Speaker 1: All right, everybody, welcome back to the Shuley Can't Be
Serious podcast. This is episode two of our Tulsa duo
that we're doing right here. We're doing The Outsiders from
nineteen eighty three versus Rumblefish from nineteen eighty three. Both
of these Francis fort Coppola, of course, both have Matt
Dillon and them. Yeah, I got a question for you. Yeah,
I'd like to play a fifty two pickup. No, don'll
be wise.
Speaker 2: He was such a jerk.
Speaker 1: He was a jerk.
Speaker 2: They said it off at the beginning. It was the
little kids. Yeah, it was the opposite idea of saving
the cat. It was like, what can we make this
guy do that? Everybody's going to hate him right off
of the bat, right, and it's be a jerk to
these little kid Not only does he flip the cards
at him, but then he chases them. You just were
you ever a little kid and you had this like
jerk sure head guy who chased you and was rude
to you. Did you hate his guts?
Speaker 1: I wanted to die, still do.
Speaker 2: And that's what we got. Like that was my that
was my neighbor. That freaking greaser shot my dog. I
mean I hated the dude like that. Yeah, and he
was he was such a greaser. He was always working
on his Camaro.
Speaker 1: We were talking. I was talking to Kayleb before we
started tonight, and he was like, man, I was so
bummed when Dolly got shot at the end, and I'm like,
he's held up a convenience store.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he didn't. Also, he didn't see the beginning. But
somehow this is great. This is great stuff because you
start off hating this guy. I mean you you genuinely hate.
Speaker 1: Him, right, he's a turn to Cherry Valance.
Speaker 2: And after you see what he does, I mean, that's
another reason to hate him, honestly, Like you see him
be such a jerk to Cherry. And then the last
thing she says is I'll probably end up falling in
love with him, and you know she freaking likes him,
you know, like I'm in the position of phony boar,
where like I'm that guy, I'm the guy who like
she's being so nice to be and I'm totally in
love with her, and she's in love with the guy
who is an absolute jerk to her.
Speaker 1: Right, it's inevitable, right.
Speaker 2: But then slowly throughout the movie, he keeps doing these
little things to take care of these guys. Right.
Speaker 1: He takes care of Johnny and Pony.
Speaker 2: I mean when they are in their crisis stage, he
is the one who does not hesitate. He gives them
what they need. He gives I mean, fifty bucks for
a kid in the sixties was huge, gives it to
him immediately, gives him a gun, immediately tells them exactly
where to go and what not to do and what
to do, and I mean he lays it out.
Speaker 1: He's kind of their hero at that moment.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, he saves He saves them and then comes to
see them and saves them again. I mean, he's taking
care of them. He's doing everything he can to protect
them for what he sees to be the bad guy,
so that by the time the end is there and
you see him stick the gun in that guy's face.
I don't remember if they touched on this, but I
think in the book it talks about he always carried
an unloaded gun. Okay, so he's sticking the gun in
the clerk's face, but we know it's unloaded. But then
the clerk's gun is loaded, right, So he's bleeding out
and he decides I'm going to go all the way
and commits suicide.
Speaker 1: Do it for Johnny Man, do it for Johnny.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: By the way, I told you this yesterday.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had a great time going around Tulsa finding all
these spots. And some of them you can find on Google.
Some of them you can't. Some of them if you
kind of look around, you might be able to figure
it out. The spot where the fountain is is very recognizable.
You can see that the girls brother's house, it's a landmark.
You can find that easily. But the place where Dally
gets shot and killed, I walked around and I started
to look at my phone try to figure out. Okay,
that tree is there, and that thing's there. Okay, there's
that fence right there. And I figured it out, and
I was standing in the spot. I'm like, go there,
it is right there. And Dolly was shot and killed right.
Speaker 2: That you showed me that picture. I'm like, this is
what the guys see as they're running screaming now towards him. Right,
and he goes rolling down the hill.
Speaker 1: Crutchfield Park tells, Okloma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, you're ready to move on to Rumblefish. Yes,
now we get a lot of crossover here, a lot
of crossing. We obviously have Diane Lane still in it.
We've obviously got Matt Dillon still in it. I mentioned
already that Glenn Withrow is both you know, he slash
Mont Dyer's Tim Shepherd or whatever his name is, right,
and is also Biff in the rumble scene and Rumblefish.
But we've got some new people. We got mister Mickey
Rourke who you mentioned audition for The Outsiders didn't get apart,
but Francis was taken with his audition. Okay, let's just
take a step back and think about our origin story here. Yes,
he decides to shoot Rumblefish while he's shooting the Outsiders,
like he was unfamiliar, right, And he literally like gets
the recommendation from Matt Dillon and s he Hinton. He
reads the book and it captivates him so much that
he literally the words fly off the page as he
sits down to write the script for this thing. And
just a few weeks after they are finished filming The Outsiders,
they start filming Rumblefish, and they've got to go through
all of the casting process. But he said, at this time,
with these young actors, he felt like one of the
old directors who had just like their arsenal of actors
that always were willing to work with him. And he
said it was this really great moment where he was
just like he didn't have to go call the casting
director and this person in the studio and that person
and the agents and all this other stuff. He just
called these guys back up and was like, Hey, I
got this other movie. I'd love you to be in it.
Would you like to come? And because he's Francis Ford Coppola,
they were like, yes, yes. And so you've got Mickey
Rourke who had auditioned. You've got Matt Dylan and Diane Lane,
and then you got Dennis Hopper who was in Apocalypse Now.
I mean, he was an icon at the time. He
was very into his intoxication at the time as well,
h which was also a problem with Apocalypse Now. And
Francis Ford Coppolo would be like he He's like, I
love him. I loved Dennis Hoprat's why I want him
in this movie. But his indulgence at the time was
extreme and it would be difficult. And so what I
did to deal with that is that whenever it was
time for him to shoot his scenes, I would go
to my trailer and watch it from a video screen
and I would not be in the same place as him,
and he would get mad and he would come pound
on my door. But that was how I dealt with
him being intoxicated all of the time.
Speaker 1: Wow, you know he originally wanted for that role to
Jack Nicholson.
Speaker 2: Well, there you go, and the other guy from Easy Writer, right.
Speaker 1: Yep, there you go.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: By the way, Mickey Rourke. Yeah, when you watch Rumblefish,
he's so quiet and like reserved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he doesn't.
Speaker 1: Raise his voice at all. And he's supposed to be
like the coolest guy alive, right, right, he's supposed to
be James Dean on steroids.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, the guys who were in charge of like the
sound kept asking him to speak up, dude, speak up,
and so their nickname for this movie Mumblefish.
Speaker 2: Well, they had this idea that he was kind of
the philosopher king, and so they changed his hair. They
wanted to make him look like a French philosopher, so
they picked Camu as their French philosopher to go with. Okay,
and so his haircut and his cigarette, the way he
held a cigarette and all that stuff. That was all
this idea of him being philosophical and intelligent, kind of
the opposite of Rusty James.
Speaker 1: By the way, Mickey Rourke decided, I'm going to play
this role as if I'm an actor who no longer
finds my work interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, it's interesting. So here here was his acting technique, right, Yeah,
a couple of talks about this. He's like, so every
day he would show up to set, to the set
and he would have a new little talisman, a new
little fidget spinner, nick knack, whatever you want to know, Okay,
some sort of something right, something new right. And he said,
what Mickey would do is he would take this thing,
he would look at it at the beginning of the day,
he would look at it, and then he would stick
it in his pocket and for the entire scene, every
time he was in a scene, he would spend the
entire scene thinking only about that talisman. And so that's
how you get this kind of distracted thousand yard stare,
I'm pondering the mysteries of the universe. It was he
gave himself something to think about other than what was
going on in the scene. And it really created. I mean,
I love this performance in this I mean you can
call him mumblefish or you can you can call it
whatever you want, but I love it. I mean, he's
he is perfect as the guy who has led the brigade,
only to realize I've got nowhere to go. Yeah, and
that's where he is.
Speaker 1: That's the whole point of the movie, right, right, I'm leading,
I'm leading the pied Piper and where am I going?
Everybody's following me, but where am I going?
Speaker 2: Right? And he doesn't know the answer to that.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, by the way, Yeah, Mickey Rourke goes on
to do Nine and a half Weeks. He does a
great movie speaking about Man exactly right, Vicki Vale. He
does a very controversial movie in eighty seven with Lisa
Bonet called Angel Heart. Remember that right, got her fired
from the Cosby Show.
Speaker 2: Cosby girls do not show their nipples.
Speaker 1: That's true. And then later on don't forget In Iron
Man two, he plays whiplash.
Speaker 2: And if you want to talk about it, I mean
he's still quiet and contemplative and smoking his cigarettes, but
he doesn't talk like this anymore. I'm like, whoa, how
is that that same voice? What happened. Too many cigarettes.
CHEMU what are you doing here?
Speaker 1: That's right by the way. Francis Ford Coppola invited Tom
Cruise to be involved in Rumblefish as well. Okay, and
Tom Cruise was like, listen, I know I told you
that whatever you said, I was there. He goes, but
I'm doing this thing called risky business and I can't
get out of it.
Speaker 2: We're gonna be covering that movie soon.
Speaker 1: Good call.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was a great movie. Yeah, maybe the
eighty three trio. I love it. Okay. We've talked about
Nicholas Cage in this yep, now interesting part in this movie.
There are a lot of kind of key ingredients that
you don't even realize how important a character he's going
to be in this movie until the end, right, And
there's a lot of key ingredients to what happens that
we're all Nick Cage's ideas. So I'm excited to tell
you about that. Come back there. And then we haven't
talked about pre Footloose mister Chris Pinn.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot Chris Pinn.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, So Chris Pin Sean Pinn's brother who's in
Reservoir Dogs, who's in footloose pale rider.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is this over the top and again one
of is very maybe his first this may be his
first movie, I don't remember, but he's this over the
top member of Rusty James's gang. He's entertaining in this.
I don't know how to describe him other than that
she does he plays the part that he needs to
play perfectly well.
Speaker 1: He does a great job.
Speaker 2: And then we get another guy that we've seen before
in Apocalypse Now, mister Larry Lawrence Fishburn.
Speaker 1: Lawrence Fishburn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Larry Fishburn is his credit in this particular movie.
He wasn't in the script. This again was just one
of those Hey, I really like working with Larry. Let
me give him a call and see what he's got
going on. And he's he calls him up, and the
character's name is Midget, and he's kind of just this
apparitional angel. I mean, he's he's real, but he just floats.
Speaker 1: Around like he's always around. Yeah, before you leave, Larry Fishburn, Yeah,
go ahead.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He goes on to do the Matrix. When Francis Pooracoppola
called him, he said, listen, it's just a small part,
but we'll figure out something cool for you to do.
Just come out, come out to Tulsa, and you can
make it your own and we'll find something creative to
do with it. And he said he was like a
son to me, so I wanted him around.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the kind of familiar atmosphere that he's got,
so sure for sure.
Speaker 2: So we got another carry over from the Outsiders, mister
William Smith, who you and I were talking about him.
I was like, man, I saw the cop in Rumblefish,
and I was like, I think that's the same guy
as store clerk and the Outsiders, And I was like,
I know that guy's face. Where do I know that
guy's face? I had to look him up, and he
was Filo Betto's friend but competitor in any which way
you can.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, it's been too long since I've seen
that movie.
Speaker 1: I love those movies. Yeah, I would love to talk
about those movies someway too.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: That was like my dad's favorite actor growing up was
always Clint Eastwood, so I'm very familiar with Left Turn Clyde.
I haven't seen those movies in decades, and I would
love to go revisit them. We need to do every
which wave but loose any which way you can, and
maybe we'll compare them to Dirty Harry. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh that'd be so much fun. Yeah, one other little
side note, I just want to toss in here. Yeah, you
know they say Rusty James over fifty times in.
Speaker 2: It was noticeable. It was noticeable. I was like, it's
a little excessive here.
Speaker 1: I don't call you James D every four seconds.
Speaker 2: Right right? Well, yeah, yeah, there are some people like that.
A lot of people do call me d Grapes. They
do give me the full name. I don't know why
it is. He's don't know if you got to give
me a full name. Let's go with the Graves. So
we as you mentioned, Tom Waits is also in this movie.
He was he was the kind of the club owner
and the outsiders and he is the pool room owner
and rumblefish. And then there's a small part the Blackpool
player who was like, you will never be the motorcycle
boy talking to Rusty James, Right, you'll never be him.
You just it's just not ever gonna happen. That's an
actor named Herb Bryce. He was also an Apocalypse Now
also one of those guys that Francis Coppola just called
up and said, Hey, we're doing this movie. Come over,
let's figure out something to do with you. Just loved him,
wanted me to be there.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, we talked about it before. And I
don't know his name, but Bob from Batman is one
of the thugs in Rubblefish.
Speaker 2: That's right, That is right, Bob from Batman.
Speaker 1: He's uh, what's his name? In City Slickers in he's
one of those that guy, you know, he's just kind
of that guy in a lot of.
Speaker 2: Movies kind of Yeah, he is kind of that, Yeah,
that guy who's always the cookie, the.
Speaker 1: Chef, Cookie, the chef. That's exactly right. I'd love to
talk about City Slickers one of these days.
Speaker 2: Oh and by the way, one one other person that's
in both movies that we didn't mention, is he hitting Yeah,
that's right. So the author of the book, you know,
she's very involved with production of the movies. In The Outsider,
she is the nurse who is trying to help Dally
as he's just being a.
Speaker 1: Total jerk turd to her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolute turd. And then in Rumblefish, she's the hooker.
Speaker 1: She's the prostitute.
Speaker 2: She is the hooker, and she is flirting with Matt
Dillon and she is flirting with Steve, who's played by
Vincent Spano.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: Vincent Spano was in a lot. He's been in a
ton of stuff. But Nick Cage at the time was blonde.
Had to dye his hair black. Vincent Spano has black hair.
He had to dye his hair blonde. And then one
other person who just has kind of a unique part,
the heroin Addict, former girlfriend of Motorcycle Boy is oh
a girl named Diane Scarwood and her character's name is Cassandra.
And I'm just gonna say that, I'll throw this out
there because it's you know, why not be why not
be that guy? So there's this scene where Dennis Hopper,
Mickey Rourke, Matt Dillon are all in the apartment and
they're goofing and stealing liquor bottles and horse around with
each other. This was all improv like Francis Pourcoppola encouraged
them to try to get familiar with each other in
this way. And this scene, Matt Dylon Rusty James starts
talking about this girl Cassandra and he's like, ah, she
says she's not hooked, but I think she's hooked. And
Dennis Hopper, being the genius that he is, Greek's got him.
And he's Russey James like what and he says, he's like,
the Greek's got him. Yeah. Cassandra is a key character
in Greek mythology. She was a trojan Trojan princess who
Apollo fell in love with. This is I've got to
give this to you because I these are the holes
that I go down. Right. Apollo falls in love with
his Trojan princess, you know, sister to Paris and Hector
and all those folks anyway, and promises her divinity if
she does some you know, favors some things, some things sure,
and she's like, yeah, okay, I'll do that. And so
he gives her divinity and then she says, Okay, I'm
not really going to do that. And so her curse
that he gives her because he couldn't take her divinity
away was that she would always be able to predict
the future, but no one would ever believe her. Uh.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: So just something to kind of swim around in your
head as you're thinking about how that Rumblefish plays out,
because I feel like it's connected and maybe it's just
Dennis Hoopper being Dennis Hopper and being awesome, But Mickey
Rourke was right on it and knew what was going on.
Speaker 1: There's so many layers rumblfish. I would not put that
past anyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so how much does this movie, like did you
identify with, Like, did you think the outsiders? Yeah, like,
I know guys like this. I was in this group.
I was in this group. I was watching these groups
from outside.
Speaker 1: Well identified a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The group that I'm most involved with is the south
Side socials.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I did go to a south Side high school.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: That's you know, very affluent, right and preppy even yeah,
with money and so my running crowd were the Socials
for sure.
Speaker 2: So jinks, jinks. I went to a smaller school, like
and so it was it was basically saysus and cowboys basically,
but the bigger schools in the town were north Side
and south Side, and it was south Side again that
was more affluent than the north Side. Uh huh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know the interesting thing about my school and I
don't I don't want to get into my personal stuff
too much. But Jinks is split by the Arkansas River.
But that's the river that Rusty James is trying to
get those fish into, right, is that's the Arkansas River, Right.
I crossed that river every single day. I went high
school there and back.
Speaker 2: Yep, so I live. I live next to the Arkansas
River in an entirely different place. I was in Fort Smith. Yeah, yeah,
it says, yeah river, Arkansas River flowed right by the town,
right in between you know, us and Oklahoma. Really there
you go. So was there anything about Rumblefish that you
were like, oh yeah, okay, yeah, I remember something like
that as a kid, not as much, not as much
both teen movies, right, sure, but you definitely have what
was kind of the t were the tropes of teen
movies back in the eighties, especially right, but with Rumblefish
you still had some stuff that for me, as you know,
a small town kid, I was like, oh, yeah, there's
the pool room. Like everybody always went and played pool
at the pool room. That was where we hung out
right right. You know, somebody would be playing music on
the jukebox, we'd be talking very much like daised and
confused pool video games foosball. That's what we did. And
then there was a part and Koppla talked about this
as well, where they're under the bridge. It's after they've
been mugged by Bob and the guy with the pro
bar or whatever, right right, and they're under the bridge.
And he talked about how when you're a kid, you
just try to kind of find places to go that
are your places and are secret and mysterious, and he
says a lot of times for a kid that is
a bridge sure totally hit home for me. It was
the bridge that went over the Arkansas River. Like there's
a huge bridge that goes that crosses the border between
Arkansas and Oklahoma. And when I was a teenager and
and running around and getting into mischief, at some point
I was under the bridge and I looked up and
I'm like, there's a ladder, and I realized that the
ladder went up to this crawl space that was literally
under the bridge. And I realized I can crawl all
the way from Arkansas to Oklahoma on my hands and
knees going underneath this bridge. And that's exactly what I did.
And then I started bringing friends there. I'm like, guys,
you got to see.
Speaker 1: This, So that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is the beauty about these two movies. As
polar opposites, you still look at them and you go, yeah,
that's like it was sure I was a kid, right, sure,
or if you're a kid, yeah that is me that
And I think that's why all of those kids had
such a strong identification with the outsiders, so much so
that they were like, hey, mister Koppla, will you please
make this into a movie?
Speaker 1: Sure? Yeah, I got one last Arkansas River story for you. Okay,
last day of seventh grade. Okay, nineteen eighty six. I
still remember I had Van Halen fifty one fifty in
my walkman. Okay, we're crossing the river on my you know,
the yellow school bus. Yeah, not the short one, the
long one. And we decide that the funniest thing ever
would be if we all threw all of our papers
out of the window at the same time and like
the entire school and it just caught fire like that bus.
We saw that bus doing it, so we did it
the next bus. We dumped so much paper into the
Arkansas River.
Speaker 2: Now, the other thing, the other thing that hit home
for me, would not have hit home for me as
a teenager but as a now in my forties year
old man. Was the speech that Tom Waits gives as
Benny in Rumblefish Okay, where he's talking, he's cleaning up glasses,
he's cleaning up the bar, and Bennie's billiards right right,
And it's this kind of weird angled shot from the
ceiling where you, as he's talking, you're looking kind of
down over the top of his head and you have
a very big space and the picture that's taken up
by this clock where it's got this scrolling kind of
menu and specials thing. And he's talking about how when
you're young, you can lose a year or two and
it doesn't make any difference. But at some point, and
he says the line, he's like, at some point you
realize you've only got thirty five summers left.
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine that.
Speaker 2: Thirty five summers. And I thought about it for a second.
I'm like, I don't think I have thirty five summers.
And that's the key kind of clincher for this teen
movie is it's all about time, right, And so if
you if you watch with that in mind, you will
see clocks everywhere. They are everywhere all over the place.
And what's looming, right, I haven't. I'm giving you my
own interpretation of this. But what's looming in this movie
is that cop. Right, the cop has it out for
Motorcycle Boy, he writes, and we know how the movie ends,
so we know it's coming. And it's as though Rusty
James knows that that's what's coming as well. And he's
the little brother who got left alone, which is as
a little brother, that's the terrifying thing.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I felt like Francis Ford Copla did about his older brother.
I feel that way about my brother, like he was
the first and best teacher I had, right, and when
he's gone, when he's missing, that's troubling to me. And
so you've got this scene where the cop walks up
to Motorcycle Boy and Rusty James inserts himself in between
those two, protecting his brother from death. The cop has
got to be death right right. They are standing in
front of a gigantic cluck.
Speaker 1: It's a huge clock with.
Speaker 2: No hands on it. It is fantastic. I mean, Francis
Ford Coppola in this movie, and Rumblefish is definitely tapping
into the art film, into the existentialist style of the
Germans that he loved, you know ing bar Bergmann and
all these other You have these, you have the time
last photography. You have the black and white. He even
painted shadows on things to give it the right feel.
And the only things that you have in color are
the fish, the rumblefish.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, I'm dying to talk about that. Yeah, this
is a black.
Speaker 2: And white movie.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind this is nineteen eighty three. You
can't computer color stuff. The only thing in color are
the fish.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That was a stunning visual for me. Right, it's like
have you ever seen the movie Pleasant Bill? Yeah, it's
sort of similar type of feels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's not done with the computer at that time.
They just filmed it in color and then did an
overlay so that only the fish would be in color.
One other part is when Russey James realizes he will
never achieve his dream, which is to be his older brother,
to become his older brother. He will never achieve it.
He just watched him die. He does this last ditch
effort to kind of finish his mission of putting the
rumblefish in the river. So kill each other, right, maybe
they won't kill each other, and then he gets arrested.
And when you see him getting arrested, you see him
look at himself in the reflection of the cop car
window and he's in color.
Speaker 1: It's awesome. It's awesome.
Speaker 2: There's a lot going on, and I'm really disappointed that
Rumblefish wasn't better received than it was.
Speaker 1: You know, and Copla when he's doing his commentary, he
can't really understand it because he's like, I just don't
really get it. And I saw a guy. You know,
Copola is a wonderful artist, but this guy said he
had the financial sense of a newt Right. But this
movie is so interesting. If you haven't seen it recently,
you really owe it to yourself to give it a rewatch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but
this is one of those movies that I'm like, well,
actually I haven't seen that movie. And he's like, watch,
you haven't seen The Outsiders, right, Yeah. Before we did this,
I had not seen The Outsiders. I had not seen Rumblefish.
So I literally got to watch these movies back to back,
back to back a few days apart, and they are
so very different experience, and I don't know as a
teenager in the eighties, I probably would have been like
everybody else. I been like Outsiders is great. Rumblefish weird
right now as a man who's watched a bunch of
movies and has some more mature taste, I don't want
to tip my hand here, but Rumblefish is definitely a
movie that you, guys, if you haven't seen it, please
go watch.
Speaker 1: I could call that, by the way, I haven't said yet. Hey,
by the way that Okay, there's one thing I really
want to talk about with you in pertaining to Rumblefish,
the out of body experience that Rusty James has. Okay,
I know that practically speaking, they had to make a
body mold for Matt Dillon and it was kind of
uncomfortably couldn't move around, and they actually had to use
a crane to kind of move him around. And it
looks really cool, and I think Bram Stoker's Dracula again,
Francis Farcoppola, right, it's a practical effect and he's moving
around hovery and sort of out of body experience. Yeah,
what did you think about that scene?
Speaker 2: Well, what I thought was he is envisioning his death,
like everyone wants their death. To be. When he goes
by the house that his girlfriend and her little sister,
they're balling their eyes out right, they're hysterical with grief
right when he goes and he and he goes past
the pool and by the way side note he also
continues to lie to her at that point. He did
not screw around with the other girl and smokes a cigarette.
That's some funny stuff right there. But anyway, and then
he goes to the pool room and all of his friends,
all of his friends are like raising a toast, you know,
it was an honor to know you. Kind of situation.
Did I think he was dead? Yeah? But I started going,
is this is just his dream of what death would
be like? This isn't actually it?
Speaker 1: So I read some stuff. A lot of people had
trouble with that particular scene, and for me, it works.
It works in the movie. The movie is just weird
enough that it pulls off all these things. But it's
consistent because when he's in his high school shop class,
he's daydreaming about his girlfriend and she's in lingerie on
top of the bookshelves.
Speaker 2: With a clock behind her, by the way, with the clock.
Speaker 1: Behind her, and so there are some sort of in
and out imaginary things that happen.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because they don't give you a clear transition,
Like you are watching stuff where he's in class and
is looking at her, and so you're like, you know,
this is a dream. She's not going to really be
in a bikini or in lingerie on the top shelf
in the classroom, right, And then he goes back to
him as he's kind of in this fever from being slashed,
and then he goes back again. He's in shop class
and you see her in the clock is spinning, and
then all of a sudden he's talking to her outside
of her house, helping with the groceries out of the trunk,
and you're like, is this another dream? Right? Oh wait, no,
this is it And there's no clear cut Hey, okay,
we're back to reality now. It's just they kind of
mix it in and I'm like, okay, I guess we
just got better. And that's it. You don't really have
any more on it. Hi.
Speaker 4: I'm Daton, the host of the docum based seventy seven podcast.
We talk about everything from Anthrax to the Muppets to
West Side Story.
Speaker 1: All right, boys, buckle up, because we have hit the
bottom of the barrel because he slaughters all the Tusken Raiders.
The fact that she stays by his side, that that
tells me everything I need to do about these women
that write letters to serial killers in prison.
Speaker 2: You know, it makes it made sense.
Speaker 1: You know, MOPy Young Sad always dumped Tim.
Speaker 2: That was the theme song.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: When you listen, Tim, did you have the volume on?
The witches are definitely much more nightmare fuel. But the
fact that they look like the Texas Chainsaw centerfolds.
Speaker 4: If Jango fet is so awesome, he's hired to be cloned,
Why the hell isn't he doing the job? You like,
Mike Client's getting impatient, Well, then what your slack ass mother?
Speaker 1: Why don't you do it?
Speaker 4: You know you just check us out on Apple podcast,
good Pods, pod Beam, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: One other thing we've talked several times now about the
fact that you have gone to these different places, both
in Rumblefish and in The Outsiders. There was a place
that was very cool looking in Rumblefish, okay that you
will not be able to find okay because they completely
created it. But it was still in Tulsa. Yeah, it's
the fair. Yeah. So when they go to the black
neighborhood where everybody is having a fantastic time, I mean,
it looks awesome. It looks great, Like I want to
go hang out there and listen to Queen Eye to
sing the blues and drink beer and playpool, listen to
you know, guys playing guitar, and it was awesome. It
was completely created for the movie at an abandoned alleyway
and area of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Yeah, video arcade, right, he's
playing the video arcade. That's the other thing about this,
Like The Outsiders, it it takes place in the sixties
and looks like it could be very well in the eighties.
And this movie looks like it's taking place in the sixties.
But video games, magazines, cars all giveaway this is the eighties. Yep.
Speaker 1: Hey, one of the things I wanted to talk to
you about this is a conversation I had with our
buddy Jeff Johnson. Okay, the score and music for both
of these Now for me, you have that the Stevie
Wonder song at the beginning of Outsiders, yep, which is
very after school special.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan at all of that right, And
I know you and I talked. I said, you know,
there's this sort of over the top score. It really
adds a lot of cheese to it.
Speaker 2: It's wrong.
Speaker 1: We didn't like it at all.
Speaker 2: Carmine Coppola, Yes.
Speaker 1: His dad did the music for it.
Speaker 2: So now this guy, I mean, he was a very
well known composer, had done a ton of work before this,
Francis Ford coupla. Once he had it and had heard
the score, he was like, I don't really think this
is right for this movie, but I don't have the
courage to tell my dad that. So he just went
with He just went with it. And so when they
did the DVD re release where they added scenes that
had been cut, added the trial scene that we talked about, he,
I mean, his dad had passed away at that point.
He's like, well, I'm a little free now to do
more of what I want. And so, as I understand,
I haven't seen it, but they like they put more
sixties songs in there and made it more of a
sixties feel popular.
Speaker 1: Okay, sound so listen to this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you and I had a conversation a couple of
days ago, and we're like, the score it's it's way
too much after school special. It's too much. Copla didn't
like it. His dad did it. He was in a pinch.
We get it, okay, But you and I had talked
him basically agreed that if they had dropped that and
plugged in some rock and roll, sixties era rock and roll,
it really jazzed up and make it feel better. So
I talked to Jeff Johnson and I called him up,
and he loves The Outsiders, and he asked me, he said,
have you seen the complete novel version of The Outsiders?
And I said, well, no, I'm watching the one on
HBO Max. And he's like, whatever you do, don't waste
your time with the new complete volume. Really, and his
complaint was the music, really, And I said, what are
you talking about. He's like, they took out that score
and they like ram rock and roll down your throat,
like sixties era rock, and I'm like, are you kidding?
So anyway, he was very, very firm that Copola's score
was better than the rock that they added. So I
think that's interesting because we had said that's how to
make it better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy interesting.
Speaker 1: By the way. One more thing, yeah, the music for Rumblefish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is good is.
Speaker 1: Done by our main man, Stuart Copeland of the Police.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so here's the thing. We get to Rumblefish and
he's like, Dad's not going to score this one. He
was actually going to try to score it himself. He
had gotten together and he again the key, like the
theme word for this is time. So what else are
you going to do? But you're gonna have a metronome
beaten out of very clear time signature, right, And they
based their rhythm around a clock. And so he's kind
of got this idea. He knew of Stuart Copeland with
his work with the Police, and he said he was
so precise, he was so mathematically precise with his rhythm.
He asked him to do the drums for this movie.
And so he gives them this music that he's kind
of worked up and Stuart Copeland starts playing with it,
and then Stuart Copeland comes to him and says, how
would you feel if I did the whole score? And
so he said it wasn't strikingly different from what he
had come up with. It was still very similar, but
it was better for sure what Stuart Copeland had done.
And this is a big deal because at that point
he's just the drummer for the police, which is not insignificant,
but he goes on to become a substantial film composer
after this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so besides putting Sting in a headlock, he can
actually compose the stuff for movies.
Speaker 2: Right. One other thing on the sound note is sound designer,
and this is an interesting story as well. So Richard
Beggs is the sound designer for Rumblefishka And there was
something going on with the union with the sound editors union.
Speaker 1: And they the sound editors have a union, yes, sound editors.
Speaker 2: So there's the sound editors have a union and they
for some reason they couldn't they wouldn't let Richard Baggs
be a sound editor on this movie, okay. And they're like, well,
you know, we really need him, we really want him.
What can we do? And they're like, listen, you can
use him, but you just you can't use editor in
the title. You can use him for something else, but
you just can't call him an editor, okay. And so
they're like, so could we call him a designer? And
at this stage in history, we've heard sound designer a
million times. This is where it started. They couldn't call
Richard Beggs a sound editor, so they came up with
the term sound designer. And now that is what you
aspire to if you are a sound editor, now to
be a sound designer. But on that note, Fristopher Coppola
had bought this really expensive projector, and so the scene
with Bob and the guy with the crowbar, there's this
moment where the guy with the crowbar comes up and
wax Rusty James wax Matt Dillon in the head. And
so when he was doing the scene, he had this projector,
this very very expensive projector that he had gotten, showing
the scene as it was being shot. And like he said,
they're out in the city and all these bums and
criminals are wandering over and they're watching this big projector
of him getting hit in the head with a crowbar,
and after each take they'd be like no, no, not
real no no, and so he's like, really, it's like okay.
So it goes back and they do like nineteen takes
and every single time these guys are like, no, not realistic,
no no. And so then he realizes He's like, there's
no sound. You don't have the sound of the crowbar
hitting because he's not really hitting him with his head sure,
and he's like, so he has bags throw the sound
in and they're like, yep, that's it.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: He ends up using his third take, after nineteen takes
of hitting Matt Dillan over the head of the crowbar.
He uses the third take.
Speaker 1: Nice that is locationally deep in downtown Tulsa. Yeah, between
big buildings.
Speaker 2: I'm glad I get to experience that in a Dinify.
Speaker 1: That was a fun conversation we had. Yes, I got
something for you on this. Okay. During The Outsiders, Francis
port Coppola did want to set up some animosity between
the group of actors who were the Sosias and the
group of actors who were Greasers, and he did it
several different ways. Okay, for the Sosias, they got a
like a leather bound, really nice copy of the script,
and the Greasers got like punch holed, laminated, you know,
crappy version of the script.
Speaker 2: Uh huh. See.
Speaker 1: Thomas hal talks about how one day they decided, okay, guys,
we're all gonna go play football. Here's your sweatpants and
a black T shirt that says greasers across the front
of it, and then he gave like a matching high
dollar jumpsuit and really nice shoes to the Sosias. And
when the Greasers and Soshas squared out on this little
game of football, see Thomas, How's like, we were intent
on kicking the crap out of them, and he's on
that day we lit them up nice. Rob Loo said
that one night Francis fot Coppola came to him and said, hey,
how about you and Cruz go sleeping over at a
greaser's house. And they're like, what what do you what
are you talking about? And he's like, yeah, there's this
guy who was a greaser. Go spend the night at
his house. And so Roblo and Tom Cruise went over
this guy's house. They ended up sleeping in the basement.
But they're just young kids and they're down there like,
we don't we don't know these people, what are we
doing here? So Copla did all kinds of stuff like
that to them. I also heard the actress talk one
of the benefits for being cast in this movie. Yeah,
all the beer they could drink.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, it's teenager.
Speaker 1: They just kind of kept the beer flowing for teenage boys.
Speaker 2: Well that's all right, yeah, that's I mean. Yeah, my
sister in love mentioned there was a lot of barbecue
and a lot of partying going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Tom Cruise came back through Tulsa several years later,
like this is in the nine or something. Yeah, and
he ran into one of the girls who said, I
worked at the hotel when you guys stayed here for
the Outsiders. The first words he said to her was,
I am sorry. Yeah, yeah, because they did all kinds
of I mean shenanigans in the hotel teenage boys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got three of them right now. I know
how shenanigans can go.
Speaker 1: Apparently in the hotel lobby there was a fountain where
they re enacted the drowning scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's hysterical. Okay, So one last thing talking
about the end of Rumblefish, and I mentioned in our
last episode that Nick Cage in his debut role that
you know, you think he's a sideman until the very end,
when you know Patty and Rusty James have broken up, right,
and then Rusty James of course he's back in the
pool hall. He's playing pool and Patty shows up. Oh
my holy did she look good?
Speaker 1: Hey, Diane Lane is a beautiful woman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he thinks she's there to see him, and
she's not. She's there to see Nick Cage. Yep, the
wild deuce is the heir apparent. Now we know that,
we know that Rusty James is not going to be
the one that takes over for his brother, and so
so Nick Cage sits down and he starts flirting with her,
and they've obviously developed this relationship. And you realize Nick
Cage's character is the one who set.
Speaker 1: Him up, and you've fractured the party.
Speaker 2: Right, manufactured the party where Russy James has the affair
and then tells her about it or gets word to
her about it, so that she's got a reason to
leave him, and then he can slip in, just like
Machiavelli here, slip into the king's throne.
Speaker 1: Right, sure enough.
Speaker 2: So he's doing these little flirtatious things and like giving
he's like giving her a locket with a picture of
him as a baby in it. That's Nick Cage's idea, right,
Like all of these little flirty things that he's doing
all Nick Cage's idea. And then Coppola has this moment
that he was excited about, right where Russy James keeps
asking him to step outside, step outside, and you think
it's going to be a fight. And then they go
out and discuss and Russy James realizes that he's been
set up, but is like, admires the tenacity and the
gumption of this guy. And so there's this moment where
he hands over the pool cue as though he's handing
over the throne to this new guy, right, and then
Nick Cage decides to drop it, and that's why it
gets dropped. It was it was like, I don't need
your pool queue. I did this on my own. You're
not giving me something. I took it from you. So
he took Coupla's idea and took it a level up.
Speaker 1: That's cool. I like that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And then one last hipbit, This is the last tibbit
I have. Also, Richard Beggs was trying to find this
perfect sound for the fan that's going on in the
pool room, and they you know, they're going through different
fans and finally he's got the fan that he thinks
is the right fan sound for an old, dusty pool room,
and couples there and he's like, it doesn't sound gritty enough.
And he's like, what does that mean. He's like, it
just doesn't like, I don't think it sounds right for
a downtown pool. It doesn't sound gritty enough. He's like,
I don't even know. And couple goes, picks up the fan,
slams it against the floor, picks it back up, turns
it on. He's like, yeah, no, that's good.
Speaker 1: That's good. By the way, I did try to go
to the location of the pet store in Rumblefish. That
building no longer exists, So there you go.
Speaker 2: Pets are free.
Speaker 1: Are we ready for final judgment?
Speaker 2: The time is now?
Speaker 1: That was then, this is now, right, let's do it.
Speaker 2: Okay, you first?
Speaker 1: Okay. So I did grow up having a relationship with
the outs The cast is absolutely undeniable. I read the
book growing up, so Outsiders had a way head start
in my mind with these two movies. Now, I love
both because I love my hometown. Rumblefish is different. It's odd,
it's artistic, but man, I can't take my eyes off
of it. Right, And they really are two sides to
the same coin. I enjoyed the darkness and sort of
the r ratedness of Rumblefish, but I just can't leave
my first love. I have to stick with the outsiders.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I didn't grow up with the outsiders. I
mean I was familiar with it. I was not familiar
with Rumblefish at all. I'd probably heard the name, but
I couldn't have told you who was an it, or
right that it came out the same year, that it
was the same director, same writer, all of that stuff, right,
And obviously I grew up with those guys, right Rob
Love who did its swayzy? Right? When I saw it,
I was surprised and I couldn't put the words to
it of why, And I don't want to say it
was disappointed, but I was just like, I was like,
this is not what I expected. And then it was
the soundtrack and I was like, why am I listening
to this music with this It just doesn't They weren't.
They didn't go together for me. So it made me
feel good that when I read later on the phrases
couple didn't like it either, right, and you told me, oh,
it's his dad, but the words that you use where
it's got this kind of after school special feel about it,
and that's absolutely right, Like I was sitting there going,
why does this feel like something I would watch on
TV as opposed to a great movie by a great
director of one of the most famous stories of all time.
And then I watched Rumblefish. And with Rumblefish, I was
still like I wasn't. I did not have the same
feeling at all. But it's like you said, it's opposite
sides of the same coin. Had you live tails? You right?
I mean, we've got death in both of them, but
one is inspirational and the other one is right. And
so I don't know that I actually liked Rumblefish better,
but I want to go watch it again. Yeah. I'm
not a big I mean, I like more artistic films
than a lot of people, but this was a very
art film, kind of art film. I'm not big into
the existentialist feel, okay, but what was going on made
me think so much and made me go, what does
this mean? What are they talking about? What's going on
that I want to go back and watch it again?
The Outsiders? Yeah, okay, I'll watch it with somebody again.
I'll watch it with a kid again, because it's a
kid movie.
Speaker 1: It is a kid movie.
Speaker 2: It's a kid movie. And so when I was watching
it with Caleb and we get to the scene where
pony Boy is crying and is upset and devastated at things,
he was like, who is that actor? And I was like, oh,
let's see Thomas Howell. He's like, well, what happened to him?
He's fantastic, And I was like, well, of all of them,
he's the guy who probably did the least well honestly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So all that to say, if I'm going to watch
a movie again, it's gonna be Rumblefish unless it's with
my kids, and then it's going to be the Outsiders.
I think as far as quality of acting goes, I
pick the Outsiders. Okay, I think as far as interesting
topic and ideas and themes and ideas of shots and
film as a whole, I go Rumblefish.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this is really a hard choice for me. Yeah,
but you're right in the end, I'm picking Rumblefish over
the Outsiders. If I got to walk out the door
and grab a DVD just for myself, sure, just for myself.
Speaker 1: Well, and like you said, you didn't see it way
back when they're two different styles and I love both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will tell you this Listening to Francis Ford
Coppola talk about his love for Rumblefish is also something
incredibly great to listen to. It is, it really is.
He's got this really fantastic moment where he's talking about
the great directors of the past, and he was talking
about how when he was young he felt like he
could do anything in any kind of movie, and that's
why he did a musical right before he did these
two movies. And he's like, and you know, theater is
not that old. Like in the rules that we have
in movies these days are all set by guys who
had never done it before. It was just happening. I mean,
it hasn't been around that long. So you should do
artistic things, and you should experiment, and you should make
your own rules. And then he's like, of course, that's
what I did with this movie, and it was an
absolute failure. It taut me to declare bankruptcy. So forget
everything that I've said, forget that. Just pretend like you
just you just skip this part the next time you
watch the commentary.
Speaker 1: Well, we hope you guys enjoyed this episode of The
Outsiders Versus Rumblefish number one. We hope you'll go watch
Rumblefish and sort of rediscover that classic. Well, d I'm
excited about what we've got coming next week tell me so.
Hopefully we'll have maybe a bonus episode or maybe let's
sprinkling with Danny Boy O'Connor. That's gonna be really cool.
But the music matchup that we've got coming down the
pipe is from nineteen eighty three. We have Lionel Ritchie
and his album Can't Slow Down.
Speaker 3: That's a nuclear that's a big hitter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, twenty million copies against Billy Joels An Innocent Man,
also from eighty three.
Speaker 2: That's too hard.
Speaker 1: Those are some incredible albums from nineteen eighty three. Ball
turning forty years old.
Speaker 2: I feel like you chose this and threw this at me,
and now I've got to pick between these two monsters.
Speaker 1: Hey, it's gonna be a lo of fun to dive in.
Speaker 2: Well, at least be fun to listen to music. I'm excited.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Stay gold, everybody,