The Many Lives of Tom Waits by Patrick Humphries

Author:Patrick Humphries [Humphries, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85712-125-7
Publisher: Music Sales Corp.
Published: 1988-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

NOTES

1 Elissa Van Poznak, The Face

2 Chris Roberts, Sounds

3 Phil Freeman, The Wire

CHAPTER 21

ONE From The Heart had been stressful from the start, and its box-office failure had led inexorably to the subsequent decline and fall of Zoetrope Studios. But for all the problems associated with that film, Francis Ford Coppola had nonetheless been enchanted that it had given him the opportunity of working with Tom Waits. However, while Waits’ standing had soared in the years since One From The Heart, the director’s reputation was now in severe decline.

In an effort to down-scale following the expensive folly of One From The Heart, Coppola had re-learned the meaning of “small scale”. During 1983 he found himself directing The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, back to back. Both were adapted from books the novelist S.E. Hinton had written as a 15-year-old, and both were shot in quick succession in Tulsa, during 1982.

In a move which might have come straight from a Hollywood movie, Coppola was alerted to the novels by a letter he received from the librarian of a school in Fresno County. She and her students (“representative of the youth of America”) had enjoyed the Zoetrope production of The Black Stallion, and felt that the studio head might consider Hinton’s books for the studio.

Alongside The Magnificent Seven, The Outsiders has one of the best “Wow, look what happened to them …” casts in film history. Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Ralph Macchio, C. Thomas Howell … But for all the dynamism that the youthful cast brought to the project, and for all Coppola’s enthusiasm, his efforts at creating a Rebel Without A Cause for the Eighties ended up falling flat.

Waits had come back into Coppola’s orbit for both films: “In The Outsiders I had one line: ‘What is it you boys want?’ I still have it down if they need me to go back and recreate the scene for any reason.”1

More successful on all counts was Rumble Fish, which boasted one of Mickey Rourke’s best-ever performances, at a time when he really did look set to inherit James Dean’s mantle. Matt Dillon also scores as his hero-worshipping younger brother, and the cast is bolstered by strong performances from Laurence Fishburne and Dennis Hopper, both of whom had featured in Apocalypse Now. Rumble Fish also marked the debut performance by Coppola’s teenage nephew, Nicolas Cage.

Describing Rumble Fish as “Camus for 14-year-olds,” Coppola’s aim with both these films was to try and entice teenage audiences away from the likes of Rambo and Conan The Barbarian. He felt that it was important to alert them to wider issues than those posed by Return Of The Jedi or Flashdance and that the way forward was to make more substantial and thought-provoking teenage dramas – “art films for kids” as Coppola characterised them. “They don’t have to be Porky’s … The Outsiders and Rumble Fish are heroic epics for 14-year-olds.”

Waits was particularly partial to his role in Rumble Fish. “I play Bennie, of Bennie’s Pool Hall.

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