Flashback Friday: The Outsiders

I remember the exact moment my girlish hormones went from "I'm too shy to say I'm crushing on this guy, because I'm still not sure what this is all about" to "Hello cutest guy on the planet! Please become my boyfriend!!!!!!" (had to add all those explanation points, because pre-teen girls say everything excitedly). That moment was 1983 when the movie The Outsiders (based upon the novel by S.E. Hinton) came sauntering into my life. Literally that movie was a living, breathing, Teen Beat magazine, but it had a certain grown-up feel to it because Francis Ford Coppola directed it and there was no cheezy '80s music montage moment (which BTW there is nothing wrong with those '80s music montage moments - The Karate Kid wouldn't be what it is without them).  

Check out this cast:  Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, C. Thomas Howell, Emilio Estevez and Tom Cruise. All of them in their youthful beauty back then. My particular crushes were on C. Thomas Howell (Ponyboy Curtis) and Rob Lowe (Sodapop Curtis). And when I say "crushes," I mean like your typical over-obsessive teen crushes: plastering my bedroom walls with their posters, buying every possible Teen Beat, Bop, etal magazines, watching subsequent movies made by them...the list goes on and on.  And to be honest, even though my teen crush on C. Thomas has faded, I still find Rob Lowe (who is almost 50 years old) smoking hot. Need proof:

But I digress. The movie does not feel dated either (maybe because the movie was set in the 1960s, but filmed in the 1980s and therefore is hard to pinpoint the look of this movie) and it's score was done by The Godfather's Carmine Coppola and Stevie Wonder did the title track "Stay Gold" (inspired by Robert Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay"). There is too much cool attached to this film. Those that were disappointed the original film did not include additional scenes based upon the book, Coppola did release his "director's cut" with 22 additional minutes in 2005. 

Want tidbits?

• This was Rob Lowe's first major film role.  He was 17 years old
• The majority of the main cast were under 20 years old, except Patrick Swayze who was in his 30s and Ralph Macchio who was in his 40s (I kid! He was 20, but looked the youngest)
• Director/writer (and Francis Ford Coppola's daughter) Sofia Coppola had a cameo as the girl who kept pestering Matt Dillon for a dime
• The author of The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton, had a cameo as a nurse in one of the hospital scenes
• For those who probably have GIFS or Tumblrs of Tom Cruise running in his movies, he does have a very brief running scene before they fight the Socs in the big rumble scene (also Cruise has the least amount of screen time than the other main cast members)
• Blooper fans? When Matt Dillon (Dally) falls off the chair in the drive-in theatre it was really an accident, but they kept the scene in the movie
• Blush moments for a pre-teen girl: (1) Rob Lowe (Sodapop) coming out of the shower; and (2) Matt Dillon (Dally) in his tightie whities

Yeah, I still love The Outsiders. *Sigh*

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