Next year will mark the 70th anniversary of James Dean’s untimely death — and yet the actor remains a compelling figure to plenty of cinephiles born in the decades since then. (That’s without getting into the use of the late actor’s voice in an AI-powered reading app.) At a time when celebrities from Bob Dylan to Maria Callas are becoming the subjects of upcoming biopics, it’s not surprising to hear that Dean is at the center of one as well.
The novel that writer-director Guy Guido is allegedly adapting for his upcoming Dean movie is what makes it intriguing. The Hollywood Reporter’s Ryan Gajewski reports that William Bast’s memoir Surviving James Dean will serve as the inspiration for Guido’s movie. While attending UCLA, Bast—a writer with a lengthy history in film and television—met Dean. Shortly after Dean passed away, he authored a more conventional biography of the actor; however, Surviving James Dean details a more intimate life of the actor, including a romantic relationship.
In their review of the later book, Publishers Weekly called Surviving James Dean a “simple, heartfelt book [that] records Bast’s coming out and the long-term impact Dean had on his life.” And for his part, Bast’s own view of Dean’s sexuality was multifaceted.
“Having sampled both sides of the sexual banquet, Dean was still in the process of defining his sexuality at the time he died,” Bast wrote in a letter to the editor at The Guardian in 2005.
