{"id":3051,"date":"2005-05-28T11:21:03","date_gmt":"2005-05-28T15:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3051"},"modified":"2010-07-12T19:53:32","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T23:53:32","slug":"speculations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3051","title":{"rendered":"Speculations on James Dean"},"content":{"rendered":"

… and the kind of actor James Dean might have become<\/a>. Very interesting. He died so young. And in many respects, his acting is quite quite limited. He does ONE thing: twitchy neurotic vulnerability. He does it very well, but Kazan (who directed him in East of Eden) suggests that that is because that is who Dean really was: “a sick kid”. A lot of actors are limited. Limited is not necessarily a bad thing. If you do one thing, and you do it well – you can make a career out of doing that one thing. Actors who think they can do everything, and who think they are not limited are deluded. I mean – good for them for trying to stretch, trying to expand. It’s very very good practice for an actor. But to pull it off? Very tricky. By the way: Meryl Streep is a genius. There’s only one of her. I truly believe that that woman is, indeed, without limits, and that she can do anything. But she’s a genius, and she skews the sample. I’d put Joan Allen and Jeff Bridges in that category as well. Those people seem to very easily abdicate their own personalities – and take on other people’s souls. Not just characteristics – but an entire INNER transformation. This is a gift that cannot be taught.<\/p>\n

I don’t hold it against Dean for only doing one thing. He was a 24 year old kid, for God’s sake. His work might have developed, he might have given up some old mannerisms, and found other ways to express himself. Hard to say.<\/p>\n

But it is interesting to contemplate. Dean is frozen in time. That’s it. That’s all we have to evaluate him on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… and the kind of actor James Dean might have become. Very interesting. He died so young. And in many respects, his acting is quite quite limited. He does ONE thing: twitchy neurotic vulnerability. He does it very well, but … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[130],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18718,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051\/revisions\/18718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}