Rumble Fish
Encyclopedia
Rumble Fish is a 1983 film
directed by Francis Ford Coppola
. It is based on the novel Rumble Fish
by S.E. Hinton, who also co-wrote the screenplay.
The film centers on the relationship between Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke
), a revered former gang leader wishing to live a more peaceful life, and his younger brother, Rusty James (Matt Dillon
), a teenaged hoodlum who aspires to become as feared as Motorcycle Boy. The film's marketing tagline was, "Rusty James can't live up to his brother's reputation. His brother can't live it down."
Coppola wrote the screenplay for the film with Hinton on his days off from shooting The Outsiders
. He made the films back-to-back, retaining much of the same cast and crew. The film is notable , for its avant-garde
style, shot on stark high-contrast black-and-white film, using the spherical cinematographic process with allusions to French New Wave
cinema and German Expressionism
. Rumble Fish features an experimental score by Stewart Copeland
, drummer of the musical group The Police
who used a Musync, a new device at the time.
Rumble Fish was booed at the New York Film Festival
. At the San Sebastian International Film Festival
, it won the International Critics' Big Award
. The movie was a box office disaster on initial release, grossing only $2.5 million domestically; its estimated budget was $10 million; a large sum for the time. Coppola utilized many new filmmaking techniques never before used in the production of a motion picture. The film polarized critics, some mainstream reviewers enjoying it, while others disliked Coppola's film, criticizing Coppola's style over substance approach. The film has since grown in esteem and is held in high regard by many movie fans.
, the film begins in a diner called Benny's Billiards, where local tough guy Rusty James (Matt Dillon
) is told by Midgit (Larry (Laurence) Fishburne
) that rival group leader Biff Wilcox (Glenn Withrow
) wants to meet him that night in an abandoned garage
lot for a fight. Accepting the challenge, Rusty James then talks with his friends — the wily Smokey (Nicolas Cage
), loyal B.J. (Chris Penn
) and nerdy Steve (Vincent Spano
) - who all have a different take on the forthcoming fight. Steve mentions that Rusty James' older brother, "The Motorcycle Boy," would not be pleased with the fight as he had previously created a truce forbidding gang fights, or "rumbles." Rusty James dismisses him, saying that Motorcycle Boy (whose real name is never revealed) has been gone for two months, leaving without explanation or promise of return.
Rusty James visits his girlfriend, Patty (Diane Lane
), then rendezvous with his cadre and walks to the abandoned garage lot, where Biff and his buddies suddenly appear. The two battle, with the fight ending when Rusty James disarms Biff and beats him almost unconscious. Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke
) arrives dramatically on his motorcycle and this distracts Rusty James who is gashed by Biff in the side with a shard of glass. Incensed, Motorcycle Boy sends his motorcycle flying into Biff. The Motorcycle Boy and Steve take Rusty James home (past Officer Patterson, a street cop who's long had it in for the Motorcycle Boy) and nurse him to health through the night. Steve and the injured Rusty James talk about how Motorcycle Boy is 21 years old, colorblind, partially deaf, and noticeably aloof — the last trait causing many to believe he is insane.
The Motorcycle Boy and Rusty James share the next evening with their alcoholic, welfare-dependent father (Dennis Hopper
), who says that the Motorcycle Boy takes after his mother whereas, it is implied, Rusty James takes after him. Things start to go wrong for Rusty James. He's kicked out of school after his frequent fights. Despite Rusty James desire to do so, The Motorcycle Boy implies that he has no interest in reviving any gang activity. Rusty James fools around with another girl and is dumped by Patty.
The two brothers and Steve head across the river one night to a strip of bars, where Rusty James enjoys being away from his troubles. The Motorcycle Boy mentions that he located their long-lost mother during his recent trip while she was with a movie producer, which took him to California although he did not reach the ocean. Later, Steve and Rusty James wander drunkenly home, and are attacked by thugs, but both are saved by the Motorcycle Boy. As he nurses Rusty James again, the Motorcycle Boy tells him that the gang life and the rumbles he yearns for and idolizes are not what he believes them to be. Steve calls the Motorcycle Boy crazy, a claim which the Motorcycle Boy does not deny — further prompting Rusty James to believe his brother is insane, just like his runaway mother supposedly was.
Rusty James meets up with the Motorcycle Boy the next day in a pet store, where the latter is strangely fascinated with the Siamese fighting fish
, which he refers to as "rumble fish". Officer Patterson suspects they will try to rob the store. The brothers leave and meet their father, who explains to Rusty James that, contrary to popular belief, neither his mother nor brother are crazy, but rather they were both born with an acute perception. The brothers go for a motorcycle ride through the city and arrive at the Pet Store where the Motorcycle Boy breaks in and starts to set the animals loose. Rusty James makes a last-gasp effort to convince his brother to reunite with him, but the Motorcycle Boy refuses, explaining they are too different to ever have the life Rusty James speaks of. The Motorcycle Boy takes the fish and rushes to free them in the river, but is shot by Officer Patterson before he can. Rusty James, after hearing the gunshot, finishes his brother's last attempt while a large crowd of people begin merging on his body.
Rusty James finally reaches the Pacific Ocean (something the Motorcycle Boy never got to do) and enjoys the shining sun and flocks of birds flying around the beach. Fade out.
". Halfway through the production of The Outsiders, Coppola decided that he wanted to retain the same production team, stay in Tulsa, and shoot Rumble Fish right after The Outsiders. He wrote the screenplay for Rumble Fish with Hinton on Sundays, their day off from shooting The Outsiders.
was not happy with an early cut of The Outsiders and passed on distributing Rumble Fish. Despite the lack of financing in place, Coppola completely recorded the film on video during two weeks of rehearsals in a former school gymnasium and afterwards was able to show the cast and crew a rough draft of the film. To get Rourke into the mindset of his character, Coppola gave him books written by Albert Camus
and a biography of Napoleon. The Motorcycle Boy's look was patterned after Camus complete with trademark cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth — taken from a photograph of the author that Rourke used as a visual handle. Rourke remembers that he approached his character as "an actor who no longer finds his work interesting".
Coppola hired Michael Smuin, a choreographer and co-director of the San Francisco Ballet
, to stage the fight scene between Rusty James and Biff Wilcox because he liked the way he choreographed violence. He asked Smuin to include specific visual elements: a motorcycle, broken glass, knives, gushing water and blood. The choreographer spent a week designing the sequence. Smuin also staged the street dance between Rourke and Diana Scarwid, modeling it after one in Picnic featuring William Holden
and Kim Novak
.
Before filming started, Coppola ran regular screenings of old films during the evenings to familiarize the cast and in particular, the crew with his visual concept for Rumble Fish. Most notably, Coppola showed Anatole Litvak
's Decision Before Dawn
, the inspiration for the film's smoky look, F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh to show Matt Dillon how silent actor Emil Jennings used body language to convey emotions, and Robert Wiene
's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which became Rumble Fishs "stylistic prototype". Coppola's extensive use of shadows, oblique angles, exaggerated compositions, and an abundance of smoke and fog are all hallmarks of these German Expressionist films. Godfrey Reggio
's Koyaanisqatsi
, shot mainly in time-lapse photography, motivated Coppola to use this technique to animate the sky in his own film.
and principal photography began on July 12, 1982 with the director declaring, "Rumble Fish will be to The Outsiders what Apocalypse Now
was to The Godfather
". He shot in deserted areas at the edge of Tulsa with many scenes captured via a hand-held camera in order to make the audience feel uneasy. He also had shadows painted on the walls of the sets to make them look ominous. In the dream sequence where Rusty-James floats outside of his body Matt Dillon wore a body mold which was moved by an articulated arm and also flown on wires.
To mix the black-and-white footage of Rusty James and the Motorcycle Boy in the pet store looking at the Siamese fighting fish in color, Burum shot the actors in black and white and then projected that footage on a rear projection screen. They put the fish tank in front of it with the tropical fish and shot it all with color film. Filming finished by mid-September 1982, on schedule and on budget.
The film is notable for its avant-garde
style, shot on stark high-contrast black-and-white film, using the spherical cinematographic process with allusions to French New Wave
cinema. The striking black-and-white photography of the film's cinematographer, Stephen H. Burum
, lies in two main sources: the films of Orson Welles
and German cinema of the 1920s. When the film was in its pre-production phase, Coppola asked Burum how he wanted to film it and they agreed that it might be the only chance they were ever going to have to make a black-and-white film.
, drummer of the musical group The Police
, to improvise a rhythm track. Coppola soon realized that Copeland was a far superior composer and let him take over. The musician proceeded to record street sounds of Tulsa and mixed them into the soundtrack with the use of a Musync, a new device at the time, that recorded film, frame by frame on videotape with the image on top, the dialogue in the middle, and the musical staves on the bottom so that it matched the images perfectly.
The song "Don't Box Me In (theme from Rumble Fish)," a collaboration between Copeland and singer/songwriter Stan Ridgway
, leader and frontman of Wall of Voodoo
, was released with the film and enjoyed significant radio airplay.
, there were several walkouts and at the end of the screening, boos and catcalls. Former head of production at Paramount Pictures
Michael Daly remembers legendary producer Robert Evans' reaction to Coppola's film, "Evans went to see Rumble Fish, and he remembers being shaken by how far Coppola had strayed from Hollywood. Evans says, 'I was scared. I couldn't understand any of it.'"
Rumble Fish was released on October 8, 1983 and grossed $18,985 on its opening weekend, playing in only one theater. Its widest release was in 296 theaters and it finally grossed $2.5 million domestically.
in New York
and Andrew Sarris
in the Village Voice. In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin
wrote that "the film is so furiously overloaded, so crammed with extravagant touches, that any hint of a central thread is obscured". Film critic Roger Ebert
gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, "I thought Rumble Fish was offbeat, daring, and utterly original. Who but Coppola could make this film? And, of course, who but Coppola would want to?" Gary Arnold in the Washington Post wrote, "It's virtually impossible to be drawn into the characters' identities and conflicts at even an introductory, rudimentary level, and the rackety distraction of an obtrusive experimental score ... frequently makes it impossible to comprehend mere dialogue". Time
magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, "In one sense, then, Rumble Fish is Coppola's professional suicide note to the movie industry, a warning against employing him to find the golden gross. No doubt: this is his most baroque and self-indulgent film. It may also be his bravest".
Jay Scott
wrote one of the few positive reviews for the film in the Globe and Mail. "Francis Coppola, bless his theatrical soul, may have the commercial sense of a newt, but he has the heart of a revolutionary, and the talent of a great artist". Jack Kroll also gave a rare rave in his review for Newsweek
: "Rumble Fish is a brilliant tone poem ... Rourke's Motorcycle Boy is really a young god with a mortal wound, a slippery assignment Rourke handles with a fierce delicacy". The film has a 68% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
and a 63 metascore on Metacritic
. David Thomson
has written that Rumble Fish is "maybe the most satisfying film Coppola made after Apocalypse Now
".
Despite mixed reviews, Rumble Fish won the highest prize in the 32nd San Sebastian International Film Festival
, the International Critics' Big Award
.
in 1984 and on DVD
on September 9, 1998 with no extra material. A special edition was released on September 13, 2005 with an audio commentary by Coppola, six deleted scenes, a making-of featurette, a look at how Copeland's score was created and the "Don't Box Me In" music video.
1983 in film
-Events:*February 11 - The Rolling Stones concert film Let's Spend the Night Together opens in New York*May 25 - Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, the final film in the original Star Wars trilogy, is released. Like the previous films, it goes on to become the top grossing picture of...
directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
. It is based on the novel Rumble Fish
Rumble Fish (novel)
Rumble Fish is a 1975 novel for young adults by S. E. Hinton, author of The Outsiders. It was adapted to film and directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983.-Plot:...
by S.E. Hinton, who also co-wrote the screenplay.
The film centers on the relationship between Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke
Mickey Rourke
Philip Andre "Mickey" Rourke, Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter and retired boxer, who has appeared primarily as a leading man in action, drama, and thriller films....
), a revered former gang leader wishing to live a more peaceful life, and his younger brother, Rusty James (Matt Dillon
Matt Dillon
Matthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon is an American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.- Early life :...
), a teenaged hoodlum who aspires to become as feared as Motorcycle Boy. The film's marketing tagline was, "Rusty James can't live up to his brother's reputation. His brother can't live it down."
Coppola wrote the screenplay for the film with Hinton on his days off from shooting The Outsiders
The Outsiders (film)
The Outsiders is a 1983 American drama film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, an adaptation of the novel The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. The film was released in March 1983...
. He made the films back-to-back, retaining much of the same cast and crew. The film is notable , for its avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
style, shot on stark high-contrast black-and-white film, using the spherical cinematographic process with allusions to French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
cinema and German Expressionism
German Expressionism
German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s...
. Rumble Fish features an experimental score by Stewart Copeland
Stewart Copeland
Stewart Armstrong Copeland is an American musician, best known as the drummer for the band The Police. During the group's extended hiatus from the mid-1980s to 2007, he played in other bands and composed soundtracks...
, drummer of the musical group The Police
The Police
The Police were an English rock band formed in London in 1977. For the vast majority of their history, the band consisted of Sting , Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland...
who used a Musync, a new device at the time.
Rumble Fish was booed at the New York Film Festival
New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival has been a major film festival since it began in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center...
. At the San Sebastian International Film Festival
San Sebastián International Film Festival
The San Sebastián International Film Festival is an annual FIAPF A category film festival held in the Spanish city of San Sebastián .-History:The festival was founded in 1953...
, it won the International Critics' Big Award
Golden Shell
The Golden Shell is the highest prize given to a competing film at the San Sebastián Film Festival. It was introduced in 1957. In 1953 and 1954, the highest prize had been called the Gran Premio. In 1955 and 1956 it was replaced by the Silver Shell...
. The movie was a box office disaster on initial release, grossing only $2.5 million domestically; its estimated budget was $10 million; a large sum for the time. Coppola utilized many new filmmaking techniques never before used in the production of a motion picture. The film polarized critics, some mainstream reviewers enjoying it, while others disliked Coppola's film, criticizing Coppola's style over substance approach. The film has since grown in esteem and is held in high regard by many movie fans.
Plot
Set in Tulsa, OklahomaTulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 46th-largest city in the United States. With a population of 391,906 as of the 2010 census, it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 937,478 residents in the MSA and 988,454 in the CSA. Tulsa's...
, the film begins in a diner called Benny's Billiards, where local tough guy Rusty James (Matt Dillon
Matt Dillon
Matthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon is an American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.- Early life :...
) is told by Midgit (Larry (Laurence) Fishburne
Laurence Fishburne
Laurence John Fishburne III is an American film and stage actor, playwright, director, and producer. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Morpheus in the Matrix science fiction film trilogy, as Cowboy Curtis on the 1980's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse, and as singer-musician Ike Turner...
) that rival group leader Biff Wilcox (Glenn Withrow
Glenn Withrow
Glenn Withrow is an American actor, director, producer and writer.-Personal life:Withrow was born in Highland Heights, Kentucky in 1953. He is married to actress Hallie Todd...
) wants to meet him that night in an abandoned garage
Filling station
A filling station, also known as a fueling station, garage, gasbar , gas station , petrol bunk , petrol pump , petrol garage, petrol kiosk , petrol station "'servo"' in Australia or service station, is a facility which sells fuel and lubricants...
lot for a fight. Accepting the challenge, Rusty James then talks with his friends — the wily Smokey (Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage is an American actor, producer and director, having appeared in over 60 films including Raising Arizona , The Rock , Face/Off , Gone in 60 Seconds , Adaptation , National Treasure , Ghost Rider , Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans , and...
), loyal B.J. (Chris Penn
Chris Penn
Christopher Shannon "Chris" Penn was an American film and television actor known for his roles in such films as The Wild Life, Reservoir Dogs, Footloose, Rush Hour, True Romance, All the Right Moves and Pale Rider.-Early life:Penn was born in Los Angeles, California, the youngest son of Leo Penn,...
) and nerdy Steve (Vincent Spano
Vincent Spano
Vincent M. Spano is an American stage, film and television actor, and film director and producer. He received a Cable Ace Award nomination in 1988 for his role as Mark Ciuni in Il cugino americano.-Backround:...
) - who all have a different take on the forthcoming fight. Steve mentions that Rusty James' older brother, "The Motorcycle Boy," would not be pleased with the fight as he had previously created a truce forbidding gang fights, or "rumbles." Rusty James dismisses him, saying that Motorcycle Boy (whose real name is never revealed) has been gone for two months, leaving without explanation or promise of return.
Rusty James visits his girlfriend, Patty (Diane Lane
Diane Lane
Diane Lane is an American film actress.Born and raised in New York City, Lane made her screen debut at the age of 13 in George Roy Hill's 1979 film A Little Romance, starring opposite Sir Laurence Olivier. Soon after, she was featured on the cover of Time magazine...
), then rendezvous with his cadre and walks to the abandoned garage lot, where Biff and his buddies suddenly appear. The two battle, with the fight ending when Rusty James disarms Biff and beats him almost unconscious. Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke
Mickey Rourke
Philip Andre "Mickey" Rourke, Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter and retired boxer, who has appeared primarily as a leading man in action, drama, and thriller films....
) arrives dramatically on his motorcycle and this distracts Rusty James who is gashed by Biff in the side with a shard of glass. Incensed, Motorcycle Boy sends his motorcycle flying into Biff. The Motorcycle Boy and Steve take Rusty James home (past Officer Patterson, a street cop who's long had it in for the Motorcycle Boy) and nurse him to health through the night. Steve and the injured Rusty James talk about how Motorcycle Boy is 21 years old, colorblind, partially deaf, and noticeably aloof — the last trait causing many to believe he is insane.
The Motorcycle Boy and Rusty James share the next evening with their alcoholic, welfare-dependent father (Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
), who says that the Motorcycle Boy takes after his mother whereas, it is implied, Rusty James takes after him. Things start to go wrong for Rusty James. He's kicked out of school after his frequent fights. Despite Rusty James desire to do so, The Motorcycle Boy implies that he has no interest in reviving any gang activity. Rusty James fools around with another girl and is dumped by Patty.
The two brothers and Steve head across the river one night to a strip of bars, where Rusty James enjoys being away from his troubles. The Motorcycle Boy mentions that he located their long-lost mother during his recent trip while she was with a movie producer, which took him to California although he did not reach the ocean. Later, Steve and Rusty James wander drunkenly home, and are attacked by thugs, but both are saved by the Motorcycle Boy. As he nurses Rusty James again, the Motorcycle Boy tells him that the gang life and the rumbles he yearns for and idolizes are not what he believes them to be. Steve calls the Motorcycle Boy crazy, a claim which the Motorcycle Boy does not deny — further prompting Rusty James to believe his brother is insane, just like his runaway mother supposedly was.
Rusty James meets up with the Motorcycle Boy the next day in a pet store, where the latter is strangely fascinated with the Siamese fighting fish
Siamese fighting fish
The Siamese fighting fish , also known as the betta , is a popular species of freshwater aquarium fish. The name of the genus is derived from ikan bettah, taken from a local dialect of Malay...
, which he refers to as "rumble fish". Officer Patterson suspects they will try to rob the store. The brothers leave and meet their father, who explains to Rusty James that, contrary to popular belief, neither his mother nor brother are crazy, but rather they were both born with an acute perception. The brothers go for a motorcycle ride through the city and arrive at the Pet Store where the Motorcycle Boy breaks in and starts to set the animals loose. Rusty James makes a last-gasp effort to convince his brother to reunite with him, but the Motorcycle Boy refuses, explaining they are too different to ever have the life Rusty James speaks of. The Motorcycle Boy takes the fish and rushes to free them in the river, but is shot by Officer Patterson before he can. Rusty James, after hearing the gunshot, finishes his brother's last attempt while a large crowd of people begin merging on his body.
Rusty James finally reaches the Pacific Ocean (something the Motorcycle Boy never got to do) and enjoys the shining sun and flocks of birds flying around the beach. Fade out.
Cast
- Matt DillonMatt DillonMatthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon is an American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.- Early life :...
as Rusty James - Mickey RourkeMickey RourkePhilip Andre "Mickey" Rourke, Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter and retired boxer, who has appeared primarily as a leading man in action, drama, and thriller films....
as the Motorcycle Boy - Diane LaneDiane LaneDiane Lane is an American film actress.Born and raised in New York City, Lane made her screen debut at the age of 13 in George Roy Hill's 1979 film A Little Romance, starring opposite Sir Laurence Olivier. Soon after, she was featured on the cover of Time magazine...
as Patty - Dennis HopperDennis HopperDennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
as Father - Diana ScarwidDiana ScarwidDiana Scarwid is an American actress. Scarwid has done work in film, television and theater.-Personal life:Scarwid was born in Savannah, Georgia, and left Georgia at the age of 17, heading to New York to become an actress. She graduated from Pace University and The American Academy of Dramatic...
as Cassandra - Vincent SpanoVincent SpanoVincent M. Spano is an American stage, film and television actor, and film director and producer. He received a Cable Ace Award nomination in 1988 for his role as Mark Ciuni in Il cugino americano.-Backround:...
as Steve - Nicolas CageNicolas CageNicolas Cage is an American actor, producer and director, having appeared in over 60 films including Raising Arizona , The Rock , Face/Off , Gone in 60 Seconds , Adaptation , National Treasure , Ghost Rider , Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans , and...
as Smokey - Chris PennChris PennChristopher Shannon "Chris" Penn was an American film and television actor known for his roles in such films as The Wild Life, Reservoir Dogs, Footloose, Rush Hour, True Romance, All the Right Moves and Pale Rider.-Early life:Penn was born in Los Angeles, California, the youngest son of Leo Penn,...
as B.J. Jackson - Laurence FishburneLaurence FishburneLaurence John Fishburne III is an American film and stage actor, playwright, director, and producer. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Morpheus in the Matrix science fiction film trilogy, as Cowboy Curtis on the 1980's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse, and as singer-musician Ike Turner...
as Midget - William SmithWilliam Smith (actor)William Smith is an American actor who has appeared in almost 300 feature films and television productions.Smith began his acting career at the age of 8 in 1942...
as Patterson the Cop - Glenn WithrowGlenn WithrowGlenn Withrow is an American actor, director, producer and writer.-Personal life:Withrow was born in Highland Heights, Kentucky in 1953. He is married to actress Hallie Todd...
as Biff Wilcox - Tom WaitsTom WaitsThomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
as Benny - Sofia CoppolaSofia CoppolaSofia Carmina Coppola is an American screenwriter, film director, actress, and producer.In 2003 she received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Lost in Translation, and became the third woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing...
as Donna - S. E. HintonS. E. HintonSusan Eloise Hinton is an American author best known for her young adult novel The Outsiders.While still in her teens, Hinton became a household name as the author of The Outsiders, her first and most popular novel, set in Oklahoma in the 1960s. She began writing it in 1965...
as Hooker on Strip
Development
Francis Ford Coppola was drawn to S.E. Hinton's novel Rumble Fish because of the strong personal identification he had with the subject matter — a younger brother who hero-worships an older, intellectually superior brother, which mirrored the relationship between Coppola and his brother, August. A dedication to August appears as the film's final end credit. The director said that he "started to use Rumble Fish as my carrot for what I promised myself when I finished The OutsidersThe Outsiders (film)
The Outsiders is a 1983 American drama film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, an adaptation of the novel The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. The film was released in March 1983...
". Halfway through the production of The Outsiders, Coppola decided that he wanted to retain the same production team, stay in Tulsa, and shoot Rumble Fish right after The Outsiders. He wrote the screenplay for Rumble Fish with Hinton on Sundays, their day off from shooting The Outsiders.
Pre-production
Warner Bros.Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
was not happy with an early cut of The Outsiders and passed on distributing Rumble Fish. Despite the lack of financing in place, Coppola completely recorded the film on video during two weeks of rehearsals in a former school gymnasium and afterwards was able to show the cast and crew a rough draft of the film. To get Rourke into the mindset of his character, Coppola gave him books written by Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
and a biography of Napoleon. The Motorcycle Boy's look was patterned after Camus complete with trademark cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth — taken from a photograph of the author that Rourke used as a visual handle. Rourke remembers that he approached his character as "an actor who no longer finds his work interesting".
Coppola hired Michael Smuin, a choreographer and co-director of the San Francisco Ballet
San Francisco Ballet
The San Francisco Ballet is a ballet company, founded in 1933 as the San Francisco Opera Ballet. The company is currently based in the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, under the direction of Helgi Tomasson. SFB is the first professional ballet company in the United States...
, to stage the fight scene between Rusty James and Biff Wilcox because he liked the way he choreographed violence. He asked Smuin to include specific visual elements: a motorcycle, broken glass, knives, gushing water and blood. The choreographer spent a week designing the sequence. Smuin also staged the street dance between Rourke and Diana Scarwid, modeling it after one in Picnic featuring William Holden
William Holden
William Holden was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974...
and Kim Novak
Kim Novak
Kim Novak is an American film and television actress. She began her career with her roles in Pushover and Phffft! but achieved greater prominence in the 1955 film Picnic...
.
Before filming started, Coppola ran regular screenings of old films during the evenings to familiarize the cast and in particular, the crew with his visual concept for Rumble Fish. Most notably, Coppola showed Anatole Litvak
Anatole Litvak
Anatole Litvak was a Ukrainian-born filmmaker who wrote, directed, and produced films in a various countries and languages...
's Decision Before Dawn
Decision Before Dawn
Decision Before Dawn is a 1951 American war film directed by Anatole Litvak, starring Richard Basehart, Oskar Werner, and Hans Christian Blech. It tells the story of the American Army using potentially unreliable German prisoners of war to gather intelligence in the closing days of World War II...
, the inspiration for the film's smoky look, F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh to show Matt Dillon how silent actor Emil Jennings used body language to convey emotions, and Robert Wiene
Robert Wiene
Robert Wiene was an important film director of the German silent cinema.Robert Wiene was born in Breslau, as the elder son of the successful theatre actor Carl Wiene. His younger brother Conrad also became an actor, but Robert Wiene at first studied law at the University of Berlin. In 1908 he also...
's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which became Rumble Fishs "stylistic prototype". Coppola's extensive use of shadows, oblique angles, exaggerated compositions, and an abundance of smoke and fog are all hallmarks of these German Expressionist films. Godfrey Reggio
Godfrey Reggio
Godfrey Reggio is an American director of experimental documentary films.-Life:Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, a facility that provided medical care to 12,000 community members in Santa Fe, and La Gente, a community-organizing project in...
's Koyaanisqatsi
Koyaanisqatsi
Koyaanisqatsi also known as Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke....
, shot mainly in time-lapse photography, motivated Coppola to use this technique to animate the sky in his own film.
Principal photography
Six weeks into production, Coppola made a deal with Universal PicturesUniversal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
and principal photography began on July 12, 1982 with the director declaring, "Rumble Fish will be to The Outsiders what Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
was to The Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
". He shot in deserted areas at the edge of Tulsa with many scenes captured via a hand-held camera in order to make the audience feel uneasy. He also had shadows painted on the walls of the sets to make them look ominous. In the dream sequence where Rusty-James floats outside of his body Matt Dillon wore a body mold which was moved by an articulated arm and also flown on wires.
To mix the black-and-white footage of Rusty James and the Motorcycle Boy in the pet store looking at the Siamese fighting fish in color, Burum shot the actors in black and white and then projected that footage on a rear projection screen. They put the fish tank in front of it with the tropical fish and shot it all with color film. Filming finished by mid-September 1982, on schedule and on budget.
The film is notable for its avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
style, shot on stark high-contrast black-and-white film, using the spherical cinematographic process with allusions to French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
cinema. The striking black-and-white photography of the film's cinematographer, Stephen H. Burum
Stephen H. Burum
Stephen Henry Burum, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer.-Biography:Burum was born in 1939 in Dinuba, California, a small Central Valley town near Visalia. He graduated from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in the 1960s, and became an instructor at the same school...
, lies in two main sources: the films of Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
and German cinema of the 1920s. When the film was in its pre-production phase, Coppola asked Burum how he wanted to film it and they agreed that it might be the only chance they were ever going to have to make a black-and-white film.
Soundtrack
Coppola envisioned a largely experimental score to complement his images. He began to devise a mainly percussive soundtrack to symbolize the idea of time running out. As Coppola worked on it, he realized that he needed help from a professional musician. He asked Stewart CopelandStewart Copeland
Stewart Armstrong Copeland is an American musician, best known as the drummer for the band The Police. During the group's extended hiatus from the mid-1980s to 2007, he played in other bands and composed soundtracks...
, drummer of the musical group The Police
The Police
The Police were an English rock band formed in London in 1977. For the vast majority of their history, the band consisted of Sting , Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland...
, to improvise a rhythm track. Coppola soon realized that Copeland was a far superior composer and let him take over. The musician proceeded to record street sounds of Tulsa and mixed them into the soundtrack with the use of a Musync, a new device at the time, that recorded film, frame by frame on videotape with the image on top, the dialogue in the middle, and the musical staves on the bottom so that it matched the images perfectly.
The song "Don't Box Me In (theme from Rumble Fish)," a collaboration between Copeland and singer/songwriter Stan Ridgway
Stan Ridgway
Stanard 'Stan' Ridgway is an American multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter known for his distinctive voice, dramatic lyrical narratives, and eclectic solo albums and was the original lead singer of the band Wall of Voodoo...
, leader and frontman of Wall of Voodoo
Wall of Voodoo
Wall of Voodoo was an American New Wave group from Los Angeles best known for the 1983 hit "Mexican Radio". The band had a sound that was a fusion of synthesizer-based New Wave music with the spaghetti western soundtrack style of Ennio Morricone.-Formation:...
, was released with the film and enjoyed significant radio airplay.
Track listing
- "Don't Box Me In" – 4:40
- "Tulsa Tango" – 3:42
- "Our Mother Is Alive" – 4:16
- "Party at Someone Else's Place" – 2:25
- "Biff Gets Stomped by Rusty James" – 2:27
- "Brothers on Wheels" – 4:20
- "West Tulsa Story" – 3:59
- "Tulsa Rags" – 1:39
- "Father on the Stairs" – 3:01
- "Hostile Bridge to Benny's" – 1:53
- "Your Mother Is Not Crazy" – 2:48
- "Personal Midget/Cain's Ballroom" – 5:55
- "Motorboy's Fate" – 2:03
Differences from the novel
Coppola did not employ the flashback structure of the novel. He also removed a few passages from the novel that further established Steve and Rusty-James' relationship in order to focus more on the brothers' relationship. The Motorcycle Boy's self-destructive actions at the film's conclusion are less motivated in the film than in the novel. In the film, the Motorcycle Boy is more attendant and more paternalistic toward Rusty-James than in the novel. The film ends with Rusty-James arriving at the ocean on a motorcycle while the novel ends with Steve meeting Rusty-James in California five years after the Motorcycle Boy's death. Also Rusty- james got arrested after The Motorcycle Boy got shot and never made the promise to ride the motorcycle. In the fight with Biff, Rusty-James was slashed with a knife rather than a pane of glass and The Motorcycle Boy simply broke Biff's wrist instead of ramming him with his motorcycle.Themes
The theme of time passing faster than the characters realize is conveyed through time-lapse photography of clouds racing across the sky and numerous shots of clocks. The black-and-white photography was meant to convey the Motorcycle Boy's color blindness while also evoking film noir through frequent use of oblique angles, exaggerated compositions, dark alleys, and foggy streets.Reception
At Rumble Fishs world premiere at the New York Film FestivalNew York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival has been a major film festival since it began in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center...
, there were several walkouts and at the end of the screening, boos and catcalls. Former head of production at Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
Michael Daly remembers legendary producer Robert Evans' reaction to Coppola's film, "Evans went to see Rumble Fish, and he remembers being shaken by how far Coppola had strayed from Hollywood. Evans says, 'I was scared. I couldn't understand any of it.'"
Rumble Fish was released on October 8, 1983 and grossed $18,985 on its opening weekend, playing in only one theater. Its widest release was in 296 theaters and it finally grossed $2.5 million domestically.
Critical response
Rumble Fish was not well-received by most mainstream critics upon its initial release, receiving nine negative reviews in New York City, mostly from broadcast media and newspapers with harsh reviews by David DenbyDavid Denby (film critic)
David Denby is an American journalist, best known as a film critic for The New Yorker magazine.-Background and education:Denby grew up in New York City. He received a B.A...
in New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
and Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.-Career:Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S...
in the Village Voice. In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...
wrote that "the film is so furiously overloaded, so crammed with extravagant touches, that any hint of a central thread is obscured". Film critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, "I thought Rumble Fish was offbeat, daring, and utterly original. Who but Coppola could make this film? And, of course, who but Coppola would want to?" Gary Arnold in the Washington Post wrote, "It's virtually impossible to be drawn into the characters' identities and conflicts at even an introductory, rudimentary level, and the rackety distraction of an obtrusive experimental score ... frequently makes it impossible to comprehend mere dialogue". Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, "In one sense, then, Rumble Fish is Coppola's professional suicide note to the movie industry, a warning against employing him to find the golden gross. No doubt: this is his most baroque and self-indulgent film. It may also be his bravest".
Jay Scott
Jay Scott
Jay Scott was the pen name of Jeffrey Scott Beaven , a Canadian film critic.Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Scott fled to Canada in 1969 as a draft dodger. He settled in Calgary, and began writing film reviews for the Calgary Albertan a few years later...
wrote one of the few positive reviews for the film in the Globe and Mail. "Francis Coppola, bless his theatrical soul, may have the commercial sense of a newt, but he has the heart of a revolutionary, and the talent of a great artist". Jack Kroll also gave a rare rave in his review for Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
: "Rumble Fish is a brilliant tone poem ... Rourke's Motorcycle Boy is really a young god with a mortal wound, a slippery assignment Rourke handles with a fierce delicacy". The film has a 68% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
and a 63 metascore on Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
. David Thomson
David Thomson (film critic)
David Thomson is a film critic and historian based in the United States and the author of more than 20 books, including The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.-Career:...
has written that Rumble Fish is "maybe the most satisfying film Coppola made after Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
".
Despite mixed reviews, Rumble Fish won the highest prize in the 32nd San Sebastian International Film Festival
San Sebastián International Film Festival
The San Sebastián International Film Festival is an annual FIAPF A category film festival held in the Spanish city of San Sebastián .-History:The festival was founded in 1953...
, the International Critics' Big Award
Golden Shell
The Golden Shell is the highest prize given to a competing film at the San Sebastián Film Festival. It was introduced in 1957. In 1953 and 1954, the highest prize had been called the Gran Premio. In 1955 and 1956 it was replaced by the Silver Shell...
.
Home media
The film was first released on VHSVHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
in 1984 and on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
on September 9, 1998 with no extra material. A special edition was released on September 13, 2005 with an audio commentary by Coppola, six deleted scenes, a making-of featurette, a look at how Copeland's score was created and the "Don't Box Me In" music video.