In June 2024, Zoe Kazan boarded a flight to New Zealand.
asserted
Kazan → board → Zealand
She scrolled through the in-flight movies.
asserted
She → scroll → movies
“They had East of Eden, and I was like, ‘I guess the gods are conspiring,’” she says.
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she → have → Eden
She pressed play.
asserted
She → press → play
Until then she had been avoiding rewatching her grandfather Elia Kazan’s 1955 masterpiece.
asserted
she → avoid → masterpiece
She was flying halfway across the world to scout locations for her own version of East of Eden, a seven-part adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel that premieres on Netflix on Oct. 1.
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that → fly → Oct.
She hadn’t wanted the film to influence her.
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film → want → her
But her script, which she’d begun working on in 2020, was finally turned in.
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she → begin → 2020
As the end credits rolled, she sighed in relief.
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she → roll → relief
“It was less like the book than I remembered,” she says.
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she → remember → book
The film, which introduced a brooding James Dean to cinema, is more inspired by the novel than a direct adaptation of it: It covers only the last third, crucial characters have been excised, and famous lines are missing.
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lines → introduce → third
“For me,” says Kazan over cold brew, extra ice on the side, at a Brooklyn cafe on an August morning, “the power of the story is how, over 50 years, it shows history repeating itself—or not.”
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history → say → itself
Her faithful adaptation covers the entirety of the multi-generational saga, which reimagines the tale of Cain and Abel twice over.
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which → cover → Cain
Cyrus (Tracy Letts in the new series), a self-mythologizing Civil War veteran, prefers his gentle son Adam (Christopher Abbott) to the violent one, Charles (Mike Faist).
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Cyrus → mythologize → one
A generation later, Adam’s twin sons Aron and Cal (Joe Anders and Joseph Zada) vie for the affection of their emotionally absent father.
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sons → vie → father
Kazan wrangles with the novel’s central question: Whether those boys can escape the shadows of their family history and forge their own paths—and whether America, carrying the sins of slavery, campaigns of violence against Native Americans, and racism against immigrants building a future in the West, can do the same.
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America → wrangle → same
Both versions are, in Kazan’s estimation, self-portraits of the artists who made them.
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who → make → 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.
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Kazan → direct → 1952
The Hollywood blacklist was in effect and, Faced with the possibility of never being able to work in Hollywood again, he named names.
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he → face → names
His granddaughter has never read his autobiography, though she has tried.
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she → read → autobiography
“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.
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she → ’ → stuff
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.”
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he → believe → Cal
Made during a period when the director was facing significant backlash, his version focuses on guilt, rejection, and alienation.
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version → make → guilt
What most intrigued Zoe Kazan, a new mother when she started on the script, were characters her grandfather rewrote or omitted: Cathy (Florence Pugh), a mother who walks out on her infant sons and whom Kazan calls “irredeemable, irresistible, and so full of agency,” and Lee (Hoon Lee), a Chinese American servant who steps in to raise the boys.
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who → intrigue → boys
Kazan may live closest to Cathy and Lee in her script.
uncertain
Kazan → live → script
But perhaps the reason she was drawn to the project is the notion of living and working in her grandfather’s shadow.
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she → draw → shadow
One cannot help but draw the parallel between her and the grandchildren in East of Eden, struggling with whether to embrace or break away from a burdensome legacy.
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One → help → legacy
“The irony was not lost on me.
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irony → lose → me
There’s a literal way that I’m following in my family’s footsteps,” Kazan admits.
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Kazan → ’ → footsteps
“I don’t think I’d be doing my job as an artist if I weren’t thinking about my family while making this family story.”
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I → think → story
Zoe Kazan was a teenager when she fell hard for Steinbeck.
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she → fall → Steinbeck
At 15, the Los Angeles native embarked on a Steinbeck-themed road trip up the California coast with her parents, dog-eared East of Eden in hand.
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native → embark → hand
Years later, she asked her agents to contact her if anyone purchased the rights.
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anyone → ask → rights
The call came in December 2019, while Kazan was shooting in Australia.
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Kazan → come → Australia
She emerged bleary-eyed from a flight back to L.A. with her 15-month-old to pitch her idea to the buyers.
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She → emerge → buyers
“I talked about America and the way that we don’t want to look at our shadow, and how the book argues that embracing your shadow, all of yourself, the good and the bad, is the only way to change,” she says.
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she → talk → yourself
By then she had built a career not just as an actor in The Big Sick and She Said but as a screenwriter with Ruby Sparks, a satirical take on the manic pixie dream girl, and Wildlife, a drama she co-wrote with her partner, Paul Dano.
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she → build → partner
She landed the East of Eden job and spent the next six years in Steinbeck’s world, and much of that time in the head of one of literature’s most complicated female characters, Cathy.
asserted
She → land → characters
Cathy appears mysteriously on Adam and Charles’ doorstep, badly beaten.
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Cathy → appear → doorstep
From there, she vacillates between a mesmerizing seductress and evil incarnate.
asserted
she → vacillate → seductress
…and 73 more, not listed.
The Aporia
