Monday, June 27, 2011

Stewart Stern, "The Rack," and words to regain consciousness to

Over at Movies on Demand (Chicago Sun-Times), Jeff Shannon profiles venerable screenwriter Stewart Stern (Rebel Without a Cause for starters) on the occasion of Stern's 1956 Korean P.O.W. courtroom drama The Rack, starring Paul Newman, finally hitting DVD.

This one has personal resonances for me: I met Stewart when he was one of my instructors at TheFilmSchool. In 2009, after I came to in the ICU after weeks in a coma (following heart surgery gone cascading kablooey), I discovered that he had delivered to my room an inscribed copy of his screenplay to Rebel Without a Cause. He's a lovely man, a Yoda without the speech impediment and a wellspring of stories about Hollywood That Was.