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Zoe Kazan on Adapting ‘East of Eden’ Seven Decades After Her Grandfather
Both versions are, in Kazan’s estimation, self-portraits of the artists who made them. Renowned for directing A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront and co-founding the influential Actors Studio from which the school of “method acting” was born, Elia Kazan was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. The Hollywood blacklist was in effect and, Faced with the possibility of never being able to work in Hollywood again, he named names. His granddaughter has never read his autobiography, though she has tried. “There’s some very young part of me that’s like, I still want my grandpa to be my grandpa and not have access to all of this adult stuff,” she says. But she believes that Elia Kazan, who died in 2003 when she was 20, saw himself in the black sheep of the family: “He had this cold and demanding father, and I think he was projecting onto Cal.” Made during a period when the director was facing significant backlash, his version focuses on guilt, rejection, and alienation.
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