"East of Eden is one of Steinbeck's most important books." "It was about his family." "It's about... the Cain and Abel story, fathers and sons... and how they dealt with a heritage of good and evil." "Steinbeck was writing out part of his own story." "His own anxieties about being a father... anxieties about what would happen to his sons." "Steinbeck's relationship with his father, I think, was also complex." "All the years, his teenage years, from about 11 to 18... when he went away to college, I think he felt ashamed of his father." "His father was struggling financially... and I think that pain became much of his own... and his sense of his childhood, his feeling like an outsider." "Also, it's a cautionary tale, at least the book was... as it was dedicated to my brother and myself." "My father loved cautionary tales." "He thought he could save... a lot of problems for humans if you could basically lay out... someone in a similar situation." ""I once knew a guy..."" "And he's actually talking about you." "And you can come to decisions based on what happens to people in this story." "That's how I think my father thought that literature was functional." "My father would have this way of taking this gigantic human myth... like Cain and Abel, and putting it next-door to you, downtown." "And it's like the neighbors next door, it's going on with the neighbor." "Steinbeck said, "At some point I want to write a story of my valley..." ""I need to write a story of my home, the Salinas Valley."" "Salinas is a kind of metaphor, I think, for life itself... and for what he was doing in the book." "Salinas is a character, as is Monterey... where Cathy basically finds her new refuge." "It took a long time to get from Salinas to Monterey in those days." "There was a train." "It was a big deal." "Culturally, it was as different as it is today." "Monterey is the artistic end, and Salinas is the agricultural end." "One's Democrat and one's Republican, and on and on." "I don't think my father ever had a great deal of nostalgia... for the Salinas of everyone else." "There was his Salinas." "It's not even very attractive, Salinas." "It's a small town with small-town views." "He felt like there were all these, what he later called "Salinas fat cats..."" "and he saw himself as separate from that, so he was a kind of... moody, dark young man." "And that's captured in Cal." "He saw the failings of his characters mimicked in the failings... of the environment they grew up in." "I think based on the same thing." "Go to hell, Jack!" "I shot him because he tried to stop me." "I could have killed him if I'd wanted to, but I didn't." "I just wanted him to let me go." "After Steinbeck's divorce from his second wife, Gwen... in 1948, he was absolutely devastated... because he had loved her with the same love that Adam feels for Cathy." "And indeed, there was much of Gwen in the Cathy-Kate character." "And I think that Adam 's love for her... his disappointment with what happens to her... his inability to really come to terms with his sons... and know quite what to do with his sons..." "There's a lot of Steinbeck in there." "My mother... what was she like?" "Was she bad?" "I never really knew what she was like." "She wasn't like other people." "There was something she seemed to lack." "Kindness, maybe." "Conscience." "When she's introduced in the book as a monster..." "She kills her parents by burning down the family home." "She seduces a teacher and ruins him." "She has some boys in her class run out of town... for a sort of accusation that they were about to rape her... so it's a town scandal." "And then, in the book..." "He kept rewriting her as he was writing the book." "So by the end of the book she becomes not sympathetic... but at least comprehensible, perhaps understandable." "And, in her attempt to deal with her sons... maybe there's even some humanity there." "My father didn't believe in absolute evil or absolute good, period." "He believed that our awareness of these things created the identities... we set up for them." "He's really aware that without... at least our personal concepts of good and evil... it makes for a lousy reading." "One of the things he wanted readers to do was to see... that we have evil in ourselves." "We're capable of things we don't even want to admit we're capable of." "So you should feel there's something about Cathy... that is also in you." "Do you think I'm bad?" "I don't know." "That's why the original book has several major fulcrums." "Elia Kazan could only allow himself one, and Abra was it." "She's the center, she's the one that gives the audience the idea... that there's a better way." "You're not so grown- up." " I'm very grown- up." " That's a matter of opinion." "I'm very grown- up." "More so than Dad, because I forgave him for not understanding." "And the minute I forgave him in my mind..." "I felt better." "You don't see this much in the film, but her family is tainted." "Her father has been reprehensible in some ways... and so she has to confront the nature of evil." "And that makes her, obviously... a better partner for Cal... but also more compassionate, more understanding." "...it's awful not to be loved." "It's the worst thing in the world." "Compassion is very important in the book." "Compassion can really help somebody like Cal change." "He's sort of on the edge, and Abra pulls him over to the other side." "Every generation has to relearn these lessons again and again... about forgiveness, compassion, and looking for love that's not there." "Why isn't it there?" "Why am I the only one left out?" "This is my son, Cal." "Ray Massey, besides representing that generalization... the stern, traditional Christian culture, if you will." "He also represented something to Elia Kazan." "That is to say, his own father." "His own father was quite a different figure, in the sense that he was... a Greek immigrant, but he was stern... he was unforgiving... he was not very understanding of his son's needs and so forth." "He and Kazan had a huge struggle over Kazan going to college... because the old man wanted him to come in the rug business with him." "And I suppose you could say that the conflict... that he and the James Dean character, Cal, get into... is a version of a conflict that Kazan had acted out with his own father." "Kazan pared down the book." "He said he himself was interested in the last 80 pages." "Having said that, I think Kazan does capture the essence of the book." "I think part four is the essence of the book." "Kazan saw in that tension between father and son... some of his own life... and I think he wanted to work with that material." "For his part, Steinbeck really thought... that if Kazan was making the film, it was Kazan's movie, not his." "He didn't want at any time to be an intimidating factor in this." "This always pretty much happens for a well-known author." "I mean, even his presence on the set implies criticism." "And in many cases, that's a very unsuccessful type of relationship." "My father would much rather wait for you down at the bar." "He would bend over backwards to help if he thought the director was going... in the right direction." "Actually, all of his life he thought that Kazan was going in the right direction." "They seemed to share a lot of sympathetic visions of things." "They found it very easy to work together." "They were lifelong friends." "Among the first people to read the galley ofeast of Eden was Kazan." "Kazan took it to Jack Warner at Warner Brothers." "He said, "It was the easiest sale I ever made." "I went in..." ""Jack Warner said, 'What do you want to do?" "' I said, 'East of Eden. "'" "And Warner just said, "You got it." "So let's go to lunch."" "Paul Osborn, who wrote the screenplay, said to me:" ""You ought to go to the theater and see the fellow playing some sort of an Arab."" "I saw him and I didn't think much of him." "I called him to the Warner Brothers office and he came there... and he just sat there looking rather surly and unresponsive." "You know, the kid was awful." "He looked like an unmade bed and he was inarticulate." "He finally said to me, "Do you want a ride on my bike?"" "So I said, "Yeah, I'll take a ride on your bike."" "I got on the back of his bike and he went around the city... on the goddamn bike, and I wished I'd never met him." "But as I got to talking to him more and more, I said, "This guy is it."" "I called Steinbeck up, I said:" ""I tell you, I've found a guy who may not be a great actor..." ""but he is it." He said, "Is that important?"" "He says, "If he's it, send him up."" "So I sent him up to John and John said:" ""I don't like the guy, but he's it." "He's the guy. "" "When Steinbeck said he's perfect for the part..." "I think probably his body movements, the awkwardness, the slouching... his dark looks, yeah, his very inarticulateness..." "I think that really conveys that brooding quality." "He was cast in The Immoralist." "They did all their rehearsals." "They were trying out in Philadelphia." "And what nobody knew was that Kazan had his eye on Jimmy... and wanted to get him out of The Immoralist... but it was opening, and they did a screen test." "And Kazan decided that he would commit to Jimmy." "On opening night in New York..." "Jimmy gave his notice... which means that he had two weeks in the play... and then was free to do East of Eden." "Action." " You think it's pretty?" " Yes." "It's very pretty, Cal." "I had been one of the first actors... that were taken into the Actors' Studio in New York City." "I met Mr. Kazan there... so we worked together on a play that the Actors' Studio actually did." "I was about 28, I guess... and Jimmy was four, five years younger." "They wanted to see if I looked too old for him..." "I doubt if Daddy even knows that today's his birthday." "He probably doesn't." "But I guess I didn't, because I got the part and we did the movie." "I had another great performance in that thing from Jo Van Fleet." "People have forgotten about Jo Van Fleet and she's neglected now... but she was a great actress." "Then you throw Raymond Massey in this mix... who looked down his nose at virtually everyone." "Anybody he hadn't done rep with was not worth doing it." "Ray Massey's performance is very stiff, very unyielding... very moralistic, very stern." "But that was Ray." "He was in life..." "I knew him, he was a stiff." "And he had off-screen, in particular... this terrible relationship with Jimmy Dean." "He would be upsetting to Ray's sense of decorum." "He was always cutting in on his lines, saying the wrong lines." "And Ray would go to Elia... and he'd say, "Gadge." We called him "Gadge."" "And he'd say, "You've got to stop this, young man."" "Massey had learned the script exactly, and he'd say to me:" ""He's not saying the lines."" "I'd say, "I'll get him to say the lines," and let Jimmy..." "I was tricky." "I'd let Jimmy do it the way he wanted... 'cause it irritated him, and I'd photograph him." "He was always inventing." "He was never the same." "You didn't know what was coming." "So you had to listen, you had to watch... you had to really be there." "I can't think of acting as saying:" ""You didn't say that before." "Why don't you..." ""Why don't you do it the same way?"" "No." "I think that's not acting." "That's... imitating or something." "It's not being, 'cause nobody ever does the same thing twice." "In acting, we have to say the same words twice... but we don't have to say them the same way." "We don't have to say them in the same rhythm." "He really compresses the amount of frustration and loss and anger." "That kind of thing you feel when you're 16, 17 years old." "Everybody's betraying you." "And then doing this Richard III thing." ""If they're gonna call me a villain, I'm gonna be a big villain. "" "Overreacting and everything." "In this constant squirming search... to be accepted by the one person that you love most in the world." "Gradually I got a terrific respect for Jimmy because of his talent." "He was a tremendously talented guy, and would do anything to be good." "He was way open." "Jimmy invited me on a number of occasions... to have dinner at his father and stepmother's place." "It was an excruciatingly uncomfortable experience... because they were totally inarticulate... and never communicated with one another, really." "He tried so hard to reach his father... to make some contact with a man who wasn't able." "He wasn't able, and it was sad." "How easy it was to pick that up and use it, and Jimmy used it." "Of course he used it, because that was the backbone of the story." "Raymond Massey didn't understand James Dean for one moment... or anything about him." "Or want to understand anything about him." "I think Kazan knew this." "Do you think I would do anything to stop that antagonism?" "No, I increased it." "Because it was the central thing that I photographed." "What I photographed was their relationship to each other." "The absolute hatred that Ray Massey felt for Jimmy Dean... and the hatred Jimmy Dean felt for Ray Massey." "That's precious, man." "You can't get that." "No director can get that." "You hopefully arouse it." "Do you get me?" "You essentially awaken something that's there... by some tactic or other, some means or other... by some hint or other, by some stimulus or other." "Directors are desperate people." "He said, "We will get what we need by hook or by crook, somehow."" "We were shooting that scene where Jimmy Dean comes in... and sees his mother, who's..." "First time he's seen her, she's a prostitute." "And Kazan took Jimmy Dean around and got him in a headlock." "And he'd get ready, "Okay, roll them."" "He shoved Jimmy Dean so Jimmy Dean committed all his weight." "Because he wanted to get that reaction when he looks on his mother." "And Jimmy Dean didn't forgive him for that." ""He didn't think I could act that he had to wrestle me around?"" "Mr. Kazan was very easy to work with... and very stimulating." "He absolutely adored actors because he had been an actor himself." "And he was so exciting to be with." "And he got everybody excited about what they were doing." "Kazan told me:" ""See that Ford there?" "It's Monday morning." ""We're gonna shoot Friday." ""I want you here on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday..." ""learn everything about that Ford." ""Drive her around the lot, work her hard, crank it."" "I knew everything about that Model T." "Then you give her a hard spin." " She caught, first time!" " Caught on what?" "That's what he wanted." "He wanted the actor to be..." "As if he's contributed as much to the scene as the director." "He didn't direct that way, "Just do this, just do that."" "He wanted to find out what made the actor tick." "I'll always remember the last day of shooting." "I didn't know at that time whether I was going to go to the cast party... so I was looking for him to say good-bye." "I went up to his trailer and I knocked on the door... and said, "Jimmy?"" "I didn't hear anything." "I knocked again." "Then I heard sort of muffled cries." "I knocked harder and he came to the door." "The tears were streaming down his face, and he said:" ""It's the last day." "It's over."" "And it was so moving that he was so affected... that this was his first movie... and it was so important to him... and now it was gone." "We are such things, such stuff as dreams are made of." "It's true, the actor takes on this persona." "And now it's not there anymore, it's gone." "From the heart of Broadway, the entertainment capital of the world... where hundreds of spectators are excitedly awaiting the arrival... of the stars..." "Kazan is something special." "If you were growing up and taking an interest in the theatrical arts... in the '50s in this country... you had to come to Kazan." "He was just an important guy... in terms of forming sensibilities in that era." "Steinbeck wrote that the only purpose in his writing... was to help people understand one another... and that writing should reach out to help people comprehend... what's going on with other people." "I think he was a very compassionate writer himself." "I think that's one of the reasons he's so popular." "Long after their association in film... they enjoyed each other's company and talked about writing... and were involved with each other for a long period of time." "They were always planning stuff." "They were like kids." "I think it was larger than just an association of a writer... and "his" director for a couple of films." "They had one thing in common, my father's favorite line." "I asked him years ago." "I said, "What is the purpose of being a writer?"" "My father said, "To reconnect humans to their own humanity." ""Their memory of both compassion and pain..." ""Their memory of things." "They forget."" "I always thought that was a brilliant description... of what these guys were doing."