‘James Dean’ a Convincing Portrait

Agents said he was strange. Others considered him weird. The one thing everyone agreed on was that he was brilliant.

Cool and classy, the TNT biopic “James Dean” (8 p.m., 10 p.m. and midnight Sunday) offers a persuasive portrait of the gifted young rebel who died at 24.

James Franco, who played one of the slackers in the splendid but short-lived “Freaks and Geeks,” is completely convincing in the title role as the passionate, difficult actor who starred in three films before he was killed in a car accident on Sept. 30, 1955.

Artfully directed by Mark Rydell, who brings a toughness to his supporting role as tyrannical Warner Bros. studio chief Jack Warner, the film opens in 1954 on the “East of Eden” set, where director Elia Kazan (“Just Shoot Me’s” Enrico Colantoni) introduces Dean to his co-star Raymond Massey, a highly respected veteran.

“This man can’t play my father,” Dean boldly declares, standing face to face with an astonished, speechless Massey (Edward Herrmann). “He’s too old. Get somebody else.”

Shortly thereafter, the film flashes back to 1939 as we meet Dean’s father (Michael Moriarty), a cold, distant figure whose inexplicable rejection would fuel the anger and confusion Dean felt for the rest of his life.

Soft-spoken, sullen, sometimes playful yet always intense, the heavy-smoking, need-for-speed Dean takes the route of starving artists in 1951 New York, where he joins the Actors Studio. “I was dead broke. It didn’t matter. I was home,” he says via voice-over.

Playwright Israel Horovitz supplies the winning script, which later finds Dean pursuing the beautiful Pier Angeli (Valentina Cervi), an actress with an overly protective mother who wanted her to marry singer Vic Damone.

At the “East of Eden” audition with Kazan, Dean refers to acting as “the best way I know to express myself. I’m not good at talking, as you can tell.”

Unlike other Hollywood biopics, this one has the ring of truth, with Franco and Moriarty delivering Emmy-caliber performances worthy of your attention.

Surf Report

SERIES

“All About Us,” four teenage girls in Chicago (today at 8:30 a.m., NBC).

SPORTS

Make way for exhibition football as the Dallas Cowboys play the Oakland Raiders, (6 tonight, KCBS).

SPECIALS

Tonight KCET’s latest pledge drive includes “Big Band Sounds of World War II” at 8, “Frank Patterson’s World of Music” at 9:30 and “Jimmy Durante: The Great Schnozzola” at 11.

Six teams drive from New York to California in a dash for cash on “Cannonball Run 2001” (10 p.m. Sunday, USA Network).

MOVIES

Gena Rowlands and Laura Linney are mother and daughter in “Wild Iris” (Sunday at 8 p.m., Showtime).

“The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells,” being shown Sunday through Tuesday (9-11 p.m.), launches the Hallmark Channel (formerly Odyssey Network).