James Dean, Life And Leaving Photography Behind - Exclusive Interview With Anton Corbijn

On Dealing With James Dean's Death

WC: And that's sort of amplified with the film ending as he gets the role in Rebel, long before he becomes a super super star and before his death. Was that very concious decision to keep it reigned in so you could look at his apprehension, as opposed to his reaction, to fame? AC: Yes, it was. Obviously, because we know how his life was cut short soon after, the plane journey is a lot more meaningful that it actually is. In that scene you use the knowledge of the audience to fill in the blanks, because we don't actually let on in the film that he passes away soon after, but everybody feels it. That becomes a much more emotional ending than it would have been had he not died, without us telling without putting a finger on it. WC: It's like the scene in Times Square; the scenes that as an audience you know so much about that you bring stuff into it. So the film presents it and you infer meaning. Like a photograph in many ways. AC: Yeah, yeah. exactly. The film was structured around photographs that Dennis Stock taken so you know these events have happened, but how we lead up to these events or what happens at these events you have to fill in because there's no record of it. So that's how we constructed the film, around these photographs. But there's also these pictues of him in coffins that Dennis Stock took, but I didn't want to use those because it felt too on the nose