Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause

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New York Times Book Review
January 8, 2006
By Stephanie Zacharek
Nicholas Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) is often considered a movie of symbols, all of them keyed to our feelings, and memories of youth as well as to our never-resolved disappointments: James Dean stands for youthful rebellion; Natalie Wood for the seemingly disparate appetites for wildness and tenderness; and Sal Mineo for the unpredictability, and the danger, of sexual desire. Sometimes it's easier, to grapple with what characters mean than with what they do.

But reducing "Rebel Without a Cause" to symbols only undermines its enduring vitality. It is really a movie of gestures, as Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel grasp in their lively and intelligent "Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making 'Rebel Without a Cause.'"

When James Dean's Jim Stark returns home, exhausted and troubled, from a game of chicken that has killed one of his classmates, the first thing he does is go to the refrigerator for a drink of milk. He holds the bottle to his forehead, then to his cheek, a movement so smooth and simple you almost miss how elemental it is. Frascella and Weisel trace this small moment to an improvisatory session between Ray and Dean, in which Ray challenged the young actor to find a way to cut to the scene's essence. "It was a startling yet entirely natural move," Frascella and Weisel write. "It possessed an electric charge that carried directly into the film, where it would read as completely true to the sensibility of the milk-fed American teen, caught between maturity and childhood."

So many making-of books seem like deadly procedurals, with the authors stuffing in tons of minutiae just to show how much research they've done; whatever affection they feel for their subject gets buried under all the paperwork. But "Live Fast, Die Young" reads as if Frascella and Weisel took a good look at the movie in front of them and simply asked how and why. That's the reason we learn the story of the milk bottle, as well as the several theories about the origin of the red jacket Dean wears so memorably in the film. Although one source claims the jacket was bought on the cheap at a Hollywood men's store, the movie's costume designer, Moss Mabry, says he made three of the jackets from a bolt of red nylon, carefully working out the size of the collar and the placement of the pockets. "Even though the jacket looked simple," he explains, "it wasn't."

The apparent simplicity of that jacket sums up the difficulties Ray faced in creating what might have been, in less capable hands, just a throwaway teenage melodrama. Frascella and Weisel suggest that Ray was probably motivated to make "Rebel" at least partly by his strained relationship with Tony, his own son from his first marriage.

At 13, Tony slept with Gloria Grahame, then Ray's wife. But the charismatic, temperamental Ray wasn't above scandalous behavior himself: he began an affair with the young Natalie Wood in 1954, when she was 16 and he was 43. Almost immediately after she took up with Ray, Wood also started sleeping with Dennis Hopper, whom Ray had just cast in "Rebel." When Ray learned of Wood's infidelity, months later, he punished Hopper by giving nearly all his lines to another character. (Even so, Hopper reconciled with Ray many years later, getting him a teaching job when he really needed work.)

But the director's truest love affair, though not a carnal one, may have been with Dean himself. The most fascinating sections of "Live Fast, Die Young" deal with Ray's relationship with his mercurial, seductive, frustrating star, a cosmically gifted performer prone to self-indulgence and erratic behavior. Immediately after meeting Dean (who had just completed "East of Eden" with Ray's mentor, Elia Kazan), Ray knew he wanted him for "Rebel." But the courtship wasn't quick or easy. "We sniffed each other out, like a couple of Siamese cats," Ray said. And even after Dean signed on to the film, the tension between actor and director never dissipated.

Although Dean is rightly considered one of the greatest Method actors, he often abused some of the Method's tenets. Dean was injured by one of his fellow actors, Corey Allen, after insisting that real switchblades be used in the movie's knife-fight scene. When Ray instinctively stopped the camera, Dean was furious: "Can't you see this is a real moment? Don't you ever cut a scene while I'm having a real moment!" Dean would sometimes curl into a fetal position before beginning a scene, or keep the other actors waiting as he holed up in his dressing room, preparing. "What the hell does he think he's doing?" one crew member grumbled. "Even Garbo never got away with that."

Had Dean lived longer, his obsessiveness might have become unbearable to his peers and everyone else. But he left so few perforamances behind - and such great ones - that we can allow him a few indulgences. In "Live Fast, Die Young," Corey Allen explains how Dean helped redefine Hollywood's idea of masculinity: "These days, we talk about vulnerability very easily, partially because of people like Dean who were willing to put it on the line." On the set, Dean may have gotten away with indulgences that wouldn't have been granted to any other actor. Then again, not even Garbo was James Dean.

Hollywood Reporter
November 28, 2005
By Gregory McNamee
There are plenty of steamy tales in this revealing and detailed book about the making of "Rebel Without a Cause."
Nicholas Ray had it tough. To make his film "Johnny Guitar," a movie he called "an appalling experience," he had to survive Joan Crawford, whom he called "one of the worst human beings (he had) ever encountered." He probably counted his wife, Gloria Grahame, in that dismal camp; she bedded his 13-year-old son when the lad came to visit and found that pop was not at home. Never again would he look at his son without suspicion, though Ray would himself soon initiate an affair with the underage Natalie Wood.

And all this before the credits even begin to roll. Leafing through the opening of "Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making 'Rebel Without a Cause' " -- Us Magazine veterans Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel's book on the making of Ray's greatest film -- you'd be forgiven for thinking it tabloid gossip, full of sex and sorrow, embarrassment and embitterment. Yet, though there are plenty of steamy tales to follow, their book is an eminently serious, revealing look behind the scenes at a film that seemed ill-fated long before it opened.

The time was just right for "Rebel Without a Cause," a zeitgeist film if ever there was one. The thing called the teenager was just becoming a social reality; youth culture would explode just a few years later, and Frascella and Weisel make a good case for "Rebel" as a premonition, if not a cause, of the flower-power era. And in 1955, juvenile delinquency was much in the news, as those feared teenagers came up against the law; thundered one judge in Boston, "We have the spectacle of an entirely city terrorized by one-half of one% of its residents. And the terrorists are children."

A tiny demographic, to be sure. But millions of teenagers were ready for a film about their lives, even if that film starred an actor who was well into his 20s, even if it was written by oldsters in their 30s and 40s. No matter: James Dean, fresh from the success of "East of Eden," would soon be hailed as the first rock star (both Elvis Presley and John Lennon lived by Ray's film). He would become an icon, for he did the rock star thing by living fast and dying young -- a month, in fact, before "Rebel" opened.

Dean's co-stars, Wood and Sal Mineo, lived fast and died young, too. (Dennis Hopper, whose part was trimmed to bit size when Ray became aware that he was seeing Wood, too, lived fast but lived, improbably.) Their sad ends gave rise to the notion that a curse hung over the movie, and it didn't help that Ray lived out much of his life unhappily and unproductively.

But for him, the helmsman, the movie seemed cursed from day one. For one thing, after shooting what insiders remember as one of the most exciting knife-fight scenes in movie history -- one that drew real blood from Dean -- Ray got word that the studio was forcing him to switch from gritty black and white to color. Ray rolled with the change, even came to like it (where would Dean's iconic red jacket be without it, after all?), but it threw a perpetually delayed production further off schedule. Indeed, in the end, "Rebel" came in 11 days late and much over budget, even as Warners labored to rein in Ray and his independent ambitions -- part of the reason Ray worked less and less in the years following what became a smash hit.

The film he gave Warners could be read on many levels: as a pioneering depiction of what Mineo called "the first gay teenager in films," as an endorsement of youth rebellion, even as a thinly disguised Cold War allegory. What is certain is that once it lit up the screen, its fire never faded.

"Rebel Without a Cause" celebrated its 50th birthday Thursday. Its influence has been inestimable. At once gossipy and scholarly, this book is the most detailed look at its making that we have, and those who admire Nicholas Ray's creation will find much of value in it.

Boston Globe
October 30, 2005
The Rebel
By Chris Fujiwara
Fifty years ago, Nicholas Ray's ''Rebel Without a Cause" changed American culture. But did it call for rebellion, conformity, or both?
''Rebel"'s impact was so strong that it actually changed the society its protagonists found so dissatisfying. In their compulsively readable, just-published ''Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making 'Rebel Without a Cause"' (Touchstone), authors Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel make the bold assertion that the film ''invented the teenager." '''Rebel' is the first film that presented teenage culture through their eyes rather than through the eyes of adults," Weisel elaborated by phone from New York. ''That teenagers had their own ideals, their own way of life, their own way of thinking and feeling—these things were in the society. But 'Rebel' was the first film to define them and to define things that were bubbling under the surface."
See the article

Films in Review
By Mark Rhodes
A chronicling of the process of making the Warner Bros. classic REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE is the basis for, Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause (Touchstone) co-written by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel. The lives of James Dean, Natalie Wood, Nick Ray as well as aspects of this film have been chronicled many times over, so, it remains surprising that ‘Live Fast’ manages to uncover some of the really interesting, but largely unknown aspects of the production and lore of this legendary melodrama. Most notably, the authors explore interesting aspects of script development (the idea of a film about troubled middle class teens was at the time a new and almost radical notion to base a film on). Much of the book concerns Dean, including details about the significance of his wardrobe and the predictable difficulties he had relating to some of the more established actors on set. Despite the allure of Dean's mythology (and the authors are not immune to it by any means), the book manages to also take note of the other players involved as well. Of special interest are details of the affair Ray had with Wood. Obviously, this is an indispensable work for the Dean fan, but it is also a great read for those interested in the machinations of a film's origin.

Philadelphia City Paper
October 6-12, 2005
By Frank Halperin
Recommending chronicles of a celebrated film is a futile effort at best—readers will be drawn in if they love the cinematic subject at hand, and steer clear if they don't, no matter what virtues the book's narrative may possess. Live Fast, Die Young, however, has a number of things going for it that disprove the rule. Yes, it's a thorough examination of Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray's tragic 1955 vision of teenage alienation that's considered the classic paradigm of adolescent angst and the picture that catalyzed James Dean's iconic, laconic stature. But even if one could care less about Dean or the Poetics-infused kicks of "chickie runs" and the Balanchine-caliber knife fight that ignites Rebel, this book has got the bullets to penetrate fickle consumer tastes with plenty of lurid Tinseltown history that would've made the editors of the era's preeminent gossip mag Confidential blush.
Just like the charmingly subversive Ray, who intensely researched juvenile delinquents prior to making the film, Live Fast, Die Young's authors have feverishly documented every possible facet of Rebel, be it profound or provocative—or both. As a result of their meticulous preparation, in which they cultivated firsthand interviews, library sources and the Warner Brothers archives, they have produced an extraordinary account not only of the movie but also the enticing lore of the old Hollywood star machine. They also achieve a delicate yet controlled balance between Rebel's volatile realization and the dubious exploits that occurred offscreen. The reader therefore learns that Ray and Dean improvised the post-"chickie run" remorse scene at Ray's bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, and that Ray bought Cuprex at the drugstore to combat Dean's first case of crabs.
For hardcore Rebel fans, this book is obviously a must—as it is for anyone interested in the controversial underbelly of mid-20th century show business. Live Fast, Die Young is an E! True Hollywood Story and Hollywood Babylon wrapped up in one striking package.

The Advocate
November 4, 2005
By David Ehrenstein
Easily the best "making of" since [Lillian Ross'] Picture, Live Fast, Die Young recounts the tumultuous production of Rebel Without a Cause with scrupulous scholarship that's only possible when gay writers are in the driver's seat.
   Conceived as a minor stopover between East of Eden and Giant, Rebel came to subsume its classier "bookends." To this day it's regarded as the seminal cinematic expression of adolescent angst and homoerotic desire.
   In this book we get the usual stories about Dean's affairs with Liz "Dizzy" Sheridan (Jerry's mom on Seinfeld) and Betsy Palmer. But Pier Angeli and Ursula Andress were largely publicity for a man who rated a 5 on the Kinsey scale. Dean wasn't interested in Natalie Wood (who was busy with both Ray and Dennis Hopper.) And while seriously attracted to Dean on-screen and off, Mineo (who gets a chapter to himself titled "The First Gay Teenager") was said by some to be having an affair with Ray too.
   As for Dean, he was busy with Jack Simmons, a personal slave whom he wanted for the Mineo part. Ray wouldn't have it, and neither would screenwriter Stewart Stern; "I thought it would put a different coloration on the relationship that might not be healthy."
   We dig.
   One night Dean and Simmons ran into Jack Larson (then boy reporter Jimmy Olsen on the Superman series) and proposed a three-way. A wary Larson turned them down to the considerable annoyance of poet Frank O'Hara, a friend of his. When he told O'Hara he'd said no, Larson remembers, the Dean-besotted poet "was shocked and it almost ruined our friendship."
   But there's a much bigger "might have been" in that Ray wanted to have an on-screen kiss between Dean and Mineo. Alas, it was a tad too early for Brokeback Mountain. But it can still play in the movie palace of our dreams.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, September 30, 2005
"At 50, 'Rebel' still a classic without a rival" By Scott Von Doviak
When director Nicholas Ray (In a Lonely Place, They Live by Night) set out to make a small, personal film inspired by the wave of teen rebellion in the early 1950s, there was little reason to think the result would be remembered five decades later. The movie was Rebel Without a Cause, and its status as an enduring classic owes much to circumstances outside of Ray's control. Fifty years ago today, the film's 24-year-old star, James Dean, was killed in a car accident, sealing his fate as an eternal cult figure and a Hollywood legend.
With Live Fast, Die Young, an exhaustive account of Rebel's production and its aftermath, film critic Lawrence Frascella and entertainment reporter Al Weisel have done their part to keep the legend alive. (Not that the movie needed their help; it makes regular appearances in repertory houses and on critics' all-time-best lists, and was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1990.)
The story begins with a shock, as Ray discovers his teen-age son in bed with his wife, the boy's stepmother. According to Frascella and Weisel, this incident was the spark that ignited the director's interest in "the teen problem," as the tabloids of the day called it. His timing was right on the money, as the studios were eager to claim a share of the burgeoning youth market.
Originally envisioned as a down-and-dirty, black-and-white B-movie, Rebel—which, like Dean's death, is marking its 50th anniversary this year—grew in stature as it attracted top talent. Dean's popularity was about to explode with the release of East of Eden, and it took a volatile mix of salesmanship and seduction on Ray's part to lure the star into the project.
With Dean aboard, along with Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, the picture became a full-color Cinemascope extravaganza. As you would expect, the authors present detailed technical descriptions of the movie's most famous set pieces, including the "chickie run" between two hot rods that ends in a fiery crash, eerily presaging Dean's demise. There is also no shortage of gossipy revelations regarding the tangled relationships—many of them sexual—between the film's principals, although the book's tone never lapses into lurid sensationalism.
Less expected are the evocative glimpses of Rebel's more haunting moments, such as the phantom house sequences filmed in the same mansion used in Sunset Boulevard, with its "air of dreamy dilapidation." In these passages, the authors' movie love seeps through the prose, transcending the usual nuts-and-bolts approach.
If there's one aspect of the Rebel story that Frascella and Weisel can't quite get a handle on, it is Dean himself. That is perhaps to be expected, as the authors are forced to juggle many contradictory impressions of a young man who cultivated an enigmatic persona -- one he probably didn't live long enough to resolve in his own mind.
Though they pay lip service to the notion of a Rebel curse—in addition to Dean, Wood and Mineo also died young under mysterious circumstances—Frascella and Weisel are more concerned with the movie's legacy. They make a strong case that Rebel is more than just the residue of a star that burned too bright.

Kirkus ReviewsHow the ultimate visual chronicle of adolescent alienation almost didn't happen—many times over. A passionate depiction of how art can create, inspire and destroy—all at the same time.
The story of how Rebel Without a Cause became a film is at times almost more interesting than the movie itself, though first-time authors Frascella and Weisel pay determined homage to that cinematic touchstone throughout their engaging and learned book. In 1954, director Nicholas Ray told mogul of moguls Lew Wasserman that he wanted to do a movie "about the young people next door," a dramatic departure from the usual approach of depicting all troubled teens as coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. Ray was attached by Warner Bros. to the long-gestating Rebel, a psychiatric study of a young psychopath. Script after script followed, with everyone from Leon Uris to Irving Shulman banging out treatments (playwright Clifford Odets even provided a few ideas). As Ray's vision stuttered forward—he knew what he wanted, but couldn't articulate it—the troubled and brilliant cast started to cohere. Natalie Wood was a precocious 17, cruelly abused by her stage mother and looking for sexual validation from everyone from Ray to her costar, a young Dennis Hopper. Sal Mineo, a strangely handsome boy from the Bronx, gave a homoerotically charged performance that immortalized him as the first (fairly) obviously gay teenager on film. Meanwhile, Ray tried to seduce Brando wannabe James Dean into his picture, though in this account it's hard to tell exactly who was playing whom. The actual shoot was no easier than the preproduction. Nosy studio heads were nervous about Ray's bold ideas; a thick web of jealousy and sexual intrigue entangled all the principals; and Ray's use of actual teen gang members in the cast caused problems. The denouement is fittingly sad: Dean died just before the film's release, and Ray's career quickly sputtered out, to be revitalized briefly decades later.

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."

Premiere magazine
October 2005, p. 28
By Chris Cronis
Fights! Scandal! Sex! An unforgettable set visit to 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause
It is James Dean's most memorable movie, a film that's become even more mythic because of the tragic ends met by its three leads. Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause (Touchstone, $24.95), by film and theater critic Lawrence Frascella and PREMIERE Contributor Al Weisel, revisits Rebel's production, serving up the lurid on-set tales: Dean's pot-smoking and casual cruelty toward his costars; 16-year-old Natalie Wood's affairs both with her 43year-old director, Nicholas Ray, and 18-year-old costar, Dennis Hopper; and the is-he-in-the-closet-ornot status of Sal Mineo; who was in love with Dean. Ample airtime is given to the movie's iconic actors, but Live Fast, Die Young's real revelation is Ray, who emerges as the book's most compelling, tortured, and, arguably, talented figure.

Wheeler Winston Dixon
Quarterly Review of Film and Video
Easily the best book on REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE written to date, LIVE FAST DIE YOUNG is superbly researched, richly detailed, and carefully written, giving the reader the most comprehensible possible overview of this American classic. The authors have amassed a remarkable trove of research material, including numerous interviews with surviving crew and cast members, in addition to studio memos, copies of the various drafts of the script, and photographs to create the most rigorous and yet accessible text on REBEL, without sensationalizing the material. Indeed, one of the highlights of the text is the manner in which the authors treat the material with respect and rigorous care. While dealing frankly with director Nicholas Ray's bisexuality, Sal Mineo's tragic career, or James Dean's unorthodox creative process as an actor, they refuse to cheapen either the film, or the hold it retains on our collective memory. LIVE FAST DIE YOUNG is written with an emotional connection to the material which makes it come alive for the reader, and secures for this film a place in the pantheon of the essential works of the art of cinema. Essential reading.

Booklist
By Gordon Flagg
Rebel without a Cause (1955), a sympathetic view of those of its era’s teenagers demonized as juvenile delinquents, is one of the rare movies that had a massive cultural impact and was of significant artistic merit. Its immediate renown came because of star James Dean’s car-crash death just before its release, which sparked his myth and the film’s big box office. Frascella and Weisel credit director Nicholas Ray for Rebel’s artistic excellence, noting that his insistence on getting his vision to the screen was fueled by estrangement from his teenaged son and anguish over his failings as a father. They construct Rebel’s production history from archival research and interviews with surviving cast and crew members (costars Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo met violent ends, too, and Ray spent most of his last 20 years in exile from Hollywood) and satisfyingly balance scholarship—in, for example, detailed accounts of such key scenes as the knife fight at the planetarium and the chickie run—and gossip, such as dish on Ray’s affair with then-16-year-old Wood.

Orlando Sentinal
October 16, 2005
By Roger Moore
Fifty years ago this month, a movie came out that hearkened a cultural revolution, nothing less than the rise of the teenager in American society. Rebel Without a Cause signaled and triggered a seismic shift in American pop-culture priorities, both documenting the restless energy and lack of direction of a new generation of American youth, and magnifying that restlessness -- by encouraging imitation.

"Troubled teens" and "juvenile delinquents" became the anti-culture's heroes. And the anti-culture became the only culture for baby boomers ready to embrace their own music, their own mores and their own icons.

After this movie, who didn't imitate James Dean, the title character, a handsome and sensitive punk all too ready to live up to that teen credo of the Atomic Age -- "Live fast, die young"?

Journalists Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel take us back to that era, onto the set and into the Chateau Marmont, where Rebel director Nicholas Ray, a disciple of Elia Kazan, drilled his young troops into convincing impressionist sketches of teen gangs, girls with father issues and gay men who didn't understand the attraction they felt for their own sex because society didn't talk about such things.

It's a big, lurid film with a lot to answer for, the authors say. Basically, they see Rebel as the first brick in the edifice of youth culture, the first shot in the sexual revolution and the movie that made the 1960s possible.

And the environment it was created in was just as steamy, from underage Natalie Wood, willing to sleep with the director to ensure that she got the role that would transform her from child star has-been to adult sex symbol, to eternally boyish Sal Mineo, manipulated by Ray and James Dean into giving a sexually confused performance that signaled a new openness about sexuality.

"In many ways," they write, "Rebel Without a Cause invented the teenager."

It's not the most stylish or compellingly written book (collaborations are always compromises). But where it scores over the earlier, more sensationalized works in this genre is in its journalistic caution. The writers make it clear what they know and can prove: Wood's dual affairs with Ray and her co-star, Dennis Hopper; Dean's sexual history, and what they can't say about it with absolute certainty; Ray's alleged dalliances with members of both sexes.

And they underscore Rebel's place in history, the way rising rocker Elvis Presley obsessed over it, the cultural tidal wave that took the film's impact around the world, the sad endings of most of those who made it.

It's not a book of bombshells, but an overdue history lesson. Frascella and Weisel place the movie within its times, and show the times that changed to reflect the legend that Rebel and its star -- who died in a car wreck a month before the movie opened -- became.

Library Journal
This book joins Wes D. Gehring's James Dean: Rebel with a Cause and George Perry's James Dean to mark the 50th anniversary of Dean's death; it also coincides with the release 50 years ago of Rebel Without a Cause , the iconic film that the authors contend had a revolutionary impact on filmmaking and the emerging youth culture, as well as made Dean a Hollywood legend. Movie and theater critic Frascella and journalist Weisel interviewed the surviving cast and crew and were granted access to personal and studio archives. The result is a riveting insider's account of the making of a film that was as dramatic and provocative as the film itself. Readers will be treated to little-known facts, e.g., how the famous "red jacket" came to be and why no rock music was used in the score. This well-researched study of a groundbreaking film will appeal to celebrity biography readers as well as serious film students. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.—Rosellen Brewer, Sno-Isle Libs., Marysville, WA

The Book Standard
October 11, 2005
"Adapt This: The Monthly Kirkus Reviews/Hollywood Reporter Column"
By Chris Barsanti
"Hollywood loves few things better than making movies about itself making movies; fortunately, several viewers often take them up on that love. High up on the list for those looking for movie-about-a-movie stories is Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel's Live Fast, Die Young (Simon & Schuster, $24.95), about the making of the teen classic Rebel Without a Cause. The book is full to bursting with psychosexual tension, homoerotic innuendo, mind games, power struggles and the frantic chaos of creation that epitomized the film's long, rocky road to production, precisely the thing for a quality, high-end studio indie to release in the middle of Oscar-bait season. There's no end to the drama inherent in this overstuffed narrative, especially centering on Ahab-esque director Nicholas Ray—whose maverick, studio-flaunting ways are equaled only by his contradictory drive to be a massive success—wooing and seducing a young James Dean into his picture, which exists almost solely in Ray's mind until well into the production. Dean remains a fascinating enigma whose pansexual charisma carried over from the film's charged troika of him, openly gay Sal Mineo and young vamp Natalie Wood into real life—a Hollywood hothouse of intrigue and insecurity charged with the explosive knowledge that film history is somehow being forged out of this florid, theatrical chaos."

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Live Fast, Die Young:
The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause