"It's about the quality of the star, those people who the camera just loves, and James Dean is really amazing. He's moody, but there's a lot going on beneath the surface. He doesn't go with the crowd which is always very attractive. When you're dealing with adolescence you've always got the kids with that strength of character. I think that's very important. I watched Rebel Without A Cause in the eighties with a group of kids and they thought it was really funny and old fashioned. When you look at it it now it is obviously a bit melodramatic, but that's partly because it's influenced so many films since. It's also a very strange film, a fated film, because the three main juvenile leads, Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood and James Dean, died prematurely. Sal Mineo was murdered in the late seventies, Natalie Wood drowned in an accident, and of course JD was too fast too young."

"This stylish, psychosexual B-picture is a really cool early example of low-budget New York filmmaking, and it also happens to be directed by MY GRANDFATHER! A great time capsule of smutty, old Times Square – in fact, all of the Times Square footage of Sal Mineo was "stolen", including a chase in the street, and supposedly the cinematographer nearly got killed by traffic during the filming of it. And definitely the first movie to ever shoot a scene in an adult book store. Seek out the right bootleg of this movie (which should clock about 90 minutes) because the only official release is a censored cut, and I know you… You like things sleazy."