Since Hinton’s characters are the backbone of the story, it was important to find up-and-coming actors capable of encapsulating both their physical and emotional essence. In 1983, he dedicated his film adaptation to Mosakian and the student body of the Lone Star School in Fresno, California.Ī beautifully shot and faithful adaptation, the success of Coppola’s feature relies heavily on the charisma of its young cast. Upon reading the novel, Coppola saw its potential to connect with young audiences. Enclosed was a copy of the book and a petition signed by over one hundred students nominating him to turn it into a feature.
In 1980, Francis Ford Coppola received an interesting letter from a middle-school librarian, Jo Ellen Mosakian. However, it was the increasing demand for Hinton’s novel by faculty and students that not only launched the Young Adult genre in literature, it launched the making of the film. Some may groan at the mere mention of The Outsiders, having been “forced” to read it in either middle school or high school. But the most powerful message is that "things are rough all over." The author uses the social divide and violence between the two gangs to represent one of the most unfortunate aspects of the human condition - the inability to empathize and accept each other's differences. Hinton covers all the teen angst bases, from unrequited crushes to child abuse and neglect. The novel’s appeal to teenagers stems from its raw and relatable themes. Distinguishable by their long greasy hair and bad reputations, greasers are constantly battling the upper-class Socs (short for Socials), who parade around town flaunting their privilege.
Appealing to young readers regardless of gender, the narrative follows the ups and downs of Pony’s life as a greaser. Maintaining the illusion, she begins and ends the novel with the same passage (“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight…”) to suggest it was written by her fourteen-year-old protagonist, Ponyboy Curtis. Inspired by the rival gangs in her Tulsa, Oklahoma high school, Hinton’s teenage perspective taps directly into the angst and isolation of youth, bringing an authenticity to her characters that is still relevant and resonating today.Ī self-described tomboy, Hinton felt more comfortable writing from a male perspective and chose to publish The Outsiders under her initials to avoid alienating male readers. A departure from stories about going to prom and young love, her novel highlighted the turmoil and injustices of being a teenager. In the late '60s, fifteen-year-old Susan Eloise Hinton was so unimpressed with the narratives representing her generation that she decided to write her own. Hinton’s The Outsiders remains a constant on school reading lists. “Most grownups don’t know about the battles that go on between us.”Īfter fifty years and more than fifteen million copies sold, S.E. In the process, I hope to unveil how these two vastly different mediums work together to tell the same story, from cover to credits. In this column, I’ll be checking out old and new adaptations to further explore both sides of that experience.
#The outsiders cast movie#
As a lifelong bookworm and cinephile, I've discovered that whether I read the book before or after seeing the movie can have a profound influence on my enjoyment of the story across both mediums. While we've all uttered some version of this sentiment at one point or another, there have been those rare occasions when the opposite is true. "Don't judge a book by its movie" is another common jab. "The book was better" is a phrase heard often in conversations about book-to-film adaptations.