When it's warm enough, which in Seattle is precious and rare nowadays, I subject my kids to backyard drive-in theater. I run silent films with Keaton and Chaplin, old Bullwinkle and Tennessee Tuxedo episodes and the occasional feature length oddity or western. It is presented as films are meant to be seen: on a clattering old Junior High School projector on a sheet on the side of the house. I own a 16mm print of "Rebel Without a Cause", which I screened for my 13 year old son and two of his buddies on Saturday night. The film broke, we had one frame of film burn in that miserable way film prints bubble and disintegrate. There were mosquitoes and bad popcorn. We had a long intermission. But, through all that they saw James Dean emote in the way only he could. Cool in a way nobody else ever will be cool again. They saw Natalie Wood in her finest moment. They saw just how weird Sal Mineo was, forever to be known as "the guy who killed the puppies". They saw the great chicken run sequence. Nicholas Ray was an American genius and RWC though it looks tame now was pretty interesting for 1955. Generally the kids liked it and it was a great experience, though I'm sure they would have liked more guns and explosions.
(the photo has Ned and his friends reacting to the camera flash and not nausea induced by 1950's melodrama)
Even though the film was from a previous generation, as a young man I really identified with the James Dean character in RWC. I doubt my son feels the same way, it probably is to him more like a bizarre look into the world 55 years ago. As I get older, I now see myself in the Jim Backus character of the weak, idiot father, fumbling in an apron trying to answer the most basic questions without a straight answer for anything. I liked it better when I saw myself as the cool guy.
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