The feature film, entitled Willy and Jimmy Dean, is based on screenwriter William Bast’s 2006 memoir Surviving James Dean and will explore the gay romance between Bast and the Rebel Without a ...

In Surviving James Dean, Bast wrote that he and Dean — who died in a car accident at age 24 on Sept. 30, 1955 — met while attending UCLA's theater program when they were both 19. The memoir ...