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# Giant & James Dean - RESUME
- URL: https://tombeaverbooks.ghost.io/giant-james-dean/
- Published: 2026-10-05T20:01:01.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-06T01:21:03.000Z
- Author: Tom Beaver
- Tags: Book: Movies And TV, #Import 2026-10-09 17:51

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STORYCONTEXT: XXX 

Have just watched *Giant*, followed by a documentary on James Dean (Martin Sheen narrating). Back in high school, Fortney showed us *Rebel* and *East of Eden*, but *Giant* is the only one I’ve watched in my adult life—three or four times now. Have appreciated Dean in that movie each time, but didn’t have any specific memories from those other two. And this is the first time I’ve watched him with an eye to understanding exactly why I like his acting. Here’s what I’ve got so far: he gives you a lot to watch and respond to, and each bit is interesting. If other actors are a clock with notches only on the fives, Dean is a clock with notches on the ones. You see something different every second—a head or body movement, a change of expression, a change of mood—and so on. He’s like a puppy in a sack, constantly showing he’s alive. He’s full of variety: mood changes, volume changes, speed changes. A sentence starts off fast in one direction, changes to slow in another direction. He shows one emotion, then a different one, then maybe another, in a short span. So you’re always getting stimulated differently than you expect. But none of it feels twitchy, false or over-stylized. He’s got ten thousand behaviors, but they all smack of the real. And he somehow cycles through all this variation without frenzy. He’s like a jazz band, some kind of play going on all the time, but the overall tempo a comfortable one. After one of his scenes I feel more filled up than I normally get from that same amount of screen time, but not more worn. 

He’s also full of delights. His handsomeness of course is handsome from every angle. But he also does a lot of things you’ve never seen before, or wouldn’t expect in that moment. In *Giant*, when he strides across his new property in those big yard-steps. When he’s eavesdropping on the boss, petting the horse’s rump. All the times he starts to speak but then doesn’t. His clowning loneliness in *Giant* feels almost like a side-movie. A character study alongside the plot. I’m curious how much of that character came from the script and director, how much from Dean. The long, wordless scene where he surveys his new property fits wonderfully into the story and the pacing, but it seems like a scene that might have been shorter on paper, because how do you write two or three pages about a man walking? Maybe someone saw they had a magic actor and new he could turn a long walk across a field into something you can’t take your eyes from. Something good happening every second. The documentary was good. The first part shows a series of scenes where Dean is performing on TV, learning his craft. You see him getting better by the month or week. Less and less conventional, less on the beat with his responses to the other actors, more and more dense with life and variety. *\~ April 21, 2021 / Text to Rob McCaskill*