Dean 'seduced everybody,' director says

Director Mark Rydell is concerned about his 14-year-old son, despite or perhaps because of his latest project, a television biography of the late James Dean.

"I wanted to make a picture about fathers and sons," says the director, who worked in the 1950s with the actor, who made only three major films ("Rebel Without a Cause," "East of Eden," "Giant") before he died in a car crash in 1955. Mr. Rydell's made-for-TV film "James Dean" will air Sunday on TNT (8-10 p.m.)

Dean's brooding face has become an international icon of youthful rebellion, says Rydell, who recently visited China - a place where Dean's image is still popular - for the Shanghai Film Festival. "I wanted to make an honorable psychoanalytical portrait of him," he adds.

Dean's father abandoned him when the boy was 8, immediately after his mother died. He rode the train with his mother's coffin to her family's home in Indiana, where he was raised by relatives until his teens.

"I was determined to reveal those aspects of his youth that created him," says Rydell, who used to compete with Dean for acting jobs.. "I know how all those factors influenced Jimmy. They created a sense of worthlessness that devalued him. He developed a need to be someone. I never knew anyone more determined to be somebody."

Throughout his brief Hollywood career, Dean was obsessed with proving himself to his father, as well as finding substitute father figures, Rydell says.

"He made everyone his father" because he was so hungry for their approval, Rydell says. While the film skirts the more ambiguous elements of his private life, such as how far he would go to get a role, it does explore the emotional impact Dean had on those who knew him.

"He did seduce everybody," says Rydell, recalling that people fell under his spell almost immediately, offering him money, professional guidance, and personal favors. "He had an irresistible seductiveness."

Written by playwright Israel Horovitz, the biopic had a long journey from script to screen, one that tells much about how storytelling has changed in Hollywood, says Rydell, who is best-known for "On Golden Pond" and "The Rose," both thoughtful, character-driven theatrical films. "They don't do personal pictures anymore," says Rydell, who still occasionally acts and who plays studio mogul Jack Warner in the new film. "Once [movies] started to substitute explosions for human drama, the natural inheritor of quality [programming was] cable."

On the topic of quality, Rydell cannot resist returning to his own struggles as a father. "My son doesn't like to read," he says with a sigh. "I ask myself, 'How can I seduce my son into the joy of reading great material?' "

Fathers and sons, he says - an issue that will never go away.