Kim Voynar at Cinematical has spoken to Rebel Without a Cause screenwriter Stewart Stern, and reports that “the screen test Marlon Brando made in 1947″ — which will be included on a new double-disc DVD of A Streetcar Named Desire coming out May 2nd — “had practically nothing to do with the Rebel Without A Cause we’re all familiar with.” Stern tells Voynar that “Marlon’s 1947 test was not for Rebel Without a Cause as we know it. Dr. Robert Lindner wrote a book of that title in which there were several case histories, written in fictional form, of young offenders whom Lindner had treated psychiatrically in prison. One of these chapters — and the book — had the title, ‘Rebel Without A Cause’. [But] the whole project fell through as undoable and was shelved for years. I hadn’t known that Marlon tested for that book adaptation — I didn’t know they even had a screenplay from it to test him with. Anyhow, fade out & fade in to 1954, when Nicholas Ray approached [Warner Bros.] about doing a story about middle-class kids in trouble and hired first Leon Uris and then Irving Shulman to write it. He wanted to call it The Blind Run but Warners didn’t like the title and someone recalled ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ so they took the title — they owned it anyway — and threw away the book.”

The Guardian’s Xan Brooks on how well Marlon Brando might have handled the Jim Stark role in Rebel Without a Cause.

It didn’t truly hit me until yesterday the degree to which public broadcasting TV affiliates (like L.A.’s KCET) are operated like medieval feifdoms, totally local and unto themselves with no regard for providing viewers with shared information about options to re-view or purchase popular shows. I’m saying this as a way of explaining that I was bizarrely misinformed yesterday by both a KCET spokesperson and a WGBH media relations executive named Lucy Sholley when I called about wanting to see a re-broadcast of Ric Burns’ Eugene O’Neill, a highly praised two-hour documentary that aired on PBS stations Monday night. Neither the KCET guy nor Sholley thought it was pertinent to mention that a DVD of Burns’ doc has been available for sale for over a week on various DVD-purchase websites like DVD Empire. (Oddly, the Amazon.com page says the O’Neill DVD won’t be available until “January 1, 2010.”) DVD Newsletter‘s Doug Pratt tells me copies of the show are sitting now at Best Buy, and I just spoke to a clerk at West L.A.’s Lazer Blazer who told me the PBS Home Video DVD was buyable at the store as of a week ago last Tuesday (i.e., 3.21), or six days before the doc’s nationwide airings. And yet I just spoke to another Johnny-on-the-spot bureaucrat at KCET and he didn’t even know about the DVD’s availability. Am I being pointed enough? The ignorance at these local stations is absolutely radiant. And so to reiterate again and to correct yesterday’s posting, you’re not out of luck if you missed Monday’s showing…all you have to do is go down to your video store and buy the damn DVD. And if you ever have a question about anything to do with repeat airings and/or DVDs of PBS original programming, it’s probably not a good idea to ask a rep from a local PBS station for help.

That $10 million Randy Quaid Brokeback Mountain lawsuit filed on Thursday, 3.23 against the makers of this widely honored, very profitable film (i.e., Focus Features, James Schamus, David Linde, Del Mar Productions), now enjoys a certain enhancement by the mere fact that Sharon Waxman has examined its merits in a N.Y. Times story out today (3.29). Boil the snow out of it, and the conclusions are these: (a) Randy Quaid is in no way a whinin’, groanin’ sourpuss actor but in fact has a bright, buoyant attitude about the lawsuit, as amply indicated by the photo that accompanies Waxman’s story; (b) The quality-films-for-cheaper-prices premise of indie “dependent” outfits like Focus Features, Fox Searchlight, Paramount Classics and Warner Independent depends upon producers being able to hire guys like Quaid for shitass fees (i.e., guild minimums); (c) The functioning of this economic system obviously requires an alliance of actors willing to cut their fees for films with substantial arthouse pretensions and/or credentials along with producers looking to exploit these actors for their own economic gain; (d) And yet this same system, essentially founded on a note of spiritual kinship (you and I care about making good films so we’re taking less money…especially the supporting actors, writers and below-the-liners), is ironically protected by standard big-studio accounting practices which have long made the idea of receiving post-release net point compensation (if and when a film goes into substantial profit mode) an industry joke; (e) And yet profit participation deals have been sculpted on smaller films — you just have to be a big-enough actor to rate being offered them. (Waxman’s story quotes “an executive from another arthouse studio” saying that “the most prominent actors [on a film have been] granted bonus fees for successful films, or a cut of the adjusted gross box-office receipts.”) When all is said and done, if you don’t get some kind of profit participation arrangement you’re happy with down on paper before you go to work, you’re not going to badger distributors and/or producers into paying you anything extra down the road. One final thought from a longtime veteran of big-studio operations, addressing the character of the people who negotiated Quaid’s cheapo deal without considering some way of paying him more money if and when Brokeback profits might materialize: “I think they’re pigs.”

If anyone in Manhattan went to the first-night preview of Richard Greenberg‘s Three Days of Rain on Tuesday, 3.28 (which is being performed as I write this, the time being 9:04 pm back east) and feels like sharing an opinion about how first-time performer Julia Roberts did in the lead role, please get in touch. Roberts’ costars in the Joe Mantello-directed show are Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper. The official opening is 4.19, and the reportedly sold-out show will run at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre for for 12 weeks. This Playbill piece claims “many critics consider [Rain to be] Greenberg’s best play,” but a theatre aficionado pal says this isn’t true. Patricia Clarkson played Roberts’ role when Rain was first mounted at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1997.

If you weren’t watching your local PBS station Monday night (like me) and therefore missed Ric Burns‘ Eugene O’Neill, a two-hour “American Experience” documentary about this country’s greatest playwright, you’re out of luck for a while. There are no repeat broadcasts set for the immediate future, although the widely-praised film will probably turn up on DVD sometime in the summer. Not making this show available for subsequent viewings over the next couple of weeks is a ridiculous policy. It underscores the suspicion that PBS is a very old-fashioned organization with separate feifdoms spread across the country, and basically out of touch with the world.

Two things about David Fincher‘s Zodiac (Paramount, 9/22) — one sounding a tad questionable and the other most likely accurate. The film, first things first, is a crime period piece based on the Robert Graysmith “books” about cops and reporters on the trail of the Zodiac killer who plagued the San Francisco area in the ’60s and ’70s. Except last night a person close to the film told me it’s no longer being called Zodiac but Chronicles, allegedly due to some title-rights issue. (The IMDB lists a recent Thinkfilm release with Rory Culkin and Robin Tunney called The Zodiac, but a Paramount spokesperson says “we have the rights” allowing them to use the word “Zodiac” as a title so don’t take this one to the bank just yet. If this info turns out to be true, they’ve got to think up a better alternate title than Crhonicles, which stinks.) The other story is that the running time is now about three hours, give or take. This, I’m hearing, fals under the headings of “not unlikely” and/or “probable.” A three-hour crime film? This, to me, spells integrity…especially from the director of the classic Se7en. The script is by James Vanderbilt ( Against All Enemies). The co-stars are Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey, Jr. as the San Francisco Chronicle reporters who wrote about the investi- gation, and Mark Ruffalo and (aparently) Anthony Edwards.

Stop what you’re doing (again) and watch “Wife Force One,” an absolutely brilliant short about the jeopardy that the wives of Harrison Ford have been subjected to over the years…and the overal climate of “rage, pure rage” that has permeated his numerous action films.

The feds looking into the past deeds of indicted private investigator Anthony Pellicano “have found no convincing evidence that actor Steven Seagal was involved in depositing a dead fish on a reporter’s windshield in June 2002,” etc. Great… and nobody cares. This story is mainly about whether or not Paramount chief Brad Grey is going to emerge so compromised by allegations of involvement in illegal wiretapping via his associations with Pellicano by way of attorney Bert Fields that he’ll be forced to resign…that’s it. With maybe a sideplot” exploring to what extent Tom Cruise may have had Nicole Kidman‘s phone tapped after their marriage ended.

Director Richard Fleisher left us a few days ago, and I’m only just paying homage now…sorry. If you’re a film buff-type, you might feel like saluting Fleisher for having directing Narrow Margin, the classic 1952 noir-on-a-train with Charles McGraw. But for me, Fleischer’s peak was The Vikings — the 1958 historical action epic that was mostly dominated by producer-star Kirk Douglas, but was (and still is) notable for two dramatic elements that still work today. One is what seems to happen inside the male Viking characters (particularly Douglas and dad Ernest Borgnine) whenever Odin, the Nordic God, is mentioned. We hear a haunting, siren-like “Odin theme” on the soundtrack, and these rough blustery types suddenly stop their loutish behavior and seem to almost retreat into a childlike emotional place…a place that’s all about awe and fear (of death, God, judgment). This happens maybe three or four times in this big, unsophisticated popcorn movie (which nonetheless feels far sturdier and more classically composed than a typical big-budget popcorn actioner made today), and each time it does The Vikings suddenly has a spirit. The other thing that still works is the film’s refusal to make much of the fact that Douglas and costar Tony Curtis, mortal enemies throughout the film, are in fact brothers, having both been half-sired by Borgnine. Costar Janet Leigh begs Douglas to consider this ten minutes from the finale, and Douglas angrily brushes her off. But when his sword is raised above a defenseless Curtis at the very end and he’s about to strike, Douglas suddenly hesitates…and we know why. And then Curtis stabs Douglas in the stomach with a shard of a broken sword, and Douglas is finished. The way he leans back, screams “Odin!” and then rolls over dead is pretty hammy, but that earlier moment of hesitation is spellbinding — one of the most touching pieces of acting Douglas has ever delivered. Douglas wasn’t very respectful of Fleischer’s authority during the making of The Vikings, and for all I know Fleischer didn’t have that much to do with this final scene…but he probably did, and he deserves our respect for it.

“I think there’s a big difference between James Bond and Jason Bourne. I think James Bond is the secret agent who likes being a secret agent and likes killing people. He’s a misogynist, an old-fashioned imperialist, and Jason Bourne is an outsider on the run and he’s one of us and he’s fighting against them, I think. That’s the profound difference, and that’s why I like Bourne.” — director Paul Greengrass riffing two weeks ago with Empire magazine online about the The Bourne Ultimatum, which will (naturally) topline Matt Damon, the script having been co-written by Tony Gilroy and Tom Stoppard. I agree with this — Bourne is right now, and Bond is prehistoric. People don’t always go “aaah, look at that!” or “listen to that!” when tectonic plates shift and major movie-culture changes kick new alignments into place, but the Bourne-over-Bond thing is one of the more significant ones to happen over the last, say, two or three years. I’m not aware that it’s been proclaimed in so many words by a film essayist or critic or op-ed sage out there, but… well, I guess that’s what I’m doing here and now….saying it in so many words.

The New York Post‘s “Page Six” column says “the race is on” to see who’ll be the first to make a biopic of LSD guru Timothy Leary — Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Appian Way production company, which has been half-heartedly stirring this pot for at least a couple of years, or Fountain director Darren Aronofsky , who didn’t mention any Leary project to me when we last spoke (at the Golden Globes awards) but whatever. Aronofsky may or may not be in a “race” mode but the DiCaprio team is mostly slumbering, I’ve been told. Two years on the case and there’s not even a screenplay written…what does that tell you? And here’s a list of current Appian Way projects with no mention of Tim. A source with a significant perspective on the action said this morning that the DiCaprio/Appian Way/Leary project has been “on hold” for some time, in part due to an effort to slap together a decent screenplay of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, which has taken the better part of two years. There’s “not a lot of focus” at Appian Way, he said. “Leo is all over the map…he wants to work with Marty on this and that…[Appian Way] doesn’t exactly have a center-of-gravity thing going on.” I had a 90-second chat with DiCaprio about the Leary project at the ’05 Santa Barbara Film Festival, and about 25 or 30 seconds into it I mentioned a great penetrating book about ’60s psychaedelia called “Storming Heaven,” written by Jay Stevens, my point being that anyone writing a screenplay about Leary should definitely read it as part of their research. (I don’t remember if Leo acknowledged having read it…he may have.) I also asked Milos Forman about his reported interest in directing a Leary biopic during the April ’04 San Francisco Film Festival, and he said “nobody knows what [this movie] would be, or how to come at it…you can’t just make a movie about [Leary’s] life…you have to figure a way in.”