Matthew Mishory’s movie, Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean, has been a big success on the film festival circuit. The movie looks at Dean when he was a young lad from Indiana on the cusp of stardom, exploring the opportunities and pressures that presents. It also doesn’t shy away from Dean’s sexuality, giving him the queer identity that many over the years have suggested he had.
We caught up with Mishory to talk about the film, ahead of its UK DVD release on May 13th.
Where did the idea for Joshua Tree come from?
My own childhood. Filmmaking is, for me, very personal. The first feature film I remember my father ever showing me was East of Eden. I was a very little boy, but, even then, I was keenly aware of how different Dean seemed. He acted, moved, and spoke in a different way. Watch the film again, and you will notice Dean is acting in a different movie; his co-stars are not quite sure what to do with him. And of course, there was the vulnerability and intensity of his performances. He was the great cinematic outsider. These images haunted my childhood and adolescence, and I wanted to make a film about him.
Do you consider it to be a ‘true’ look at James Dean, or do you think the ideas you’re exploring in the movie are more important than finding an objective truth about the actor?
Of course, the film is not only about James Dean. It is also about the system of star-making that exists in Hollywood even today. And the commodification of flesh. And the dilemma of loving somebody destined to be great. But of course we stumbled into these themes through our examination of Dean. And our objective was always to find a sort of “truth”. The histories can be messy, and often contradictory, but portraiture is very much about uncovering a truth that transcends specific facts and figures. And I do think we ultimately present a take on Dean that is truthful. As Brando described him, “he was a young man trying to find himself.”
Your earlier short, Delphinium, also included the word ‘portrait’ in the title. What does that word mean to you in the context of your films?
It means the film is not a biopic or even a conventional Hollywood biographical film. It is something else and, hopefully, something more. To me, a filmed portrait suggests all of the possibilities of the portraitist’s toolkit. Ordinary biopics do not interest me very much. James Dean was not an ordinary actor, and I didn’t want to make an ordinary film about him. Our film is challenging, especially in form, but I think the rewards are real for those willing to try something different.
Do you think Dean was gay, straight or bisexual, or is that something we’re never likely to definitively know?
I think the film reflects my thoughts. There is no handwringing about sex in this movie – and no angst. The characters are simply presented as they are, and the words “gay” or “bisexual” are never uttered. That said, the notion that James Dean was non-heterosexual is so commonly and widely known (reiterated even by his great friend Elizabeth Taylor on national television) that I cannot imagine how it could be controversial. So, while the film has been somewhat “controversial” among certain audiences, I think that speaks more to those viewers than to the film itself, which has no sexual hang-ups.
What do you think it is about Dean that’s made him such an icon. Is it purely down to his early death?
I am sure his early death contributed. Also the pure ubiquity of his image in the popular culture. But I prefer not to focus on that shallow iconography of Dean the face on a T-shirt or coffee mug. For me, Dean is iconic because he changed acting forever. It is difficult to imagine another actor ever again having the same impact. And that was ultimately the essential question we sought to answer with the film: what were antecedents to a remarkable life and career?
Did you feel a conscious need to differentiate your film from previous looks at Dean?
I think the film speaks for itself in this regard. Joshua Tree has nothing to do with any previous film about Dean. Our approach was completely different.
How difficult was it to find an actor for the central role? Was James Preston daunted at the idea of the part?
It was not easy, but as soon as James Preston walked into the final audition and did his scene, we knew we had our Jimmy. To his credit, James was never daunted, but he was over-prepared. He spent months reading about Dean. And when he arrived on set, I told him to forget about everything he read and play the part as written, to become that talented young man from Indiana with radical new ideas about acting who came to Hollywood with nothing and got eaten alive. And James did exactly that. He did not attempt a mimicry. He did something much more authentic and raw, and I really admire his performance for that reason.
What was behind the idea of shooting most of the film in black and white?
I always saw this film in black-and-white. It references an era in history very few of us have actually lived through but nearly all of us have experienced through the movies. And those movies were made primarily in black-and-white. Since the film both references and revises history, I thought it was important to do the same with style. Many aspects of the look of the film are classical, but others are very contemporary and revisionist. For me, there is no distinction between style and story. Style is story. It is a part of the narrative itself.
With its semi-‘non-narrative’ approach, is it difficult to keep track of the film when you’re in the editing room, and making sure it does what you want it to, even if it’s not engaged in traditional storytelling?
The film exists in a sort of dream-state, and while that sort of narrative is not “traditional”, it does have its own language and grammar. My editor, Chris Kirkpatrick, was masterful in balancing the narrative and non-narrative elements and developing a poetic, episodic structure that is, like Dean’s mind, never entirely surreal but never quite “real-world” either. Chris helped make the film accessible to a mainstream audience. A great editor will do that — stand in as a proxy for the viewer.
Do you feel that the film’s look at the price to become famous is as valid today as it was back then?
Without a doubt. The film’s pool scenes, based on an infamous pool party of the day, could have taken place in the Hollywood Hills this past weekend. Only the swimsuits would differ. As Violet says in the movie, “Hollywood will never change.”
You seem to be interested in the point where queer sexuality and film meet, why do you feel it’s such an interesting thing to explore?
Cinema has always been a means of exploring power and sexuality; Joshua Tree is no exception. The very apparatus of the camera itself sexualizes and fetishizes by nature, no more so than in classical Hollywood filmmaking. Today we are simply much more aware (and perhaps suspicious) of the voyeuristic cinematic gaze, but I still find it to be one of the great pleasures of filmgoing.
A trailer for your next film, Disappear Here, was recently released. Can you tell us a little bit about that movie?
It could not be more different, though there is a thematic through-line. Disappear Here is a mainstream political/Hollywood thriller and star vehicle for its young lead, James Duke Mason (the grandson of British actor James Mason and son of pop star Belinda Carlisle). But really, it is a film about privacy (or the lack thereof) in modern life, so in that way, it examines a notion of celebrity very different from what James Dean would have experienced. The film reunites much of the Joshua Tree team. Morgan Mason (Sex, Lies, and Videotape) will produce.
When do think we might see it?
We hope 2014.
Thank you Matthew.
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