RUMBLE FISH (1983)

With his self-financed studio on the line after ONE FROM THE HEART/’81 tanked, Francis Coppola (Ford-less at the time) got a welcome cash reprieve adapting S.E. Hinton’s THE OUTSIDERS/’83 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-outsiders-1983.html).  A credit lifeline he immediately blew on this art-house project, a second Hinton ‘troubled youth’ YA.  (Coppola’s like a character from Dostoevsky’s THE GAMBLER, going back to the tables with borrowed money to lose again.)  Arty as hell, with shimmering b&w shots so self-consciously angled they cancel out the last one, or read as parodies of films from the ‘50s.  (Stylized to death, was the film designed to be a musical just as Coppola’s TUCKER/’88 was before he got cold feet?)  Here, kid brother Matt Dilllon, wearing the clingiest of muscle ‘Ts,’* runs hot-and-cold about the return of big brother Mickey Rourke and the Oklahoma boy gangs he used to run.  Like OUTSIDERS, there’s another amazing cast to violently wile away the days – Nicolas Cage, Diane Ladd, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, Vincent Spano (excellent), Tom Waits Chris Penn – all artfully posed in the dramatic valleys between a few overly choreographed fight scenes.  Plus a died-and-floated-to-heaven shot for Dillon . . . till he comes back down.  (You’ll find a similarly hilarious shot at the end of FAR AND AWAY/’92 where Ron Howard lets the camera do all the work.)  Fun just to look at for two or three reels, then . . .  

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: With all the publicity for Coppola’s latest (last?) non-starter, MEGALOPOLIS/’24, he’s yet again trotted out RUMBLE FISH as his favorite amongst his films.  Like a mother favoring her weakest child.  Yeah, I know, weaker examples from FFC abound, but you get the idea.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Was Matt Dillon purposely groomed to look like Brooks Shields in a trouser role?  Everything but the chest.  And here’s a drinking game you can play.  Every time someone calls Dillon by his full name, Rusty James, take a shot.  Warning:  Everyone uses the whole name every time.