I first saw “The Outsiders” in its initial theatrical release in the spring of 1983. At the time, I was a twelve year old kid in junior high like Ponyboy Curtis. Though I definitely had more in common with a Soc than a Greaser, I honed in on Ponyboy’s adolescent rumblings of confusion, anger and disconnection, as well as his desire to belong, to fit-in and to simply get along.
After seeing it more than once in the theaters, “The Outsiders” was one of those movies I saw multiple times when it came out on videotape. It boasted a pre-brat pack cast of budding stars Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane, Emilio Estevez and Ralph ‘Karate Kid’ Macchio and, of course, Leif Garrett. It was one of those movies that made us want to go to a drive-in (which we still had in Cleveland in those days), smoke cigarettes, wear jean jackets and wander around pretending we had it rough in our Wonder Bread suburb. We were really just bored kids who were desperate to seem and feel cool.
And it was, lest we forget, the movie had the famous line, “We’ll do it for Johnny!”
Aside from the costumes, props and badass youth, “The Outsiders” tapped into a very real American teenage angst, isolation and confusion, like a “Rebel Without A Cause” for a younger generation – the X-Generation.
The other night, I re-watched Francis Ford Coppola’s 2005 edit of the film, titled “The Outsiders: The Complete Novel,” which integrates a great deal of footage that was cut from the original theatrical release. Coppola also ditched much of the original score and replaced it with rock and roll of the period from Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Van Morrison, making for a sound canvas that keeps us in the story and the time. (The recut positively proves that studio non-creatives in suits have no business the editing room.)
The overall experience of the 2005 re-edit of the movie is a revelation – a must-see for a teenager or any of us Gen-X adults who grew up with this spectacular young cast. All the themes of the original intact, but expanded and made even richer by Coppola’s re-edit. It was wonderful to see it again.
Original Trailer:
Links:
“The Outsiders” on IMDb
“The Outsiders: The Complete Novel” on DVD
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