Biography

Frank Mazzola was born in Hollywood to a family that had worked in and around movies for generations. His father, Leonard Al Mazzola, was a stuntman and actor who got his start in silent films. As a child, Frank Mazzola was an extra in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939) and other films. By the time he was 19, he had graduated from Hollywood High School and briefly attended the University of Oregon. But much of his life was dominated by the Athenians - so named, he told the Los Angeles Times in 2000, because "the guys were athletes and some were scholars." Their ranks included a kid named Syd Field, who later became a well-known scriptwriting guru. "It wasn't like Scorsese's 'Mean Streets' of New York City" Mazzola said. "It was Hollywood!" Still, Mazola, by his account, was involved in violence, from shoving matches on Hollywood Boulevard to stabbings in San Bernardino. He told an interviewer that he once snagged an opponent hard enough to send him flying through a shattered second-story window. When he tried to muscle his way onto the set of "Rebel Without a Cause," the casting director saw trouble and threw him out. But Mazzola came back, managed to sneak up to Ray's office, and impressed the director with his authenticity. He was given a $200 consulting fee, an office, and a script. Mazzola hit the streets with script-writer Stewart Stern, who compiled a list of 52 phrases that seemed to be current at all the teen hang-outs: Too much, twisted, hang loose, crazy, flake out, cool, grass, fuzz, and more. Mazzola had seen Dean on the set of "East of Eden" but didn't know him. "My first impression was that Jimmy was like a wild animal out of a cage". Mazzola, who had a small part in the film, said years later. "He was telling people to back away and to not look at him." For "Rebel Without a Cause," Mazzola took Dean to meet the Athenians. They sparred in a boxing ring. They hung out. Mazzola told Dean a little about fighting, reminding Dean to wrap his jacket around his forearm during the knife fight scene - a maneuver Mazzola said he developed through necessity. Ultimately, Mazzola played the part of a gang member named Crunch. In some ways, he said, Dean played him, adopting his characteristic pose of leaning against a wall in his red jacket and T-shirt, his foot up and his arms crossed. Dean, who terrified Mazzola with his driving on the tortuous twisting road from Hollywood to North Hollywood, through Laurel Canyon, died in a car crash, on September 30, 1955, at a cross road located in Cholame, California, in route on the Central California road. Dean driving, and his mechanic sitting in Dean's Porshe Spider's passenger seat, were headed to a weekend Monterey car rally-race. Dean died nearly a month before the film was released on October 27, 1955. Jack Warner had forbade Dean to drive any automobile while under contract with his Warner Brothers Studio. Dean's driving provision was only to drive in a legitimate car rally or on an automobile race track. His driving all-inclusive-restrictions included the streets of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. On the morning of September 30, Dean driving with his mechanic sitting beside him, were seen departing Hollywood at the intersection of Vine Street and Fountain Avenue, at the Hollywood Ranch Market's 24 hour grocery store.

Mazzola went on to work behind the camera at several studios, editing his first films in the late 1960s. He became well known for his work with British director Donald Cammell, first on "Performance" (1970). Mazzola later recalled, "I almost got into a fight when one of the producers walked in like he was a tough guy, saying, 'No flashbacks, no flash-forwards, not cuts less than 10 frames,' I told him the only person I cut for is the director - period. The producer said, 'I'm the money guy, blah blah' - all that nonsense." Mazzola was similarly independent during his restoration of Cammell's "Wild Side" (2000). The director had committed suicide in 1996. When Mazzola viewed his friend's final film, he said he "let out one of his screams. I kept running out of the room, coming back and watching it through my fingers. It was a complete embarrassment." Mazzola's reworking of the film undid changes wrought by the producing studio. "Under Mazzola's micro-surgery, the film emerges as classic cinema," said the British newspaper, The Guardian.

Editing, Writing, Directing

In the Warner Brothers color film "Rebel Without a Cause" the hot-tempered leader Jim Stark is played by actor James Dean, (Feb. 8, 1931-September 30, 1955, age 24). For the Hollywood street "Athenians" gang, Frank Mazzola staged the famous knife fight in "Rebel Without a Cause," Dean's landmark 1955 film about violent, disaffected, middle-class youth. Mazzola advised Dean and director Nicholas Ray on gang talk and gang dress. He also steered the film-makers away from an embarrassing choice of vehicles in the climatic "chickie run" show-down. "They had cars in the script that were like a model of an auto the Dead End Kids would drive", he told Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel for "Live Fast, Die Young," their 2005 book about "Rebel Without A Cause." "They weren't custom cars like we had".