Coppola Watch: The Outsiders (1983) - the full novel cut

Watched:  09/16/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Francis Ford Coppola

Selection:  Jamie

I've been meaning to see this movie *since* 1983.  But over time, I'd heard mixed things and I came to know what the story was, anyway, via cultural osmosis.  My one memory from when it hit cable in the mid-1980's was being told "you wouldn't like it" - and I genuinely don't know why I was told that at the time, probably aged 9 or 10.

When I was 11, the kid across the street came over while me and some others were sitting around in my front yard and asked us to "rumble".  I now assume they'd just seen this movie and were inspired.  We did not rumble.  We did ask them what movie they pulled "rumble" from.*  I think I now have the answer.

The movie is now mostly famous as the movie that launched careers.  All of the leads went on to become staples and household names for the generation that came up on the movie - it's sort of ground zero for a few brat packers.  Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane - and starring C. Thomas Howell as Ponyboy.  For those of us so-inclined, it also has an appearance by Michelle Meyrink.**  Sophia Coppola shows up for literally 30 seconds.

The movie is about the young people at the height of the "juvenile delinquency" national panic - the Greasers, who are white trash kids from the wrong side of their dusty Oklahoma tracks, and the Socs, who are the well-to-do kids from the South Side.  Adults are mostly a non-factor, the Greasers living somewhat abandoned by their parents - or in the case of Ponyboy and his brothers, orphaned.  The Socs are hovering nearby in new cars and khakis instead of dirty jeans.

Told through the earnest eyes of teens (the novel was written by an actual teen girl in the mid-1960's, SE Hinton) it does have the authenticity of youth's belief that everything in their world is working on an operatic level, which can drive choices that reverberate in the real world.  The Greasers are trying to get by in lives that will not peak in high school, because everything looks like a dead end.  The Socs are just learning how to bully the poor kids, getting ready for roles in corporate America, I guess.  A pretty, big hearted girl (Diane Lane) sees the Greasers almost as humans, and flirts with being... decent.  

After a day of run-ins, Ponyboy is hanging out with Johnny (Macchio) when they're jumped in the wee hours.  Ponyboy is almost drowned, and Johnny pulls a knife and kills the worst bully (played by Leif Garrett!).  This sends everyone into a spin, and Ponyboy and Johnny on the run, asking their most volatile pal, Matt Dillon, for advice.

The story is a tragedy built around young people.  While it doesn't echo Romeo and Juliet thematically, the same overwrought feelings drive both.  Both cover the drama in the lives of young people out of the line of sight of adults, or when responsible adults fall into the background of their lives.  This drama is paired with the intensity of feeling part-and-parcel of youth - as we see guys hug each other 10x more than will occur in nature, and weep about sunsets.  As a teen or younger, I suspect I would have liked this emotional outpouring a lot.  I remember having feelings!  And who doesn't see themselves as misunderstood and hanging by a thread in high school?  relatable!

As an adult, the story feels meandering, and the characters a bit one note, which makes sense given how many characters there are.  It's a mix of melodrama and class issues, and a study in the uselessness of violence.  Overall, it reads like someone who has extrapolated a lot from what they know of teen-life, something that weirdly gets forgotten by adults pretty quickly, even though it's a phase we all went through.  The (SPOILERS) moment Cherry looks away from Ponyboy at the end of the movie lands, man.

Coppola's post-Godfather II work could be insanely stylized - something I think we can expect more of in Megalopolis.  There's hints of what's to come in Dracula, for example, with superimposed images of characters like an Olan Mills portrait. Sunsets that seem to be shot on a backdrop.  But, also, the dialog eschews anything sounding natural to a forced dialect and rhythm that the characters adopt.  They speak in gee-whiz language of movies from the early-60's while also pulling blades.  It's a B-movie about youth gone wild overlayed with Robert Frost, colliding with each other uncomfortably.  No one is a bad actor, but the dialog sounds insane at times.

It's kind of cool that the movie isn't in New York or LA or a movie-city.  This is an unnamed outskirt of Tulsa, or near it.  It's post-Dust Bowl Oklahoma where there isn't much happening, and more like the rest of America than our densest cities.  It's a startlingly White movie, reserving it's eye for social issues to what's happening between White classes, with Black and Latino people only showing up in a handful of shots, but it seems aware of what it's framing.

I didn't dislike the movie, but it was exactly what I was expecting.  And we did watch the version with 22 extra minutes, so if it dragged, I can only blame myself.  It's a story for young people, so watching it at this age is maybe not the best way to take it in.  But I don't know what I would have thought in the early 90's when gun violence was a thing every night on the news in Houston, Greasers were a relic of a bygone era that already saw a nostalgia wave that had sailed by.  I cannot imagine what teens see in this now - a world of knives rather than guns, and organized, scheduled "rumbles" when drive-by's are something that just happens.

Maybe it works.  How different can teens be?

I'm glad I saw it.  I'm glad I'll get the references and stay gold.  But it's wild to see the men hitting elder-statesman status in Hollywood now (or passed on. RIP, Patrick Swayze) as the troubled youth of yesteryear.

*my memory is that, instead, I was goaded into squaring off with the neighborhood kid and everyone else would watch.  The kind of fight where two kids don't know how to fight ensued.  I was used to my much larger brother socking me, so I don't even remember if I was hit or not.  Soon, they moved out and a girl I was buds with moved in across the way, and that was better. She never threatened to punch me.

**yes, Jordan from Real Genius