual affair with co-star Dennis Hopper).

That the film ever managed to become the classic it was lies largely to this rare collaborative process that Ray nurtured in a time when Hollywood -barely over the dread of McCarthyism and its related blacklist- was anything but collaborative.

While often times abusive and erratic, and even boastful - years later he would take credit for scenes and ideas proposed by screenwriters and actors- Ray is shown as a maverick who made his mark, despite his eventual downfall, by having created more than a great film, but a document of a culture at a pivotal moment. Frascella and Weisel's thorough work shows readers how it happened.

I want to start my review out by saying that I seriously doubt that there will ever be another book like this on Rebel Without A Cause. There certainly hasn't been anything like it in the past.This classic film deserves a book like this and I'm surprised that one was so long in coming.This book is exhaustively researched. Every detail of Rebel from its conception to its filming to its release to its cultural impact is detailed. New interviews with surviving cast and crew members added depth and perspective.The films 3 main stars-James, Natalie and Sal , And Director Nick Ray's experiences making the film are also recounted along with a Chapter each about their lives and fates after Rebel, but the portraits of them are not super deep with perhaps the exception being Nick Ray. The book is more about the evolution and the ultimate impact of Rebel than about the Actors themselves.
The one complaint I have about this book is that at times I think it relied too much on unproven sensationalism about James Dean. Particularly a passage in which an Actor claims that James and Jack Simmons were hitting on him, but what sounded like a perfect innocent invitation to visit the house they were living in to me.
But this is a book that should be on any Rebel fans bookshelf.

Rebel Without a Cause almost defined what teenagers were supposed to be when it appeared in the middle 1950. Here was the complete antithesis of the Father Knows Best type of show. It featured three young starts that seemed destined for greatness: Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and James Dean. Strangely enough, all three of them died, quite young, and not by natural causes.

This book is about the making of that movie. It features interviews with the surviving members of the cast and crew and the authors had firsthand access to both personal and studio archives.

This is a rather remarkable book in that it was written so long after the film. It reads like the authors knew and were involved with the people making the movie it tells an extraordinary story. It's very well done, so far as I am concerned, the definitive film on the movie.

I loved reading this book, for most of the reasons outlined by the other reviewers. The organization is superb, breaking down the wealth of material into discrete units, sometimes arranged by theme, sometimes by a central event. The intelligence of the sorting out leads to a greater understanding of the events portrayed in the book, from the inception of the general idea (to make a picture about teenagers, then a new subject for film) all the way to the ongoing and continuing myth of REBEL.

One thing leads to another, organically speaking. The book convinces me that the central mainspring of the success of REBEL was not, perhaps, James Dean, but Natalie Wood, desperate to prove she wasn't a child any longer, throwing herself at director Nicholas Ray who, in a crazy display of grand seigneurial privilege, took her as his lover. Was Wood feeling any sexual excitement in this union, or was she just trying to get back at her horrible mother, Maria Gurdin? Ever since Suzanne Finstad's biography of Wood revealed this affair with Nick Ray, together with the story of Wood being raped by a still-living Hollywood leading man, it's hard to look at REBEL without thinking of Judy as the victim of sexual abuse "acting out" her fantasies of sexual liberation and pleasure, but not able to really get any for herself.

I appreciated the care the authors took in interviewing just about everyone connected to the movie, including the gang members, some of whom you hardly notice in the movie. But as it happens, and I wonder if someday the extra footage will turn up, many of the gang members had bigger scenes with lots of dialogue, when the shooting started Warners wasn't going to pay for anything but black and white, and then a third of the way through they decided to scrap the b/w footage and go with color. They threw the baby out with the bathwater in this one, for wouldn't you like to see that black and white material? Wonder where it is now? The authors tracked down Steffi Sidney, who was sort of the Tori Spelling of her day in that her dad was a well known Hollywood institution who managed to get her jobs just by laying down the hammer. He wasn't a producer like Aaron Spelling, but even more fearsome, one of LA's top gossip columnists, a man called Sidney Skolsky. Steffi is particularly observant about the day to day shooting of REBEL, and her pointed comments are always trenchant and super-funny.

I hear today in the news that Warners has unearthed test footage of Marlon Brando playing scenes from a version of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE that never got made, seven or eight years before the present one! And that they will be issuing this screentest as an extra to the DVD of STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE! I bet the authors of LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG are kicking themselves that they didn't get to view this footage--indeed they don't seem to have been aware such a test even existed, or that the movie was almost made in 1948! Otherwise they are an omniscient pair indeed.

This is a wonderfully detailed yet easy to read account of the making of "Rebel Without a Cause." The authors did their homework and did a superb job of compiling the information into an interesting story. No matter if you're a fan of James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, you'll be rewarded with a glimpse behind the camera at how it all came together. A must read for fans of the stars, director, the film itself or film students in general.