Stefan Brandt(Freie Universität Berlin)

Email: slbrandt@web.de

VORTRAGAtlantische Akademie

Seminar “James Dean”

The Pose of a Rebel•

Zur Ästhetik des Körperlichen bei James Dean

- Method Acting und Körperausdruck

- Expressive Körperlichkeit und Star-Image

- Totenkult um Dean

- EAST OF EDEN (1954)

The Girls Who Worship the Corpse of James Dean

James Dean – intense believer in the occult, intense student of reincarnation […] pursued death as if it were a beautiful woman […].

Concentrate on the physical action; […] this is when you are already working on a scene with an actual prop, examining the knife; look at it closely, test its edge with your finger, find out whether its handle is firm or not .

Konstantin Stanislavski, in: Lee Strasberg, A Dream of Passion (1987)

Let your thoughts sink deep into your memories. Do not, however, look for sombre colors just because you are acting the murderer and you want to kill your enemy. Allow your memory, your thought, to paint you the picture of your former friendship with your rival when your friendship with him began, picture to yourself the loving faces of your mother and of his mother, and so on and so forth.

Konstantin Stanislavski, in: Lee Strasberg, A Dream of Passion (1987)

I don’t know what’s inside me […]. I don’t know what happens when I act. […] but if I let them dissect me like a rabbit in a clinical research laboratory or something, then I might not be able to produce again. They might sterilize me.

That man – [Strasberg] – had no right to tear me down like that. You keep knocking a guy down and you take the guts away from him. And what’s an actor without guts?

James Dean

Directing James Dean was like directing the faithful Lassie. I either lectured him or terrorized him, flattered him furiously, tapped him on the shoulder or kicked his backside. He was so instinctive and so stupid in many ways.

Konstantin Stanislavski, in: Lee Strasberg, A Dream of Passion (1987)

VORTRAGAtlantische Akademie

Seminar “James Dean”

Stefan Brandt(Freie Universität Berlin)

Email: slbrandt@web.de