The Outsiders

The first of two films made by Coppola in 1983 and based on novels by youth fiction writer S.E. Hinton (‘The Outsiders’ was her first novel, published when she was just seventeen). Like ‘Rumble Fish’, ‘The Outsiders’ was a rites-of-passage novel that focused on the lives of disenfranchised urban male youth. Set in 1966 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it follows the lives of the members of two rival teenage street gangs; the middle-class Greasers and the working-class Socs. When Ponyboy, the youngest of three orphaned boys who hang out with the Greasers, and his friend Johnny, are involved in a deadly confrontation with the Socs one night, the two are forced to hide out and reconsider the direction their lives are taking. Cast includes Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise and Tom Waits. Original music by Carmine Coppola.