Cal Trask

In the early 1950s, James was just another young actor trying to find work.

He'd grown up in Indiana and after leaving school had returned to California and began to study drama.

He attended UCLA, performed in university productions and eventually abandoned his study to pursue acting properly.

His first television job was hardly the stuff of legend, a Pepsi-Cola commercial.

James Dean had his first major starring role at 23 years old.

And the really extraordinary thing was that Kazan soon discovered just how personal the role would become.

Before filming, Kazan accompanied James to visit his estranged father who was living in California.

Kazan witnessed the difficult relationship between them and saw how desperately James still seemed to want his father's approval.

That sounds exhausting.

The article specifically names Joseph Zotta, who plays Cal Trask, and Zoe Phillips, who plays Abra Bacon, as actors who had to wade through this landscape just to reach the location.

Let's consider the biomechanics and the psychological impact of that for a performer.

Okay, yeah.

But crucially, it also rejects the hollow, toxic positivity narrative of modern self-help that says you can just manifest a totally new personality by tomorrow morning with the right morning routine.

We see this brutal tension perfectly realized in the character of Cal Trask.

Cal is the Cain figure of the next generation, and he knows exactly what he is.

He literally has his mother's profound, terrifying capacity for manipulation and cruelty running through his veins.

And it's really interesting because in a limited series you have the room to kind of breathe and to explore these characters more and to cover the entire novel.

And I think that that's, that's a blessing because there's an awful lot going on with these characters that in the, the movie you don't really get a full understanding of the motivations of Adam Trask and his sons because you're only seeing the sons as young men, Cal Trask in the movie famously played by James Dean.

And, and so you miss an awful lot.

And the limited series is just really, really fantastic because Charles Trask, played by Mike Faist, isn't even in the Elia Kazan movie, so, and isn't even mentioned.

And through it all runs the author's central question: Are we predestined to a particular fate and disposition, or can free will overcome? The movie version, produced in the 1950s and adapted with Steinbeck's input, chopped off the first three-quarters of the book.

It opens with Cal Trask, one of two very dissimilar brothers, hunting down his mother, who abandoned the family right after her twins were born.

Cal and his brother Aron are like the biblical Cain and Abel.

One is good by nature, the other evil.

Anyway, that's a trip.

But it begins with James Dean as Cal Trask sitting on the sidewalk and this very ornately dressed woman walks past him and he follows her and he's obsessed with her and who is she? And that is who she is and who she is to him and his brother Aaron is sort of like the central thing.

The central narrative thrust here, the source of tension here, is essentially a Cain and Abel story in early 20th century America.

So it's a story of the development of America, but also of ancient biblical themes.

I love, again, the, the James Dean-ness of it is great.

James Dean played Cal Trask, and Mike Faist is playing Charles Trask.

Oh.

But not the same character.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

Joseph Zott is playing Cal Trask.

Oh, okay.