The Outsiders

In the early 1980s, after his "Godfather" films (1972, 1974) and APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), works of epic scale, Francis Ford Coppola began choosing smaller projects like THE OUTSIDERS, based on a popular teenage novel by S.E. Hinton, a teenager herself when it was first published (who makes a cameo appearance as a nurse). Set in Oklahoma of the 1960s, the story hinges on a conflict between the "greasers"--leather-clad poor kids with Elvis-style pompadours--and their affluent high school classmates, the "Socs" (pronounced "soshes"). Hinton's novel was brought to Coppola's attention by a letter from a Fresno, Calif., high school class, asking that he film their favorite n...