Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean (2012)

An intimate and dreamlike portrait of icon James Dean on the cusp of achieving fame.

Director:

Matthew Mishory

Writer:

Matthew Mishory

Stars:

James Preston, Dan Glenn, Clare Grant

4 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
James Preston	...	James Dean
Dan Glenn	...	The Roommate
Clare Grant	...	Beverly
Erin Daniels	...	The Roommate's Mother
Rafael Morais	...	Johny
Edward Singletary	...	Roger (as Edward Singletary Jr.)
Darri Ingolfsson	...	James DeWeerd
Edgar Morais	...	Franco
Dalilah Rain	...	Violet
Christopher Higgins	...	Arthur Rimbaud
Clint Catalyst	...	Johnny the Bartender
Jay Donnell	...	Preston
Tony Herbert	...	The Officer
Elizabeth Hirsch-Tauber	...	Claudia
David Pevsner	...	The Acting Teacher

Storyline

JOSHUA TREE, 1951 is an intimate portrait of James Dean on the cusp of achieving notoriety as both a great actor and an American icon. Set primarily in the early 1950s and focusing on Dean's experiences as an up-and-coming actor in Los Angeles, the film is a series of revealing and sometimes dreamlike vignettes that blend biographical and fictionalized elements to present a pivotal moment in a remarkable life.

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Plot Keywords:

pubic hair | male pubic hair | actor | 1950s | joshua tree | 

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Taglines:

The new motion picture about an outsider icon.

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

USA

Language:

English French

Release Date:

1 June 2015 (USA)

Also Known As:

A Portrait of James Dean

Filming Locations:

USA

Box Office

Budget:

$1,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Iconoclastic Features,Jay-X Entertainment,MGDB Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

93 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Black and White Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Critics and the filmmakers have described the film as "post-queer" or "post-gay". Sexuality is never questioned, discussed, or editorialized in the movie.

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Connections

References Family Theatre: Hill Number One: A Story of Faith and Inspiration (1951)

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Soundtracks

I Should Care
Performed by Jeff Harnar
Written by Sammy Cahn, Axel Stordahl, & Paul Weston
Used by Permission of Hanover Music Corp. Stordahl Music Publishing, & Cahn Music

User Reviews

Should have been titled: A Portrait of James Preston

If you've never seen East of Eden or Rebel Without a Cause or Giant; and if you know and care nothing about James Dean; and if you'd rather look at Abercrombie & Fitch ads than watch a movie; and if you like to daydream that all beautiful men are gay; and if you like gazing at James Preston; and if a line like "It was as if I had seen in black and white my entire life and suddenly I saw in color" (in an excruciatingly solemn movie that switches between black and white and color) sends you into ecstasies of intellectual bliss, then this is the movie for you.

If you HAVE seen the real James Dean in ANY movie, then you cannot for one second accept this milky crap as anything but one very stupid man's wet dream. Matthew Mishory should be slapped silly for wasting fantastic cinematography on this silly, stupid, pretentious movie.

I admit that James Preston is fabulously beautiful, and if this movie hadn't even pretended to be about James Dean, then I could have gazed in drooling stupor at him in every frame. But his transcendent gorgeousness is one reason he makes an absolutely terrible James Dean. Dean looked and acted more like James Franco than like James Preston.

The other reason Preston makes an absolutely terrible James Dean is that he's a smug, self-satisfied, talentless wimp, gorgeous on the outside with nothing but marshmallows inside. Dean was raw, vulnerable, fascinating, unstable and dangerous as a lit firecracker, not at all the cool, smug, calculating opportunist Mishory makes him here because it's all Preston's acting ability allows.

The only wise move Mishory made was not letting Preston try to recreate even one second of any performance Dean ever gave. The only glimpse of Dean "acting" we see is him jumping over a table in acting class.

The James Dean of this movie is like the real James Dean in only one way: he's short.