StewartStern Tagged Articles at Cinematical

This is Part Two of a two-part interview with screenwriter Stewart Stern, who wrote the screenplays for Rebel Without a Cause, Sybil, and many other films. Part One of the interview covered Stern's career.

CINEMATICAL: Stewart, let's start by talking about your childhood, which profoundly impacted your writing. You and your mother never had a good relationship.

STERN: She did her best - she and my father never intended to have a baby so soon. They went on their honeymoon - boom! - she was pregnant; they never even had a chance to know each other, really, before they became parents. My mother was creative, she wanted to be an actress. She didn't really want to have a baby then. Her own mother, my Grandma Kaufman, was 47 when my mother was born; she had already used up most of her affection on the nine children she had before my mother. So my mother never learned how to be...how to be that way.

But when I made clay figures, my mother would run them off to a ceramic studio and get them glazed and fired. (Stern goes to his desk and pulls a small, green clay figure out of a drawer) This is an alligator I made as a kid...just a little clay figure, and look - she had it glazed and fired. (He hands me the figure to examine)

CINEMATICAL: It says on the bottom you were nine years old. This is remarkably well done for a nine-year-old.

STERN: I was always artistic. Marjorie (his younger sister) wasn't. She wanted to be, she tried so hard, but she just wasn't.

Stewart Stern had a enviable career in Hollywood for over a quarter century. He was the nephew of Paramount founder Adolph Zukor, and spent much of his childhood at Zukor's Mountain View Farm near Nyack, NY, where he played with his cousin, Arthur Loew Jr, who would later help Stern start his career in Hollywood. But Stern's childhood was far from idyllic; he had a difficult relationship with his emotionally distant parents, which would later shape much of his writing.

Stern wrote the screenplays for Rebel Without a Cause, Sybil, The Ugly American, and Rachel, Rachel, among others. He had unprecedented access as a screenwriter to the sets of his films, and counted some of Hollywood's biggest names - Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Natalie Wood, James Dean - among his friends.

Going Through Splat: The Life and Work of Stewart Stern is a revealing portrait of a Hollywood legend with the soul and sensitivity of a poet. For over a quarter-century, Stern had one of the most prolific writing careers in Hollywood, penning films including Rebel Without a Cause, Rachel, Rachel, and Sybil; in 1983, at the pinnacle of his career, he abruptly left Hollywood for good and moved to the Pacific Northwest.

Stern’s longtime friend, Paul Newman, says of Stern’s retreat from Hollywood, "Stewart just ran out of wonderful determination…he just ran out of stink."

Through intimate conversations with Stern about his troubled childhood and his prolific career, and interviews with a parade of Stern’s celebrity friends, including Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Sally Field, Dennis Hopper, Delbert Mann, and George Englund, director Jon Ward unfolds the story of a lonely, sensitive boy who grew up surrounded by wealth and fame, but felt more loved and nurtured by farm animals than by his own parents. Stern, who survived the Battle of the Bulge in World War Two, later became a screenwriter - without the help of his uncle, Adolph Zukor, the founder of Paramount - and worked with some of the most famous names in Hollywood.