From Your First Cigarette to Your Last Dying Day: “The Outsiders”

 When I was growing up, youth cliques and gangs were a hot topic. West Side Story made it big on Broadway in 1957, and became a must-see film in 1961. It was five years later that S.E. Hinton (Susie to her friends) published a Young Adult novel called The Outsiders. It looked squarely at the lives of teenagers who, because of their looks or family situations, were regarded as social outcasts in their Oklahoma hometown. In the world of this story, teens are divided into two groups. The Socs (pronounced “soshes”) were more affluent, dressed better, and had cool cars with fins. The Greasers worn grubby jeans and T’s, started smoking at a very young age, and didn’t have much use for school. Hinton—who, remarkably, published the novel when she was sixteen—empathized almost entirely with the Greasers, whose underlying pain and sensitivity she understood. The narrator of her novel, Ponyboy Curtis, is a fourteen-year-old who—in the absence of parents—shares strong bonds of loyalty with his three older brothers. Though he's at the fringes of some brutal situations, like a rumble in a local park, he’s basically a good kid who’s polite to girls, loves sunsets, and ruminates over a poem by Robert Frost, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

 Following his acclaimed release of two Godfather films and Apocalypse Now, director-producer Francis Ford Coppola turned his talents to The Outsiders, after a librarian and her students at Lone Star Elementary School in Fresno, California brought the novel to his attention. Now his goal was to find a troupe of very young actors who could embody Hinton’s characters on the screen. C.Thomas Howell, then fifteen, appealingly played Ponyboy. His brothers—the tortured Dally and the take-charge Darrel—were Matt Dillon and Patrick Swayze. Other rising young actors in the cast were Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and (in a small part) Tom Cruise. A key role, that of a very young Greaser who proves himself both a hero and a martyr, was played by Ralph Macchio, just before he became The Karate Kid. (He apparently was 20 at the time, but convincingly looks about 13.) The film’s final moments, in which a close-up of Macchio is superimposed upon an image of Ponyboy writing his story is either hugely poignant or hugely corny, or both at once.

 As a movie, The Outsiders makes an interesting contrast to the much-beloved West Side Story. Its rivalries are purely social rather than ethnic. West Side Story of course pits Puerto Rican immigrants against white kids whose ancestry is probably not far removed from Ellis Island. But in The Outsiders the divide is almost entirely along economic lines. And, of course, there’s no singing and dancing in this film. Being a Greaser doesn’t seem nearly as much fun as being a Jet. The rumble in which most of the characters participate is less picturesque than grubby, fought in the mud during a driving rain.

 At my L.A. public high school there was not the kind of stark social divide portrayed in the film. Though I never heard anyone called a Greaser, we definitely had Soshes, who vied to gain membership in exclusive social clubs. A more innocent version of the kind of divide portrayed in The Outsiders shows up in both the stage (1971) and the film (1978) versions of a box-office hit, Grease. Hinton’s novel could have been an inspiration for that show, but I suspect there was something in the culture that inspired both projects. Ironically, a version of The Outsiders landed on Broadway in 2024, taking home the Tony Award for best musical.  

 

TV’s Dirty Dancing: Putting Baby in a Corner

No one pretends that the original Dirty Dancing is a masterpiece. Its  story beats are obvious; some of its casting doesn’t work (e.g. an older sister who resembles 17-year-old Baby not at all) and there’s woefully little discussion of the pitfalls of teen sex. But the 1987 film also has some unmistakable assets: a great score, an ending that appeals to the romantic in all of us, and (especially) a dance duo who make our hearts go pitter-pat. As bad-boy dance instructor Johnny Castle, Patrick Swayze is thrillingly sexy, while still managing to convince us of his tender side. Lithe Jennifer Grey (age 27), is credible as a sheltered teen learning how to spread her wings. When, late in the film, she leaps into Swayze’s arms for a triumphant “angel lift,” the moment is sheer terpsichorean perfection. Vicariously we too have the time of our lives, watching these born dancers go through their paces. Truly, they make ME feel like dancing.

Which is why I was curious to see the 2017 TV remake. The original, a modestly budgeted flick from Vestron that was expected to go pretty much unnoticed, made such an impact on young people everywhere that it wasn’t too surprising to see it re-tooled as a TV movie. This, after all, is an era in which the TV versions of several Broadway musical hits (The Sound of Music, The Wiz, Grease) have attracted big audiences. Those shows were all broadcast live, enjoying the energy as well as the challenge of in-the-moment performance. Dirty Dancing was not filmed in the same throw-caution-to-the-winds way. In order to replicate the atmosphere of Kellerman’s, the fictionalized Catskill resort of the movies, it was filmed on location, amid the lakes and piney woods of North Carolina. Still, this new Dirty Dancing is intended to come off as a genuine musical entertainment, which has helped contribute to one of the odder aspects of the storytelling.

The makers of this re-make brag about how they’ve improved upon the original by fleshing out such featured characters as Baby’s sister, mother, father, and the hot-to-trot divorcee who complicates life for Johnny. This turns out to mean that each of them gets a spotlighted musical number. You see, Baby’s mom (Debra Messing) is feeling neglected by her workaholic spouse, so she threatens divorce . . . but when she croons “The Way You Look Tonight” in front of a rapt Kellerman’s audience, her husband (Bruce Greenwood) realizes how much he loves her. Which leads, in turn, to him seated at the piano in the hotel’s rehearsal hall, playing and singing the very same tune. And Baby’s sister (Sarah Hyland of Modern Family) ventures a ukulele duet with the camp’s African-American piano player, Because the story is still set in 1963, the filmmakers are clearly trying to convey a brave social message.

My biggest problem, though, is with this film’s Baby, played by Abigail Breslin. She’s an appealing actress, whom I fondly remember from Little Miss Sunshine, but (alas) a dancer she is not. With her chunky, busty figure and physical awkwardness, she is convincing as the Ugly Duckling Baby of the early scenes. But her transformation into a skillful dance partner (as well as sexual partner) for Johnny is not to be believed for a moment. When they performed the famous “Angel Lift,” I was relieved that poor Colt Prattes, playing Johnny, remained upright. See below to compare the two versions.

One key plot point in Dirty Dancing remains an illegal abortion that comes close to ending in tragedy. It’s alarming, frankly, that in 2018 this seems like Dirty Dancing’s most timely detail.