"Sal" Focuses On Sal Mineo's Last Day

[Lucky]

"James Franco's Sal chronicles the final hours of the life of actor Sal Mineo, one-time teen idol and star of the blockbuster films Rebel Without a Cause and Exodus."

Franco is too old to play Sal, so a muscular young actor named Val Lauren did that. I am not so sure that Mineo was so muscular, nor that he received testosterone shots way back then. (1976)

His fame was on the decline and he was trying to push a script that didn't seem to be going anywhere. Frankly, it could have been the script for this movie, which was brutally painful to watch. Boring scenes, bad camera angles, and washed out lighting don't help what was a rather tedious final day for Mineo, whom I adored on the screen and fantasized him getting fucked by James Dean. My date and I walked out before Sal dies, as the movie had Dead On Arrival scrawled across it. It has taken it three years to make the screen, and even that for a free showing with "talk-back" with actor Val Lauren.

My date and I had something hotter on our minds, so we left early, along with many others, who were not headed for the scene we had in mind.

[MsGuy]

So I gather you didn't much care for the play?

[Lucky]

Oh oh-TRAP! Do not fall into? Fall into? One would be embarrassing, the other might make me look cool. Nah. No one is going to think a guy my age is cool. They already guessed that when I said I had something hotter waiting that it was food,.. not a boy!

So, to answer Ms. Guy: No, I didn't care for the show.

[MsGuy]

Too bad about the play.

I, too, had a thing for Sal Mineo even before I was real clear exactly what it meant that I had a thing for Sal Mineo, lol.

[AdamSmith]

Exactly! I first saw 'Rebel Without a Cause' just about the time I began Figuring Things Out.

It was a great help, in its inimitable way.