Sunday night, and this doesn’t really belong on the front page, but so what.

Was just reminded of a movie I’d forgotten about completely. In 1983, Francis Ford Coppola directed two films based on similar S.E. Hinton books written for the “young adult” set. Both starred Matt Dillon and one, The Outsiders, was a fairly pedestrian 80’s young-adultish film and performed reasonably well at the box office.

The other was Rumble Fish, and it largely crashed and burned at the theaters. It too starred Dillon, but also featured Diane Lane, Tom Waits, Mickey Rourke, Dennis Hopper and others – a really interesting cast. Unlike The Outsiders, it was filmed with a lot more creativity – not simply by virtue of being filmed in black and white (except for the fish, as I recall), but for some unusual cinematography and scene transitions. In fact the whole film’s tone really transcended the source material. Yeah it was melodramatic, and perhaps pretentious, but it worked – at least as I recall. Haven’t seen it since I was in high school.

Anyway, it just came rushing back to me when I recalled the song from the movie, which I absolutely love, and which (again, from what I remember) captured the odd, even disturbing tone of the film well. Does anybody else remember this pic? Was it as good (or at least interesting) as I remember it being (I was only, like 15 or 16 at the time, and I thought some pretty crappy stuff was good when I was 16, after all)?