A new film drama, Willie And Jimmy Dean, plans to explore the relationship between screen icon James Dean and screenwriter William Bast.
A new film aiming to explore the man behind the legend has just moved a step closer to production with the announcement that it has found its James Dean. According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Parenting actor Brandon Flynn has been cast to play Dean in the planned biopic which will explore the actor’s purported relationship with author and screenwriter William Bast. It’s based on Bast’s 2006 memoir, Surviving James Dean.
The film is set to be directed by Guy Guido, maker of the documentary film Madonna And The Breakfast Club, which explored the artist’s early days as a struggling musician in New York. Likewise, Guido’s next project will explore the early days of Dean’s stardom, apparently beginning with the first meeting between Bast and Dean when they were 19 to the actor’s death in September 1955. Bast died in 2015 at age 84.
Called Willie And Jimmy Dean, the film is said to focus on its subjects ‘navigating their evolving relationship and Bast coming to terms with being gay during the 1950s.’
Attempts to resurrect Dean on film have ranged from the superb to flat out bizarre, but have often been doomed to failure. Michael Mann took a crack at it years ago, but after setting his heart on a 19-year old Leonardo DiCaprio for the role, couldn’t bring himself to wait for the actor to reach the right age. He did get tempted away by 1995’s Heat though, so we can’t really hold that one against him.
Then there was the strange plan to resurrect Dean using CGI in the Vietnam war film, Finding Jack, which would have seen a digital likeness of Dean playing a secondary character in a film about dogs being abandoned in Vietnam following the war. Yes, we were as stumped at the time as you likely are right now. That one never happened either, so Guido’s film surely has a tricky path to navigate yet in its journey towards the screen.
We’ll bring you more on Willie and Jimmy Dean as we hear it.
