whokilledjamesdean
wbeath
Interviews
oday An Interview with Warren Beath
By Paul Waters
Part One
PW: When did you get a clear concept of what would become the novel "Who Killed James Dean?" How did you go about structuring it?
WB: I start novels on faith and write the parts that are already shapes in my imagination. Then I write toward those parts or away from them. It starts like a movie trailer-I see glimpses of sex and violence that stimulate me and the process is a struggle of trying to make sense out of them. Structuring is not my strong suite. I think the idea of attempting something was born when I read the novel "Who Killed Sal Mineo?"
PW: Give examples of some interviews you could not get, as far as people being unwilling to speak about Dean.
WB: The book that came to be called-by its publisher- "The Death of James Dean" was really my book called "California Death Trip" and it was about the obsession with death and with celebrity death cult. And it was about me and the effect of growing up with a fevered imagination near where James Dean was killed. When they changed the title it became an unbalanced book-not unnaturally people expected it to be all about James Dean. So I had this form in my imagination and I knew the story I wanted to tell and it was my story in a major way-and I was not going to be dependent on interviewing Elizabeth Taylor or George Barris.
PW: Which of Dean's friends warmed to you immediately and were most helpful during research for "The Death of...." and "Who Killed.....?
WB: Of Dean's friends, Bill Hickman and Jack Douglas were very helpful. They were two friends who were involved in the events of that last day. The policeman and the eyewitness I interviewed-we seemed to get along great.
PW: If the reader is to assume that the character of Lou Ehlers, in the novel, is based loosely on yourself, how many and which of the other characters contain elements of your own personality?
WB: The character of Devereux was also me- I understood both those people very well and they were written from the inside out.
PW: In the Author's note at the end of your Dean novel you gave an eloquent overview of your approach to the novel and wrote that many people participated on the guarantee of anonymity for the remainder of their lives. Twelve years later, since "Who Killed James Dean" was published, are there any real names that can now be revealed, as in the instance of individuals being dead now?
WB: Actually, most still are alive. I hope to have help from them on one more Dean book.
PW: What did you think of Ron Smith's piece on Dean's death which appeared in a 1990 issue of the Robb Report? Did you ever have contact with Smith?
WB: That aticle was very interesting-I believe I am mentioned in the article though he never interviewed me. But it was in a nice mag and sort of represented the codification of the myth as something not merely the province of tabloids but as an indelible part of popular culture and a fixture in the collective consciousness.
PW: There seems to be some discrepancies in the various documents describing Dean's injuries in the fatal accident. One says Jimmy had no bloody cuts or gashes of any kind, yet there was very little blood found arterially to test for alcohol content. Elsewhere one finds injury descriptions that state Dean's legs were OK, except for one document that says he sustained a fracture of one leg. Please comment on the contradictions found in the Dean accident reports.
WB: He had terrible injuries-one eyewitness said it was like his face was covered with muddy syrup. So the body was quite bloody when removed from the car. But I think the morticians did wonders in cleaning him up. One commented that he would have been presentable for an open-casket funeral.
PW: Do you think the 70's and 80's were a far more exciting and interesting time to be a Dean fan? Specifically, I mean before the aggressive legal clamp-down by CMG and the family?WB: Definately, those were great days- the subject of Dean was wide-open for conjecture and as a jumping-off place for all sorts of speculations and extensions of the myth. The fan base congealed around the family and the homogenization of Jimmy- which in retrospect is now pretty apparent as a basically homophobic-inspired rehabilitation of an image that was coming to be tarnished by allegations of an alternative lifestyle.
PW: Please give an overview of your feelings about the mass-marketing of James dean by CMG, and the family's involvement with them.
WB: It seems like Fairmount could only embrace James Dean-finally-in concert with a reformatting of his image in the cultural software.
PW: What did you think of the Dean biopics Portrait of a Friend, Race With Destiny, and TNT's James Dean? In particular, how did you feel about the handling of Dean's death in the one film that attempted to stage it (Race With Destiny)?
WB: They just seem to string together some visual and aural cliches-scream of brakes, shattered windshield,the dust clearing-I like the way it was portrayed in The James Dean story-in the actual highway. I seems to evoke the time and event better than any of the recreations. But the recreations are important-they render a visual tradition. The essence of liturgy is repetition and these different recastings and re-imagings of the event solidify the religious aspect.
Continued above left....
PW: Some reports about the actual collision between the 1950 Ford and the Porsche claim that the Spyder simply skittered off the road undramatically after the impact. Others say it was launched into a series of horrific cartwheels ending in a cloud of dust against the phone pole. What is your take on the trajectory of the Porsche?
WB: My opinion changes with new bits of evidence. Today I suspect that the passenger side would have been more damaged in cartwheel-type motions. It spun counter-clockwise but I would disagree that it wasn't dramatic.Especially the forensic evidence that confirms Dean's direct contact with the grill of the car.
PW: Please give some examples of some bizarre and interesting characters you've met at Cholame over the years.
WB: It's probably the people who have met me there who could answer that.
PW: Were you ever able to reconcile a friendship with Vampira after she withdrew from the candid correspondence described in "The Death Of James Dean?"
WB: I did not make any attempt. I was told that the issue was the mention of her missing teeth. I still hear from her current acolytes who accuse me of stealing her story. Which is absurd, because she has been telling her story since I was four years old, and even today has a more bully pulpit from which to tell any story she wishes to tell on various TV specials and things.
PW: Some have commented that they feel "The Death of James Dean" slows and muddies a bit during the excerpt detailling individuals like Ed Wood and Tor Johnson. The same with Maila Nurmi. Why did you feel those elements were important to the story?
WB: I was most interested in the aspect of Dean as a Hollywood grotesque-a strange and chimerical character who was sexually ambiguous, and separated from his fellow lurkers in the Hollywood demimonde only by genius.
PW: When and how did you arrive at the idea which would eventually evolve into the James Dean in Death encyclopedia and its website?
WB: I have so much material I have collected and have always wanted to display it in a scrapbook format-and guess this book is the closest thing that was acceptable to a publisher who would work with me.
PW: Describe your brief encounter with the tragic figure of Donald Turnupseed.
WB: What developed into a multi-million dollar business seemed just a little hole-in-the-wall shop at the time . His mother was there, and his father. Donald Turnupseed was actually very polite and even smiled-though he declined to help me with my term paper (I think I was seventeen or so). I think if he had sat down and told me the story, my curiosity might have been satisfied. As it was he sent me on a nearly forty-year odyssey.
PW:In the, Who Killed James Dean?, you wrote of cultists exhuming Dean's body to re-unite it with the fabled Spyder. You described in detail what Dean's corpse would probably look like, i.e., facial features blurred, skin the color of parchment paper, patches of mold on the suit he was buried in, and the body would be generally shrunken and smaller than one would expect. What was your source for the condition of a 40-year old corpse after exhumation?
WB: Like Shakespeare said, moisture is the enemy of your basic corpse. And it's a fallacy that caskets are alway moisture proof. But if there is moisture you see all sorts of unpleasantness. The better the seal, the more likelihood the corpse is going to be more dessicated than gooey. I guess I'm sort of a student of decomposition in a minor way, and longtime member of the Hollywood Underground list which has several morticians among its contributors.
PW: Alternative Rock singer Morrissey, once refered to Dean as completely miserable even after he (Dean) became successful. Morrissey also commented that only the sense of alienation changed with the arrival of fame and cash; that is to say, possibly, that success and money wipes away any feeling of being alienated. I personally can't agree with that point. What do you think?
WB: I think Morrissey is guessing. I don't think Dean had experienced fame and wealth long enough for ennui to set in. He had not lived an extravagant lifestyle and his one big extravagance wound up killing him in very short order.
PW: In your opinion, what is the worst song about James Dean, or that which mentions him? For me, it's a tie between Larry John McNally and the Goo Goo Dolls.
WB: Lou Reed's "Take A Walk On the wild Side" bugs me.The singers in the background annoy me and it's a pretty annoying ditty. But the Eagles' "James Dean" also bugs me-"Along came a Spyder and picked up a rider".....isn't that what it says? Madonna's "Vogue" is pretty creepy. And the amateur tribute songs are wonderful. Sometimes they are wonderful...sometimes set to lyrics to the themes from the movies. Leonard Rosenman would be spinning in his grave like a lathe...wait, he's not dead.
PW: Although much has been written about the alleged rivalry and hatred between Rock Hudson and James Dean, do you think it possible the relations soured after a brief sexual affair between the two much earlier, such as around the time of their appearance in "Has Anybody Seen My Gal?" Both men were very active in the homosexual demimonde of Hollywood and New York, perhaps Hudson more in Hollywood, but he and Dean had run into each other repeatedly between 1950 and 1955. Of course it's speculative hearsay, but the rumor has circulated for years about them being briefly involved. Sal Mineo denied ever having an affair with Dean, and since Hudson and Dean were radically different personalities it's unlikely they would have hit it off. Comments?
WB: It's hard to imagine Anthony Perkins and Tab Hunter having an affair, yet they did. But Rock seemed to like more normal-type guys. Apparently the guys who would catch his interest would often be regular Joes who were happily married. So Dean would seeem to be outside the profile of a Rock Hudson conquest.
Paul Waters is a writer,rockabilly singer, and guitarist from Davenport, Iowa
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