Many of the obituaries for Hollywood star Luke Perry, gone too soon at 52, mentioned how the young actor sauntered to near perfection in his generation-defining role as “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Dylan McKay on Beverly Hills 90210. And then many of them offered a slight lament that Perry never became quite the James Dean they thought or hoped he might. Two responses to this are more than reasonable. First, even James Dean wasn’t the James Dean of enduring magnetic fame until his “live fast, leave a good-looking corpse” persona was cemented by his tragic Porsche-crash death at the tender age of 24. Giant, for which Dean received a posthumous Academy Award nomination, hadn’t even come to theaters yet when Dean died.
The other answer to the notion that Perry never achieved James Dean-like status ignores his very best movie, 8 Seconds, a bull-riding film starring Perry as Lane Frost, an indelible character in a powerful film that “changed the perception of bull riding,” according to Esquire and others. If Perry isn’t quite James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, it’s only because he is very definitely Luke Perry in 8 Seconds — a different generation star but a big charismatic star nonetheless.
Even 19-time bull-riding champion Gary Leffew, talking to KWTX, said how Perry had an enormous impact on his sport: “People watching that movie and the way that he portrayed Lane Frost, it just impacted a lot of people’s lives and, ya know, set goals to become bull riders. Everyone that’s been associated with rodeo for all these years has watched that movie over and over again, and he’s impacted so many kids and inspired so many kids to be bull riders or to be good rodeo cowboys.” Leffew should know — he trained Perry for the role. If fans want to determine whether Luke Perry fulfilled his potential to be the “next James Dean” they should watch 8 Seconds. Esquire called the film and Perry’s work in it an “underrated classic.”
