Transcript
Speaker: There I was scrolling my phone.
Speaker: Then someone cracked open a Mountain Dew Baja Cabo citrus.
Speaker: I grabbed my own and took a sip.
Speaker: Next thing I know, I heard a rip.
Speaker: My friend tried the splits in skinny jeans.
Speaker: The crew couldn't stop laughing.
Speaker: But hey, not a drop of Baja Cabo citrus was spilled.
Speaker: Have a blast with Mountain Dew Baja Cabo Citrus, a punch of tropical citrus flavor.
Speaker: Baja Cabo Citrus
Speaker: Welcome to Adaptation, the Book to Movie podcast.
Speaker: I'm Nate.
Speaker: And I'm Chris.
Speaker: And today we are actually pre-recording this episode to keep in our back pocket in anticipation of me moving and Chris moving or traveling or both.
Speaker: So apologies if this is not the episode that was promised.
Speaker: We will get to whatever text we expected, but we just needed to have this ready to go.
Speaker: We're just two guys.
Speaker: We can't control time.
Speaker: Can't control time?
Speaker: Not yet.
Speaker: Not yet, anyway.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: We do have a great episode today, recording in the past, time traveling here a little bit.
Speaker: We are talking about The Outsiders, written by S.E.
Speaker: Hinton, with a film adaptation directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Speaker: But before that, I still want to check in.
Speaker: How you doing, Chris?
Speaker: I'm doing wonderful.
Speaker: We're having a great week, eh?
Speaker: Yeah, we are.
Speaker: We are actually recording in person, sort of, from adjacent rooms in my apartment.
Speaker: And I had a good, fun weekend.
Speaker: And Chris and Blair came to visit, watched a lot of great British break-off.
Speaker: Great British bake-off.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, and saw a lot of friends.
Speaker: We've had a good time.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: Since we're skipping the usual intro stuff here, Chris, dive in and tell us a little bit about the book.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It feels so strange to go straight in now.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I feel a little naked.
Speaker: Yeah, so we read, well, I read, you watched The Outsiders, written by S.E.
Speaker: Hinton, published in 1967.
Speaker: The setting is never said explicitly in the book.
Speaker: I don't know if they refer to it anyway in the movie.
Speaker: No, they don't.
Speaker: A lot of the actors use heavy Southern accents, so I could tell what region of the nation it was in.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, obviously the book, I had no idea.
Speaker: So I was interested to look it up.
Speaker: Apparently it takes place in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker: And I saw different, I don't know, opinions.
Speaker: I don't know that the author ever said explicitly, but about 1965, mid-60s Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The author, S.E., is for her given name, Susan Eloise Hinton, born in only 1948 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker: So for anyone that doesn't want to do the fast math there, she started writing this book when she was just 15.
Speaker: 15 years old?
Speaker: Yeah, right?
Speaker: Crazy.
Speaker: And then was 17, 18 when it was published.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And even at that time, at that young age, chose deliberately with publishers to use the initials to not let her gender come in when sending it for publication in case they would just say, oh, this is written by some girl and not even read it.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And indeed, I mean, obviously, I didn't think it was crappy because of the gender of the author or anything, but reading it, I just assumed it was a man until I went to do some research.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know if I knew it was a woman either until looking into this.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Well, I mean, we've talked about this a little before we started recording.
Speaker: I had never heard of this before you told me about it.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: I've read it, I want to say in middle school, and it was like a huge, you know, hit.
Speaker: Like everyone in school loved reading it.
Speaker: Why couldn't we just read this instead of To Kill a Mockingbird?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Oh, I love To Kill a Mockingbird.
Speaker: I need to get back to it.
Speaker: I think I would appreciate it far more now.
Speaker: In ninth grade or whenever we read it in school, I did not enjoy that book.
Speaker: No, it's on our list.
Speaker: We'll get to it someday.
Speaker: Okay, okay.
Speaker: Well, this book, the one we're actually talking about, is essentially, at first, not great sales, relatively poor initial sales.
Speaker: And then the publishers looking at demographics of who was buying it, realized it was selling well with teachers who were using it in classrooms.
Speaker: Oh, well, yeah, that tracks.
Speaker: And it is credited because of this.
Speaker: I should have found more sources corroborating this.
Speaker: But from what I found, credited as kind of creating or being the first book of what we now call YA or young adult books, the genre itself, which is super cool.
Speaker: Damn.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: Turned out a lot of the content, obviously 15 in high school in Tulsa, everything same as the book, fairly autobiographical.
Speaker: The book is about two rival gangs, the Greasers and the Sochas.
Speaker: I guess I didn't see if those were the exact same gangs, but she was inspired to write it based on two rival gangs at her high school.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Her father died when he was 15, spoke a lot later about a non-son.
Speaker: When he was 15?
Speaker: When she was, when she was.
Speaker: Oh, she was 15, sorry.
Speaker: Just like the boys in the book, both their parents passed.
Speaker: But, you know, along the same lines, a lot of themes, as we've seen with many of the books we've discussed, she wrote about what she knew.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And in this case, especially literally writing about the people she was seeing and what they were doing directly around her, which is super cool.
Speaker: It's a coming of age story about Ponyboy.
Speaker: For anyone else who had not read it before this, like myself, that is truly the character's name.
Speaker: That's not a nickname.
Speaker: He is one of the greasers.
Speaker: And the story is essentially following him.
Speaker: You know, the greasers at large, but really he's truly the main character.
Speaker: and his brother Soda Pop.
Speaker: And then what I think is so good, their other brother, Derry.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I think in the, is it short for Daryl?
Speaker: But they do call him Derry.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But like, yeah, because he makes reference at some point in the book, like my dad was creative or some original or something like that.
Speaker: It's like, oh, but his first child, he just thought, nah, you get something regular.
Speaker: Sorry, bud.
Speaker: You get a real name.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The story is pretty much along the lines exactly what you expect from a coming of age.
Speaker: You know, this outsider's title comes from the life I think all of us had.
Speaker: I think if you say you didn't have this experience, maybe you're not being truthful with yourself or you hit the jackpot.
Speaker: Because I think that we all had the experience, especially in high school, of not feeling 100% accepted.
Speaker: Part of that being that we certainly did not know ourselves 100% at that age, right?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: I thought it was fascinating because I'm immediately picturing these characters that are...
Speaker: more known, fairly well known, you know, the Fonz from Happy Days, and the movie Grease, this, to me, at least this persona, this huge personality, very outgoing, boisterous, I read that as confidence.
Speaker: And a lot of the theme here is regardless of what people are showing, this tough guy act or whatever, it is out of a very vulnerable state.
Speaker: And this idea, this came up often where essentially Ponyboy would suggest, well, the socias, they've got this money, they've got this great life in their cars.
Speaker: And so they have all the outlets they need.
Speaker: And when we, the greasers, don't have a loving household, don't have the money to get what we need, we have all this pent-up emotion and we need to act out.
Speaker: And unfortunately, his friend's responses to that were like, I don't know how to express myself.
Speaker: I'm going to rob a gas station.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which...
Speaker: feels, I don't know, dated or however you want to, I never thought, man, I don't know how to express my emotions.
Speaker: I should rob a gas station, but the overall experience very, very relatable.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Um, so sorry, I threw in a discussion question right away because this was a very interesting experience for me.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And I think it fits at this point in our discussion.
Speaker: So every experience I've had with the American literature coming of age story, I have hated.
Speaker: Oh, I'm sick of them.
Speaker: I want no more to do with them.
Speaker: It's like repetitive.
Speaker: It's a dumb, boring town.
Speaker: In my head, the world I'm creating as I read is like nearly in black and white, real drab.
Speaker: Everybody's bummed all the time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And as I thought, I thought about it trying to figure out, you know, we're going to discuss it.
Speaker: This is a good time for me to maybe sort through why, where does this disdain come from?
Speaker: And I think I really have a new paradigm for myself.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I also have absolutely no allegiance to my hometown, Egan, Minnesota, who cares about Egan?
Speaker: Never harbored any strong school spirit.
Speaker: about either my high school, my college, any of that.
Speaker: I'm not going back for the big homecoming games at my alma mater's, right?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And the portrayal here, and I'm going to argue, I wrote this before I saw her age, but even at that, I think this is what she was seeing and was trying to do.
Speaker: It's a humanizing of this group that feels other, and it's not teenage angst.
Speaker: It's not they're acting out because they don't know how to
Speaker: You know, they're so emotionally dull.
Speaker: They have an inability to express themselves.
Speaker: It's a need that we all had at that time to vent frustration.
Speaker: And I think she puts it in a good way because a lot of these kids, you know, the kid who, oh, nuts.
Speaker: Johnny, he's the one who dies.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, you're right.
Speaker: Choosing to sleep in a park instead of going home because his home life is so crummy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's an objectively bad situation that I think few of us have legitimately had to do, had to resort to that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And instead of complaining about them who have been labeled public nuisances, she paints the picture from their perspective and you immediately just go, oh, they're not they're not criminals.
Speaker: I feel bad for them.
Speaker: So that was a very long lead up.
Speaker: What is your view on this writing or storytelling style?
Speaker: Clearly, there's something to it because it keeps getting reused.
Speaker: Viking Publishing said as of 2017, this book, The Outsiders, still sells half a million copies a year.
Speaker: How do you feel about this approach, this, I guess, nearly a genre in and of itself?
Speaker: I tend to be a big fan of coming of age stories.
Speaker: I think for me, it's similar in the Agatha Christie episode, we talked about how those sort of campy whodunits make it like, comfortable and I don't know, socially appropriate to access and explore our morbid fascinations with death and being scared and things like that.
Speaker: I think that these stories
Speaker: We're drawn to them because we've been through something similar.
Speaker: We've all, like you and I, we're also both once 14-year-old boys, 14 and 16-year-old boys, which is the main characters of this book.
Speaker: We didn't go through things exactly the same as them, but the things that they go through are so big that we're able to sort of find our way into those, right?
Speaker: So he stays in a park because he doesn't get along with his parents or brother.
Speaker: I think it's his dad, right?
Speaker: He doesn't... Johnny gets beat by his father.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Oh, that's right.
Speaker: His parents fight a lot.
Speaker: I mean, we've all, as teenagers, had spats with parents or siblings or friends or whatever.
Speaker: Obviously not...
Speaker: to the degree, hopefully, that Johnny did.
Speaker: But, you know, we get to sort of explore those feelings and remember what that was like.
Speaker: And the good times, too.
Speaker: You know, becoming such good friends with people.
Speaker: And you remember the people that stick out in your life, right?
Speaker: And this is about some very, very young boys that don't get to be lifelong friends.
Speaker: Spoiler alert.
Speaker: Jeez.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I tend to like it.
Speaker: I also think
Speaker: I do think that the term coming of age is kind of funny because we typically apply it to stories about teenagers and young adults.
Speaker: But I think that we have these sort of coming of age moments throughout all of our lives.
Speaker: You know, like you enter a new phase of life when you get married or you get divorced or you move to a new city and all of these experiences, they help you grow and explore yourself, but they also sort of humble you in certain ways, which I think is really sort of the core of
Speaker: coming of age story in the traditional sense that we're watching somebody go through these changes.
Speaker: So it's just applicable throughout your life and accessible, you know, from from the time you're like old enough to practice reading comprehension, basically.
Speaker: Yes, that's no, that's an excellent point that I had not thought about.
Speaker: This keeps happening.
Speaker: You know, I just moved.
Speaker: It's obviously exciting.
Speaker: It's a choice that I made, but it's still difficult.
Speaker: I still have these big feelings.
Speaker: And if I had gotten to read this at that time, maybe I'd have a little more in the tank for how to deal with.
Speaker: No, that's a great answer.
Speaker: I'm going to throw a curveball at you because it's completely not what we discussed, but I think it's very germane here.
Speaker: A little treat for any of you Burnsvilleites that do listen to this, all two of you.
Speaker: We've got a cool electronic guest appearance here today.
Speaker: It really made me curious when Nate said he read this in school and I did not.
Speaker: So I reached out to one of my favorite teachers on earth from, I suppose, about 19 years ago now, Mr. David Burr.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And he responded, which is super cool.
Speaker: So he was my eighth grade English teacher and sent them a few questions.
Speaker: And his answer was actually really along the lines of what you just said.
Speaker: I'm sorry, let me pull it up.
Speaker: Yeah, so he talked about, I asked, you know, what is it about this that keeps people coming back year after year, right?
Speaker: And it truly was nearly what you just said, this idea of working through tough concepts, life situations at any time is a challenge, but we all have to do it.
Speaker: And so his point was living through the character allows the students to develop coping mechanisms that they'll need.
Speaker: They're going to face these again, as you said, hopefully not the same things, but you're going to face things that are hard.
Speaker: And this is your way of saying, I mean, they got through it.
Speaker: Yeah, this is how they dealt with it.
Speaker: Oh, that's fascinating.
Speaker: I'm really it's very cool to me that you two.
Speaker: It was very similar.
Speaker: He also went on to talk about dealing with an event and how the choice did not pan out.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I guess we didn't talk about whether we're going to spoil that or not.
Speaker: Probably not.
Speaker: OK, OK.
Speaker: Not going to spoil it.
Speaker: If you can avoid it.
Speaker: Yeah, that seems fine.
Speaker: But observing that as an outside party, what we talked about with the dreams in our discussion in Agatha Christie of the fascination with murder and how you can observe this and maybe empathize.
Speaker: How would I deal with this situation?
Speaker: How would it feel for me?
Speaker: But from the safety of a classroom with your peers.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that is all to say I think it has considerably changed my paradigm on the genre.
Speaker: Yeah, very cool.
Speaker: Especially some 15 year old from the 60s has got me really reevaluating how I look at life.
Speaker: Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker: So we'll wrap up our book time here.
Speaker: This is not a fun fact, but I thought I laughed out loud when I hit this part.
Speaker: The phrase stay gold pony boy.
Speaker: Yeah, I've heard that 1 billion times in my life.
Speaker: And I had no idea it was a quote from this book.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: I love you, but that is a little bit of a lapse of, like, that's a little bit on you.
Speaker: No, I think you are 100% correct here.
Speaker: Yeah, but I just, I hit that and I laughed out loud.
Speaker: I was like, how did I never wonder where this was from?
Speaker: Like, you never asked your parents, you're
Speaker: They never said that.
Speaker: And we're like, you weren't like, what's a pony boy?
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: You were just like, okay.
Speaker: Did not question it at all.
Speaker: It was someone's friend who was, I don't know, into ponies.
Speaker: I don't know what I thought.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But yeah, it's honestly a very tight.
Speaker: We really covered everything but like a couple big events.
Speaker: And I mean, that was a fast overview.
Speaker: But the heavy, heavy themes really kind of are the shining element here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's what I've got for you about the book.
Speaker: Okay, great.
Speaker: Well, let's pause for a minute and take a break, and we will be right back.
Speaker: And we're back.
Speaker: Thank you so much for joining us for our conversation for S.E.
Speaker: Hinton's The Outsiders.
Speaker: Chris just went over the book.
Speaker: I'm going to go over the movie.
Speaker: It was written by Kathleen Rothwell, the screenplay was, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, which is a really, really big name in
Speaker: cinema history for all the cinephiles out there.
Speaker: They know that he's widely known as one of the greatest directors to ever live.
Speaker: I've heard that name.
Speaker: Why have I heard that name?
Speaker: The Godfather, most likely.
Speaker: Apocalypse Now.
Speaker: I mean, like... Okay, yep, yep.
Speaker: Everything.
Speaker: This movie, The Outsiders, was released in 1983.
Speaker: This is at the tail end, maybe even a little after it ended, of the New Hollywood Movement, which is my favorite period in Hollywood history.
Speaker: This movement, there's some debate as to whether it's a movement or the time period of
Speaker: because most of it took place during the 70s.
Speaker: But it was mostly characterized by the most popular stories coming out of Hollywood centering on people that felt very disaffected by their communities.
Speaker: So I very much feel like this fits that because we're talking what I think we'll get into it later in the discussion questions.
Speaker: But we're talking about people that don't exactly feel like they fit in.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And Francis Ford Coppola was a leading voice really in
Speaker: this movement.
Speaker: So often people say that it ended in like 1982.
Speaker: I would, I would just maybe put this in as an asterisk in the new Hollywood movement there.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The movie stars see Thomas Howell as Ponyboy with a huge, huge supporting cast.
Speaker: Obviously, there's a ton of characters in this book.
Speaker: And what's really interesting is that the supporting cast is full of huge names in their sort of breakout roles.
Speaker: This is what made
Speaker: People very famous, including Ralph Macchio.
Speaker: This was right before Karate Kid.
Speaker: Rob Lowe.
Speaker: I believe this is Rob Lowe's first movie ever.
Speaker: Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise has a tiny, tiny role in this.
Speaker: And then Diane Lane, who is the star of one of Chris's favorite movies, Under the Tuscan Sun.
Speaker: What a list.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: It's just unbelievable that these guys all went on to have huge careers and in such different ways.
Speaker: You know, Tom Cruise obviously is...
Speaker: just like nothing compares.
Speaker: But I mean, Rob Lowe's had a great time.
Speaker: Patrick Swayze had a good run.
Speaker: Like, wow, it just doesn't.
Speaker: It's I think it just really speaks to how Francis Ford Coppola and and whoever his casting director was, they really had their thumb on some big pulse there when this movie was being made.
Speaker: Tell me Rob Lowe had to be one of the socias, right?
Speaker: No, Rob Lowe was Soda Pop.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm so glad that you reached out to your high school teacher to talk about this book because the movie actually was made because Francis Ford Coppola was inspired to make the movie after receiving a letter from middle school, a middle school librarian from Fresno, who said that her students were so in love with the book that they had
Speaker: drafted and signed a petition to ask that the book be turned into a movie.
Speaker: Heck yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they just put it in the mail and they decided Francis Ford Coppola was the one they wanted to make it.
Speaker: Like I said, he was sort of the movie god of the day.
Speaker: And this letter that they sent to him included 15 pages of signatures.
Speaker: Incredible.
Speaker: From the students.
Speaker: And he was so moved that he immediately began working on this adaptation.
Speaker: So the roots of this book...
Speaker: in schools really, this story really runs pretty deep.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: They did have to cut quite a bit to maintain a short runtime because they wanted the movie to really move and keep people interested.
Speaker: Like I said, Francis Ford Coppola was known for some really heavy stuff like the Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now that
Speaker: some commercial audiences maybe wouldn't have been so interested in.
Speaker: So this movie really zips.
Speaker: But a director's cut was later released on DVD featuring 22 extra minutes of footage throughout the movie that includes some of those scenes.
Speaker: So if you watch the movie and feel like it's missing some of your favorite scenes, I would encourage you to search for that director's cut.
Speaker: I also thought it was kind of interesting, just kind of a fun, funny fact.
Speaker: The re-release included a new score as well, because Francis Ford Coppola's father did the score of the original movie.
Speaker: And even though Coppola didn't like it, he didn't feel comfortable telling his dad.
Speaker: that he needed to rework some stuff, which I thought was just like for this story in particular, which is sort of about confronting tough things with your family.
Speaker: I was like, come on, man.
Speaker: He read the story and went, man, I'm so glad these characters stood up to their parents.
Speaker: No, no, I won't.
Speaker: But I'm so glad they did.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: And it's even better because...
Speaker: I rewatched this movie to prep for this and was like, dang, this score really is pretty cheesy and melodramatic.
Speaker: And it was kind of the one complaint I had was the score.
Speaker: So it was very funny to see that that was a pain point for Coppola as well.
Speaker: That's so good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Mostly positive reviews, I guess maybe I would say mixed to positive.
Speaker: This was sort of the beginning of the end.
Speaker: Like I said, end of the New Hollywood movement, sort of the beginning of the end for Coppola as well in terms of being a titan of his craft.
Speaker: Pretty much everything he's made after this has gotten mixed to...
Speaker: very poor reviews.
Speaker: It's kind of his last great film and it came out in a time when he was really exploring a lot of stories about youth.
Speaker: He sort of deviated from some of the darker layered stuff that he had been doing before.
Speaker: Is that to suggest that this caused that downturn or this is just maybe the end of his...
Speaker: As you said, dominance.
Speaker: Yeah, just the end of his dominance.
Speaker: Maybe a sign that he was sort of wavering in what he wanted to do with film, what kind of stories he wanted to tell.
Speaker: Sofia Coppola, his daughter, who's also a huge director, was born in 71.
Speaker: So she would have been 12 when this came out.
Speaker: So I could see him, you know, having turned to movies about youth because he was inspired by having young kids of his own as well.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: One of the sort of lasting effects of this movie is that the house in Tulsa that was the set for the Curtis boys home, this is Ponyboy, Soda Pop, and Derry, Daryl, Curtis, the three brothers.
Speaker: It's now actually a museum.
Speaker: There's a handful of props and mostly behind the scenes photos that are on display in this home that you can visit.
Speaker: It's called Outsiders Home Museum.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: Also in town nearby, a gas station that was featured early on in the movie was restored and is a popular stop for fans of the movie.
Speaker: People like to travel because it's developed this sort of cult following since its release.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just because it resonates so strongly with so many people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So really cool that people like take trips to go see this house and this gas station.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, that's so cool.
Speaker: Yeah, it is pretty cool.
Speaker: And that's, I mean, that's pretty much it for the movie.
Speaker: Like I said, cult following means that people are watching it all the time now.
Speaker: People love it all the time.
Speaker: I just cannot believe that you haven't.
Speaker: hadn't heard of the book that you hadn't read the book it does feel crazy now now that i've gotten through it and done my research i am wondering yeah how how it's i mean there are so many books that's my excuse yeah how long how long is the final runtime the cut that they released publicly an hour 31 so it really freaking zips i mean there's not a boring minute mm-hmm
Speaker: I mean, it's, it's, uh, um, the, I think something that's kind of miraculous about it and we can maybe chalk up to the youth of the author for the heavy and multiple themes that it contains and truly choose on.
Speaker: It's not, it's a pretty tight story.
Speaker: You know, the, it moves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, another reason that it's got this sort of everlasting, evergreen quality, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Very digestible.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Well, with that, let's take another super quick break, and we will be back with some more information and discussion.
Speaker: Welcome back to Adaptation, the Booked Movie Podcast.
Speaker: We are getting into discussion questions for
Speaker: The Outsider is written by S.E.
Speaker: Hinton and adapted in part by Francis Ford Coppola.
Speaker: And they brought her in for the making of the movie.
Speaker: Did I tell you about that?
Speaker: I think I knew that because she has been quoted saying that she got very close with all of the boys in particular.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think maybe she said that she still is in touch with some of them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Tom Cruise has a reputation for staying in touch with people for a long time.
Speaker: I would not be surprised if he's still in touch with her.
Speaker: Man, that's so cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm going to take the lead here and ask my first question that I wrote down.
Speaker: One of the larger themes of this movie is that our...
Speaker: social order that we're born into cannot ultimately be changed or challenged.
Speaker: There's a really important conversation between Ponyboy and a member of the Soc gang.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Where they both sort of agree that nothing will ever come of their rivalry.
Speaker: They're just going to be Soc's and Grease's forever, Grease's forever.
Speaker: I'm curious, for those that don't know me, I work in social services, so I, I,
Speaker: sort of deal with people being stuck in these cycles of poverty quite frequently.
Speaker: That's the populations that I work with.
Speaker: And the county I work for is in suburban Colorado, and I was just really fascinated by the differences between the American South, of course this was set decades ago and written decades ago, and what I see now in terms of people moving through these sort of socioeconomic classes or orders or whatever...
Speaker: term you want to prescribe here.
Speaker: Do you think that the story would be different if it was set somewhere else besides Tulsa?
Speaker: This is an excellent question.
Speaker: This is that scene in particular was honestly probably one of my favorite scenes because it felt so unlike the tropes of the American dream and, you know, pick yourself up by your bootstrap, however you want to approach it.
Speaker: That part in particular felt like it would be so comfortable in any of these English caste system novels, of which we've discussed many.
Speaker: Yeah, because that's like such a huge thing there.
Speaker: The butler is a butler because his dad was a butler because his dad was a butler.
Speaker: And they work for the lords because the lords are the lords.
Speaker: And that's how it works.
Speaker: And I think one of the big themes of America, certainly American literature, is screw that.
Speaker: We're going to shatter it.
Speaker: We can do what we want.
Speaker: And then we see that little glimpse of it.
Speaker: right here and it almost to me maybe that's more analysis than hinton intended but to me it almost um offers without answering the question of okay have we genuinely escaped that or have we tricked ourselves into thinking it and we are perpetuating the exact same caste system on the other side of the atlantic ocean you know right yeah so my answer to that would be i think i don't think tulsa is the crux here
Speaker: I think the point was anywhere in the US, as you asked, would have the same thing happening.
Speaker: But anywhere that you ask them, they would say, oh, no, we're not like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: Which is somewhere between naivety and lying to yourselves.
Speaker: But that's, again, a question that I think she deliberately or otherwise posed and didn't necessarily answer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I agree with you.
Speaker: And I actually want to... I think that's a great point to jump into my second question.
Speaker: So instead of ping-ponging, if that's all right with you, I'm going to dive into the second one.
Speaker: I'm not... When we read...
Speaker: coming-of-age books or watch coming-of-age movies, I'm not very big on contemplating what happens to the character afterwards, unless there's a sequel, of course, because I sort of think, like, you're just supposed to retain those ideas that were presented in this text as it is, you know, sort of like a concrete block of information that you're supposed to consume.
Speaker: But I did find myself feeling a little bit at odds with the idea, you know, Ponyboy is told several times to stay gold.
Speaker: Forever.
Speaker: And his internal struggle is kind of that a greaser, he's not really sure if you can stay gold and be a greaser, but that's, again, who he is.
Speaker: He's stuck in that caste system.
Speaker: So I'm just curious, what do you think happens to Ponyboy long term?
Speaker: Do you think he stays a greaser?
Speaker: Do you think he stays golden?
Speaker: Can you do both?
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: So first of all, I want to adamantly disagree with your approach to
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: My favorite, I think all of the character development and interactions and world building of any text is with the purpose of, okay, we all now have this fully fleshed out character.
Speaker: What, what is the rest?
Speaker: What I've given you just enough to know who they are.
Speaker: And now your brain gets to play.
Speaker: Where are they in 10 years, 20 years?
Speaker: And I love that.
Speaker: So that's fascinating to me.
Speaker: I think that you're correct.
Speaker: I think these segued perfectly because the beauty of that discussion with the Soch, what I pictured was Ponyboy walking away from that conversation, looking at all of the troubles they've had.
Speaker: You know, all along he feels this guilt that Derry couldn't go play college ball and...
Speaker: soda pop dropped out of school so that they could support him and they're saying stay in school the the nauseating um i hope somewhat dated idea at this point of the american dream of a 4 000 square foot five bed four bath in the suburbs with your 2.5 kids and your dog yeah i hope is dead and buried i'm sure it's not um but i picture him walking away going
Speaker: okay, I do stay in school.
Speaker: I don't keep fist fighting people.
Speaker: I get a regular job and can support myself and have my brothers over to my house for dinner.
Speaker: And we don't need to continue feeling like we're scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Speaker: I think that is the dream to him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I saw it as...
Speaker: You know, I love seeing these dudes who were like punkers in high school and now they're 55 and have their kids and can't wait to show them the wonder of the sonic experience that is hearing the Sex Pistols for the first time.
Speaker: And then also go get in their car, drop their kid off at middle school and drive to their nine to five because they're regular people that have bills to pay and groceries and mouths to feed.
Speaker: And again, I have no idea if this is Hinton's goal in approaching this.
Speaker: But to me, that's the...
Speaker: The beauty behind what is ugly, you know, caste systems are objectively ugly, the idea that you're stuck with this and you can't escape.
Speaker: He gets to decide what escape, succeed, stay golden, quote unquote, means to him.
Speaker: Even if it just means he can see the humanity in this rival gang, this group that they've disliked forever and say, hey, guys, we could quit having this weird gang fight once a month just because it's what we do.
Speaker: And I would call that growth and improvement, you know?
Speaker: Sure, yeah.
Speaker: What do you picture when you think about that, his next step?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: That's why I put it here.
Speaker: Because I just find these ideas to clash, not meaning that it was a poorly constructed story.
Speaker: I mean, I think that the point of the story is that these ideas clash between sort of staying true to who you are and doing what you've got to do,
Speaker: because he is an orphan, you know, and like life is going to be harder for him.
Speaker: Of course, of course.
Speaker: But also people tell him to stay gold because they're like, you're so much better than the rest of us and we can see that.
Speaker: And better, I'm talking better with like a lowercase b. Yes, yep, yep.
Speaker: You know, it's not like he's the Messiah.
Speaker: He just has this sort of heart of gold, right?
Speaker: The scene with the, is it a sunrise or sunset?
Speaker: That sort of proves that he's a little bit more sensitive than most of the other guys.
Speaker: I'm sorry, can I turn that a little towards Derry?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's, I think, exactly what's being exposed here.
Speaker: These are all very quote-unquote average people.
Speaker: When he runs away because Derry hits him and even his dad never hit him before he passed.
Speaker: And then they have this coming back together of, oh, wait, he is this hard on me because he loves me this much.
Speaker: Because he doesn't want to let Ponyboy drop out of school because he wants better for him.
Speaker: Expresses it in an objectively bad way.
Speaker: Don't hit kids.
Speaker: But the end result is not – they're not saying you're going to go be winning Nobel Prizes and saving the world.
Speaker: They're saying get yourself into a marginally more –
Speaker: I don't know, comfortable, successful, happier position.
Speaker: Don't let yourself fall into the same unhappy place we have.
Speaker: It's quite clear.
Speaker: Derry does not want to be working at a gas station at 20 and feeding his kid brothers, you know.
Speaker: And that's what I see when they say stay gold.
Speaker: It's like this purity.
Speaker: They talk about Johnny and how he needs the gang and everyone in the gang needs him.
Speaker: This puny, runty youngest member.
Speaker: That is the beauty in it.
Speaker: What is the love that you see being shared between these, frankly, very, very young people?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then extrapolating that to the rest of life.
Speaker: Yeah, I like that.
Speaker: Great questions.
Speaker: You always have great questions.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Great questions.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Should we get to our second guest question?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So we do have a couple more answers from Mr. Burr that we will hear.
Speaker: But I also, I just, as a teacher, I nerded out about this and like the meta of the last five years that we all lived through.
Speaker: So mid-COVID, the audiobook copy of this that I found was actually a recording by a fellow teacher for her...
Speaker: language arts class during COVID.
Speaker: Oh, okay, cool.
Speaker: And I thought, this is so cool.
Speaker: So I tracked her down and reached out to her and presented her the same few questions that I sent to Mr. Burr.
Speaker: And I just, one, think it's so cool that she responded.
Speaker: So if you listen to this, thank you, Ms.
Speaker: Wagers.
Speaker: And congrats on the upcoming retirement.
Speaker: You made it.
Speaker: The first question I asked, again, purely because of the discussion we had, you read it in school, and I...
Speaker: never even heard about.
Speaker: I don't know, maybe I wasn't paying attention or something.
Speaker: I just said, why is it so popular in schools?
Speaker: And she talked about essentially how Hinton packed so much into such a short story.
Speaker: We hear friendship, drinking, fighting, rebelling, lots of rebelling, growth, found family in this very digestible story.
Speaker: And I think that's a phenomenal synopsis.
Speaker: I could not have put nearly as eloquently, but we also talked about
Speaker: To me, reading this, I was like, this is not for kids.
Speaker: You know, I also have 14-year-old students, and I really deliberately shy away from themes that I think, you know, are not appropriate for that age, whatever that means.
Speaker: And this really forced me to stop and look at that, and that is an action I am taking as a teacher 100% out of fear, that I won't know how to answer whatever questions might come up.
Speaker: You know, not that a 14-year-old will read about, you know, some adult theme and leave the room crying or something or tell their parents that they read something they shouldn't have.
Speaker: My far greater fear is that they'll say, well, Mr. Anderson, why does this happen?
Speaker: And I'm like, how am I supposed to answer that?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I love the answer.
Speaker: Miss Wagers sent back.
Speaker: And Mr. Burr actually said something right along the same lines.
Speaker: Kids aren't as naive, she said, as her generation.
Speaker: I would expand that further to as naive as we perhaps picture.
Speaker: And she said she used to send home permission slips when she first started doing the book 20 years ago.
Speaker: And she said she quit doing that.
Speaker: She hasn't done it in years.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And she said, most parents have read the story or watched the movie and they love it too.
Speaker: And that was, man, that was like getting hit by a truck.
Speaker: I was like, of course, I am.
Speaker: I'm doing a disservice by choosing to these circumstances and they're going to have to deal with them.
Speaker: And I'm looking at them and deciding, I don't think you're ready yet.
Speaker: And it's just going to be all the more blindsiding later.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So that was very interesting.
Speaker: But I would love to hear, you know, that's a little bit from two English teachers perspectives.
Speaker: For you, do you have you thought at all about why?
Speaker: Why the book maybe even why the movie have been as popular and stayed as popular as they are?
Speaker: One thing that stood out to me as you started talking about all of this, I was trying to think I read it in middle school.
Speaker: And I was trying to think if I had to get a permission slip signed, simply can't remember.
Speaker: And I don't even know if my parents would remember because, you know, you're a kid in school, you're signing permission slips left and right.
Speaker: But I do remember being particularly excited about this book because my parents had read it as well.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I remember talking to them about it.
Speaker: I remember asking them.
Speaker: My mom had seen the movie, and I believe we watched it as a family after I finished the book.
Speaker: I don't think we watched the movie in school.
Speaker: And I remember being like, talking to my parents about what does this guy look like in the movie?
Speaker: What does this girl look like?
Speaker: How does this girl dress?
Speaker: Like, you know, all of these things kind of matching.
Speaker: I remember just being really excited about kind of hearing that the way I was picturing these characters in my head was the way that other people perceive them.
Speaker: So I think that the one really interesting thing is this generational approach that many generations have read this.
Speaker: in school.
Speaker: And so it's fun to go home and talk to your parents about it.
Speaker: And like I said, I'm pretty sure we watched the movie for the first time after I finished the book.
Speaker: So it was just kind of really exciting and engaging in that way.
Speaker: And even though I don't think we're processing this at the time, I think it's very exciting for us to read a book about kids, right?
Speaker: You mentioned To Kill a Mockingbird, and that is about kids that are actually, I think, even younger than
Speaker: the kids that are generally reading it in school.
Speaker: I read it, I believe, my freshman year of high school.
Speaker: And they're like middle-aged school kids in Mockingbird, I think.
Speaker: But it's just that easier path in, I think, to the characters and what they're feeling and learning and experiencing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: This might have been the first book that I read where somebody died for school.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: You know, like Harry Potter aside.
Speaker: So, so you just really feel that impact a lot more when you're reading about somebody that's your age.
Speaker: Yeah, then you do reading, I don't know, the Odyssey.
Speaker: right, was another one around this time where you're like, I don't really care about this.
Speaker: Yes, totally different meaning.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that's so that's, that's it.
Speaker: I think it's just as sort of the perfect potion.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, yep, yep.
Speaker: What else do we have?
Speaker: Do you have another discussion question?
Speaker: I do have one more.
Speaker: I didn't know if you had one more.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: No, just those two.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: There was one more that I wanted to touch on because I was just blown away when I found out how old the author was.
Speaker: So I asked both of our... Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker: Absolutely crazy and lends a lot to the authenticity, I think.
Speaker: Well, again, yeah, talking about how it appeals to kids because a freaking kid wrote it.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So this was, I really liked this answer.
Speaker: Again, our electronic interviewees.
Speaker: So I asked, do you discuss, since you're going through it in a classroom, do you discuss the age of the author and kind of how remarkable that is, you know?
Speaker: And Mr. Burr said they do discuss
Speaker: the author, how old she was when she wrote it before they even start reading it.
Speaker: And he suggested this is another reason for its popularity among students, because it shows that someone their age can do amazing things, such as write an entire novel.
Speaker: And that is, yeah, he said, absolutely inspirational concept.
Speaker: I could not agree more.
Speaker: It's so meta that someone this age doing a hard thing successfully wrote a brilliant book about people her age doing hard things.
Speaker: I mean, mixed bag on the successes, but that's real life, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like at some point, a kid also needs to hear for the first time, you tried really hard at this thing and it didn't work.
Speaker: But if we don't see these examples of, yeah, it worked.
Speaker: She went and did the thing.
Speaker: If I was 15 and someone said, you could write a novel and publish it, I would have said, yeah, you're dumb.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Hopefully not that.
Speaker: But that's so inspiring to think, again, me as a teacher.
Speaker: That like gives me hope that we have resources like this to hand a kid and say, yeah, that that test was tough.
Speaker: You did not pass, but that's OK.
Speaker: Look, there are things on the other side.
Speaker: People have been in maybe not your exact situation, but similar and have persevered and have thrived, have stayed cool.
Speaker: Stayed gold.
Speaker: That was cheesy.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: That was the perfect way to cap that discussion.
Speaker: Well, huge shout out and thank you to Miss Wager and Mr. Burr.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Thank you, guys.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: I did not expect either of them to reply to me.
Speaker: So cool to have.
Speaker: Thank you, guys.
Speaker: You're the best.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I now read 60 books a year, and it is no doubt in no small part due to this phenomenal gentleman teaching me about a subject that I hated 14, yeah, 19 years ago.
Speaker: Goodness gracious.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Okay, well, let's talk recommendations and ratings.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: Do you want to go first and tell me what about who you would recommend this to or if you would recommend it to anybody?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I am so astonished.
Speaker: I had never heard anything about this before.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: Maybe halfway through the book, I see why it's such a classroom thing because if you and I were not having this discussion, I would not have done the research I had done.
Speaker: And just the book on its own without processing these themes, I would maybe say three out of five.
Speaker: I would not.
Speaker: It wasn't bad, but I would not be impressed.
Speaker: If you have some friends you like chatting stories with, a book club, your own kids, that is who I would recommend this to.
Speaker: Someone who's going to sit down with others and say, what did you take away from this, from this?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How do you feel about the movie?
Speaker: Yeah, very similarly.
Speaker: It's a really moving movie.
Speaker: I recommend it to anybody who's a fan of coming-of-age stories, and I know that that's a pretty broad net to cast, but it's the best way to put it.
Speaker: It's just such a seminal...
Speaker: story that i mean if you're like fine with seeing kids on screen you're gonna like you're gonna like this movie you know i did wonder a little bit about that part i didn't even ask you about it because there's a big difference between reading something your brain is building the images and seeing it on screen there's an amount that i was concerned i don't think i want to watch two 15 year olds pummel each other
Speaker: Yeah, that's where the sort of punch comes in, right?
Speaker: Is that you're watching these kids, especially now.
Speaker: I've got young family members, you've got young family members and students, so it hits a little differently, no pun intended, than it did when I was 15.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: But I think it's important to read it at both ages.
Speaker: I mean, that brings it right back around to we have coming-of-age moments all the time.
Speaker: That was a moment for me to be like, dang, it means something different to me to have kids around and take care of kids.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You know, watching this through the eyes of an adult instead of, you know, 15 or whatever I was.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And that was your example.
Speaker: There was exactly what I thought this year for the first time.
Speaker: One of my teenage nephews texted me and asked if we could talk about something that happened on one of his high school sports teams.
Speaker: And I'm just sitting there thinking.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Why are you asking me?
Speaker: How am I?
Speaker: That's a horrible situation.
Speaker: And I go, man, at that age, I was asking adults the same questions.
Speaker: We're all Blair loves saying this, and I love her for it.
Speaker: We're all on our first try here.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: All of us.
Speaker: Yes, we are.
Speaker: Me and my eternal naivety, these 14-year-olds that I'm more afraid of than they're afraid of me, and these incredible experts we brought in that have been teaching this for 20 years, and I'm sure still take new parts away each reading.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: What kind of rating did you give it on Goodreads?
Speaker: Yes, that's a great question.
Speaker: I think I rated it before I did this digging.
Speaker: I'm still not certain.
Speaker: It's a five for me.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Honestly, what it did for me more is it makes me want to return to some of those stories.
Speaker: Other coming of age stories that I did not enjoy and see what I was missing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: but still absolutely a four for me, four out of five, if not higher.
Speaker: Yeah, I actually am going to sort of mirror what you just said.
Speaker: I rated it shortly after seeing it, and now post-research, post-discussion, I would bump mine up as well, I think.
Speaker: I rated it three and a half stars, because the movie does, at times, can feel a little bit dated, partly because it is.
Speaker: Like I said, it was released in 83.
Speaker: And I mentioned that Coppola was sort of...
Speaker: beginning this downward slide in his career.
Speaker: So there's some weird things in the movie.
Speaker: But the themes are so strong, right?
Speaker: And the story of the outsiders makes you feel like an insider, regardless of the format that it's shared in.
Speaker: So it's easy enough to overlook any of those flaws.
Speaker: So yeah, I think I would probably bump it up to a four.
Speaker: as well.
Speaker: Do you see this now, knowing that it is continuously seeing the same appreciation in schools as a book?
Speaker: Do you see a remake, a modernization, and another film coming out?
Speaker: I hope not, just because even though this one can feel dated, it holds up well enough that there's just no reason to.
Speaker: It's not like they missed the point or that they could have gone deeper or something.
Speaker: It hits all of its marks.
Speaker: you know, in terms of what the story and particularly what S.E.
Speaker: Hinton like had in mind when, as far as I can tell, when it was conceptualized.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, remaking a Coppola movie would also be like career suicide probably.
Speaker: No, I see what you mean.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So yeah, I doubt it and I hope not.
Speaker: But I will say, I mean,
Speaker: You know, they recently made Outsiders the musical that did pretty well on Broadway.
Speaker: So I don't.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That sounds crazy.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And annoying to me, but that's a different conversation.
Speaker: You know, I just saw I totally forgot.
Speaker: I just saw an ad for it on the subway the other day.
Speaker: I feel like.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know much about it.
Speaker: Besides, I'm pretty sure it's well liked.
Speaker: I might just be an old curmudgeon here.
Speaker: I think that description that Ms.
Speaker: Wagers gave us really summed it up well.
Speaker: Without requiring 700 pages, it hits a lot of stuff that we are all familiar with.
Speaker: I mean, that's going to be...
Speaker: A home run of a story.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Very cool.
Speaker: Once again, you have forced me into a place I did not want to be.
Speaker: And you were 100% correct.
Speaker: So thank you for that, sir.
Speaker: I'm so glad that you came out the other side feeling the way you do.
Speaker: I'm a changed man.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Well, I'll make you do that more often, I guess.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, we'll talk, but... Also, before we go away, once again, huge, huge thank you.
Speaker: Miss Wager, Mr. Burr, you guys rock.
Speaker: The teachers are the ones keeping society running, and we all know it.
Speaker: Yes, they are, and we love teachers here on the pod.
Speaker: We're a big fan.
Speaker: We are big fans of teachers.
Speaker: And we're 50% teachers, so maybe that's why.
Speaker: But even I tried to hold my tongue earlier, but I can't.
Speaker: Librarian is the one that got the movie made.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: It's so cool.
Speaker: I love how that just runs through the DNA of the whole thing.
Speaker: It's perfect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thank you for joining us for this very special discussion.
Speaker: Like I said, this episode is being recorded in advance and is, as of recording, unscheduled.
Speaker: So we don't know what's up next, but be sure to follow us on socials.
Speaker: which are linked in the episode description below to catch up and read and watch the next text along with us.
Speaker: Thanks a lot.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: That's the show for today.
Speaker: Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker: Let us know in the comments what you're reading, what you're watching and what
