James Franco asked Paul McCarthy, whose self-effacing, irreverent art has only gotten bolder and grosser over the years, to re-stage what happened in director Nicholas Ray's Chateau Marmont suite, among James Dean, Natalie Wood and other cast members from Rebel Without a Cause — rumors about Champagne baths and sexual trysts abound. McCarthy agreed to “dabble.” So Rebel Dabble Babble, a show at the Box Gallery concurrent with MOCA's “Rebel,” organized by Franco, came to be. McCarthy hired actors to star alongside him and Franco in the videos that screen at the Box. Elegant Elyse Poppers plays Wood; in one vignette, McCarthy, as director Nick Ray, pulls a chair out from under her. You see her fall to the floor again and again, shot from all different angles. There are more explicit, more intense scenes in the show, but none get at the childishly violent absurdity of the Rebel mystique better than this.

Wednesdays-Saturdays. Starts: May 11. Continues through July 7, 2012

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