In the early 1990s, Warner Bros. planned to produce a feature biographical film about actor James Dean, and the studio hired Israel Horovitz to write the script. One of the working titles was "James Dean: An Invented Life" before it was finalized as "James Dean". When Horovitz wrote the script, he explored the "psychological insight" of Dean by showcasing the abandonment of his father, which became the fulcrum of the storyline. Horovitz recalled, "Why would a father ship his wife's body back on a train with an 8-year-old son, never go to the funeral and never pick the son up again, never bring the son back out to him?" The screenwriter felt it was best to portray Dean's purported homosexuality by innuendo rather than explicitly. He wanted to focus on the romance between Dean and Pier Angeli and Dean's growth as an actor, and believed that a homosexuality subplot would distract from the storyline. Producer Marvin Worth explained in July 1995, "We'll try to make a good movie... not one of rumor and innuendo."