THE OUTSIDERS (1983)

The classic YA novel, converted by Francis Coppola into something of an homage to ‘50s melodrama & stylistics (think Douglas Sirk; Nicholas Ray; and a soupçon of Elia Kazan).  With a frankly amazing cast of up & comers (Ralph Macchio, Diane Lane & Patrick Swayze already fully-formed actors among Method Actor wannabes C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, et al.), its story, as if you didn’t know, very WEST SIDE STORY/REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, but set in ‘60s small-town SouthWest where only teens seem to live, and wrong-side-of-the-track Greasers grumble & eventually rumble with cashmere-clad wealthy ‘Socs.’   Nowadays, the film plays as something of a parody of itself.  Heck, it did back then, too, but what’s become even more clear are the gender issues that drive the plot.  Not sexual issues; gender.  If readers & non-readers alike know one thing about author S.E. Hinton, it's that her manuscript was submitted with initials in hope that publishers would assume the author was male.  And something of the same thing is going on with the male heavy cast of protagonists: they’re really girls.  (Does that explain the gender-neutral nicknames?)  Sure they’re gross & rough, messy & ready for a fight, but also obsessed with GONE WITH THE WIND.*  (Have you ever met a teenage boy who’s read it?)  More touchy-feely than the budding ‘tween psychologists in STAND BY ME/’86, they cuddle for warmth, sleep with one head tilted on a BFF’s shoulder, and have æsthetic/philosophical heart-to-hearts on the impermanence of sunsets when not quoting Robert Frost.  (These deep feelings sure to be used as song cues in the soon-to-open B’way Musical adaptation.)  Getting out of the bath, they alluringly drape a towel on toned torsos to flaunt & flirt while sashaying thru the gang.  And does anyone have an actual, as opposed to an aspirational girlfriend?  Not gay, either.  Nor trans-anything.  Just girls in Greasers clothing.  It explains a lot.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  This Write-Up based on the original 1983 1'31" cut.  Twenty years later, Coppola upped the running time by twenty minutes with previously deleted material and tossed his father’s lush score for something more ‘Pop’ oriented, no pun intended.

DOUBLE-BILL:  OUTSIDERS, a big, if brief financial help after ONE FROM THE HEART/’81 bankrupted Coppola’s ZOETROPE, was soon back in the soup when his even artier b&w Hinton followup, RUMBLE FISH/’83, did barely a tenth the business later that year.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Coppola reveling in visual GWTW aspects.  Dramatically tinted long shots with silhouettes bathed in over-saturated autumnal color, opening credits with titles sweeping across the screen and the cast listed by ‘house.’   A particularly neat touch at the time as those famous opening credits had been replaced by a still title shot as the infamous 70mm re-release of GWTW in the ‘mid-60s was forced to re-do the title optical since it no longer fit properly in the cropped image.  The original title design only restored years later.