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The Outsiders · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film Is lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie. I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit. When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I only had two things on my mind. Paul Newman and a ride home. It's the Outsiders, and this film is lit. Hello and welcome back to this Film Is lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. I think we have every single segment, including quite a lengthy Guess who?
• 1:12
  Speaker B: I am so excited.
• 1:13
  Speaker A: I looked over it. I'm gonna get zero of those. I am 100% positive. But we will get to the Guess who in just a second. Before that, if you have not read or watched the Outsiders, we're gonna give you a brief summary of the film in Let me sum up. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. This summary is sourced from Wikipedia. I also realized after reading it that this is the complete novel version. I did remove the additional stuff.
• 1:44
  Speaker B: Yes, we watched the theatrical.
• 1:47
  Speaker A: Yes, that's a good point to point out here. And I should have mentioned this at the beginning in case somebody skips this segment because I started putting chapter markers in our episodes a while ago.
• 1:56
  Speaker B: We'll mention it again.
• 1:57
  Speaker A: We'll mention it again right at the beginning of. What's that in the book? Just in case somebody skips. Let me sum up. But this is. We did watch the theatrical release. There is a complete novel version which adds some stuff in, which is what the Wikipedia summary is. I removed all of that stuff from the Wikipedia summary, but we'll talk about that more later. In 1965, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Derry Curtis is left to raise and support his younger brother, Soda Pop and Ponyboy, after the death of their parents in a car crash eight months earlier. Youth subculture in the city is centered around two gangs, the affluent Socs and the poor Greasers. Amongst the latter are Ponyboy, Johnny Cade, and their friend Dallas Winston, who go to a movie at the local drive. In there, Dallas, unsuccessfully, albeit lewdly, flirts with Ssh Cherry Valance and leaves, enraged after she insults him by splashing him with Coca Cola, which he had just purchased. That's a weird detail to include in there. Cherry and her friend. There's a parenthetical that says which he just purchased. Like they're almost.
• 2:51
  Speaker B: Somebody edited the Wikipedia page and felt like that was really important to include.
• 2:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, this almost feels like somebody trying to go to bat for Dally because they're like he unsuccessfully, albeit lewdly. All right, he was a bit lewd. Flirts with her and he did. But he bought the soda, so it's very rude of her to. I don't know. It seems weird. Cherry and her friend Marcia invite Ponyboy and Johnny to sit with her and her friend, later joined by Two Bit Matthews. After the movie, the socious boyfriends Bob Sheldon and Randy Anderson take umbrage, prompting 2bit to pull his switchblade so the girls leave with the Soch guys. To avoid any escalation, Ponyboy and Johnny walk to an abandoned lot to help Johnny avoid his parents bickering and domestic violence. He confesses the hopelessness of his young life and considers suicide. Ponyboy falls asleep and Johnny wakes him up a few hours later. At this point, Ponyboy rushes home where Derry confronts him and violently shoves him to the floor. Ponyboy runs off to a local park with Johnny where Bob, Randy and three other SOCs attack them. Johnny is beaten and when Ponyboy is almost drowned in the park's fountain, Johnny fatally stabs Bob in self defense. Ponyboy and Johnny find Dallas, who gives them money for food and a loaded firearm. They flee to Rendricksville after hopping on a train and hide in an abandoned church where they read Gone with the Wind aloud to pass the time. Dallas visits, taking them to get a meal at Dairy Queen. He brings a note from Soda Pop that urges Ponyboy to come home as Cherry is willing to testify on their behalf. Johnny favors turning themselves in, but Dallas disagrees. Returning to the church, they discover that it is set on fire. That it is on fire with children trapped inside. They rescue them but suffer burns. Johnny breaks his back when part of the structure collapses on him. We don't find that out in this moment. We find out later. Yeah. Ponyboy reunites with his brother in the hospital and returns home. The heroic deed makes the front page of the local newspaper. The the next day, Ponyboy falls ill and 2 bit volunteers to care for him. 2 bit and ponyboy hitchhike towards the hospital, but duck into the Dairy Queen upon seeing Soces driving by one of the Soces. Randy peacefully talks to Ponyboy about an upcoming rumble to settle the Grisher SSH rivalry. Ponyboy and Two Bit visit Johnny in Dallas in the hospital. Ponyboy asks Two Bit to buy another copy of Gone with the Wind at the hospital gift shop and then Johnny's mother comes but he refuses her visit. Dallas encourages them to win the rumble for Johnny and they do. Dallas then drives an injured Pony Boy to the hospital to see Johnny. Dallas tells him about the Greasers victory, but Johnny is dismissive and dies after telling Ponyboy to stay gold. A distraught Dallas robs a store, is pursued by the police, and commits suicide by cop. Ponyboy finds a letter from Johnny explaining how saving the children was worth him sacrificing his own life and advising Ponyboy to never change. Johnny's letter inspires Ponyboy's essay, which begins I had only two things on my mind. The the book, movies, opening line and then there's some stuff I cut, but we're not going to talk about that. We'll get to that in your notes. So that is the summary of the film. Like I said, we got Holy cow so much in Guess who. So let's get into it. Who are you? No one of consequence. I must know. Get used to disappointment.
• 5:52
  Speaker B: He is 6ft 2 and broad shouldered and muscular. He has dark brown hair that kicks out in front and a slight cowlick in the back just like Dad's. But his eyes are his own. He's got eyes that are like two pieces of pale blue green ice.
• 6:09
  Speaker A: I I'm thinking 6ft 2. So this has gotta be somebody tall. I'm assuming this is from the perspective of Ponyboy and he says just like Dad's. So I'm gonna say that this is a description of Darry because he's the adult.
• 6:26
  Speaker B: This is Derry.
• 6:27
  Speaker A: Okay? It's the only one that I think I'm gonna maybe we'll see. But that one. Just because he's so tall. I knew he wasn't like a kid played by Patrick Swayze.
• 6:36
  Speaker B: Yes, he has a finely drawn sensitive face that somehow manages to be reckless and thoughtful at the same time. He's got dark gold hair that he combs back long and silky and straight. And in the summer the sun bleaches it to a shining wheat gold. His eyes are dark brown.
• 6:56
  Speaker A: See, this is anybody. They all have dark hair. And summer the sun bleaches it to wheat gold. I don't know who that would be. All of the greasers seem pretty tied to their dark hair. I'm inclined to say Johnny because of the sensitive face, but that doesn't make sense. Cause he specifically long hair that he combs back. I, I'll say no, because I just looked at the. I was gonna say Dally, but then I looked at the next one and I think it's probably him. I, I truly. I'm just gonna say a name. I have no idea. I'm gonna say whatever. Rob Lowe's character's name is Soda Pop.
• 7:41
  Speaker B: Yes, this is Soda Pop, played by Rob Lowe, as he said.
• 7:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, Soda Pop, that's right. I forgot.
• 7:48
  Speaker B: He was about 6ft tall, stocky in build and very proud of his long rusty colored sideburns. He had gray eyes and a wide grin.
• 7:57
  Speaker A: Like I said, I was going to guess Dally on the last one, but then this one said 6ft tall. He's not stocky. But Dally in the movie is bigger than the rest of them because he appears to be like a little bit older, maybe like a year or two older than them. And so I'm going to say this.
• 8:13
  Speaker B: Dally, this is actually two bit.
• 8:16
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 8:17
  Speaker B: He's the oldest one.
• 8:18
  Speaker A: Oh, okay. I didn't know that. And he didn't appear the oldest in the movie. Yeah, I would have thought, if you asked me, I would have thought him and Dally were like the same age and they were both a little bit older than like Johnny and Ponyboy.
• 8:28
  Speaker B: Dally is only supposed to be like 17 or 18, I think.
• 8:32
  Speaker A: How old is two bit supposed to be?
• 8:34
  Speaker B: Like 22.
• 8:35
  Speaker A: Oh, okay. I didn't get that. In the movie he seemed the same age as like Dally, but okay, he.
• 8:42
  Speaker B: Had an elfish face with high cheekbones and a pointed chin, sharp animal teeth and ears like a lynx. His hair was almost white, it was so blonde. And he didn't like haircuts or hair oil either. So it fell over his forehead in wisps and kicked out the back in tufts and curled behind his ears and along the nape of his neck. His eyes were blue, blazing, ice cold with the hatred of the whole world.
• 9:10
  Speaker A: This doesn't really scream anybody to me, but I would say with the blonde hair, again, assuming the movie is accurate in the sense that all of the greasers, I think, have dark hair. Seemingly that this is Bob.
• 9:26
  Speaker B: This is actually a description of Dally.
• 9:29
  Speaker A: Okay, that was my other, honestly, my other guess, because the hatred of the whole world, that felt like him to me. But I could also kind of see it with Bob, maybe because he's just kind of a malcontent, it seems like. But Dally was actually my other guess. It was just the hair color really that stopped me from guessing that he.
• 9:47
  Speaker B: Had big black eyes and a dark tanned face. His hair was jet black and heavily greased and combed to the side, but it was so long that it fell in shaggy bangs across his forehead.
• 9:59
  Speaker A: This could be anybody. I. I don't know.
• 10:02
  Speaker B: Okay, process of elimination, this one.
• 10:04
  Speaker A: I mean, my, my guess, based on where we've gotten to from here, I was gonna say Johnny.
• 10:09
  Speaker B: It is Johnny.
• 10:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, his hair is not that long in the movie, but yeah.
• 10:15
  Speaker B: Seems to imply that all of them have hair that's like longer than what's depicted in the movie.
• 10:20
  Speaker A: To be fair, some of them do. Like, like Emilio Estevez has longer hair in the. A little bit longer hair in the movie.
• 10:28
  Speaker B: So I want to also read real quick another description and I didn't include this one because there was no way to include it without it just being obvious who it was. But I do want to read it. When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my Paul Newman and a ride home. I was wishing I looked like Paul Newman. He looks tough and I don't. But I guess my own looks aren't so bad. I have light brown, almost red hair and greenish gray eyes. I wish they were more gray because I hate most guys that have green eyes. But I have to be content with what I have. My hair is longer than a lot of boys wear. Theirs squared off and back and long at the front and sides. But I am a greaser and most of my neighborhood rarely bothers to get a haircut. Besides, I look better with long hair. Okay, so yeah, so that's Pony Boy. Obviously. I love that we dive right in with a description of the main character from first person perspective. Absolutely. Which is something that I just absolutely love that's going on here. Another thing that I really love, now that we've gone through the laundry list of all of the boys in this book, is the mental image of 15 year old Essie Hinton kicking her feet and writing up descriptions of every kind of boy she thinks is cute.
• 11:58
  Speaker A: Yes, that is 100%.
• 12:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 12:00
  Speaker A: Although they're all very similar, to be fair. But yes. Yeah, she has a type. It would appear. 100%. All right, I have so many questions. Let's get into them. In. Was that in the book?
• 12:12
  Speaker B: Gaston? May I have my book, please?
• 12:14
  Speaker A: How can you read this?
• 12:16
  Speaker B: There's no pictures. Well, some people use their imagination.
• 12:19
  Speaker A: We mentioned this earlier before. We get started here. I wanted to mention again, we mentioned this in the Let me sum up section, which I know some people skip over because they don't need to hear that part. So if you did skip over, that we are doing. We watched the theatrical cut of the movie, not the complete novel version. So there are things probably, or, sorry, not for this section necessarily, but for your stuff later, when we get to better in the book. Better in the movie. There are some things that are in the complete novel version that didn't make it into theatrical cut that come from the book and stuff. So we'll get to that when we get to it.
• 12:52
  Speaker B: And we know what some of them are, so we'll call those out. We'll mention it as we need to.
• 12:56
  Speaker A: As we need. Yeah. Because the Wikipedia summary included at least some of those scenes from the extended version. So my first question is that the movie opens with a voiceover of Ponyboy, the one I read at the beginning, saying I stepped outside something or another. And so we get this framing device where it appears that Ponyboy is writing. I wrote. Is he writing the Outsiders? And then realized that I think it's supposed to be that we then see him. I think the thing he's writing is the next scene we see in the movie after the opening credits, essentially, because he talked about leaving a movie theater. But then they go immediately to a drive in movie. And we don't actually see them leave a movie theater in the beginning, but I assume that's what it's supposed to be because we see them walk out onto the street.
• 13:46
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 13:47
  Speaker A: And so I wanted to know. Anyways, the important point here, important question is, does the book have a similar framing device which appears to be Ponyboy writing a retelling of the events that happened?
• 13:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. So I just read the first paragraph of the book, which was back in Guess who. So that's how the book opens. And then at the end, we get that framing device of him writing down the first sentence of the book. So you don't know at the beginning of the book that there's a framing device, but yeah, there is.
• 14:18
  Speaker A: Because in the movie it's obvious that this is a framing device because we see him writing this and then we get like a fade and then it's like, okay, so we're going back or something. It becomes kind of clear.
• 14:27
  Speaker B: No, that circular structure truly blew my mind as a 13 year old.
• 14:32
  Speaker A: Yeah. I could see. Yeah. I was like, whoa, that's your first exposure to something like that.
• 14:36
  Speaker B: So in the book, he is leaving a movie theater by himself and walking home. And then he gets jumped by a car full of socias and beat up a little bit. The drive in scene that the movie starts with happens after that initial scene. It's like the next day.
• 14:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 14:56
  Speaker B: I prefer the book's version one because I like not knowing that he's writing the book initially. Yeah.
• 15:03
  Speaker A: I find out at the end it's like almost a twist reveal kind of.
• 15:06
  Speaker B: Yeah. I just think that's more interesting than showing him writing it at the beginning. And I also think that the first scene of the book where he gets jumped is kind of vital to setting up the class conflict that runs through the novel. Something that I don't think the movie goes nearly hard enough on.
• 15:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, we'll talk more about that later because there's one scene specifically that I question about that kind of references that. But it really is kind of that one. Well, it's not that one scene. There are other lines.
• 15:37
  Speaker B: It's in the movie, but it's almost more like background radiation in the movie.
• 15:42
  Speaker A: 100%. It's definitely pretty subtle. And it's. It's. It is evoked through a handful of lines throughout the movie, but it's not. It doesn't. It's definitely not like one of the main focuses of the movie or one of the main thematic points that the movie feels like it's making. It's there. It's one of the points the movie is making. But it doesn't feel like one of the top three. Probably.
• 16:02
  Speaker B: Yeah. I also. The other thing that that first scene in the book does is establish Ponyboy's relationship with his brothers. Like with both Soda Pop and Derry and like how he feels about them differently and how they all interact with each other. Which is something that I also think the movie really needed.
• 16:22
  Speaker A: It had that at the beginning a little bit, but it was. I had a hard time because a lot of that was like the dialogue. They were talking over the top of each.
• 16:29
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 16:29
  Speaker A: And like with a little bit of an accent. I had a hard time understanding in those opening scenes where they're all like. Where we're introduced to like his brothers and stuff at the very. I had a hard time understanding what they were even saying half the time for that first like five minutes of the movie. But so they then, as we mentioned, go to the drive in movie theater in the evening and they get in and they're hanging out and they go to like. There's a section where if you're not in a car, you can just. There's seats, you can watch the movie. And Cherry Valance and her friend Marcia have bailed on their boyfriends and are sitting in these seats watching the movie. And Johnny, Ponyboy and Dally show up and sit down behind them. And Dally immediately starts hitting on Cherry, played by a very young Diane Lane. I think she's like 18 in this. And they. So he starts hitting on her and he's immediately super creepy. Like, just super, as the Wikipedia summary said, flirting with her, albeit lewdly, just saying creepy, nasty stuff, trying to hit on her. And Johnny actually calls him out and was like, hey, man, knock it off. And I wanted to know if Dally was, you know, a creep to the point that even the other greasers are like, hey, man, can you chill? Also, originally, I thought in this opening scene here, I didn't realize because I had a hard time understanding some of the dialogue in the very first scene before this, I thought Dally was Ponyboy's older brother. Mainly because I just felt like, see, Thomas Howell and Matt Dillon look like brother. Like, just looking at them, I thought they were supposed to be brothers. And then I realized later that it wasn't. And then I think I also, because Dally and Darry, their names.
• 18:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, they're pretty similar.
• 18:11
  Speaker A: So I think I was just confused. So I initially thought he was supposed to be Ponyboy's older brother and figured out very quickly he's not. But my question is Dally a creep?
• 18:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, he is the worst of the bunch, by far. The scene where he's harassing Cherry is pretty spot on. The book doesn't give us any specific dialogue, but it does. Like, Ponyboy talks about, like, how he's being, like, really dirty and he and Johnny are, like, embarrassed by it.
• 18:39
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:40
  Speaker B: And he thinks about how, like, if some of the older boys were there, they might have joined in with Dally on it. But him and Ponyboy and Johnny are still young and innocent.
• 18:49
  Speaker A: Right? They're. They're. Yeah, they're young and innocent.
• 18:51
  Speaker B: Yeah. And Johnny does eventually call him out.
• 18:54
  Speaker A: Yeah. Speaking of Johnny, they then leave later that night. There's some stuff goes down. They end up hanging out with Cherry and Marcia for a bit and then get into a brief altercation with their boyfriends, Bob and Randy, and threaten a fight. But then Cherry kind of deescalates everything and leaves with the socias. And then later that night, they then go. They get back to Johnny's house and his parents are fighting. They have a very violent, tumultuous relationship. This appears to be a very common Thing where he gets home and they're fighting and he doesn't like being around it. So they go and they hang out in this. They call it like the abandoned lot. Yeah, it's a lot. It's just an abandoned lot nearby where they have like a fire and there's like an old car seat or whatever that they are hanging out on. And Johnny kind of starts talking about how he hates it here and he wishes he could go somewhere where there weren't socias and greasers and stuff. And also where like he just clearly hates like being around his parents fighting all the time and literally says that he's like he's thought about killing himself. And I wanted to know if Johnny was deeply depressed, you know, slash suicidal because of all the stuff with his parents and the drama between the gangs. And also during the scene earlier where the socious confronted him and two bit and Ponyboy after the drive in movie he seemed like very. There was a close up of him like turning away from it and like in a way that seems like he really doesn't like conflict or something or I don't know. And I wanted to know if this, if that characterization of Johnny was true to the book.
• 20:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, I would say that it is depressed. He does talk about wanting to kill himself in this scene. He does have a terrible home life. Like his parents are either abusing him or ignoring him. One of those two things.
• 20:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 20:52
  Speaker B: And I. The movie has Ponyboy tell Cherry some of Johnny's like backstory. So like several months before the events of the novel, Johnny got beaten up really badly by a gang of socials. Like basically left for dead.
• 21:09
  Speaker A: I did not know. I don't remember that conversation.
• 21:11
  Speaker B: And I'm pretty sure they talk about it.
• 21:13
  Speaker A: I believe you, I just don't.
• 21:14
  Speaker B: I didn't notice, but I. I don't think. And your assessment of this like the scenes with Johnny confirms this for me. I don' think that the movie does a good job of depicting like what happened to Johnny and how it affected him. Because when he's nervous around those socias, it's because one of them, the guy he kills actually is one of the guys who beat him up.
• 21:41
  Speaker A: That makes sense. I will say that first scene, it did seem like he was like hiding his face to like so they didn't see who it was. Like so they didn't see him. And I didn't know. And I was like, oh, maybe he wants. Maybe he doesn't want them to see him for some reason that I was unaware of. But then later when they, when the whole thing happens in the park, I was like, oh, well, he didn't seem to like hide his face. I don't know. I, I. So yeah, I don't think the movie does a good job communicating that. I bet the extended version does a better job. If I had to guess, that might be part of what that goes into more detail. But because it's clearly there in the movie, like clearly something that was something they were trying to show.
• 22:18
  Speaker B: That element is like it's present in some way. But I can't imagine watching it without having read the book and being able to glean exactly what is going on there.
• 22:31
  Speaker A: And I think, like I said, I don't even remember when you said, oh, Ponyboy tells Cherry that he got about him getting beat up. I was like, I don't know when that happened. When did. What scene?
• 22:41
  Speaker B: When they're getting popcorn at the movie theater. When they go to get popcorn. That's where it happens in the book. And in the book it's a whole flashback scene and it's. You get like the whole story. And I think in the movie it might have just been like a couple sentences where he's like, oh, Johnny got beat up really badly by some socias a while back.
• 23:01
  Speaker A: I think my brain just like thought that wasn't important, like, cause they didn't make a big point of it. So I was like, ah, I might not, you know, whatever. Sure, like, okay, that makes sense though.
• 23:10
  Speaker B: But it is really important because then later on that's why he snaps basically and like goes so hard trying to defend himself and Ponyboy.
• 23:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, speaking of that was my next question is in later. I guess it's the next night or something.
• 23:27
  Speaker B: No, it's the same night.
• 23:28
  Speaker A: It's the same night. You're right. They decide to go because Ponyboy goes home, gets into a fight with Darry, ends up leaving again, comes back, finds Johnny. They go to the park and are hanging out in the park. And then the Socials roll up in their car to start shit and Ponyboy like mouths off to him. When they show up, they both, they both like exchange some verbal jabs back and forth. And then the Social start chasing after grab him and start beating him up. They knock Johnny down and then they drag Ponyboy over to a big fountain and start like trying to drown him in the fountain. Now whether or not they were actually going to drown him or if they were, they are saying drown him to be fair. But we don't know for sure that you know, if they were just trying to scare him or whatever. I think that's probably intentionally vague, you know, about whether or not they were actually going to kill him. But it was enough where, you know, I would argue that Johnny's actions were probably at least fairly justified. So Johnny pulls out a switchblade that he has and ends up. We don't see what happens. We see the aftermath, which I thought was really cool, but he. He ends up stabbing Bob, who is Cherry's boyfriend. And the main soc, played by Leif Garrett, I believe, in the movie, and ends up stabbing him and killing him. And I wanted to know if that happened in a movie, but I just wanted to mention. I thought I was like, oh. Cause we kept. When they're drowning Ponyboy, we keep cutting to an under the water camera shot where you see him thrashing around underwater and you can just kind of hear the muffled sounds outside of the water. And when that happened, like twice after one of them, I was like. And I didn't know what happened. I truly went in spoiler free here. I knew nothing of what happened in this movie, but my filmmaker brain knew some stuff. And when he started getting drowned in that water, I was like, 100%. What's gonna happen here is we're going to. Because honestly, I thought Johnny was gonna die in this scene. I thought that was what was gonna happen, is that Johnny was gonna try to fight back and get killed or something. And then that was gonna be, I don't know, something that kicked off events. But I knew when we were seeing that under the. I was like, oh, we're gonna get a shot where he's under the water and then all of a sudden it's just gonna start turning red. And I was like, nailed it. That is exactly what happens. So does that happen in the book?
• 25:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, this is exactly what happens in the book. Like Beat for Beat.
• 25:49
  Speaker A: Yeah. I was wondering. I felt. I was like, did we watch Let the Right One In? Yes, I think we did. Right?
• 25:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 25:57
  Speaker A: Did we even do a bonus episode?
• 25:59
  Speaker B: No, we watched. I don't remember why we watched that. We watched that a couple years ago.
• 26:03
  Speaker A: Okay. Because there's a scene at the end of Let the Right One in where a main character is being attacked. The main character's being. Spoilers for Let the Right One in highly recommend it. It's a vampire movie. Go check it out. It's very good. They remade it with. Into a movie called Let Me in, like, a few years ago with Chloe Grace Moretz. But in Let the Right One In, I Think it's like a Danish or Finnish movie or some Swedish. I don't know. At the end of that movie, the main character is being attacked by a bunch of bullies and they are holding him under the water, trying to drown him. And then we hear a bunch of stuff happen above the water. And then all of a sudden the water gets soaked with blood and a bunch of other stuff happens in that. That's really cool. But I was like, ooh, that feels like a direct outsider's reference because they're similar ish movies in that they're both very much coming of age like tales. And I was like, I bet Let the Right One in is referencing the outsiders here. So they have now killed Bob, one of the socias. And by they, I mean Johnny has killed Bob, one of the socias, and he starts freaking out. They kind of freak out and don't know what to do. So they go and they find Dally because he's like, I guess the, the, the most.
• 27:18
  Speaker B: He's the. He has the most experience with crime.
• 27:20
  Speaker A: Yes, that's. That's what I was getting at.
• 27:22
  Speaker B: He lived in the big city.
• 27:23
  Speaker A: Exactly. He's the most criminally experienced. So they go find him and he seems to be living in like a bar, like upstairs in a bar or something like that. He gets there and he's like, okay, there's this abandoned church. Hands him, gives him a gun and some money and says, catch a train and go hide in this church. And when they get there, they go hide out in this church. And then while they're there, they, because they're on the lam, they decide they need to change their appearance because they know people be looking for them. So Johnny cuts Ponyboy's hair and then dyes it. They dyed blonde. They bleach it, basically. And I wanted to know if they cut and bleach their hair while they're on the lamb.
• 28:01
  Speaker B: Yes, they do.
• 28:02
  Speaker A: Okay, we'll talk about this later. I want to get to it. It gets to your notes, but this movie was fascinating, especially finding how much of it came from the book and knowing that the book was written by a 15 year old. I think this may be. And I don't want to spoil any of your final verdict or anything, but it truly feels like some sort of weird divine providence or something that a 15 year old just happened to write a bunch of like deeply symbolic stuff into their like, coming of age, like, you know, like very simple story that is like fairly amateur houry kind of stuff. Like you could tell it's written by a 15 year old. But like, so much of the stuff in it, you're like this. It's like deeply.
• 28:53
  Speaker B: No, I. It's interesting.
• 28:56
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 28:56
  Speaker B: And I do touch on this some in my final verdict. But we can talk about it a little bit here because, like, you are correct that a lot of this definitely speaks of, like, amateur hour. Like, this was totally, believably written by a 15 year old.
• 29:14
  Speaker A: But then also, I mean, going into like four sentences into the first page being like. And here's what I. The main character look like. You know what I mean? Yeah.
• 29:23
  Speaker B: But then also some of it hits right here in the chest.
• 29:30
  Speaker A: Yes. And you're. It's. It's one of those things that's like. Was this one of those where it's just. Did. Did she just get really lucky or something? You know what I mean?
• 29:38
  Speaker B: I don't. I don't want to say definitively that Essie Hinton bumble her way into writing some really great, like, thematic moments.
• 29:47
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 29:48
  Speaker B: But maybe.
• 29:49
  Speaker A: I don't know and maybe I'm just. It's just I. I only say that because. Or she's just brilliant. I mean, I know no 15 year olds who understand some thematic.
• 30:00
  Speaker B: No.
• 30:01
  Speaker A: And allegorical storytelling on the level that this book is doing at times.
• 30:06
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 30:07
  Speaker A: To the point where I think it's not intentional. It's just she's writing things that happen to be allegorical and symbolic. I don't. I mean, maybe it was intentional.
• 30:18
  Speaker B: I mean, maybe it was because I don't think it'd be possible. I mean, maybe. And maybe it's just really good instinct.
• 30:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. And that's what I mean.
• 30:25
  Speaker B: Like, she's writing things that feel emotionally resonant. And it just so happens that it all thematically works and like dovetails really well.
• 30:34
  Speaker A: But there's just so many moments where you're just like, this is. It feels so literary where you're like, how did a 15 year old write this again? Like. Cause there's just so many. And I fully believe that most of it isn't intentional, but like the idea of Ponyboy being drowned and then this big event happens is. Baptismal imagery is like a huge part of. Of literature. Post the Bible, but like. Or probably not post the Bible later than that, but you get what I'm saying. Like, that, like the idea of characters during very striking events or moments in their life being like dunked in water as an allusion to kind of like a being reborn in a. In a baptismal is something that is used throughout literature, whether it's religious or not, it's just kind of a shorthand for showing a character being reborn or a stark change in a character. And her choosing them to drown him in a fountain feels probably not like she was like, I'm gonna write them drowning him in a fountain because I want to make this allusion to baptism and, like, this life changing moment. I doubt that was her intention, but that is what it is. You know what I mean? And a similar thing here with, like, the cutting his hair and bleaching it and changing his appearance to where he actually ends up looking more like a soc. And like, there's this weird kind of playing with, like, identity and like, what does it mean to be a Greaser? And the fact that he now doesn't look like a Greaser anymore and actually looks like the people that the Greasers are at war with a little bit because he's got this short blonde hair that. You know what I mean? Feels like very thematically important, but also it just feels like probably she's like, well, they're on the run, so you got to die and cut your hair. You know what I mean? It's fascinating that I thought the whole movie felt like that to me. I'm just like, man, this is so interesting that a 15 year old wrote this. And it does make you go, like, maybe she just got really. Or like I said. I think what you're saying is right. It's just very good instincts, probably.
• 32:44
  Speaker B: Right.
• 32:44
  Speaker A: Well.
• 32:44
  Speaker B: And because when they do cut their hair, Ponyboy thinks a lot about, like, not liking the way that he looks and, like, feeling like he's wearing a Halloween costume. And I do think that you can kind of find yourself in a thematic space like that without necessarily understanding the nuts and bolts behind the theme.
• 33:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. You can. I just think it's fascinating to. For that's fascinating. I like that, that, that you can do that. That you can, like you said, kind of bumble fuck your way into being like, oops, I wrote really literary allegory, or not allegory, but really, I wrote a bunch of really, really literary symbolism into my book on Accident.
• 33:33
  Speaker B: Like, and it's also probably, I think, very likely that she may have been very well read.
• 33:40
  Speaker A: That would. That would also make a lot of sense. Yeah. And referencing things without even realizing it.
• 33:45
  Speaker B: Referencing things without realizing it. Or like, fully grasping and understanding things. You're doing the literary breadth of what she was referencing.
• 33:54
  Speaker A: That's a good. That's a fair point. Yeah. Because I actually have a Similar note to that. We'll get here in a second of something. We'll get to that. But I had a similar example watching this movie of a thing with me. I'm like, well, I didn't even realize I was referencing this because I had not seen this, but we'll get to that. So they're hiding out in this. In this abandoned church. Again, having them hiding out in abandoned church after the, after the. The. His baptism in the fountain. Like you're just like, are you kidding me? Like what? Come on. So hiding in this abandoned church like you made it to church on purpose or. No, I don't know. Yeah, anyway, so they're hiding on this abandoned church. It's just Johnny and Ponyboy and they're kind of hanging out and talking about stuff. And there's this scene where they're. They're looking at the sunset. They're standing on top of the hill watching the sunset. And Ponyboy quotes a Robert Frost poem to Johnny about nothing gold stays, nothing.
• 34:43
  Speaker B: Gold can stay, nothing gold can stay.
• 34:46
  Speaker A: And recites the whole poem and they share this moment. And I wanted to know if one. If he recites Robert Frost to him because again, you're 15. Calm down.
• 34:54
  Speaker B: But no, hang on. That is a perfectly valid 15 year old girl thing.
• 35:00
  Speaker A: Just putting a whole Robert Frost poet.
• 35:01
  Speaker B: Yes, just putting a whole Robert Frost poem in your book.
• 35:04
  Speaker A: That's fair.
• 35:04
  Speaker B: That is a very teenage writer thing to do.
• 35:06
  Speaker A: That's fair. Yeah, you're right. You're right. Yeah, but that is in the book. Yeah.
• 35:12
  Speaker B: Yes, it is.
• 35:13
  Speaker A: So then I want to ask if this next exchange is in the book because it kind of precipitates another question. Johnny says, I never noticed clouds or colors and clouds and stuff until you kept reminding me about them. It's kind of like they were never there before. Ponyboy says, yeah, I don't think I could ever tell Steve or Two Bit or even Darry about the clouds in Sunset. Just you and Soda Pop. Maybe Cherry Valance. Johnny. Guess we're different, huh, Ponyboy? Shoot. Yeah, maybe we are, Johnny. Maybe. Johnny says, maybe you're right. And I wanted to know if that exchange happened in the book.
• 35:49
  Speaker B: No, you messed up that line. It's really important.
• 35:52
  Speaker A: Oh, sorry. Shoot. Yeah, maybe they are.
• 35:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's an important distinction.
• 35:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't get that. I thought that was a misquote. What is it saying then? No, what?
• 36:02
  Speaker B: So Johnny says, I guess we're different. And Pony's Boy is like, yeah, maybe they're different.
• 36:10
  Speaker A: Oh, it's the Emphasis. Okay. I just copy pasted the words and then, yeah, without the inflection, it's hard to parts. Okay. Cause I saw that and I was like, my brain just corrected it. I was like, I must have meant we are. But yeah, that makes sense. So he's saying, we're not the different ones. They're the different ones. And Johnny's saying, maybe you're right. Maybe they are the different ones. Okay. Does that exchange happen in the book?
• 36:31
  Speaker B: Yes, it does. That exchange is directly from the book.
• 36:33
  Speaker A: And that leads directly to my next question. Okay, so did Essie Hinton know that she was writing a queer love story? I am. I am joking here to some extent for a reason that you're going to get to at the end of your response here that I completely agree with. I just want to preface that because I know this kind of thing can annoy people, but I was just. It was just cracked me up watching the scene of these two boys being like, I never appreciated a sunset until I met you, kinda. Come on, man. Like, you know what I mean?
• 37:05
  Speaker B: No, it's funny you should mention that because Essie Hinton's troublesome previous tweets that I mentioned in the prequel were about this very thing. People getting that read on it. Getting, like a queer theory, queer lens read on it.
• 37:21
  Speaker A: Apparently not even necessarily about these two. I was finding people talking about Johnny and Dally, that being her reading.
• 37:28
  Speaker B: I don't get that read at all.
• 37:29
  Speaker A: This one I totally like. Well, because also I mentioned I missed a part earlier. And again, your point here at the end of this is very valid and I don't want to undercut that ahead of time, but because I also had a similar thought earlier where they, like, fall asleep in each other's arms on that couch in the lot or whatever. Like, they snuggle up with each other and like. Anyway, so, yeah, go ahead.
• 37:49
  Speaker B: But that was what her, like, troublesome tweets were like.
• 37:54
  Speaker A: She was like, it's not gay.
• 37:55
  Speaker B: Reacting very poorly to people thinking that and insisting that her story was in no way gay. And I feel extremely confident that she did not at all understand that her work had some queer undertones.
• 38:07
  Speaker A: 100%. Yeah.
• 38:08
  Speaker B: And she may have even been very blindsided by that interpretation when people started asking about it.
• 38:14
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 38:16
  Speaker B: But teenage girls have always romanticized boys. And in my opinion, I think that's what was going on here when she wrote the book. This book is very fanfic. Yes. And that's like 95% of fan fiction right there is positing the question, what if boys were sensitive and romantic and not the worst.
• 38:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. And even with each other. Yeah, exactly.
• 38:40
  Speaker B: I think interpreting it as queer is a perfectly valid reader response.
• 38:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 38:45
  Speaker B: But I also think that we need depictions of platonic love between boys. I think that's really important.
• 38:51
  Speaker A: I 100% agree. And that's why I said I was kind of joking because I do think it. I think it's slightly problematic to look at those scenes and go, well, that definitely means they're gay. Like. Oh, they're. They're like. Because. Yeah. I think it's also very.
• 39:04
  Speaker B: I think we're treading into like toxic masculinity of like. Oh, well, if you're theory being super.
• 39:11
  Speaker A: Yes, exactly.
• 39:12
  Speaker B: Being super sensitive and touchy with your.
• 39:15
  Speaker A: Male friend, then it means you're gay. Yeah, exactly. And that's not what I'm saying at all. But you cannot argue that there are still. At the same time, you know, there is like. Okay, but that doesn't mean that. That you're not like, you know, like you could also be gay in that instance. Like, you know. And so. Yeah, I think that is important. And I completely agree with your point there that, yes, platonic love between boys and men or whatever, where they have sensitive and even affectionate relationships is totally normal and is a thing that should be depicted. But it also.
• 39:48
  Speaker B: Conversations about sunrises.
• 39:50
  Speaker A: Exactly. 100%. But it is also funny to find out that she kind of got a little homophobic after writing this. Yeah, it's just a little funny. So they meet up with Dally, shows up and they go to Dairy Queen, which I had a note about later, but I'll mention it here. I guess back in the day Dairy Queen served barbecue, I think. Fascinating.
• 40:15
  Speaker B: So I. Do they still sell barbecue. I think you can still get barbecue sandwiches at some Dairy Queen.
• 40:21
  Speaker A: Really?
• 40:21
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:21
  Speaker A: That's fascinating.
• 40:22
  Speaker B: So I tried to like dive into this and I was like on the Dairy Queen Wikipedia page.
• 40:26
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 40:27
  Speaker B: So they didn't start as like a barbecue place, but did you know that there are like a bunch of different types of Dairy Queens that all have sex? Slightly different menus.
• 40:40
  Speaker A: No.
• 40:41
  Speaker B: Yeah. So there's like a bunch of different like kinds of Dairy Queens.
• 40:47
  Speaker A: I did know. Well, sorry. I knew there was at least there's what? Like what? Cuz there is one. I can't remember.
• 40:53
  Speaker B: Grill and chill.
• 40:54
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 40:55
  Speaker B: And then there's like the Dairy Queen. That's also Orange Julius.
• 40:58
  Speaker A: Yes, I knew that. But that's a different thing.
• 41:00
  Speaker B: There's one that's called like oh my God. What was it?
• 41:06
  Speaker A: Because. So all of the Dairy Queens that I've always gone to my entire life have served ice cream.
• 41:11
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 41:11
  Speaker A: And then like burgers, fries, chicken strips, chicken, stuff like that. They've not had barbecue and they've. And it's really just like burgers fry, you know, like McDonald's like stuff basically. Or like a Sonic or something like that.
• 41:25
  Speaker B: Oh, brazier.
• 41:28
  Speaker A: Yes, yes, that's another one.
• 41:30
  Speaker B: Brazier locations. And there's.
• 41:33
  Speaker A: Which is what I think most of the ones around us are, I think are braziers. Brazil brazier, whatever they're called.
• 41:38
  Speaker B: Yeah. And there's grill and chill and there's Texas country foods.
• 41:43
  Speaker A: I wonder if that's a barbecue one. Texas country foods, maybe. That's so fascinating. I did not know that. But anyways.
• 41:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, some of the smaller ones are Dairy Queen stores and they like carry limited.
• 41:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 41:57
  Speaker B: Menus.
• 41:58
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 41:59
  Speaker B: But there's like. Yeah, there's a bunch of different kinds.
• 42:01
  Speaker A: Of Dairy Queens that actually as soon as you. I didn't know that before you said it, but once you said it, I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. Because I have noticed the subheadings under like brazier or whatever. But I never thought about what that meant. Like my brain has just ignored that. It's like it's Dairy Queen. I don't know. They sell ice cream and bad food.
• 42:19
  Speaker B: I mean, the dairy is the important part.
• 42:21
  Speaker A: That's why you go there. You don't go to Dairy Queen for food. At least most people I know don't go to Dairy Queen for food. But yeah. Anyways, so after they get back from that, they talk to Dally and he explains that Cherry was. Is offering to. Or she writes a note that offers to basically vouch for them and say that they. What they did was self defense or whatever. So they go back to the church anyways, briefly. And when they get back to the church, there's a school bus there and the church is church on fire, very on fire. And they run up and there's apparently a bunch of kids inside. There was a field trip there or something and I'll get to that in a second. But Johnny and Ponyboy run into the church and then eventually Dally comes in and helps too. They run in to try to save the kids that are stuck inside because the adults there are useless. They're not doing anything.
• 43:13
  Speaker B: Absolutely useless.
• 43:15
  Speaker A: And so I wanted to know if they saved a bunch of kids from a burning church. And also my lost in adaptation question for this part is why the fuck was There a field trip to an abandoned church.
• 43:26
  Speaker B: So yes, they do save a bunch of kids from the church when it's burning down. And in the book, I think one of the adults says that they were having a picnic nearby and some of the kids snuck off to explore the abandoned church.
• 43:39
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 43:40
  Speaker B: Which I can't even judge them for because I also would have done that to be fair.
• 43:44
  Speaker A: In the movie, the buses parts at the church. Yes. Not like, I mean, they do live.
• 43:50
  Speaker B: In like a two stick town.
• 43:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 43:53
  Speaker B: Like, well, let's go on a field trip to the abandoned church.
• 43:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. I thought it was fascinating. Yeah.
• 43:58
  Speaker B: Maybe they were studying old architecture.
• 44:01
  Speaker A: Yeah. So yeah, they. They save the kids, but Johnny gets badly hurt and Dalli gets some relatively hurt. Ponyboy escapes mostly unscathed other than maybe some like, smoke.
• 44:11
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 44:11
  Speaker A: Another thing that again feels. There's this whole running thing where Ponyboy smokes too much and then he gets into this fire and he inhales a bunch of smoke and gets. Gets sick from it. And there's like this recurring thing of like Dairy telling him to stop smoking as much and stuff. And all I was like, is this intentional? Is she doing this on purpose? It's too.
• 44:28
  Speaker B: I would. That one. I would say probably not.
• 44:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. I just. It's fascinating. Anyways, a side little detail that I wanted to know is that in the movie, apparently 2 bit, who is played by Emilio Estevez, is really into Mickey Mouse. He wears like a sleeveless Mickey Mouse shirt for most of the movie. And then there's a scene where they're back after the fire. They're back at Dairy and Ponyboy and Soda Pop's house and they're hanging out and somebody yells to Two Bit, Mickey Mouse is on. And he like comes in and gets super excited and then sits down in front of the TV with an entire chocolate cake and a beer. I was like, what? So I want to know if the Two Bit being really into Mickey Mouse came from the book.
• 45:12
  Speaker B: There's no mention of Two Bit liking Mickey Mouse in the book.
• 45:16
  Speaker A: I thought that was fascinating. I guess Emilio Estevez, that was his like, his like character.
• 45:21
  Speaker B: Yeah, that was his character choice. He was like, I'm gonna be really into Mickey Mouse. Love that Mickey Mouse.
• 45:29
  Speaker A: So they need. They decide they need to have a big rumble with the socias to settle this bad blood because obviously Johnny killed Bob and there's whatever, all the fallout from that. So they're gonna have a big rumble to settle it. No weapons or anything, but just a big, big fight in a field. But before this fight happens, Two Bit and Ponyboy are like walking through town. I think they might even be going to the hospital, I think, to go see Johnny at this point. And they. A car of socias rolls up on them and they hide in the Dairy Queen again, because it's the only. The only thing. Down they go hang out at a Dairy Queen. So then they have a conversation, but basically they show up and they're like, we just want to. Two Bit says no, no jazz before the rumble, I think is what he says, which is great line. But they. They're like, well, we just want to talk. And Randy specifically, who was like Bob's friend from the beginning, who was there when they were like, trying to drown Ponyboy, but was also there at the beginning because he's one of the, like Marsha's boyfriend, I think, specifically wants to talk to Ponyboy and they have this conversation alone in Randy's car. And I wanted to know if this came from the book because I thought it was really fascinating. They share, like a really honest moment together. But Randy is like, this is all bullshit. Like, what are we doing? All this violence is pointless. He, like, basically opines about how pointless all the violence is. He also decries. And this is like the main scene where the classism, the class element of it comes in. Yeah, he kind of decries the inherent classism to it. He's like, when all this is over, you'll still be poor, I'll still be rich, nothing will change, blah, blah, blah. Like, and this is all pointless, basically. And I wanted to know if that scene came from the book, because that's again, now that is obviously very intentional. Like it's not subtext or, you know, it's just the text of the conversation they're having. And I was impressed. I was like, that is a very deep conversation for a 15 year old, a relatively deep conversation for a 15 year old to write into a book. And so I wanted to know if it came from the book.
• 47:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, that scene is directly from the book. All of the dialogue comes from the book. The movie does leave a couple things out, in my opinion. The main thing being that Randy tells Ponyboy that he's decided not to fight at all, he's gonna skip the rumble. He's like, this is stupid. I'm not doing it.
• 47:47
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 47:48
  Speaker B: They also have an exchange that I don't think was in the movie.
• 47:53
  Speaker A: I don't remember this in the movie. I think I would, because it's a great line.
• 47:57
  Speaker B: So they're talking about the classism of it all. And Randy says to Ponyboy, you get a little money and the whole world hates you. And Ponyboy says to him, no, you hate the whole world.
• 48:13
  Speaker A: How is a 15 year old that insightful?
• 48:15
  Speaker B: I know, man.
• 48:18
  Speaker A: That feels like you have to be referencing something.
• 48:20
  Speaker B: And I will say that the messaging with, like, the greasers and the socias and the classism aspect in the book didn't always work for me, I think probably because of my own political opinions, because there is kind of a thread of like, oh, we're not so different. Which I don't necessarily mind, but it's mainly present in two places here. And then also when Ponyboy first meets Cherry Valance and she talks about, like, she's like, things are bad all over. Yeah, we also have it rough. And I was like. I was like reading the book and I was like, okay, sure. But you guys probably also shouldn't run around just like jumping kids and beating them up.
• 49:16
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 49:16
  Speaker B: Like, you probably shouldn't be like, I understand that you have your own set of problems, but you shouldn't be doing that.
• 49:24
  Speaker A: There's also a difference. I think it works in this scene because there's also a difference between, oh, we're not so different. We both have problems and hardships or whatever.
• 49:31
  Speaker B: Right.
• 49:31
  Speaker A: That's a different thing than we're not so different. This is all made up.
• 49:35
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 49:35
  Speaker A: Money is fake. What the fuck are we doing? You know, that's a different thing than we're not so different because everybody's got problems even though we're rich. It's the. Randy here is almost being like, what the fuck is this money? How. How are we letting money determine? Like, we're the same? Like, it's just money. That is like. He's almost saying that it's like literally just the money. That that's the difference. And that's ridiculous and silly. It's kind of what it feels like he's getting at a little bit, at least to some extent in the movie. Which again, is a different form of we're not so different than. Because that I agree with, and I think that's true. We're all just people. And class divides are. We are very important distinctions that have to be addressed within society. But at the core, we are just all people. Even rich people are just people. And were it not for the weird stratified society that we constructed, we are not that different. That is true. But saying we're not so different, we also got hardships is not. That's bullshit. Like, fuck you. That's a different thing.
• 50:39
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 50:40
  Speaker A: So then they do get to the hospital to visit Johnny, who is in bad shape from the fire. He is, as I mentioned earlier, his back has been broken, so he's paralyzed. But he's also very, very badly burned. And pretty much the movie is not shy. Pretty early on about him being unlikely that he will survive. And there's a very heartbreaking conversation. Probably the saddest scene in the movie where he talks about how earlier he wanted to kill himself, but now he's like, I'm only 16. There's a lot of stuff I didn't get to do. And it's just very sad about all the opportunity that he potentially is going to miss. And I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 51:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, it does. The dialogue that he says in the movie is directly from the book where he's like crying and Talking about how 16 years isn't long enough.
• 51:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's brutal. It's legitimately just heart wrenching. And I have a note about that scene that I want to. I'll just say it now because it's a great scene. One of my only complaints with the movie on a craft level was most abundant in this scene, which was the score. I thought the score did not always fit the moment and sometimes just needed to not be there at all.
• 51:57
  Speaker B: And this scene, I thought it was.
• 51:58
  Speaker A: Like, overpowering, was a huge example where this is incredibly emotional, powerful moment. And as he's having this speech, the score comes in and I'm like, go the fuck away. What are you doing? It's like, but. And it's not even score that feels like it perfectly fits this moment. It's just. And there was a couple moments like that where the score came in. I'm like, what are we doing? And I think it's. I'm pretty sure it's scored by Coppola's dad. I think.
• 52:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't. I don't. I didn't love the score.
• 52:24
  Speaker A: It was not my favorite. I think it's Carmine Coppola, who I'm fairly certain was.
• 52:30
  Speaker B: It's just like, not my jam. And it felt very, like, dated to the.
• 52:34
  Speaker A: The time it was Coppola's dad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just. Yeah, the score. I thought it was mostly okay. Even disregarding how much I thought the score. I was just like, in this moment, it just needs to not be there. Like, just. Even if it was like the perfect emotional accompaniment to the scene, I just would rather nothing be in this scene because it doesn't need it at all. It just felt, like, distracting.
• 52:57
  Speaker B: Much better suited to the stark silence.
• 53:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, it was just distracting. And there was a couple moments like that, and this was maybe the biggest one. So then we get to the big rumble. There's a big fight in a field between the Greasers and the Socias. They stand in a big line and punch each other. Punch each other. But right as they start fighting, a storm breaks out and it starts pouring down rain. And I wanted to know if that happened in the book, and then if ultimately the Greasers win the fight.
• 53:25
  Speaker B: There is a rumble and the Greasers do win. I don't think there's any mention of it porting rain, but I'll allow it for drama's sake.
• 53:33
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Very dramatic. It works. Very good.
• 53:36
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 53:37
  Speaker A: So they win the big rumble, and then they decide to go back to the hospital to tell Johnny that they won the fight. They get there and they tell him, and he does not give a shit because he's like, motherfuckers, why would I care? And then he dies. But right before he dies, he says the famous line. He looks over at Ponyboy and he says, stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold. Which was a reference back to the Robert Frost poem from earlier. And I'm gonna assume this is in the book, but is it?
• 54:07
  Speaker B: Absolutely. Yes, it is.
• 54:09
  Speaker A: Okay, makes sense. So after this happens, Dally is there with Ponyboy, and this, like, breaks Dally. And we'll get to this in just a second about this moment, but Dally, like, snaps and kind of, like, freaks out and runs out and goes and robs a convenience store with a gun and then immediately gets the cops chasing him, and he's already been shot. I think. I think it's implied that the. Not. I think it's definitely implied that the store owner shot him. Yeah, because we see the store owner shoot at him. And then when he calls Darry or whoever it is on the phone, he's leaning against some stuff and we see blood on the stuff. So he definitely got shot. So he's already bleeding at this point, but we don't know how bad it is, but. And then the cops start chasing him, and he pulls his gun and just gets shot a bunch of times by the cops and killed, as are the rest of the Greasers are kind of running up to try to, like, get him and help him. And I wanted to know if that all played out like that in the book.
• 55:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, the scene plays out pretty much exactly as it happens in the book. I think the main big difference is that he doesn't get shot by the convenience store owner. And the line from the book after he is killed that Ponyboy thinks to himself is, Dally Winston wanted to be dead, and he always got what he wanted.
• 55:28
  Speaker A: And then my final question here was that the movie then wraps up pretty succinctly after that. There's not a whole lot else that happens. We get back, and we get back to Ponyboy at home, and he is writing. Well, the movie ends on him writing the letter or the story that we see at the beginning, which is how the movie starts. But the thing that kind of spurs him to write that is he has the copy of Gone with the Wind that Johnny had in the hospital. And in it is a note that he wrote to Ponyboy telling him, like, that he. Something about saving the kids and it was worth it and that sort of thing.
• 56:10
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 56:11
  Speaker A: And this kind of inspires Ponyboy to write the story, and I wanted to know if that's how the story ended.
• 56:19
  Speaker B: Yes. So Ponyboy sinks into a deep depression after Johnny and Dally die. And Johnny's letter is the thing that starts to, like, bring him back and inspires him to. To tell the story of his friends. Because nobody is telling their story.
• 56:35
  Speaker A: Okay, well, there you go. Those are all my questions for. Was that in the book? But I do have two questions that I wanted to get to in Lost in Adaptation. Just show me the way to get out of here and I'll be on my way. Yes, yes. And I want to get unlost a spirit as soon as possible. My first one is, why didn't they dye Johnny's hair? Because they say, we're gonna dye. We're gonna cut and dye our hair. And then they cut and dye Pony Boy's hair, But they do not dye Johnny's hair. They do cut it a little bit, but he basically looks the same.
• 57:07
  Speaker B: Yeah. In the book, Johnny says that his skin is too dark for blonde hair to be believable on him.
• 57:13
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 57:14
  Speaker B: So they don't dye his hair.
• 57:15
  Speaker A: I guess he is very tan in the movie. Yeah. Ralph Mashio.
• 57:18
  Speaker B: And he's similarly described as being, like, very tan in the book and having black hair.
• 57:24
  Speaker A: That makes sense. I guess so. I just referenced this a second ago when I said that, like, after Johnny dies, Dally snaps and goes and gets himself killed. And I was left in the movie wondering why a little bit. Like, why was D so attached to Johnny? Like, I felt like the movie wanted me to think they had this very close brotherly type relationship, but we Never see that at all. Seem like I. At least to me, I felt like we never really saw that much at all. Like, the main interactions between them was, like, Johnny telling him to stop being a creep at the beginning, and then like, a couple other small scene. They don't really have a lot of time together or anything. And I just kind of felt like Dally breaking in that moment wasn't really built up to specifically in relation to Johnny. And I was wondering, which I think is maybe what could have spawned some of the people being like, oh, maybe he was, like, in love with him. And this is where that queer reading on their relationship comes from. Because it seems so underdeveloped that maybe he had some unrequited feelings or something and that's what causes him to snap. I think maybe that's where that comes from. But I'm wondering if there's any more in the book about why Dalley was so attached to Johnny and why his death is so hard on him.
• 58:39
  Speaker B: Okay, so I totally agree with you that I don't think the movie does a good job of depicting this. And to be totally fair, the book also doesn't do a whole lot of quote unquote showing on this count. But we're in Ponyboy's perspective the whole time. And Ponyboy's mind is, like, a mile a minute. And a lot of it is, like, recounting things that have happened previously and things that he knows about his friends. And we know that Johnny kind of fills this, like, little brother role to basically the entire gang. Like, that's how everybody has always viewed him. And we also get in the scene where Ponyboy recounts what happened to Johnny when he got beaten up really badly, that Dally finds him. And Ponyboy tells us that he had never seen Dally so shaken up by something. Now, the book implies, or at least I think it implies, that Dali looked at Johnny as being like himself when he was still good and innocent.
• 59:53
  Speaker A: I could see that.
• 59:55
  Speaker B: We know that everybody sees Johnny as, like, kind of innocent. Like this kid brother role.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker B: But then also when Johnny wants to go back and turn himself in, Dally gets really mad about it. And he's like, I don't want this to happen to you. Prison changes you.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker A: It changes me.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker B: And I don't want you to do. I don't want you to have the same experience. So I think if we look at it as Dally kind of, like, projecting his own lost innocence and lost youth onto Johnny, we can get around to why this affected him so badly.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker A: I Think that makes sense? I think, yeah, I think that totally makes sense in Tracks. It's just. I think the movie needed to do a better job.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker B: Yeah. I don't think just a little movie didn't do a good job.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker A: It's not like it's awful. It's not like you can't get there.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker B: It's just you kind of have to fill in.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker A: You have to fill in some blanks on your own. And I would. I. I would have to go. I think I would really have to go back and watch the scene at the Dairy Queen when they're. When it's. Because that's the thing you're talking about where Dally is talking to them. And then Johnny says, like, I wanted to let's go turn ourselves in, or whatever that I think would be. Oh, I also another thing here, now that I think about it, that makes sense. Just talking through this. Johnny says, let's go turn ourselves in. And Dally says, no, don't do that.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker A: Because he doesn't want that to do. Whatever. But then they go back to the church to hide more. And that is what directly leads to Johnny dying.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker A: So Dally may feel responsible for.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker B: That's a good point.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker A: You know what I mean? I hadn't thought about it that way, but that actually could make some sense too. So. Yeah. Cause if he had been like, okay, yeah, let's go turn yourself in. They wouldn't have gone back to the church. He wouldn't, you know, it would have played out very differently. So. Huh. Okay. Yeah, I get that all makes sense. All right, those are all of my questions. It's time to jump into what Katie thought was better in the book.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker B: You like to read. Oh, yes, I love to read.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker A: What do you like to read?
• 1:02:06
  Speaker B: Everything. A random thing that I love in this book is that there's an aside where Ponyboy explains some of the lingo of the Greasers. Specifically, he explains the difference between tough T O U G H and tuff Tuff, which we don't get in the movie. I guess we can't have that in the movie. This explanation of the difference between these two things. He says tough and tough are two different words. Tough is the same as rough Tuff. T U F F means cool, sharp, like a tough looking Mustang or a tough record in our neighborhood. Both are compliments.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker A: Huh? Okay.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker B: This is slightly mentioned in the movie Cherry saying that she could fall in love with Dallas Winston.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, I thought it was a very funny. Well, not funny line, but a very self aware line. Where she's like, I. I better not ever see Dally again because if I do, I'll probably fall in love with them.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker B: Yeah. And it's. I think it's a little better in the book because it's something that Ponyboy keeps like coming back around to and trying to figure out why she feels that way.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker A: Know.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker B: I forgot about the insane flashback in the movie where the train hits his parents car.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's very unsubtle. That's a very Copa moment. Thinking back to like the Godfather. And there's some moments like I try, I think specifically like the, the. The flashback to the scene where the. What's his name? The. In Italy where the lady's car blows up.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker A: And so like it's just like, oh, okay.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker B: It's like this dreamy like flashback. And then it hard cuts to a train hitting the car. After Johnny kills Bob. The movie does like a fade from Johnny saying I killed him to them running to like where Dally is. But I really liked in the book seeing their conversation where they're like freaking out and then figuring out what they were gonna do and then deciding that Dalli was the only person who could help them. The movie mostly leaves out that because this is set in Oklahoma, most of the characters also compete in rodeos.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker A: Yes, it completely leaves that out. That's hilarious.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker B: Which is like a fun little.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker B: Aside. I know he's just a kid in this movie, but I really didn't like see Thomas Howell's delivery of Nothing Gold Can Stay.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker A: There were quite a few moments in this where I thought some of the kids performances weren't amazing. Yeah, plenty of them are great at different times. Like there's moments where. And even some of the people where other times I'm like, eh, that wasn't great. They have other scenes where they're great, which makes sense for kids. Like you know, at the age there are. They're all like teenagers or whatever. Like you know, they're in that like 13 to 16 range or whatever. I would have to think about. I don't remember how I felt about that specifically, but there definitely were a handful of moments where I'm like, yeah.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker B: This one particularly just like really didn't work for me. I was willing to look past like most of those moments, but this one just really didn't work for me. The movie leaves out most of the thematic threads from Ponyboy and Johnny's read of Gone with the Wind, which I'm tentatively putting in this section. I was fine with losing all of the stuff about the boys admiring the Southern gentleman. But Ponyboy also really hones in on the idea of gallantry in the sense of being courageous and noble and recognizing that attribute in his friends, which I think works really well.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker A: Yeah. They only read like one brief passage in the movie. I don't remember what it was in reference to. I think they're just. It's a. It's a. It's a. It's a passage that's about like the war and like bodies.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker B: Yeah. Bodies on the battlefield.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. Which is. Is relevant.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker A: But yeah.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker B: When Ponyboy is sitting in the hospital waiting room and the guy from. Who was like at the church with the kids tells him that he shouldn't be smoking.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker A: The teacher or whatever.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker B: Yeah. He's like, oh, you shouldn't be smoking. That scene is in the movie. But what the movie is missing is Ponyboy being completely taken aback by this information because no one has ever told him that he's too young to be smoking. I didn't feel like the movie took all of the steps to build up the relationship between the Curtis brothers to have their tearful hospital reunion payoff. It felt pretty meh.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker A: I would agree. It works because, you know, like, assuming you just kind of like the movie is banking on you like understanding familial relationships and not so much on actually working to make it. It work on screen necessarily.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker A: They're just like. Well, you understand that.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker B: You understand that they're brothers.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker A: Then you still like love them or whatever and have, you know, like, it works. Okay. But I agree. I felt the same thing of like there wasn't anything. They just kind of go from. They go from literally the last time we. They saw each other, he like shoved them and they were like, hated each other to tearful embrace. And then they're seemingly perfectly fine from then on. You know, it's just like. Okay, it's. Yeah.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker B: So you mentioned the scene where 2 bit is eating the chocolate cake with a beer. And that is a reference to something that is from the book. But I have to talk about. There's this insane aside in the book where Ponyboy is like cooking breakfast and he tells the reader all about what they like to eat for breakfast. And what the Curtis brothers eat for breakfast is chocolate cake and chocolate milk. And it was one of those moments where I was like, oh, yeah, a 15 year old wrote this.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker A: Like, what?
• 1:08:11
  Speaker B: And like, listen, I could buy the idea that like, they're all really young.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker A: Yes. Because that's the idea is like, well, they don't have parents.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker B: They don't have parents, so they're. They're. They don't really know. And they're eating Trouble Chocolate cake for breakfast. But then also, the book goes to great lengths to depict Darry as, like, old before his years and, like. And, like, going, yeah, going really hard on trying to be a good parent. So those two things just, like, did not mesh for me.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker A: Also, he is the most jacked man in existence in the movie because it's Patrick Swayze. So you're like, well, that's. That's not a man who eats chocolate cake for breakfast every day. That's a man who eats. Eats boiled chicken three times a day.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker B: There is a brief line. I think Two Bit says this at some point. The only thing that keeps dairy from being a soch is us. And I just felt like, why bother including that line when we don't know anything about Derry's backstory? Because his backstory in the book was that he should have been able to go to college, but they couldn't afford it.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker A: I think. I think that's literally there. So that when we get to the rumble and we see him square off with.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker B: With the guy he used to know.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker A: He was on the football team with, we have a little bit of setup for it. Yeah, I thought it was fine. I thought it worked as kind of. I was like, oh. Because I. The movie doesn't show us that necessarily, but that line to me was enough to be like, oh, he. He's somehow different, a little bit, at least in his background, from his other brothers. And then we see a little bit more of that. We then find out, oh, he was on the football team and was friends with these guys years ago. And so I thought it worked.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker B: Okay, all right, fair enough. Fair enough.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker A: Did you mean to.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker B: No, I didn't. I'm gonna go back to it. In the book, we see Johnny's mother in the hospital lobby screaming about how Johnny's worthless because he doesn't want her to come in and see him. And I gather that this is in the director's cut version that seems to.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker A: Be in the director's cut cut based on the Wikipedia summary. And then also there's a confrontation where then Ponyboy and Two Bit, I think, confront her and, like, berate her for being a bad mother or whatever is that they do.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker B: I wouldn't say they berate her. And again, we didn't see this scene in the movie, so I don't know.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker A: We're just going to go into a sentence from the Wikipedia side.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker B: But in the book, they see her in the lobby and she's, like, screaming and carrying on about what an awful child he is. And one of them says to her, no wonder he hates you.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker A: Yes. So that's. I think that sounds like what is in the movie, basically. Yeah.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker B: My last note here is. And again, I gather that this is in the complete novel director's version. Is that the movie, the theatrical cut, has zero explanation of why Ponyboy is writing this story.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. In the director's cut, based on the Wikipedia summary here, what I assume is from the complete novel version, it says his English teacher offers him a passing grade if he writes a quality essay. He's uninspired. But then he finds the letter from Johnny, and that inspires him to write about that.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker B: Yes. And that is what happens in the book. But in the theatrical cut, he just, like, sits down and starts writing it for, like, seemingly no reason.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. We've had no reference to him wanting to write or liking writing or anything like that. And you're like, okay, but, yeah, that makes sense. All right, let's go ahead and talk about the things that Katie thought were better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker B: I like that. We see Cherry and Marcia leaving their boyfriend's car at the drive in. We don't see that in the book. They just come up to the seats and the girls are already there. There was a quick visual when they're all reading the drive in.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker A: I didn't know what it meant. I assumed it was intentional.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker B: Where it's. The west side of the drive in is playing movies, and the east side says it's closed for repairs.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker A: Yeah. So they all came from the west side one, but the east side one is, like, broken down, not operating, which I assume the greasers are from the east side.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker B: Yes, greasers are east side, and socias are west side. Cherry has a line to Ponyboy when she says to him, if I see you in school, and I don't say hi, please don't take it personal. And I don't think she ever says that in the book, but I thought it was a good addition. Yeah, I liked Ponyboy hallucinating. Derry making breakfast in the church when he, like, wakes up that after that first night, I say hallucinating. I think he's, like, dreaming or something. And he likes. He, like, looks up and he, like, thinks he sees Darry, like, cooking breakfast in the other room in the church.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker A: Yeah. I Miss this completely. I did not notice that at all.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker B: I don't know that C. Thomas Howell really pulled off the delivery of this line, But I liked the idea of Ponyboy hearing a raccoon outside of the church and saying that there's a monster outside as, like, a way to kind of emphasize his youth. Because he's only 14. And not just 14, but we find out in the book he's freshly 14. Like, his birthday was, like, a month ago. So, you know, imagine yourself at freshly 14 going through this stuff.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker A: Yes. Insane.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker B: Yeah. I have to call out the line, do it for Johnny, man. Do it for Johnny. As actually not being from the book.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker A: That's crazy.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker B: Yeah. I have to mention it because my mom quotes that line to us all the time.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker A: I was about to say, I have heard your mom quote that line. And I was. I had no idea what it came from.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker B: It is from this movie specifically. It does not appear in the book.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker A: All right.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker B: I like the little detail of Darry's old high school friend Paul at the Rumble still wearing his letterman jacket. Because they're supposed to. They're supposed to be like. Dairy's supposed to be, like, 21 or 22, so. Peaked in high school much, Paul.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker A: Right. A little detail that I just noted or read somewhere that I don't have anywhere else that I thought was funny is that during that fight, two of the extras who are part of the Socias gang, one of them was. Would go on to be later, a professional hockey player. I can't remember his name. Cam something or another, which is funny. I just, like, they found, like, a hockey player. Like, you. Could you. You can fight. Get in here and do this scene where you're. But then one of the other ones, and I actually think I recognized him. I. I didn't read this till after. But then my. When I read it, my brain went. Oh, I think I do remember seeing him in this scene. One of the other guys who's like, one of the extras who's, like, in the Soc gang in the brawl scene is Flea, the bassist from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker B: Interesting.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker A: He's an actor. He did some random movies. He did some actors.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker B: His name is Flea.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker A: His name is Flea. Why? His nickname, I assume. I don't know his actual name.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker B: Like, the Bug.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker A: Paulie will tell us. Paulie's a huge fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But what, like the bug. F L E A Flea.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker B: Okay. All right.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker A: Good for you. He's also in the Big Lebowski. He's one of the the, the nihilists who attacks comes and pisses on their rug or whatever.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker B: I thought the scene where Dally fires the empty gun in the doctor's face was a good way to show us that Dally has an unloaded gun, which is important in the book, that it's not loaded, but that, like, the cops don't know that it's not loaded. Also, that doctor was like, completely unfazed.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker A: He didn't.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think he even flinches when d trigger. Yeah, he was like, do it, do it.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker A: I don't want to go to work tonight, please.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker B: Now, this might be a controversial opinion. I don't know if you're a big fan of the book, let me know if this is a controversial opinion. But I was totally fine with the movie. Cutting the judge, acquitting Ponyboy, and dismissing the murder charges. I, I, I gather that this is in the complete novel version.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker A: I don't know for sure. So the line from the Wikipedia summary for that is the judge exonerates Ponyboy for Bob's death as self defense and places him in Derry's custody. I don't know. I'm assuming that we see that in the complete novel edition. But it's also possible because sometimes Wikipedia summaries do this where they just tell you what did happen. True. Whether or not you actually. Because you would gather that's what happened in the movie even. And somebody may even say that in this movie, like, oh, he something, I can't remember. Somebody may even have a line along the lines of him getting put into Dar's custody after whatever. But we don't actually see that happen in the movie. And maybe the, it's possible that the complete or the director's cut version has that scene in it.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker B: I just think not including it is the right choice. It's kind of a nothing scene.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker A: It doesn't seem necessary.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker B: Like they all, they all go, There's a whole scene in the book where they all go in and people testify and like Cherry testifies and Randy testifies and then the judge is like, I'm acquitting this case. So like, nothing really comes of it. And I, I think we could fill in the blanks. I had honestly completely forgotten about it. And I was like, I was rereading the book and I was like, oh, yeah, that scene.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's irrelevant. I would, yeah, it doesn't really matter at all. All right, that was it for what Katie thought was better in the movie. Let's go ahead and talk about all the stuff the movie nailed. As I expected.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker B: Practically perfect in every way. They do sneak into the drive in. Cherry does throw the coke in Dalli's face. A specific exchange between the socials and Two Bit where the socials say, we've got two more in the back seat. And Two Bit says, pity the back seat. Johnny's line, there's gotta be somewhere without greasers and socias with just people. Also the white trash exchange with the socias where they're like, greaser is white trash with long hair. And Ponyboy is like a socias white trash with a Mustang.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker A: Yeah. And a Madeira.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker B: Yeah. Johnny does give them a gun and some money and gets them out of town. They do hop a freight train. Johnny gets a copy of Gone with the Wind for them. Johnny's line, it's our looks or us. Johnny does decide that he wants to go back and turn them in. One of the kids does bite Ponyboy.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker A: In that. Yeah.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker B: That is also in the book. He does wake up in the ambulance. Then after they get out of the church, the newspaper article about how they're all heroes. Like, specifically the headline, juvenile Delinquents turn Heroes.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker B: Two bits line. He goes to the barbershop for an oil change, not a haircut. Is from the book. And when they're the. When the gang is leaving the house on the way to the rumble, they do acrobatics. They do, like, flips and things.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker A: Patrick Swayze does a little handstand flip over the fence, and then Tom Cruise does a backflip off of the car.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker B: Yeah. No, the scene in the book is really turns into west side Story for a minute. It's, like, funny.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. All right. We got quite a few odds and ends to talk about before we get to the final verdict. I don't think I've ever seen opening credits that start as a page of everybody's name, like, filling up half the screen. And then it zooms in and we slow scroll through all the names. That was.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker B: That was something I. I had, like, the same note. I was like, wow. They really wanted to make sure we knew who the cast was.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah, Very, very interesting.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker B: A little thing that I thought was hilarious as I was reading the book is that when Ponyboy is telling us about Steve, he says that he doesn't like Steve. And the gist of it is that he thinks Steve just has a bad vibe. And then Steve is played by Tom Cruise.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is very interesting. So as we were watching the movie, the scene at the drive in where they're sitting there and then Matt Dillon Dally puts his feet up on the seat next to Cherry and then he falls out of his seat. I was like that felt like an accident that they used to. Because if you notice see Thomas hall how after it happens they all start laughing. Which could be like if that was scripted that they would be laughing.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker A: But he like looks and I can tell he's like looking at crew. He's looking at like the director or somebody on the crew. You could. It's just that look I can. I can recognize from a camera shot of somebody like looking at crew behind the camera and he's like. He like makes this face case. I just looked up on the trivia to IRDB trivia to see if there was anything about it. 100 that's like one of the trivia facts is that that was unscripted and an actual accident or at least it wasn't scripted. Maybe Matt Dillon did it on purpose to like get a reaction but it wasn't scripted. And see Thomas Howell was like yeah, he like looks at like the director or something like that.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker B: Like I put this here because I didn't really know which other segment to put it in. But the way that Derry shoves Ponyboy clear across the room in the movie seemed way more violent than the slap that's described in the book.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker A: That's interesting. I don't know how the slap is described in the book but the scene in the movie I thought was a pretty good depiction of somebody getting frustrated but not actually trying to hurt. You know what I mean? Like he shoved him in a way that felt.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker B: That's kind of why I like didn't know where to put it. I was like this is different but I don't know how to. How I feel about it.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker A: Like he. It felt like a frustrated shove of like what. What the are you doing? Like just shoving him and then not. And almost not realizing that he is Patrick Swayze 25. You know, like he is a 6 foot 2, right, 22 year old man. A 13, 14 year old or whatever. And so just kind of not realizing like he, you know he's. He's a guy that gets in fights and stuff. And when he shoves a guy normally it's probably not that big of a deal but he shoved a 13 world. And so yeah, it's like yeah, he.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker B: Flew across the room.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker A: And so like it almost to me felt like a pretty realistic depiction of like an accidental with that green on it.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker B: I think I could like that better in the Movie?
• 1:22:59
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. That's just kind of how I read it. I was like, that kind of work. Yeah. Speaking of that moment, though, right after that happens, Ponyboy then runs out of the house to go run and find Johnny.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker A: And when he runs out of the house, we get a shot where the camera is on a dolly, tracking inside the house from the side. And he's running and we follow with him. And then as he runs through the door, the camera passes past the wall with him and then outside and follows him continuing out the door. I did that exact shot in a movie I made in college. I don't think I knew that I'd seen that in anything before. And I apparently was referencing this, having never seen. I've never, 100% have never, never seen this movie. Maybe I saw a similar shot in something else. I don't know. But yeah, that. Speaking of the thing of like, referencing a classic piece of. Without even really realizing that you're doing it. You know what I mean? I was like, oh, I did that. They got to do it for real, though, in one take. I had to do it in two takes because we didn't have a fake set house or whatever because there's. The wall is cut away so that they can move the camera past the front wall or whatever. Whereas I did it. I had to put a fake. Hide a fake cut in there. But similar idea.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker B: Speaking of camera shots in this film, I really liked the rotating shot when Ponyboy wakes up and sees Johnny holding the bloody knife.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker A: It's incredible.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker B: He's on his back and he opens his eyes and we see Johnny upside down. And the camera rotates as he's sitting up.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker A: And then the first shot, even right before that, we get this top down shot. I think it's right before that. Or maybe it's right. I think it's right before that we get a top down shot because you don't even know what's happened. You get this top down shot, you see the fountain, and then you see two bodies laying on the ground. And then Johnny, like, leaning against the fountain.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker A: And you can't tell from there who's dead, who's alive, what happened. Because it's right after, like, we fade back from, like, Ponyboy passing out.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. Almost drowning.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker A: And then I think we go from that top down shot to the close up you're talking about where the camera does this really cool rotating, like, move around to reveal everything, which I thought was awesome. Also, I think I might have said this about Carrie. No, Because I think I talked about how much I hate split diagonal.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker B: I think you did. Yeah, I know.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker A: I talked about how much.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker B: We had a whole conversation about how Brian De Palma is a hack.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, but not. But not I would make. You can't just say that without context. Because go listen to the Carrie episode. I also say it's one of the most brilliant movies ever. I'm just saying. And that clearly depalma is a genius, but he's also a hack. Anyways, a whole different discussion. But I talked about in that how I generally am not a fan of split diopter shots. I do not like them for the most part. And just for clarification, for people who don't know, split diopter shot is where you use basically a lens attachment to set two focal distances on your shot. Traditionally, if a. If somebody is close to the camera and you want focus on them so that they're in focus and you can see them, everything far enough away from the camera is out of focus. You can do this thing with a split diopter where you can have something near the camera and something far away from the camera, both in focus at the same time. But you get this kind of weird blurry line down the middle because you're doing two focal lengths. And I think it's literally like a half piece of glass or something. I don't know how it works, but this one had. This movie has one split diopter shot in it. And it's maybe my favorite one I've ever seen. And it made me like split diopter shots. Or at least this one, which is right after that shot you were talking about with the rotating shot. We get this close up of Pony Boy or not Ponyboy Johnny. I think he's cleaning the knife or maybe or like freaking out. And he's in the close up. And then behind him on the ground is Bob's body further away, but both of them are in focus with this split diopter shot. And it's super effective. And yeah, I was like, okay, all right. You can do good split diopter shots.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker B: I mean, yeah, that sounds like a good use of that type of shot, for sure. I think I wrote this down. When they go see Dally and he comes down and he doesn't have a shirt on. I had such a mad crush on Matt Dillon because of this movie on, like. Like 1983 Matt Dillon. I was like, break me off a piece of that.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker A: He's a very unique looking man, especially in this movie. His facial features are Very. There's a scene where they're in the car. It might be the Dairy Queen scene where they're, like, eating the barbecue. Where he's talking or something. And I was like. He just has some of his eyes and the way his. His face is shaped, particularly just the way, like, in this movie, he. He has almost these, like. I don't want to say ape, like, features. I don't know. He just looked so. Almost animalistic or something. It's very interesting.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker B: But he's also, like, very kind of boyish looking.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, he.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, a good casting, in my opinion.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker A: I think he does a great. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker B: I was also laughing at the two very obviously domesticated rabbits that were just hanging out in the abandoned church.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker A: Yeah. Sitting in front of the broken mirror. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker B: I really liked how the sunrise scene was lit.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker A: You talking about. Is it the poetry scene you're talking about?
• 1:28:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, when they're.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker A: Yes. It does have a.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker B: It has, like, a weird dreamlike feel to it.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker A: It almost feels like it's kind of green screen. Not green screen, but. It almost feels like a composite shot or something. But it's not.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker B: Well, it kind of rem. Of like. Like, it made me think of, like, an old Hollywood. Like Technicolor.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. It is over saturated in a way that feels. Yes, exactly. Like a soundstage or something. And maybe that's what I was thinking. Not. Not composited or green screen or blue screen, but a. A soundstage with, like, a painted background is what it kind of feels like.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker B: Yeah. And it has just, like, this kind of dreamy quality that I thought worked really well.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker A: Reminds me a little bit of. I mean, obviously one of those scenes from the musical we watched not that long.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker B: Singing in the rain.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker A: Singing in the rain. But also a little bit of. It's not sunset. I think it's sunrise. No, it is sunset. Princess Bride. When they get to the top of the cliff and they're standing and that's a big soundstage and it's like sunset. And it's kind of a similar feel at times during their conversations. One of the things I thought was interesting at one point is. I don't remember who says it, but somebody asks.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker B: I think Dally.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker A: I think it is. Dally says, hey, give me one of them cancer sticks. Sticks? In reference to a cigarette. And I was like. Were they calling cigarettes cancer sticks in the 60s?
• 1:29:26
  Speaker B: No idea.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker A: I thought that was interesting because I thought it was a little bit later than that. Like, we knew earlier than most people. Like, we knew fairly early that cigarettes were not good for you. But I didn't think in the 60s we like, were like 100, like, oh, they're causing cancer. And especially not to the point where in common parlance people would be calling them cancer sticks. I could be completely wrong.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker B: I don't know. I don't know what the history of that is. If that's something that would have been, have. They would have said in the 60s or if maybe that's a 1980s.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker A: That's what I'm wondering. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I, I would have to, I have to try to find that out. But I heard that and I was like, interesting. I, I just again, I wouldn't be completely surprised to find out that we did know that cigarettes caused cancer in the 60s. We probably did.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker B: Yeah. But, but would it have been, but.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker A: Would it have been common knowledge? Yeah, especially because we were still selling them as like healthy back then. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, doctors prescribe these cigarettes or whatever, you know, I don't know. It's just interesting.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker B: Stay calm and keep your weight down.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker A: Exactly. So I was just wondering like, is that.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker B: Yeah, we gotta talk about the brief moment of shirtless Rob Lowe in this movie.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker A: I, I thought, I legitimately thought you might have confused him with Patrick Swayze because shirtless Patrick Swayze is in this movie.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker B: We also have shirtless Patrick Swayze in this movie. But so shirtless Rob Lowe specifically. When I was making content for socials for this movie, I went on letterboxd and I was like looking at the top reviews and finding some interesting ones that I could make into content. And one of them was, let me just pull it up. We were watching this in class and the girls behind me asked our teacher to rewind for the scene of Rob Lowe getting out of the shower. Me too. And I was cracking up because I literally had that exact experience. You wore out the teeth watching this in school. That scene played and every girl in class leaned forward. We were all like, hang on, that's hilarious.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker A: Oh goodness.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker B: Why does the hospital gift shop have a copy of Gone with the Wind?
• 1:31:35
  Speaker A: I guess this is an era still where it was like, like popular enough that I guess I, I think that's not outlandish. Hospital gift shops have quite a few books for this re of people in the hospital.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker B: Fair enough.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker A: And so they have a lot of like best selling classics or whatever. Just cuz they're easy crowd pleasers that. You know what I mean? So I wouldn't be completely surprised for a hospital to Have.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker B: All right, fair enough.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker A: Next time I'm in our local hospital for.
• 1:31:59
  Speaker B: Yeah, we need to. We need to see if they have.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker A: A copy of Gone with the Wind. I'll take a picture of it. You can definitely tell. So again, having watched the theatrical version, you can tell that the end of this movie was edited down like crazy after the, like, church fire to the end of the movie. I felt like, yeah, we're really, really moving in a way. And it's not that it doesn't work like, it mostly works, but there's a handful of moments where I was like, oh, I felt like we skipped a scene here. Like, it's felt like the moment moment. A big example of it, I think, for instance, was like, the fight ends. Like, the rumble ends. And then we cut to Pony with nothing. Like, there's a fight. And he's like, yeah, good job. Like, I think Darry and Ponyboy kind of like, embrace or whatever. And then we cut directly from that to Ponyboy in the car with Dally, like, flying down the street somewhere, we don't know. And then they get pulled over by the cops.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker B: I thought the movie did show them going to the car.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker A: Oh, did it?
• 1:32:59
  Speaker B: I think I did.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker A: I didn't think it did. Maybe it did, but I thought it would just cut from that to that. And then. And then. And then they get like, whatever, and then they get to the hospital. And then there was another moment where there was something else similar. But there was a handful of moments like that where I just felt like, oh, we are just like. I feel like we are skipping scenes here of just like, there's definitely.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, the movie is quite leisurely up until a point. And then it starts, like, really like, okay, move. Let's move.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker A: Which makes sense based on the Wikipedia summary, which is apparently of the complete novel version, because most of the additions seem to be in that last act. So that's probably where most was cut from the film. Because I did talk about in the prequel that apparently he had almost a two hour cut of this movie originally, and producers or studio or whatever was like, this too long. You gotta cut it down. So then he cut it to 90 and then he went back and brought it back up to two hours or whatever. But yeah, it's really moving again, it's not that it doesn't work, it's just. It's like, this is one where I think the studio notes were an issue. I think it would be a much. I'm glad we watched the theatrical version because we did debate whether or not we were going to watch the regular. The theatrical or the complete novel. Like, I think it makes sense to watch a theatrical for our audience and for discussion, because most people will have probably seen the theatrical version and that's the one that originally came out, blah, blah, blah. I think it's worth watching that one. But in retrospect, I'm like kind of wish we had watched it complete. I don't want to it and watch the complete one until maybe some years from now. But I bet that the complete novel version is like a more complete, obviously. But it just feels like a much better paced and cohesive movie, especially in the last act, than this one does. And this one's not even bad. It's just. And then my last note was that. And I just. And I kind of mentioned this earlier in terms of the writing being amateurish, but specifically I thought a lot of the dialog felt very amateurish, but that it actually ends up kind of working.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker A: Because at times, like, I was like, it sounds really amateur, but then I'm like, yeah, but most of the time in movies when kids are talking, that's not how kids sound. And this sounds more like how kids sounds like kids more than normal. And so that, that amateur nature of some of the dialogue does actually kind of work because it's like, yeah, it's a 15 year old writing other 15, 15 year old dialogue. So like, it is talking.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker B: My last note here. I think something that makes this book appealing to teenagers is that everybody has a fun name.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker B: I feel like so confident in my soul that Hinton's publisher probably at least tried to talk her out of Ponyboy.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker B: And I for one, am glad she stuck to her guns.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker A: And supposedly that's his birth name. On his birth certificate.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker B: Yes, on his birth certificate.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker A: He says it in the movie. Yeah, Same for Soda Pop, which I thought was hilarious.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker B: But Dairy has a normal name, which is maybe the funniest thing.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. All right, before we get to the final verdict, we wanted to remind you you could do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, Threads, Instagram, Blue Sky, Goodreads, any of those places. Let us know what you thought about the Outsiders. We would love to hear it and we will talk about it in our next prequel episode. You can also do us a favor by heading over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to our show. So if you can write a review there, write us a nice little review. Drop us a five star rating. We would appreciate that. If you would really like to support us head over to patreon.com thisfilmislit Support us there for 2, 5 or 15 bucks a month. Get access to different things at each level. $5 is where you start getting bonus content. Every month we put out a bonus episode. This month it will be our bonus episode on Muppet Treasure island, which this one actually will be going out to everybody. Just this month. We talked about this before, but because we did a listener's choice for the Treasure island episode and Treasure Planet won by one vote. We were gonna do Muppet Treasure island as the bonus episode this month, but because it was so close, we decided to release it for everybody. Just cause. For the people who wanted to hear us.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker B: For the people, yeah.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker A: If Treasure Planet had crushed, you know, and nobody seemed to care about Muppet Treasure island, we probably just would have left it a bonus episode like actually on Patreon. But this one we're gonna put out for everybody, so look out for that. But every other month we do a bonus episode that is just for our $5 Patreon patrons. And then at the $15 level, if you have a request for a book slash movie that you would really like for us to talk about, you can request it and we will add it to our list as soon as we can. It's a. It's out of ways. We're scheduled out pretty far, but we will add it when we can. Katie, it's time for the final verdict.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker B: Sentence. Fast.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker A: Verdict after.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker B: That's stupid. I mentioned at the end of our Treasure Planet episode that when I read the outsiders as a 13 year old in middle school, it was something that really captured my imagination. I think obsessed was the word that I used, and that's accurate. I read all of Essie Hinton's other books. I consumed any other media that was even remotely similar. Hence why I'd seen Crybaby. And I even wrote my own version of it, kind of. I can't really remember why at this point, but for some reason, I truly hyper fixated on this book. I think this is the first time I had reread it since high school. And as an adult, I still like it. I still think it's good. A big part of the charm, in my opinion, is how authentic it is. You mentioned the dialogue being amateurish, but that it works. The entire book is like that. I don't know that there was a whole lot of strategy to it. I think Hinton was just a teenager writing like a teenager, but she also happened to have enough raw talent and maybe picked the exact Right Subject material that writing like a teenager worked. I don't think that this would pan out like it did in very many situations. It was lightning in a bottle. Like I said. I can't really remember why the Outsiders appealed to me so much as a teen, but I imagine that that authenticity was probably a factor. Something else that I'm charmed by now is how fan fiction coded it is from the descriptions of the characters to how the boys are romanticized to the inclusion of quoted poetry. It's all there. And now, knowing that Hinton was inspired by people she went to school with, I have to wonder if those real life greasers ever read it and how they felt about it. It's like fanfiction of real people. While I've always loved the book, I can't really say the same about the movie. I think that the main things I liked about it at 13 were Matt Dillon and that one scene with shirtless Rob Lowe. What can I say? I'm a simple girl. I think it's an okay adaptation, but I think it struggles to fully communicate the class tension aspect of the novel. And I think it suffers in a big way from not having Ponyboy's inner monologue. Listening to him puzzle through the thorny situations and heavy questions that life throws at him are key to communicating the novel's themes and messages. I know this book isn't everyone's cup of tea. I'm aware that my experience with it is not universal. But there is something about it that's made it endure and continue to appeal to young people even 60 years after publication. The movie is fine, but the book clearly has some kind of secret sauce, so I have to give this one to the book.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker A: All right. And I will talk about my feelings a little more on the movie when we get to the prequel episode. Because I never really talked about how I felt overall about the movie. I mean, I think it's kind of clear from our discussion. But we're not gonna do that now. We'll do it on the prequel. Katie, what's next?
• 1:41:01
  Speaker B: Up next, we are doing a Switch episode. You're gonna read the book and we are gonna be talking about Cloud Atlas.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker A: Indeed.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker B: It is a 2012 film based on the novel by David Mitchell.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker A: All I know of this is that it's supposed to be a little confusing. Interested to see? It's like a. It's like a multi generational timeline span.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker B: Timeline. I know that Halle Berry is in the movie.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker A: Yes. I believe it's a Wachowski.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker B: Yes. I believe you are correct.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker A: That'll be interesting because I a lot of their movies that people didn't appreciate when they come out, then when they came out, and this is one of those this was not a well reviewed film film when it came out. Some of those movies like Speed Racer and maybe even Jupiter Ascending to some extent are I think being reappraised is perhaps better than they were initially reviewed. And so I'm interested to see what my feelings on Cloud Atlas are, both the book and the movie. But we will get to that in due time. In two weeks time, actually, we'll be talking about Cloud Atlas. But next week we'll be pretty previewing Cloud Atlas and getting all of your feedback on the Outsiders. Until that time, guys, gals, and I'm binary pals and everybody else keep reading.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker B: Books, keep watching movies and keep being awesome.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker A: Sam.