But I was thinking about James Dean and thought since I know so much about him and his firey relationships on set I thoguht why not? I'll talk about his relationships with the 3 directors he worked with, even though they were too brief, unfortunately.
Jimmy's first role was as Caleb Trask in East of Eden. This was an Elia Kazan film.
Dean and Kazan on Dean's scooter on the set of East of Eden.
Kazan disliked Dean, but he knew how to control him. Dean was an emerging method actor and although Kazan thought he was rude and ignorant, he saw his potential and allowed him to do what he liked on set. Kazan rode around town with Dean on his scooter, they also just hung around and got to know each other. Kazan said he did this for exactly that purpose, to get Dean to open up and trust him.
"There was no point in attempting to cast it nicer or bigger...I realised it wasn't a matter of could he or couldn't he(play the part)..." Elia Kazan
On the set of East of Eden, Kazan also had Raymond Massey to deal with. Massey, an old school actor of a theatre background, despised Dean and his style. Kazan would utilise this perfectly for the scenes they did together. Kazan would receive a complaint from Massey claiming that Dean was mumbling his lines or not sticking to the script, and Kazan would say that he would go and sort it out. However he would tell Dean to mumble more and go off script even more. This resulted in true anger between father and son in the film, and some great perfomances.
This is a better video, but embedding has been disabled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uG4PRf6ROM
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