The Outsiders

I was just the right age for S.E. Hinton’s young adult novels in the early 1980s. It was at an impressionable age that I read and re-read The Outsiders, Rumble Fish and Tex (for some reason I never warmed up to That Was Then, This Is Now). I loved getting lost in the worlds she created, often about teenagers from the wrong side of the tracks facing real problems. I liked that she didn’t sugarcoat things or talked down to her readers. There was an authenticity to her work that deeply affected me, especially The Outsiders, the novel of hers I read the most.

As luck would have it, the ‘80s would see film adaptations of her first four novels, starting with Tex (1982), but the one I really looked forward to the most was The Outsiders (1983). At that young age I had no idea who Francis Ford Coppola was or the mostly unknown cast of young actors but I knew that they brilliantly brought Hinton’s novel to the life on the big screen almost exactly how I imagined it when I read it. The film affected me so strongly that the characters in the novel and the actors that portrayed him became indistinguishable.

“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.” And so begins Hinton’s classic story about troubled youths in 1960s Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ponyboy Curtis (C. Thomas Howell) is a young teenager from the wrong side of the tracks. He’s a Greaser, Hinton’s romanticized version of poor, white trash. He and his best friend Johnny Cade (Ralph Macchio) go to a drive-in movie theater with fellow Greaser Dallas Winston (Matt Dillon).

What is so striking about these early scenes is how much Matt Dillon commands the screen with his cocky swagger and mischievous attitude as he half-heartedly chases a trio of little kids across a vacant lot while “Gloria” by Them plays on the soundtrack. The actor portrays his character like a playful variation of Marlon Brando’s biker in The Wild One (1953). He really gets to have some fun when Dallas, Johnny and Ponyboy arrive at the drive-in and decide to sit behind two beautiful girls – Cherry (Diane Lane) and her friend Marcia (Michelle Meyrink) – who left their drunk Soc (rich white kids) boyfriends. He starts hitting on Cherry and initially it’s funny and we see genuine chemistry between Dillon and Diane Lane (that would continue in two more films they made together) but things go south quickly when he gets nasty and she tells him to get lost. It’s an enjoyable bit of acting on Dillon’s part as we see how easily Dallas can go from rascally to crude in a few moments. Lane is also decent as Cherry goes from playfully flirting to angrily offended, telling off the nasty punk.

After leaving the drive-in, the focus shifts to Ponyboy and Johnny who take refuge in vacant lot when the latter discovers his parents fighting at home. This scene shows the close bond these two boys have and how tough life is for them, especially when they have to deal with Socs. Ralph Macchio is particularly moving in this scene as Johnny breaks down and laments, “Seems like there’s got to be some place without Greasers, Socs. Must be some place with just plain, ordinary people.” He says these words with a heartbreaking vulnerability reminiscent of Sal Mineo’s doomed teen in A Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

Their lives are changed forever when they hang out at a local playground and cross paths with a carload of Socs – the same ones that are boyfriends to Cherry and Marcia and that beat Johnny pretty badly awhile back. They attack Ponyboy and Johnny, trying to drown the former until the latter kills one of them with a switchblade. Fearing that they’ll get in trouble with the law (because Ponyboy’s parents are dead, he’ll be taken away from his brothers) even though it was self-defense, they have Dallas get them out of town. He sends them out to an abandoned church in the country and for a spell the film becomes a two-hander as Ponyboy and Johnny spend the days playing cards and reading Gone with the Wind to each other. This is The Outsiders at its most romantic as they watch sunrises and remark at the stunning colors as Ponyboy quotes a Robert Frost poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Over the course of the film, Coppola extends the metaphor to the friendship between the two boys.

Coppola gets truly wonderful performances out of his young cast, in particular C. Thomas Howell and Macchio, as evident in the portion of the film where their characters are hiding out in the country. There’s one scene where Ponyboy gets upset when the realization of how much trouble they’re in sinks in. Their friendship is the heart and soul of The Outsiders with the sensitive Johnny being the Greasers’ unofficial mascot that everyone looks out for – even the jaded tough guy Dallas. Watching this film more than 30 years later it is amazing to see how many actors got their start or that this was their first major role. Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Patrick Swayze, and Tom Cruise were all relative unknowns and went on to greater fame after the success of this movie.

Coppola has always had an uncanny eye for casting and this is readily apparent with The Outsiders, which features an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the cast. Lowe and Swayze play Ponyboy’s older brothers, both of whom had to drop out of school to get jobs to make ends meet with the former playing the disciplinarian and the latter, the easy-going peacemaker. They, along with Howell, are believable as brothers, given little screen-time to convey a tight bond between their respective characters.

Howell delivers a thoughtful performance, capturing the dreamer quality that is essential to Ponyboy, a character who reads Gone with the Wind and enjoys sunsets. Estevez is a funny scene-stealer as Two-Bit Matthews, always cracking jokes. Initially, Dallas appears to be the toughest, most cynical of the Greasers, but by the end of the film it is revealed that under that hard exterior is someone with a big heart and when the one thing that keeps him in check is taken away, he spirals out of control, which allows Dillon to go full-on Method scenery-chewing in a powerful, show-stopping, operatic exit that is worthy of the 1950s melodramas Coppola is celebrating.

With the help of cinematographer Stephen H. Burum, Coppola creates a richly textured world shot in glorious widescreen with a look that evokes another epic about troubled youth, A Rebel Without a Cause. The Outsiders is also drenched in the golden hues of warm sunrises and sunsets like something right out of Gone with the Wind (1939). The Outsiders is clearly Coppola’s homage to Rebel and other melodramatic teen movies of the ‘50s. The screenplay is peppered with the occasional grandiose statement like when Dallas dedicates the upcoming rumble with the Socs, “We’ll do it for Johnny,” like a declaration of war that seems anachronistic and cheesy by today’s standards but would not seem out of place in a James Dean film.

One of the themes that drives The Outsiders is a loss of innocence. Despite his poor upbringing, Ponyboy is an idealist who believes in the basic decency of people – even Socs. It is Johnny who keeps him hopeful, to “Stay Gold,” to paraphrase the Robert Frost poem they both love. Ultimately, the film is about looking beyond one’s socio-economic class and judging people by their actions. Although, it is pretty obvious that Coppola’s sympathies lie with the Greasers as opposed to the selfish Socs.

That being said, there’s a nice scene late in the film when Ponyboy has a private conversation with Randy (Darren Dalton), the Soc that was friends with the boy that Johnny killed. He lets his guard down and tells Ponyboy in a moment of rare candor, “You can’t win, you know that, don’t you? It doesn’t matter if you whip us, you’ll still be where you were before – at the bottom and we’ll still be the lucky ones at the top with all the breaks. It doesn’t matter. Greasers’ll still be Greasers and Socs will still be Socs.” It is an important scene in that it not only humanizes Randy but also underlines the fundamental truth about this world – the characters will forever be defined by their socio-economical class. It is this realization that makes the Greasers’ victory over the Socs in the film’s climactic battle ultimately a hollow one. This is compounded further by the tragic demise of two people close to Ponyboy.

S.E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was 15-years-old, based on the social differences she witnessed at her high school. Viking Press published it two years later in 1967 and it quickly became a cultural phenomenon, kickstarting the Young Adult genre. It immediately struck a chord with young readers who identified with its honest depiction of teenagers and became a staple at school classrooms around the country. In 1980, Francis Ford Coppola received a paperback copy of the novel accompanied by a letter written by Jo Ellen Misakian, a librarian at Lone Star School, Fresno County. Apparently, a petition had been started at school to get the book made into a film and they selected Coppola as the best director for the job.

In her letter, she wrote, “I feel our students are representative of the youth of America. Everyone who has read the book, regardless of ethnic or economic background, has enthusiastically endorsed this project.” Coppola asked his producer Fred Roos to read the book and let him know if it was suitable for cinematic treatment. He read it from cover to cover and recommended Coppola make it. In addition, the novel had sold four million copies since 1970 and this convinced Coppola of its potential for box office success – something that he needed at the time. Roos met with Hinton in the summer of ’80 and found out that she wasn’t a fan of Coppola’s Godfather films or Apocalypse Now (1979) but being an admirer of horses loved The Black Stallion (1979), which he produced, and felt that it demonstrated he and Roos “had some affinity for young adult fiction,” according to the latter.

Hinton asked $5,000 for the rights but at the time Zoetrope, Coppola’s production company, was struggling with massive bank debt when his passion project, the ambitious One from the Heart’s (1982) budget ballooned to $25 million. She agreed to a $500 down payment. He was able to get a distribution contract from Warner Bros. and on the strength of that, Chemical Banks gave Zoetrope a loan and a completion guarantee from Britain’s National Film Finance Corporation, which resulted in a $10 million budget.

Coppola hired young writer Kathleen Rowell to adapt the novel but the filmmaker felt that their screenplay was “too much soap opera” and shelved the project. He would soon return to it, reading the book and feeling that making it would be a way to escape his trouble with Zoetrope: “I used to be a great camp counselor, and the idea of being with half a dozen kids in the country and making a movie seemed like being a camp counselor again. It would be a breath of fresh air. I’d forget my troubles and have some laughs again.” He would end up writing 14 drafts with Hinton. The Writers Guild of America wouldn’t give her credit for her contributions and in protest, Coppola temporarily quit the organization.

To prepare for filming, Hinton drove Coppola around Tulsa, showing him locations she thought of while writing the book. To help the cast get into character, Coppola separated them by social class and so all the Greasers stayed on the same hotel room floor and hung out together while the Socs had nicer rooms. Furthermore, the actors playing the Socs received their scripts in leather-bound binders while the Greasers had them in denim notebooks. Actor Ralph Macchio remembers that Coppola had “a very theatrical way of working.” In early March of 1982, the cast spent two weeks rehearsing, improvising, and doing acting exercises, which helped everyone bond with each other. He then videotaped a dress rehearsal with the actors in front of a blank screen. He would superimpose stills of exterior locations sites in Tulsa and shots of interior sets so that by the time principal photography started on March 29, he had a good idea of how each scene would look. C. Thomas Howell remembers, “We were all raw and young and very impressionable, so it was a good time for us to have a mentor like Coppola.”

Filming finished on May 15 as planned and Coppola began editing it during the summer. He approached his father Carmine to compose “a kind of schmaltzy classical score” that would embody the Gone with the Wind for teens vibe he wanted: “It appealed to me that kids could see Outsiders as a lavish, big-feeling epic about kids.”

While performing strongly at the box office, The Outsiders was not particularly well-received by critics with Roger Ebert giving it two-and-a-half out of four stars. He wrote, “The problem, I’m afraid, is with Coppola’s direction. He seems so hung up with his notions of a particular movie ‘look,’ with his perfectionistic lighting and framing and composition, that the characters wind up like pictures, framed and hanged on the screen.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “To those of us who can’t buy Mr. Coppola’s inflated attempts at myth making, it’s a melodramatic kidfilm with the narrative complexity of The Three Bears and a high body count.” The Washington Post’s Gary Arnold wrote, “Between the aimlessness of the plot and the marshmallow sponginess of the sentimental content, Coppola is left with ingredients every bit as defective and softheaded as the ones he overrated in One from the Heart.”

Coppola’s original version was quite faithful to Hinton’s book but in 2005, he decided to revisit the film and put back in 22 more minutes of deleted scenes, most noticeably at the beginning and end of the film. This new footage opens up the film more. We are introduced to the Greasers much earlier on now that Coppola isn’t reined in by the dictates of test screenings. Another significant change has Coppola replacing all of his father’s beautiful, classical score in favor of period rock ‘n’ roll music. In some cases, like the opening scene where Ponyboy is jumped by some Socs, it works and in others, like the whimsical surf music that plays over the scene where the Socs jump Johnny and Ponyboy, it feels awkward and out of place. Part of the film’s original charm was its moments of ‘50s style melodrama, as epitomized by the film’s orchestral soundtrack, and this is diminished by the newly inserted period music that could be right out of an episode of Crime Story. Hinton’s books are timeless with their universal themes and the original music reflected that. This new music, while accurate for its time period, contributes to a loss of some of the timeless feel.

Throughout the ups and downs that Ponyboy experiences, what matters most is the bond he has with his brothers and his fellow Greasers that are an extension of his biological family. They stick up for each other and this is a large part of the film’s (and book’s) appeal – a story dominated by teenagers with little to no adult presence. When you’re a kid and always being told what to do by your parents, teachers and other adults, a story where kids your own age are the protagonists has a very definite allure – a form of escape that speaks to the reader in a way that feels honest and true. This is why the novel and its film adaptation continue to endure and speak to successive generations of young people.

SOURCES

Cowie, Peter. Coppola. Da Capo Press. 1994.

Dickerson, Justin. “An Inside Look at The Outsiders.” USA Today. September 19, 2005.

Gilliam, Mitch, Joshua Kline, Joe O’Shansky and Michael Wright. “Making The Outsiders.” The Tulsa Voice. August 2016.

Harmetz, Aljean. “Making The Outsiders, A Librarian’s Dream.” The New York Times. March 23, 1983.

Phillips, Gene D. Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola. University Press of Kentucky. 2004.

The Big Town

Most actors have what I refer to as “paycheck movies” somewhere in their filmography. They are movies that are done for the money or the desire to work that month. They are movies that are usually not all that memorable and done purely for mercenary reasons but they are still part of an actor’s body of work. One such movie is The Big Town (1987), made after Diane Lane took three years off from the business and saw her reunited with Matt Dillon, her on-screen love interest in The Outsiders (1983) and Rumble Fish (1983). Like Lane, he had hit a speed bump in his career after the box office hit The Flamingo Kid (1984). I’m sure appearing together was a large part of the appeal of doing The Big Town for both actors. While their on-screen chemistry continued, the final product was something of a mixed bag.

J.C. Cullen (Matt Dillon) is a small-time crapshooter who aspires to make it in the big city. He is a very skilled/lucky dice thrower with the gambling instincts of his deceased father, much to the chagrin of his mother. He’s young and too restless for life in small-town America circa 1957. He soon arrives in Chicago and the movie does a nice job of immediately immersing us in the sights and sounds of the period era thanks to a soundtrack of classic songs from the likes of Johnny Cash, Bo Diddley, and Big Joe Turner among others.

He soon goes to work for Mr. and Mrs. Edwards (Bruce Dern and Lee Grant) who set him up with a place, a bankroll and establish the ground rules. They’re all business and don’t have much expectations as young men like him come off the bus every week. They team him up with Sonny Binkley (David Marshall Grant), a veteran gambler who shows him the ropes. Cullen takes to big city life like a fish to water, making consistent money for the Edwards.

One day, Cullen meets a sweet single mom named Aggie Donaldson (Suzy Amis) at a local record store. She loves all kinds of music and dreams of being a disc jockey one day. Always looking for action, Cullen is told about the Gem Club, a strip joint with high stakes and a very exclusive crap game. It is also the only place in town where gamblers can play with their own money and not give any of it to their handlers. Naturally, the odds are stacked heavily in favor of the house, which is run by the no-nonsense owner George Cole (Tommy Lee Jones).

The first night playing Cullen wins big ($14,000!) and in the process pisses off Cole by not only beating the house badly, but doing it in front of his regulars. After subsequently being set-up by Cole, in retribution, Cullen starts a torrid affair with his gorgeous wife Lorry Dane (Diane Lane), the Gem Club’s star stripper. However, he also finds himself increasingly attracted to the more wholesome Aggie and starts a romance with her. Eventually, Cullen has to make a choice while steering clear of the dangerous Cole – if he can.

Matt Dillon’s cocky gambler evokes Paul Newman’s iconic turn in The Hustler (1961) as both of their characters push their respective luck to the limit. For Cullen, he is very smart when it comes to shooting craps (he expertly figures out when Cole swaps dice for a loaded pair) but exhibits poor judgment when it comes to women, seeing two at the same time. Aggie represents his small-town, Midwestern roots while Lorry represents his flashy big city life. Dillon has the retro looks from a bygone era and has no problem portraying a gambler from the 1950s.

Much like Dillon, Diane Lane looks like she came from another time. Her retro stripper look resembles her mother Colleen Leigh Farrington, herself a nightclub singer and Playboy Centerfold (Miss October 1957) and one wonders if her performance in The Big Town was a tribute to her mother. Lane even pulls off a very sexy fan dance at one point, showing off the research and hard work she put into the role. Lorry is more than a stereotypical bad girl. She is a woman trapped in a situation with a dangerous man that is also her husband. And yet, we are never quite sure if she can be trusted even while Cullen falls head over heels for her. Lane does what she can with an underwritten role that often relegates her to very attractive eye candy.

Dillon and Lane had undeniable chemistry in The Outsiders and Rumble Fish and continue it with The Big Town. As sweet as Suzy Amis’ Aggie is, one can’t see Dillon’s slick gambler settling down with the single mother and her daughter. Cullen and Lorry are much more suited for each other with their similar outlooks on life. It doesn’t hurt that the two actors radiate genuine on-screen heat. And while Dillon does have some nice chemistry with Amis, it pales in comparison to Lane.

Tommy Lee Jones turns in a typically effortless performance as the movie’s heavy, opting for a less is more approach as he conveys danger with an ominous look or a slight edge in his voice. The always-watchable Bruce Dern plays a blind fixer by the name of Mr. Edwards who bankrolls up and coming gamblers like Cullen. He has a nice scene with Dillon where his character tells Cullen how he lost his sight in a well-delivered monologue. He used to be a hotshot dice roller like Cullen but losing his sight ended his career and he’s been searching for the man who robbed him of his vision ever since.

The Big Town sprinkles snazzy period dialogue and colorful gambler slang throughout, courtesy of Robert Roy Pool’s screenplay – itself an adaptation of Clark Howard’s novel The Arm. There is a nice shot partway through the movie of Cullen and Lorry walking down a deserted Chicago street late at night, which is soon followed by them kissing passionately under elevated train tracks much like a similar scene also with Lane in Streets of Fire (1984) albeit without the rain. Ralf D. Bode’s cinematography, coupled with Ben Bolt’s direction results in a movie that looks like it could easily exist in a corner of the world of period television series Crime Story, but as a prequel of sorts (since that show took place in the 1960s).

In late summer of 1986, director Harold Becker was set to adapt Clark Howard’s novel The Arm, about a crapshooter, and approached noted gambling expert Edwin Silberstang to be a technical advisor on the movie. He read the screenplay and agreed to do it. Silberstang taught Matt Dillon the rules of the game, the difference between a basic street game and playing at a casino, and some of the street slang. They spent time betting at casinos in Las Vegas. After ten days, they flew to Toronto where the interior gambling scenes were to be filmed and ‘50s era Chicago was recreated for financial reasons.

Silberstang helped design a special craps table that allowed the audience to follow the action easier and could be broken in half for special shots. However, two weeks into principal photography, Becker was replaced when he clashed with producer Martin Ransohoff over creative differences. Columbia Pictures chairman and CEO David Puttnam brought in one of his friends, Ben Bolt, son of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) screenwriter Robert Bolt, to direct. Puttnam was not fond of Ransohoff’s three-picture deal at the studio and wanted to help out a friend, but it rankled some within the industry who wondered why an unproven Brit was hired to direct a period piece set in Chicago.

The Big Town received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and praised Dillon’s performance: “Dillon has some kind of spontaneous rapport with the camera. He never seems aware of it, never seems aware that he’s playing a character. His acting is graceful and fluid, and his scenes always seem to start before their first shot so that we seem him in the middle of a motion.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas felt that it was “so entertaining, so true to its period that it’s easy to peg it as another ‘50s nostalgia piece when it actually possesses the kind of complexity usually associated with less commercial, less starry productions.”

In her review for The New York Times, Caryn James wrote, “More to the point, this huge cliché of a movie isn’t even a distant relation of films like The Color of Money, which can actually make you root for hustlers. The Big Town only proves we’ve gone back to the 1950’s one time too many.” The Chicago Tribune’s Joanna Steinmetz wrote, “But director Ben Bolt, whose previous experience is in British and American television, is not about to let style carry this show. Unfortunately, he’s not about to let substance carry it, either.” Finally, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Ben Yagoda wrote, “Then, somewhere around reel three, the chips, so to speak, are cashed in … So the stageyness becomes stagier, the improbabilities more improbable and the lunacy loonier.”

In retrospect, The Big Town can be seen as a stepping-stone towards bigger and better things for Dillon and Lane (and Jones as well). Shortly after this movie he would attract much critical acclaim for his role as a junkie in Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and she would be nominated for an Emmy for her excellent work on the T.V. miniseries Lonesome Dove (which would also feature Jones). The Big Town didn’t exactly set the box office on fire – barely registering, in fact, but it wasn’t meant to with its small budget and limited distribution. The movie tells a story we’ve seen a million times before: a young man from a small-town that tries to make it in the big city only to learn a painful lesson. While it is hardly an original idea, the movie does have its entertaining moments with engaging performances from Dillon and Lane, which should appeal to fans of both actors.

SOURCES

Comer, Brooke. “Big Trouble in The Big Town.” American Cinematographer. September 1987.

Silberstang, Edwin. Winning Casino Craps. Random House. 2007.

Stadiem, William. Moneywood: Hollywood in Its Last Age of Excess. St. Martin’s Press. 2013.

Tex

In the early 1980s, Disney struggled to become relevant and in the process decided to gamble on several live-action films that weren’t the kinds of projects the Mouse House were known for making, chief among them Tron (1982), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), and Tex (1982). The latter film was an adaptation of the popular S.E. Hinton novel of the same name. Her first four Young Adult novels (The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, Tex, and That Was Then This Now) were all set in and around Tulsa and struck a chord with young people because they refused to talk down to their intended audience. They also dealt with the class conflict between rich and poor kids in a way that not many other authors were doing at the time. Her novels featured worlds inhabited mostly by teenagers with an emphasis on the intense friendships between them as well as the friction between siblings in an unflinchingly honest way. At first, Disney picking up the option for Tex seemed like an odd move as the book took a frank look at two brothers trying to stay together with very little money and each one heading off in different directions. However, it did fit in with the current regime’s desire to think outside the box and the end result was a smartly written, well-acted slice-of-life tale of regular folks just trying to get by.

Tex McCormick (Matt Dillon) is a rebellious teenager who would rather spend time with his horse Rowdy then waste time in high school where he’s flunking out anyway. He lives in a modest house with his older brother Mason (Jim Metzler) who’s trying to scrape together enough money to go to Indiana University and play basketball. Their mother is dead and their father (Bill McKinney) is a deadbeat, spending most of his time on the road working rodeos. It seems like the only reason Tex stays in school is to hang out with his best friend Johnny (Emilio Estevez) and flirt with his beautiful sister Jamie (Meg Tilly).

The film refuses to sugarcoat the tough times Tex and Mason endure as they try to survive on their own. For example, Tex comes home to find that Mason sold his horse and he understandably flips out. There’s an almost scary intensity to their fight as we realize just how hard it is for them to make ends meet and how Mason has to make difficult choices for the both of them. Director Tim Hunter expertly captures life for young people in the Midwest at that time. We see Johnny and Tex goofing around at the local county fair and yet Hunter tempers this by having the latter go see a psychic. The director doesn’t treat it like some kind of joke, but rather an eerie foreshadowing of things to come.

Hunter does a nice job of portraying Tex’s day-to-day life in a naturalistic way that is reminiscent of films from the 1970s. There is nothing flashy about his direction as he wisely gets out of the way of the actors and lets them do their thing. As a result, he gets some wonderfully grounded performances out of his talented young cast with the relationship between Tex and Mason as the heart of the film. This is due in large part to the solid screenplay by Hunter and Charles S. Haas, which features realistic dialogue and scenes that feel like we’re intruding on these characters’ lives.

For a brief time, Matt Dillon was the go-to actor for Hinton adaptations, appearing in The Outsiders and Rumble Fish (1983). With Tex, he shows versatility at an early age, playing a vastly different character then he would go on to portray in the aforementioned films. While those were very stylized takes on Hinton’s novels, Tex wisely opts for a much more grounded approach, which is appropriate for the subject matter. Dillon had the brooding good looks that made him a teen idol at the time, but he delivers a strong, Brando-esque Method performance as a teen trying to do all the typical things someone his age does, while facing some pretty harsh realities.

Jim Metzler is excellent as older brother Mason who is torn between quitting school and getting a job to support Tex, and getting a scholarship to Indiana University in order to get out of their dead-end town. He’s been forced to grow-up fast, much like Darrel in The Outsiders (1983) who dropped out of school in order to support his younger brothers. Mason may ride Tex about going to school and staying out of trouble, but he sticks up for him, like when Johnny’s father (Ben Johnson) stops by to question Tex about getting his sons drunk the night before.

Tex is a potent reminder of how good Emilio Estevez was early on in his career, appearing in memorable efforts like The Outsiders and Repo Man (1984). He has a minor role as Tex’s best friend and he plays well off of Dillon – a rapport they would have in their next film together – The Outsiders. Meg Tilly is quite good as Tex’s tomboyish love interest. Jamie is armed with a caustic wit, which she uses to flirt with Tex. Like him, she’s going through changes and has a lot to sort out, which leaves their potential romance up in the air.

While making Over the Edge (1979) with Matt Dillon, the young actor asked screenwriter Tim Hunter if he’d adapt one of S.E. Hinton’s novels as they were his favorites. In fact, many of the kids cast in the film were fans of her books. Intrigued, Hunter read a copy of Tex while it was still in galleys. After a string of commercial failures, Disney wanted to try something different. Hunter knew that the studio were going in this direction and approached them with Tex and asked to direct. As luck would have it, at the time Disney vice president in charge of production Tom Wilhite was determined to hire young, inexperienced filmmakers with talent.

In 1979, Hinton received a phone call from Disney expressing an interest in adapting her novel Tex into a film. Initially, she wasn’t interested in the studio adapting one of her novels. “I thought they’d really sugar it up, take out all the sex, drugs and violence and leave nothing but a story of a boy and his horse.” Wilhite personally visited with Hinton and convinced her that the film would be faithful to her book. She agreed to option her book, but only under the condition that her beloved horse Toyota be cast as Tex’s horse in the film.

If Hinton had any other reservations about the project, they went away when she met with Hunter, the film’s director who also planned to co-write the script. They got along famously and she took him around Tulsa, showing some of the actual locations used in the book. At first, she wasn’t convinced that Dillon was right for the part of Tex, especially after their first meeting, which left her unimpressed, but there was no questioning his commitment to the role. Dillon arrived two weeks early so that Hinton could give him riding lessons.  In addition, she helped scout locations, cast actors and rewrote bits of dialogue during filming.

Disney originally looked at Stockton, California to shoot Tex, but Hunter lobbied for Tulsa and convinced the studio to shoot there. Principal photography began on May 11, 1981 on a $5 million budget. The film received good reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “There is more to this movie’s story, but the important thing about it isn’t what happens, but how it happens. The movie is so accurately acted … that we care more about the characters than about the plot.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Metzler’s performance: “In a much less flashy role, Mr. Metzler is equally impressive; if Mr. Dillon’s Tex gives the movie its glamour, Mr. Metzler’s Mason gives it backbone.” People magazine praised Dillon’s performance: “Tex, in which his face shows the play of thought in fresh, unexpected way, raises him to the level of a young Paul Newman. Dillon, now 18, finds humor and honesty in the role with a disarming lack of guile.” However, Disney dropped the ball in marketing Tex and it didn’t do well at the box office. It went on to be selected for the New York Film Festival, which prompted Disney to re-release it in selected theaters where they hoped word-of-mouth would give it a second life.

While the problems Tex and Mason face may not be earth-shattering in the grand scheme of things, they are to these characters and the film really captures how everything seems like life or death at that young age. These are not easily solvable problems and it is refreshing to see that in this day and age. Tex flew in the face of previous Disney films by refusing to sugarcoat the real world problems its characters faced. It also demonstrated, yet again, Hunter’s affinity for the trials and tribulations of teens, which he would continue to explore with his next film River’s Edge (1986).

SOURCES

Farber, Stephen. “The ‘Oddball’ Who Brought Tex to Disney.” The New York Times. October 10, 1982.

Farber, Stephen. “Directors Join the S.E. Hinton Fan Club.” The New York Times. March 20, 1983.

Hinton, S.E. Some of Tim’s Stories. Speak. 2009.

Wooley, John. Shot in Oklahoma: A Century of Sooner State Cinema. University of Oklahoma Press. 2011.

Grace of My Heart

Grace of My Heart (1996) is Allison Anders’ unabashed love letter to three decades of popular music, from the doo-wop era of the late 1950’s, to the rise of girl groups in the 1960’s to the psychedelic era of the 1970’s, all seen through the eyes of a female songwriter cast in the mould of Carole King, among others. Anders’ passion project finally gave a substantial role to character actress Illeana Douglas who, finally freed from the shackles of numerous supporting character roles over the years, delivers a career-defining performance. Despite the pedigree of having Martin Scorsese as executive producer and the likes of John Turturro and Matt Dillon in supporting roles, Grace of My Heart was not a commercial hit, and was quickly eclipsed by another nostalgic look at popular music from the ‘60s that came out the same year – Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do! (1996), which, incidentally, wasn’t a huge hit either but had much more advertising muscle behind it. For all of its flaws, which include a weak third act, Grace of My Heart is a fascinating look at a time when the craft of writing a good song mattered. It is a film that deserves to be rediscovered.


Edna Buxton (Illeana Douglas) comes from a wealthy suburban Philadelphia family whose mother has her life all figured out – marry a man from another wealthy family and live the rest of her life as an obedient housewife. Let’s not forget that the film begins in 1958 where this was the prevailing attitude. However, a chance encounter with a talented singer by the name of Doris Shelley (Jennifer Leigh Warren) backstage at a local talent contest inspires her to pick a different path in life for herself, one that is not planned by her controlling mother. Edna wins the contest, receives a recording contract and moves to New York City to make it as a singer.

However, Edna finds out that there are all kinds of women who sound just like her and sing the same kinds of songs. A kindly yet condescending engineer (Richard Schiff) tells her that guy groups are where it’s at. Her life changes when she meets Joel Milner (John Turturro), a brilliant record producer who convinces Edna to write songs for others. She figures that this will do until she can record her own material. He also changes her decidedly unglamorous name to the catchier Denise Waverly. They work out of the legendary Brill Building, the headquarters for pop-music during the ’50s and ‘60s and which saw the likes of Burt Bacharach, Neil Diamond, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Phil Spector and many others write some of the biggest hits at the time.

With Denise’s insistence, Joel records one her songs with a girl group known as the Stylettes and it is a hit, bucking the prevailing trend of popular guy groups. Joel then pairs her up with Howard Caszatt (Eric Stoltz), a Beatnik poseur who injects social issues into the songs he writes with her. I like that Anders shows Denise and Howard writing a song together and we see them coming up with ideas for lyrics and melodies. They soon become romantically involved and get married after she becomes pregnant. After she has the baby, Denise continues to work, quite unusual for the times, but it becomes obvious that she has a real knack for creating hit songs while Howard appears to be holding her back. This causes tension in their personal lives and it’s not long before she catches him in bed with another woman.

The next man in Denise’s life is popular radio disc jockey John Murray (Bruce Davison) who becomes smitten with her and uses his show to promote a controversial song she wrote. He’s a nice enough guy and seems like the one she should be with instead of the pretentious Howard; it’s just too bad that he’s married. During the course of the film, Anders also shows the rivalry between fellow female songwriters, like when Joel brings Cheryl Steed (Patsy Kensit) in to write hit songs and Denise immediately sees her as direct competition. Cheryl even gets a better office then Denise who has been there longer. Cheryl quickly becomes Joel’s new favorite songwriter, much to Denise’s dismay but she puts on a brave face in public.

Joel then decides to team her up with Cheryl as an experiment and the two women are instructed to write a song for bubblegum pop singer Kelly Porter (Bridget Fonda channeling Leslie Gore). Initially, they don’t know what to write about but after being privy to a secret part of Kelly’s personal life they figure it out. Cheryl and Denise bond over the Porter song, become close friends, and generate a hit. After years of writing songs for other people, Joel reminds Denise that she started working for him to create her own music and sets her up with Jay Phillips (Matt Dillon), a brilliant yet temperamental musician from the West Coast, to produce her single. It is at this point that Grace of My Heart shifts from songwriters working in the Brill Building to the experimental West Coast psychedelic scene and some momentum is lost. It may be that Jay and his world is just not as fascinating as Joel and his. It also doesn’t help that John Turturro’s performance is so strong and memorable, while Matt Dillon seems miscast as the mercurial Brian Wilson-esque Jay.

Illeana Douglas is an unconventional choice to play Denise. Her speaking voice doesn’t really match up with the person cast as her singing voice (the fantastic sounding Kristen Vigard) but it is refreshing to see someone who doesn’t look or act like your traditional A-list movie star and it would only happen in an independent film like this one. Douglas makes it work, using her considerable talents to show the different sides of her character – her doubts, fears and aspirations – while also running through the spectrum of emotions. There are scenes where she breaks down completely, is romantic, funny, and really digs deep within herself to fully inhabit Denise. The veteran actress shows a vulnerability that is fascinating to watch, especially the scene where she records her first single, the soulful and soaring “God Give Me Strength” (written by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello no less!). This is a criminally underrated performance that should’ve won her every acting award the year it came out.

John Turturro, with his black suit, goatee and sunglasses, plays a nicer, more neurotic version of Phil Spector, the legendary record producer and pioneer of the Wall of Sound production technique, mixed with Don Kirshner, a rock producer who gave Neil Diamond and Carole King their starts. Of all the men that pass in and out of Denise’s life, he is a consistent presence and the voice of reason, constantly reminding her about her considerable talent while never candy-coating his opinions on her music or her life. He plays a flashy personality and one of the film’s pleasures is watching how he plays off of Douglas. There is a wonderful scene between them where Denise apologizes for her first single leading to Joel’s financial ruin but he dismisses that notion, reminding her that she wrote his first hit and many after as well as inspiring him to take chances he would have never done otherwise. It a touching moment between the two characters – one in which we see Joel let his guard down for moment and in doing so it reveals a lot about him. It is so rare that Turturro plays nice, decent guys and so it is a real treat to see him refreshingly cast against type in this film.

In 1994, Allison Anders was gearing up to direct Paul Is Dead from an autobiographical screenplay with Hugh Grant lined up to star. Then, a month before the start of filming, the actor pulled out and with it the financing, which was contingent on his participation. Understandably upset, Anders was woman without a film. In stepped Martin Scorsese who had written a fan letter to Anders after seeing Gas Food Lodging (1992). He was eager to team up his then girlfriend and actress Illeana Douglas with Anders for a film that he would produce. After making Cape Fear (1991), Douglas had acted in but was ultimately cut out of a string of impressive films: Jungle Fever (1991), Husbands and Wives (1992), and Quiz Show (1994). Feeling depressed as a result of these snubs, she talked to Scorsese who recommended she start developing relationships with directors. Douglas went on to make a low-budget film called Grief (1993) and went to the Sundance Film Festival with it. There, she met Anders and they became friends. Afterwards, the two women kept in contact in the hopes of making a film together.

Initially, they wanted to do a biopic about American poet Anne Sexton but couldn’t get the film rights to her life. They were both obsessed with music, in particular Anders with girl groups from the ‘60s. Douglas told her about how she used to work in the Brill Building as an assistant for infamous New York publicist Peggy Segal and that maybe they should do a film about it. As a result, Anders wrote the role of Edna/Denise specifically for Douglas. When it came to writing the screenplay, both women put a lot of personal details into it. For example, Denise’s relationship with Jay was reminiscent of Douglas and Scorsese. When Anders thought of Douglas for the film, she was looking for an actress to “embody all sorts of contradictions. I have to find the right woman to speak to other women.” However, the actress was worried about how women would react to Denise’s habit of getting involved with men who aren’t good for and tended to sidetrack her dream of recording her own album, “because women don’t want to think Edna would let a guy interrupt a career. But that’s the big secret: Women always think that being loved is much more important than being talented.”

The script originally started as the story of one singer/songwriter but then Anders and Douglas started to add aspects of others: Joni Mitchell, Phil Spector and the Beach Boys. Legendary songwriter Gerry Goffin, who was married to Carole King at one time, was brought into write three songs for the film (including one with his daughter and recording artist Louise Goffin) and also gave Anders a lot of autobiographical information, which she incorporated into the script. Instead of using actual songs that came from the time period, Anders decided to have new songs that sounded like they came from that era because “it would have been very confusing to have these fictional characters writing songs that were already well-known to the public.” Originally, Douglas expected to do her own singing, having started out doing musicals, but the studio wanted to make a lucrative record deal and she had to lip-synch to Kirsten Vigard’s voice.

Grace of My Heart is a treasure trove of hidden gems for music fans who are hip to the music and the musicians of the eras it depicts. For example, towards the end of the film Denise uses her skill for crafting pop songs towards creating very personal ballads, much like Carole King did with her top selling record Tapestry, which inspired some of the songs. In her previous films, Anders used alternative rock (Gas Food Lodging) and hip-hop (Mi Vida Loca) as the soundtrack for stories about young women. While Grace of My Heart is about music from a bygone era, she had contemporary indie rockers team up with seasoned veterans. Gerry Goffin, the inspiration for Howard Caszatt, wrote a song with Los Lobos. Brill Building veteran Carole Bayer Sayer teamed up with Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart on a song. Easily the best collaboration on the film’s soundtrack saw Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach pen the signature song “God Give Me Strength,” which went on to become more successful than the film itself.

Grace of My Heart was made on a small budget and there wasn’t much money to advertise it. The film opened in only 39 theaters in North America and failed to make back its $5 million budget. To make matters worse, it was quickly overshadowed by Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do!, which came out shortly after. It received mostly mixed reviews with critics praising the time spent on the Brill Building era but criticizing the last third where Denise moves out to the West Coast to be with Jay. Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Once Grace of My Heart leaves the Brill Building, the movie gets stranded in a parade of '60s clichés. It turns into the most banal of melodramas, complete with a ''tragic'' finale that plays as borderline kitsch. Still, there's no denying Anders' talent. She should have been content to make a catchy single and not stretched it into an overblown rock opera.” The Globe and Mail’s Rick Groen gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, “In its embracing of easy melodrama, of the wronged woman who endures and then prevails, Grace Of My Heart hopes to emulate the elegant simplicity of the pop music it celebrates. But that combination, as potent as it is rare, is hard to bring off – like her hired melody-makers, Anders gets the simplicity yet misses the elegance. All the trite notes are there, but none of the redeeming grace.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Ms. Anders, who displayed such effortless, down-to-earth feminism in Gas Food Lodging, has to strain harder to make a heroine out of Denise. Ms. Douglas plays her eagerly, but the film casts her as an old-fashioned victim in many clichéd ways … This story offers so little novelty that the film's musical score and great retro costumes easily upstage its drama.”

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Edward Guthman wrote, “Anders is very good to her actors and writes smart, well-rounded characters. Her problem is loving them too much, embracing them too tightly and not knowing when to let go.” Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out four and wrote, “I would have preferred a more limited story that went deeper, instead of a docudrama that covers so much ground, so relentlessly, that we grow weary.” The Washington Post’s Richard Harrington wrote, “One major problem is that Grace of My Heart feels like a preview reel from some upcoming miniseries. Despite its two hours, events seem to unfold too quickly and in too little depth. Anders never really captures the communal bustle, competitive friendships or astounding productivity of the Brill Building's golden age.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Jack Mathews wrote, “Grace marvelously re-creates that atmosphere of sweatshop creativity, both the pressure and the joy, and Douglas' portrayal of a woman fighting for her own identity and a piece of the action gives the story a solid emotional footing.” USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and Susan Wloszczyna wrote, “Allison Anders (Gas Food Lodging) infuses her epic with joy and a keen eye for pre-feminist details, before the pill and pantyhose set us free.”

Ultimately, Grace of My Heart is the story of a survivor. Denise endures all kinds of ups and downs in her personal and professional life with music as the constant thread that runs throughout. It is always there for her whereas the men in her life come and go. Her personal journey propels the film and when it hits a lull this mirrors the lull in her life until someone like Joel comes along and gets her going and the film’s narrative starts up again. By the end of the film you really feel like you’ve been on a journey with this character. Denise channels all of her life experiences into her music and so it makes sense that the film climaxes with her finally recording and releasing the full-length album she had always wanted to do. It is rare when you see a film that is such a labor of love as this one. Anders and Douglas poured so much of themselves into this project and it shows. Grace of My Heart may strain at times under its own ambition but one has to admire its desire to do so in a day and age where so many films and filmmakers play it safe.

SOURCES

Dawes, Amy. “Director Sings Praises of Film Collaborators.” Tampa Tribune. September 17, 1996.

O’Neal, Sean. “Random Roles: Illeana Douglas.” A.V. Club. February 9, 2009.

O’Neal, Sean. “Random Roles: John Turturro.” A.V. Club. June 28, 2011.

Powers, Ann. “Paying Tribute to the Music That Never Died.” The New York Times. September 22, 1996.

Pryor, Kelli. “Her Crazy Life.” Entertainment Weekly. July 22, 1994.

Salem, Rob. “Illeana Douglas Grew Into Roles as Musical Tale Rocked On and On.” Toronto Star. September 13, 1996.

Smith, Chris. “Illeana Douglas.” US Weekly. October 1996.