After several years as a clinical social worker and supervisor at a Harvard University-affiliated hospital and also as a private therapist in Boston, he relocated in 1980 to Los Angeles.
Continuing his work as a therapist there for several years, he eventually branched into journalism, publishing feature articles and interviews in The Real Paper, Cinefantastique,[1][2] American Film Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Saturday Review, Cosmopolitan, Movieline, GQ and More, among others.
His interview subjects have included David Fincher, James Cameron, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Yeager, Steven Soderbergh, Matt Damon, Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Cruise, Robert Downey, Jr., Sigourney Weaver, Nicole Kidman, Scarlett Johansson, Sandra Bullock, Joaquin Phoenix, Michelle Pfeiffer, Heath Ledger, Kate Winslet, Drew Barrymore, Keanu Reeves, Matthew McConaughey, and Denzel Washington.
On May 30, 1988, Abbeville Press published his award-winning non-fiction book Reel Art: Great Posters From the Golden Age of the Silver Screen (with Richard C. Allen).
"[2][4] Critic, author and filmmaker Richard Schickel called the book "indispensable and marvelously readable" and "one of the best accounts of the making of an individual movie we've ever had."
During the latter half of the 1990s, Rebello worked alongside many Disney artists as a writer on several ambitious animated film concepts and projects that remain unproduced.
In addition, Rebello wrote an as yet unproduced teleplay for a live-action version of a Disney animation classic with music for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).
Instead, the film began development in 2011 by The Montecito Picture Company with first-time director Sacha Gervasi at the helm of the project subsequently entitled Hitchcock.
Principal photography began on location on April 13, 2012, and the film was released in selected U.S. cities on November 23, 2012, with a nationwide and worldwide theatrical expansion thereafter.
The book, which details the history of Jacqueline Susann writing her bestselling novel and Hollywood's movie adaptation of that novel, received considerable media attention and critical praise.
The editors of Vogue chose it as one of best books of the summer, praising its "great detail and heavy research" and calling it "as heady and colorful as the pulsating Pucci prints Susann so famously wore."
Theater Jones called it "fascinating," "enlightening" and "entertaining," and "required reading for all Valley of the Dolls fans, of course, but also highly recommended as a postmortem view of the birth of a blockbuster, circa the 1960s."
This film about internecine power struggles and thwarted ambition had its share of big personalities involved in its making, among them Brando, Elia Kazan, playwright Arthur Miller, screenwriter Schulberg, producer Sam Spiegel, composer Leonard Bernstein, Marilyn Monroe, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Montgomery, Grace Kelly, Aaron Copland, and more.