GERARD CHRISTIAN ZACHER'S JAMES DEAN SITE

WILLIAM BAST WAS JAMES DEAN'S BEST FRIEND AND ROOMMATE WHEN JIMMY STARTED HIS ACTING CAREER IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. BAST REMAINED ONE OF JAMES' CLOSEST FRIENDS FOR THE REMAINING FIVE YEARS OF JIMMY'S LIFE. HE HAS RECENTLY REVISED A BOOK HE HAD WRITTEN BACK JUST AFTER DEAN'S DEATH. BECAUSE THE TIMES HAVE CHANGED AND CERTAIN TOPICS ARE FAR MORE OPEN TODAY THAN THEY HAD BEEN IN THE PAST, WILLIAM HAS GONE INTO MUCH FURTHER DETAIL PREVIOUSLY OMITTED IN THE EARLIER VERSION. HIS REVISED BOOK IS TITLED, "SURVIVING JAMES DEAN".

WILLIAM'S EARLIER VERSION OF THE BOOK WAS MADE INTO A TELEVISION MOVIE IN THE MID 70'S. IT STARRED STEVEN MCHATTIE AS DEAN & MICHAEL BRANDON AS BAST. WILLIAM HIMSELF HAD WRITTEN THE SCREEN PLAY AND CO-PRODUCED. BAST HAS ALSO APPEARED IN EVERY MAJOR DOCUMENTARY ON JAMES DEAN TO HELP SHED LIGHT ON HIS GOOD FRIEND.

I, GERARD CHRISTIAN ZACHER, HAVE HAD THE PLEASURE OF EMAIL COMMUNICATION WITH BILL BAST, AND HE IS AN EXTREMELY KIND AND SUPPORTIVE GENTLEMAN AS WELL AS AN EXTRAORDINARY, UNIQUELY TALENTED WRITER!!

WILLIAM BAST WITH PRE-FAME JAMES DEAN & GIRLS

WILLIAM BAST'S MOTHER WITH PRE-FAME JAMES DEAN

"SURVIVING JAMES DEAN", The Actor's Former Roommate, William Bast, Tells All:



In SURVIVING JAMES DEAN (Barricade Books), William Bast candidly describes his five year personal relationship with the charismatic actor and American legend. In the years since Dean's death, a number of books have speculated about his sexuality and friendship with Bast. In 1956, Bast wrote his own simple chronicle of their years of friendship, making him an overnight celebrity and the main apostle of Dean's followers. However, in an era that was both puritanical and punitive, Bast had to ignore his budding homosexuality in order to avoid tarnishing Dean's image. This meant keeping any sexually and intellectually questionable aspects of their relationship out of the public eye.



Now, 50 years later, Bast once again chronicles Dean's life, this time revealing previously unseen passages defining the homosexual undertones of their relationship in addition to eruditely describing Dean's daring, reckless personality. "SURVIVING JAMES DEAN" divulges the truth of Dean's existence, years after his story was distorted by peripheral figures, and is told by a man who has survived the evolving myth surrounding Dean since his death - TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES, Movie News, 2006.

In 1956, Bast's first book about his friendship with James Dean was published, but the full story could not be told in the Cold War era. In this unabridged version of sorts, the television writer frees half a century of memory, revealing above all that he and the famed actor were sexually involved off and on for five years. Bast deserves credit for his sense of restraint in the post-James Frey age; his divulgement is not at all disrespectful, vulgar, or shocking, but simply written as one of many traits in an extraordinarily complicated human being: a love-starved, marrow-of-life-sucking boy-man with bipolar tendencies and a fierce dedication to acting - in short, both a holy joy and a holy terror. To be Dean's friend, roommate, and sometime lover could not have been easy... Bast offers the most human and credible snapshots of not just the budding actor, but of a young man trying to carve his destiny... You close the book glad at having read someone with integrity. Highly recommended for performing arts and memoir collections. - Heather McCormack, LIBRARY JOURNAL, Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

William Bast met James Dean at UCLA in 1950 and roomed with him there and in New York. Later, they met up again in Hollywood where Dean was Filming EAST OF EDEN and remained friends until Dean's death in September 1955. A talented screenwriter, Bast has drawn a vivid portrait of his gifted, driven friend who was willing to do and did whatever it took to achieve fame. James Dean students have long known that the major influence in Dean's life was not Elia Kazan or Marlon Brando but a brilliant, fey radio director named Rogers Brackett. Author Bast knew at firsthand his friend's Rimbaud-Verlaine relationship with Brackett that the studio tried to suppress after Dean's death. Bast's vivid portrait of Dean and Brackett and the gay underground of New York and Hollywood in the early 1950s will be one of the most talked about books of the year. AMERICAN LEGENDS, 2006

To hear the name of actor James Dean today, with its instant recognition, one would think he must have made many films: not so, he made only three and it was primarily his last film which made him a Hollywood star. SURVIVING JAMES DEAN surveys the author's own five-year relationship with Dean, chronicling his life and including clarifications of the homosexual



undertones of their relationship. Any who would understand Dean - including elements of his personality - will want to read this eye-opening analysis. MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW, 2006.







This revealing book may put some puritan or otherwise homophobic noses out of joint, especially those who cherish the iconic image of the actor James Dean as normal that is, as a true-blue, red-blooded, sexually unambivalent American boy. In actuality, it appears that Dean was few of those things, which is arguably one of the reasons he continues to fascinate after half a century. Bast has at last done us the service of bringing the truth about Dean to light. Those who prefer their truth untinted by rose colored spectacles will cherish this book. Dean now fascinates even more, warts and all. A DIFFERENT LIGHT, 2006.







Bast explores his experience of Dean's multifaceted personality with the insight of an artist, the sensitivity of a true friend, and the wit of a fine writer. Not that he pulls any punches where Dean, or indeed his own actions are concerned. Fiercely honest, often joltingly revelatory, Bast's account is frequently humorous, but inevitably sad. A truly remarkable and informative book, unique in its field, a work of love full of compassion, insight, and wit. DIRECT TEXTBOOKS, 2006.

THE FOLLOWING ARE WILLIAM BAST'S OWN WORDS FROM HIS PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE. TO HELP HIM SECURE HIS PRIVACY, I WILL NOT REVEAL THE DETAILS OF THAT SITE AT PRESENT. BUT I HAVE BORROWED THIS EXCERPT SO THAT YOU MAY LEARN MORE ABOUT WILLIAM BAST'S CAREER.

Let's get my background details out of the way first: I was born, raised and had my primary and high school education first in Milwaukee, then Kenosha, Wisconsin. I went on to the University of Wisconsin and subsequently transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles.

There I became the close friend and roommate of the as yet unknown, would-be actor James Dean. In 1952 and fresh out of college, egged on by Jimmy who had already ventured to New York in hopes of furthering his acting career, I gave up a job as an usher at the CBS radio and television studios in Hollywood, and flew East to join him. In New York we became roommates again and devoted ourselves to the pursuit of our separate careers.

I got a job in the Press Relations department at CBS on Madison Avenue. After almost nine months I suddenly, surprisingly, found myself writing for network television on a dare, a dare that paid off. At 23 I was turning out scripts for NBC's television sitcom, THE ALDRICH FAMILY. Heady with my modest early success, I left Jimmy in New York and returned to Los Angeles, which was fast becoming the nation’s principal center of television production. There, after a fruitless period of waiting for the phone to ring, I finally found myself writing for more television series.

Within only a matter of months Jimmy was banging on my apartment door in Hollywood. Elia Kazan had cast him in his upcoming Warner Brothers picture, EAST OF EDEN.

The next year and a half was filled with more television work for me and three feature films for Jimmy, EAST OF EDEN, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, and GIANT. Jimmy was on location a lot, but we got to spend time together between pictures. It was an amazing period, Jimmy suddenly a film star, me inching along in television. Then, just as suddenly, it all ended. At least, for Jimmy it did.

Shortly after Jimmy's untimely death I was commissioned to write the story of our five-year friendship. It was published in 1956. However, because of the pressure of the unexpected and often unwelcome notoriety that came with its publication, I began to feel the need to get away from New York and Hollywood. I chose Europe, where, after some months in Paris, I settled in London. While there I was commissioned by Granada Television to write an original ninety-minute drama, THE MYTH MAKERS, inspired by what I had perceived as Jimmy’s grotesque publicity-driven funeral and its shattering effect on his rural American family and hometown, Fairmount, Indiana. My script was subsequently published in Faber & Faber’s collection of television dramas, SIX GRANADA PLAYS. I stayed on in England for another eighteen months and wrote a number of dramas for Granada, ITV and the BBC.

Back in New York, I was approached by the producers of NBC's Dupont Show of the Month to do an American version of The MYTH MAKERS, which was retitled THE MOVIE STAR, and was well received. However, finding little inspiration and less work in the States, I returned to England, where I was commissioned by Granada Television to adapt Jean Giraudoux’s TIGER AT THE GATES. I also wrote several original dramas for the BBC and Independent Television, as well as scripts for various English television series, including the classic THE PRISONER.

Once again, however, Hollywood beckoned me home. This time, television was booming and I was soon writing for many of the top shows, among them PERRY MASON, BEN CASEY, OUTER LIMITS, ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, DR. KILDARE, and THE LAW AND MR. JONES.

After a couple of years, armed with a promise of a feature film for Columbia Pictures, back I went to England. Two years and two feature films later, Ray Harryhausen's THE VALLEY OF GWANGI for Columbia Pictures, with James Franciscus, Gila Golan, Richard Carlson and Laurence Naismith, followed by, HAMMERHEAD, with Vince Edwards, Judy Geeson and Diana Dors, I returned to Hollywood.

In 1974 I wrote an original two-hour Movie-of-the-Week, as they were then called, THE LEGEND OF LIZZIE BORDEN. Bless her, the dearly loved and achingly missed Elizabeth Montgomery read my script and agreed to star, along with the marvelous Katherine Helmond and a dream cast including Fionnuala Flanagan, Fritz Weaver and Ed Flanders. The film received Emmy nominations for editing and music, as well as a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best TV Film in 1976. It also won me the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allen Poe Award for my script.

Subsequently I was comissioned to adapt Harold Robbins' novel THE BETSY as a feature film for United Artists/Allied Artists, also with a cast to dazzle: Laurence Olivier, Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duval, Jane Alexander, Katherine Ross, and directed by Daniel Petrie. I also wrote and adapted a number of three, four and five-hour movies and miniseries for television, among them: Hallmark's THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, with Richard Chamberlain, Louis Jourdan, Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm, Vivien Merchant and Jenny Agutter, for which I received an Emmy nomination; THE FIRST OLYMPICS: ATHENS, 1896, with Angela Lansbury, Louis Jourdan, David Caruso and David Ogden Stiers, which won me the Writers Guild of America Annual Award for Outstanding Script for Television Longform Series that year; THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, with John Gielgud, Michael York, Richard Thomas, Timothy Dalton and Ian Richardson; THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL, with Ian McKellen, Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour, which garnered an Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Drama Special, and won me a Christopher Award; THE STAR MAKER, with Rock Hudson, Melanie Griffith, Suzanne Pleshette and Brenda Vacarro.

To commemorate the twentieth anniversary of James Dean's death, I was approached by NBC to adapt my 1956 account of our friendship as a television movie. Initially I balked at the idea, but it was made clear by NBC that they intended to make the film "with or without" me. So, in the interest of maintaining control over such a personal subject, I agreed. The movie was initially entitled, JAMES DEAN: PORTRAIT OF A FRIEND, although somehow the PORTRAIT OF A FRIEND part got lost by the time it was aired. It featured Stephen McHattie as Dean, Michael Brandon as yours truly, Amy Irving, Brooke Adams, Candy Clark, Katherine Helmond, Meg Foster, Jayne Meadows and Dane Clark.

After that my sometimes writing partner Paul Huson and I wrote the pilot for, as well as produced all the episodes of the television series, THE COLBYS, a spin-off of Richard and Esther Shapiro's DYNASTY. It starred Charlton Heston, Barbara Stanwyck, Katherine Ross, Ricardo Montalban and Stephanie Beacham. That was great fun to do, a real hoot.

Among other projects, Paul and I also collaborated on the television movie POWER AND BEAUTY for Showtime, which starred Natasha Henstridge as Judith Exner, President John Kennedy's mistress; THE BIG ONE: THE GREAT LOS ANGELES EARTHQUAKE with Joanna Kerns, Dan Lauria, Joe Spano, Ed Begley, Jr.,and Richard Masur; an action-adventure movie for NBC, TWIST OF FATE with Veronica Hamel, Ben Cross, Ian Richardson, Bruce Greenwood, Sarah Jessica Parker and John Glover; and THE FURY WITHIN, a paranormal thriller with Ally Sheedy for USA cable network. But far and away the best thing we ever collaborated on, and a script that still makes me proud, was our television adaptation of Anne Rice's INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, which I still consider among my - and Paul's - proudest accomplishments. Sadly, because the feature film rights were sold before we could put together a production for NBC TV, the script was never produced.

I can honestly say it’s been one helluva trip; so fantastic, in fact, that I’ve decided to revisit what now appears to have been the most extraordinary time of my life (although I didn't recognize it as such then) in a new book, SURVIVING JAMES DEAN. In it, among other things, I have included everything that the law and my faint heart didn’t allow me to commit to print in my earlier account. Barricade Books has published it under their Legends imprint, and it is now available at your favorite online or local walk-in bookstore.