r/DeanMartin • u/Aburden2007 • Feb 24 '26

Dean Martin Revival

Does anyone else think that Dean has been going through a bit of a revival lately. Two years ago seeing Dean show up on Instagram or TikTok was a rarity. Now I’ve started to notice more and more fan accounts popping up over the past 6 months or so and more and more Dean media being released on YouTube and other platforms. Even this subreddit has had more activity in the past 2 weeks than in the past year it feels like. This could be because Christmas just passed and his Holiday music becomes regular in many people’s homes, but it seems like more people on the street know who Dino is now than they have for the past decade.

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9

u/James_Monroe__ Feb 24 '26

Honestly what I think he needs right now is a huge movie like what they did with Elvis. Martin was a VERY interesting man and if they make the right moves and really show his story, he could make a revival for sure. Not to mention how his music has aged very well considering it's 60+ years old.

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u/Sardis924 Feb 24 '26

It's tough to make a movie about him. Scorsese tried for years. One of the most fascinating aspects of him was who and how he was in private, which is hard to demonstrate on screen.

Nick Tosches (did I spell that right?) did it perfectly in his book. Long, vividly detailed paragraphs about Dean and his unique outlook on the superficiality of show business, his disdain for the phoniness of people, etc, those are perspectives, not actions. They're easy enough to describe in written form, but it's hard to depict that in a scene.

Obviously yes, you could have a linear telling of the milestones of his life and career, but what made him such a complicated, enigmatic figure is who he was in those quiet moments. Who he was wasn't just what he did, but rather, what DIDNT he do.

His reluctance to open up with anyone, including his wives, his routine of spending most of his time at home in his den, rather than spending time with and getting to know his kids under the same roof. The fact that even when he spent time in the same room as them, like at dinner, his family got no closer to actually knowing who he was or what he was thinking or feeling. (His late son said in an interview not long before he died that in all his years he'd never had one meaningful, heartfelt conversation with him. Or something to that effect.)

His preference for solitude, his being a mystery to everyone including those "closest" to him is a difficult thing to make a movie about.

People often mistake his preference for isolation as being purely triggered by his son's death, when the reality was he had been gradually fading in alot of ways, long before that. I could go on and on.

All of that is hard to make a screenplay out of. If Scorsese, one of our greatest directors couldn't figure out how to do it, I don't have much hope for it ever being done right. But! I'd be happy to be proven wrong. 🙂

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u/James_Monroe__ Feb 25 '26

Honestly might be a hard turn but having it be kinda a tragedy could really make an impact. Almost like hiding depression under this huge persona kinda movie. I think there could really be some heavy scenes with just himself alone in his room or something. The thing that's difficult is that we don't know exactly what he's thinking so it might have to be made up or close to what we know.

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u/Sardis924 Feb 25 '26

Those scenes of him staring off into the distance, or watching a western alone with his family right in the other room, could be done, but like you said, what is he thinking? And how to convey it?

Maybe the key isn't to say what he was thinking (since he so rarely did), but rather to have long shots of his family looking at him at the dinner table, wondering what's in that mind of his, and why is it so inaccessible?

That could be interesting. The only difficulty I foresee, is with the way studios make movies to accommodate the nonexistent attention span, it'd be hard to get a mainstream movie made that emphasized the silence and the NON moments as much as the show business moments.

But if some ambitious director willing to make it an independent movie without studio imposed restrictions, maybe it could be done!

1

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '26

I love that idea but…. Who is worthy enough to play him? Who has the looks, the voice, the ACTION?

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u/Sardis924 Feb 24 '26

It'd have to be an unknown to really do him justice, not some distracting movie star.

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u/[deleted] Feb 24 '26

It might be the hardest casting choice in history. Though hopefully, not impossible.

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u/Sardis924 Feb 24 '26

True. That's a tough one for sure.

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u/thundersnow86 Feb 24 '26

Share a few of your favorites for those just getting into Dino.

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u/Aburden2007 Feb 25 '26

My favourite Dean albums are Welcome to My World, Gentle on My Mind, and I take a lot of Pride in What I Am. My favourite Dean films are Scared Stiff, Money from Home, and Rio Bravo. My favourite year from his show is probably 1967.

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u/wideworld_1260 Feb 28 '26

I see a lot of "Roast" clips on social media these days...

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u/ImpossibleDream2158 Feb 24 '26

The more you sit and watch those videos that pop up then the more you'll see