NEED TO KNOW
Brandon Flynn has some big shoes to fill.
Best known for his role in Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why, the 31-year-old actor is set to portray James Dean in Willie and Jimmy Dean, a forthcoming film about the movie star’s purported gay college romance with the late author William “Bill” Bast.
Flynn will also serve as an executive producer on the film, which was written by Guy Guido, and is based on Bast’s 2006 memoir Surviving James Dean. Guido — known for the documentary-drama Madonna and the Breakfast Club — is also set to direct. No other casting announcements have been made as of yet.
In Surviving James Dean, Bast wrote that he and Dean — who died in a car accident at age 24 on Sept. 30, 1955 — met while attending UCLA’s theater program when they were both 19. The memoir details a close friendship between the two men that turned romantic as Dean’s career took off in the early 1950s. Bast — who died in 2015 at age 84 — says in the book that he and Dean kept their relationship private, even as Dean dated women in Hollywood, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“James Dean is like the known unknown. His short life left behind just three films, a mountain of photographs, and a cultural mythology we keep trying to decode,” Flynn said in an official statement.
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The Willie and Jimmy Dean script, he added, “is a beautiful attempt at truthfully understanding who he really was — not just the icon, but the man.”
The forthcoming film, The Parenting actor added, “doesn’t sensationalize — it humanizes. It highlights how Hollywood has historically forced LGBTQ people into performance, even in their personal lives. This story dares to present James Dean as a man with real, complex relationships, and I think there’s power in that truth.”
Guido also offered a statement along with Flynn’s casting news, saying the film “is not a traditional biopic.”
“It’s a tender and sometimes tragic story about two young men who found each other in a time and place where being seen — truly seen — came at a cost,” he said. “Flynn brings both the fire and vulnerability this role demands. I couldn’t imagine anyone more perfect to explore and play out the complexities of James Dean.”
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“Shy and intelligent, Bill is a closeted young acting student living in L.A. in the early 1950s. When he meets the magnetic and unpredictable Jimmy Dean, the two form a bond that defies labels. As Jimmy’s star begins to rise, their dynamic shifts: from shared apartments and late-night confessions to jealousy, distance, and denial,” an official synopsis for the film states.
“Haunted by a world that won’t accept who they truly are, both men search for meaning: Jimmy through performance, Bill through the written word,” the synopsis continues. “At the story’s heart is Bee, Bill’s glamorous, difficult, and ultimately redemptive mother. As Jimmy’s tragic death shocks the world, Bee becomes the one who quietly urges Bill to do the one thing he’s most afraid of — tell the truth.”
