I'm not convinced the additional music and footage make the film all that much better, but there's no denying the film is now more than ever like Hinton's book....
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"The Outsiders," book and movie, is one of the most remarkable success stories in the history of literature.
In 1965 Susan Hinton, a high school student in Tulsa, Oklahoma, wrote a short story that she would publish two years later as "The Outsiders" we know today. It was soon taken up by high school and junior high school English teachers across the country, and young people everywhere began reading it and loving it by the millions. By the spring of 1980 a librarian at Lone Star School in Fresno, California, sent Francis Coppola a petition signed by students and faculty alike urging him to make a movie of this beloved book. Using a cast of largely unknown actors who would soon become megastars, Coppola's film became almost as well liked as the novel.
Since the film's release in 1983, Coppola tells us that he, Ms. Hinton, and Warner Bros. have been besieged with letters asking them "Where's the rest of the book?" The novel is short, but Coppola's movie was even shorter, ninety-one minutes, leaving out several key scenes at the beginning and at the end. Well, Coppola goes on in a written statement to explain that "I have a rule of doing anything kids ask of me," and so now he has restored about twenty-two minutes of previously deleted footage. For good measure, he also reworked the musical soundtrack (but don't worry: Stevie Wonder's "Stay Gold" remains), and WB remastered the video and appended their usual ton of extras to create this new, two-disc Special Edition DVD set, subtitled "The Complete Novel." Yes, there is still gold in this story after all these years.
What exactly did Coppola add to this new version? Well, obviously, he went back and restored some of the bits that he had initially shot and then deleted. He tells us on one of the disc's audio commentaries that he was persuaded to shorten the theatrical release to help it flow more quickly and smoothly, a decision he says he now regrets. Most of the restored material comes at the beginning and at the end of the film, with a few added sequences in between. The new opening shows Ponyboy coming out of a movie house, just as he does in the book, getting harassed and jumped by the rich-kid socs, and his brothers and friends showing up to save to the day. That new sequence lasts about twelve minutes. Then, there are little snippets here and there put back in, a bit more at the church on the hill and some things in the hospital, for instance. But the next-most important additions come at the end, where Coppola restored scenes of the trial, the school, the brothers bonding, and, finally, the book's original ending.
In addition, Coppola tells us he was never entirely satisfied with his father's epic, Max Steiner-like musical score, which tended to make the movie seem too much like "Gone With the Wind," an obvious allusion to the place of Margaret Mitchell's novel in the book that was maybe overdone. So, reluctantly, Coppola subtracted some of Carmine Coppola's music and substituted period tunes by Elvis Presley, Van Morrison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and others. Some of his father's music remains, naturally, as does Stevie Wonder's title song.
I'm not convinced the additional music and footage make the film all that much better, but there's no denying the film is now more than ever like Hinton's book, and that it is an improvement. First, though, let's take another look at the movie itself, using much of my review of the theatrical release as a starting point.
If you attended high school anywhere in the U.S. in the last thirty years, odds are you read S.E. Hinton's little book about lovable delinquents, "The Outsiders." Ask any graduating seniors what their favorite book was in high school and they'll probably answer, "The Outsiders." Doesn't matter who they are or where they're bound: Convenience-store clerk, the local community college, Stanford, or Harvard, it's always the same: "The Outsiders."
It's a depressing thought, actually, but it's no wonder Coppola chose Hinton's novel as the source for his next directorial effort in 1983 after the monumental failure of "One From the Heart" the year before. "The Outsiders" must have looked like a surefire winner, especially after the encouragement of high school students themselves, and Coppola was in desperate need of money. I suppose he figured that if the book helped thousands of English teachers all over the country get countless reluctant readers interested in something, the book could just as easily attract a few customers to theaters.
Under Coppola's very literal yet sometimes extravagant direction, the story is more faithful to the book now than ever, both a blessing and a curse. Those readers looking for visual reinforcement will get it in the film. Those people looking for an interpretation more insightful than the book has to offer will be disappointed. The book rather clunks along, and so does the new, expanded version of the movie.
After a melodramatic opening sequence worthy of "Gone With the Wind," accompanied by Wonder's overwrought theme song, "Stay Gold," the story unfolds as a narration by its main character, a high school freshman named Ponyboy Curtis. He tells us of his life as a "greaser," one of the boys from a poorer section of Tulsa, Oklahoma (where the author grew up) in the 1960s, and his conflicts with the "socs," the upper-class kids from the wealthier neighborhoods.
Ponyboy is an outsider for several reasons. Most obviously, he's from the "wrong" part of town, a poorer part of town, and the other kids at his high school tend to look down on him for it and be a little afraid of him. More important, however, Pony is an outsider even within his own group. He likes to do really strange things like read books, go to movies, and get good grades in school. He also cries a lot, showing us how sensitive he is, something most high school boys reading the book tend to overlook or ignore. Indeed, most boys reading the book don't even know that the author, S.E. Hinton, is a woman, Susan Eloise, and that she began writing "The Outsiders" when she was herself in high school. Nor do most students notice that while Ponyboy tells us that he and all of his close friends swear a lot and are exceptionally tough, there is no swearing in the book or the movie at all, and his friends are about the sweetest guys on earth. Students seem to get so caught up in the simplicity of the story and its language that they forget how really old-fashioned the narrative is. It's one of the book's greatest charms and possibly its greatest draw.
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