The Outsiders (film)

The Outsiders
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Francis Coppola
Written by	S.E. Hinton Kathleen Knutsen Rowell
Produced by	Fred Roos
Starring	Matt Dillon Ralph Macchio C. Thomas Howell Patrick Swayze Rob Lowe Emilio Estevez Tom Cruise
Cinematography	Stephen H. Burum
Edited by	Roy Waldspurger
Music by	Carmine Coppola
Distributed by	Warner Bros. American Zoetrope Universal Studios Home Entertainment (DVD)
Release dates	Theatrical March 25, 1983 Extended September 9, 2005
Running time	Theatrical cut 91 min. Extended cut 113 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$10 million
Box office	$25.6 million

The Outsiders is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton, and was made in 1983 by Francis Ford Coppola.

The main characters are the Curtis brothers, Ponyboy, Sodapop, and Darry, and their friends Johnny Cade, Dallas Winston, Steve Randle, Keith "Two-Bit" Mathews. Together, they are a gang of greasers in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1967. The story is narrated by Ponyboy. The Curtis boys are orphaned after their parents are killed in a car accident. As a result, Darry forgoes college to care for his brothers so that the family will not be broken up.Nicolas Cage, and Johnny Depp were cameo's in the rumble scene.

The Greasers are, at first glance, the common stereotype of the juvenile delinquent. Their nickname is derived from the grease they use to slick back their long hair. The Socs (pronounced soashes, an abbreviation of Socialites) are the "haves" to the Greasers' "have nots." Although "The Outsiders" may seem to refer to the alienated Greasers, both groups are set back by economic, social, or creative limits.

Plot

This synopsis is of the 1983 original release. Dallas, Ponyboy, and Johnny sneak into a drive-in theater and seat themselves behind two Soc (pronounced "sohsh") girls, Cherry and Marcia. Dallas starts flirting with the girls and refuses to leave them alone until Johnny tells him to back off. Dallas leaves, and the girls ask Ponyboy and Johnny to sit with them. Later, the boys are walking the girls home when their drunken boyfriends catch up to them in their Mustang. Bob and Randy are itching to fight, but Cherry defuses the situation by asking Bob and Randy to take Marcia and her home. Johnny and Ponyboy go to a vacant lot and end up falling asleep. When Ponyboy goes home, Darry is upset with worry and, during the confrontation, hits Ponyboy. Ponyboy runs from the house back to the vacant lot and wakes Johnny. They go to a nearby park to cool off.

At the park, Ponyboy and Johnny are confronted and harassed by Bob, Randy, and their friends. The Socs try to drown Ponyboy in a fountain, but flee after Johnny draws his switchblade and stabs Bob to death. Ponyboy and Johnny seek help from Dallas, who gives them a loaded gun, money, and directions to an abandoned church in Windrixville, where they are to hide out until Dallas comes to retrieve them.

Ponyboy and Johnny cut off their hair to make themselves less recognizable, and Ponyboy bleaches his hair blond with peroxide. The boys pass the time by smoking cigarettes, playing cards, and eating baloney sandwiches. Ponyboy also reads to Johnny from a paperback copy of Gone with the Wind and shares the Robert Frost poem Nothing Gold Can Stay with him. Ponyboy confesses that he never quite understood the poem.

A week later, Dallas comes to visit the boys and takes them to get some hot food. Dallas tells Ponyboy and Johnny that Cherry is willing to stick up for them to the authorities. Johnny says that he and Ponyboy want to go home and turn themselves in, which upsets Dallas. Nevertheless, he starts the drive back home.

Ponyboy and Johnny see smoke from the direction of the abandoned church. They beg Dallas to drive by and they see that the church is on fire. When they hear the cries of children trapped inside, Ponyboy and Johnny both run in to rescue them. They get all the children out safely. Ponyboy escapes the inferno, but a roof beam collapses and falls on Johnny, who is still inside. Dallas immediately moves to rescue Johnny. Dallas, Ponyboy, and Johnny are taken to the hospital. Dallas has minor injuries, and Ponyboy is basically unhurt, but Johnny is in critical condition with severe burns and a broken lower back. Darry and Sodapop reunite with Ponyboy and, as the brothers hug each other tightly, Darry cries openly, (something he hadn't done in years, not even at his parents funeral) relieved that Ponyboy is alive. Johnny asks for a new copy of Gone with the Wind to replace the one lost in the fire.

The next day, Ponyboy is resting at home when Steve and Two-Bit come over. They show him a newspaper article that calls Ponyboy, Johnny, and Dallas heroes for rescuing the children in Windrixville, and that Johnny is being charged with manslaughter for killing Bob. Even though Randy and the other Socs had admitted that they had been the aggressors, and that Ponyboy and Johnny were only defending themselves, Bob's death at Johnny's hands has sparked the call for a gang fight, or a "rumble," from the Socs.

The day of the rumble, Randy seeks out Ponyboy and admits that he does not want to fight in the rumble, nor will he, because he feels that no matter what the outcome, nothing would change. He has grown weary of all the fighting, is ready to leave town just to get away from it, and wanted to tell someone who he felt would understand how he feels.

Dallas breaks out of the hospital to join in the rumble. The rumble begins, ending with the Greasers victorious. As the Greasers revel in their win, Dallas and Ponyboy rush to the hospital. The head doctor initially refuses to let them see Johnny because he is dying, but eventually relents. Dallas tells Johnny about the Greasers' victory, but Johnny seems disinterested. Dallas then tells Johnny that he is proud of him, which fills the younger boy with happiness. Johnny looks over at Ponyboy and tells him to "stay gold," and with that, Johnny passes away. Completely heartbroken, Dallas flees from the room.

Ponyboy returns home to tell the rest of the gang that Johnny is dead and that Dallas ran off. The gang is worried about what Dallas might do, and their worry becomes alarm when Darry receives a phone call from Dallas, who had robbed a convenience store and was now being pursued by the police. He tells the gang to meet him at the vacant lot. The gang races to the vacant lot to intercept Dallas, but they are too late; Dallas is already surrounded by police officers. He pulls out an unloaded gun and is shot to death by the police in front of his horrified friends.

Days later, Ponyboy is flipping through the copy of Gone With the Wind that Johnny had left behind and finds a letter from Johnny, addressed to him. Johnny's letter explains that the phrase "staying gold" in the Frost poem means to never lose the appreciation for the things one finds wondrous when one is young. He urges Ponyboy to tell Dallas about it. The film ends with him writing the opening line of the film, which is also the first line of the novel: When I stepped out into the bright sunlight, from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home...

Production

Francis Ford Coppola never actually wanted to make a movie about teen angst. What changed his mind was a middle school class, great fans of The Godfather, wrote to him about making a sort of gangster film, except about The Outsiders. When he read the book, he was moved and not only directed the film, he also adapted Rumble Fish into a movie the year after, again with Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, and Glenn Withrow.

The actors playing the Socs were put in luxury hotel accommodations and given leather-bound scripts, while the Greaser-actors were put on the ground floor and received tattered scripts. Coppola is said to have done this to create tension between both groups before filming. The cast played pranks on each other and the hotel staff during the shoot. Years later, Tom Cruise revisited the hotel, and when he discovered that it was the same hotel where he and the rest of the cast had stayed, his first words were, "I'm sorry."

Francis Ford Coppola went to arbitration unsuccessfully for the writing credits of this film.

Sodapop's fascination with Mickey Mouse, as shown in a later scene in the film, was thought up by Emilio Estevez, who approached the character as a "laid back, easy-going guy." This could also be a reference to a deleted scene (not included on the DVD) where Ponyboy tells Cherry about Sodapop's horse riding career and love for a horse named Mickey Mouse. The scene was also intended to highlight that Sodapop's having already suffered some heartbreak before his girlfriend leaves him, as well as the brothers' own sense of loss, but Coppola cut it because he felt it slowed the film's pace down.

The film was shot on location in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The drive-in is the Admiral Twin, still going strong in 2007.

Coppola filmed The Outsiders and Rumble Fish back-to-back in 1982. He wrote the screenplay for the latter while on days off from shooting the former. Many of the same locations were used in both films, as were many of the same cast and crew members.

The credits are shown at the beginning of the movie in the style normally found in a published play.

Music

While the film's score was composed by Carmine Coppola and the main title song is sung by Stevie Wonder (Stay Gold), the film also contains many songs that were hits from the time that the film takes place (the 1960's). These hit songs include:

• Real Wild Child - Jerry Lee Lewis
• Out of Limits - The Marketts
• Tomorrow is a Long Time - Bob Dylan (performed by Elvis)
• Mystery Train - Elvis
• We're Gonna Move - Elvis
• Lend Me Your Comb - Carl Perkins
• Milky White Way - Elvis
• Teen Beat - The Ventures
• "Gloria" - Them

Re-release

In September 2005, Coppola re-released the film, including 22 minutes of additional footage and new music, entitled The Outsiders: The Complete Novel, reinserting previously deleted scenes that helped bring this new version much closer to the book. However, a couple of scenes of Ponyboy and Johnny at the abandoned church from the original cut have been deleted; they are included in the deleted scenes segment of the DVD.

External links

• Official site
• The Outsiders at IMDb
• The Outsiders at AllMovie