Totally wiahful thinking, but It could be a clue for Knife in the Water too (besides Rumble Fish) now that I think about it. Okay, not really, but Criterion should totally upgrsde it.
A Knife in the Water coming to Blu...yeah definitely that cause I see at least one knife in the water. I mean Rumble Fish makes like zero sense with this picture.
Noticed a small change to the Tree of Wooden Clogs cover:
Old:
New:
Glad to see that Rumble Fish will be Criterionized, but I'm pretty happy with my Eureka release, which I think has a too low score for video on this site. I'm sure the Criterion will be an all new, probably 4K master.
Noticed a small change to the Tree of Wooden Clogs cover:
Old:
New:
Glad to see that Rumble Fish will be Criterionized, but I'm pretty happy with my Eureka release, which I think has a too low score for video on this site. I'm sure the Criterion will be an all new, probably 4K master.
So I'm kinda newer here, so I don't know, but I'm curious. Is there a reason The Man Who Fell To Earth went out of print? Was it just a licensing dispute, or just a random occurrence? Doesn't seem like it happens much with Criterions much in recent years
So I'm kinda newer here, so I don't know, but I'm curious. Is there a reason The Man Who Fell To Earth went out of print? Was it just a licensing dispute, or just a random occurrence? Doesn't seem like it happens much with Criterions much in recent years
Studio Canal decided to licence their entire catalog to one company (Lionsgate) instead of doing it film by film, so the Studio Canal stuff that Criterion had went oop.
A Knife in the Water coming to Blu...yeah definitely that cause I see at least one knife in the water. I mean Rumble Fish makes like zero sense with this picture.
[Show spoiler]
Knife just came out overseas, so now that an HD master exists, I'd hope it gets an upgrade.
Haven't seen Rumble Fish, but it looks more like a clue for that (based on title and synopsis alone) than Knife in the Water, although it could be a double clue. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Okay so challenge for you. What are his best roles. Movies that he's not just in a couple scenes for. I'm asking because now I really want to check out some of his films. Some of the best if possible
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Okay, this is how I'd rank Tom Waits in cinema (from the films that I've seen of him in!):
Keep in mind, that most of his roles have been in the supporting category. He's never really been a primary in films.
1. Down by Law(starring role)
2. Ironweed(supporting role)
3. Short Cuts(supporting role)
4. Coffee & Cigarettes(supporting role)
5. Bram Stoker's Dracula(supporting role)
6. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus(supporting role)
7. The Fisher King(supporting role)
8. Rumble Fish(supporting role)
9. Fishing with John(starring role)
10. The Book of Eli(supporting role)
11. At Play in the Fields of the Lord(supporting role)
12. The Outsiders(supporting role)
Here are films of him I haven't seen him in:
There is also one other film he's starred in, Cold Feet(starring role).
He's also been in Candy Mountain(supporting role) too.
A movie called Queens Logic(supporting role) is another movie he's been in.
And now we can add on Rumble Fish to the collection!
Yes! Rumble Fish is an amazing film too. It's actually one of my favorite Coppola movies of all time. Back in my college days I wrote a long 20 page essay about this movie. I can paste it here for everyone's reading enjoyment. It's probably the longest essay I've ever written about a film! Enjoy!
[Show spoiler]
Jonathan Wayne
English Literature 1480 / Youth Film - Professor Feuer
19 April 2001
The Resolution of Rumble Fish
In Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish, two brothers, Rusty James and the Motorcycle Boy, are cast in an unrealistic world where authority shifts between both characters in the film. According to Jon Lewis, the “functional hero is the dominant structure of authority in narrative”. Yet, in this film there is no true male hero or authority, because neither Rusty James, the Motorcycle Boy, and police officer Patterson, are able to control authority through time itself. Just like their imaginary world, the nonexistence of linear time prevents these characters from grasping any long term qualities of superiority. In the film, clocks on walls speed up, clouds in the sky race against time, and day turns to night in a matter of seconds. Yet, despite the instability of leadership amongst these characters, it is the socially incompatible Motorcycle Boy, the anti-hero, who is labeled as the reigning authority in the society depicted through the film. In my analysis of Rumble Fish, through Lewis’s comments, along with specific sequences from the film, I will reveal how authority exists and shifts between the human beings portrayed in this story.
Chronologically speaking, from one of the very first shots to the final shot in the film, four words bring about immediate closure to the issue of authority: “The Motorcycle Boy Reigns”. In this black, white and very gray world, these words are written on a metal sign, an arrow, pointing to infinity, as cumulus clouds drift in a southwesterly direction. Even though the authoritarian arrow may symbolize a social command for the Motorcycle Boy, to follow the arrow southwest to California, this phallic object may also resemble the male sex symbol. Thus, the symbolism inherent in the arrow signifies that authority and power exists outside of the human vessel.
In the very first sequence in the film, Rusty James (Matt Dillon) is the authoritative figure in his society. He is standing tall and erect, holding the phallic pool cue so that it seems to jut right out of his hand. Moments later, he stabs a billiard with the edge of his stick, and assumes an authoritarian role. He orders his friends to “sit down”, snaps for a chocolate milk, and immediately sits down on a table so that his imposing figure looms over the characters that sit nearby. However, what can occur if Rusty James is placed alongside another superior individual?
Fifty-six degrees. High humidity. 10:02pm. Fires rage on within trash canisters. Steam rises from city streets. Pigeons fly overhead. Water trickles down into gutters. Suddenly, a train blares its horn and nine boys materialize from behind a column underneath an overpass. In this fight sequence, it is not Rusty James’s opponent, Biff Wilcox (Glenn Withrow), who complicates the theme of authority, but James’s brother, the Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke). As blood streams down Rusty’s face, he freezes in his place and superiority transposes to the Motorcycle Boy, as he asks him: “What is this...another glorious battle for the kingdom?” During these moments of awe, Biff slashes Rusty James and authority has now completely shifted over to the Motorcycle Boy. As he revs up his bike and attacks Biff with it, “the Motorcycle Boy’s apparent ability to seize authority any time he feels like it paradoxically commences as his brother lies bleeding on the street” (Lewis 145). Earlier on in the film, as Rusty James used the pool cue as his phallic object of power, the Motorcycle Boy utilizes his testosterone-powered motorcycle as the instrument of authority for his own lifestyle.
Rumble Fish may be interpreted as a “softie” juvenile delinquent film, in which most of the setting takes place in a mostly lower class suburban landscape. Moreover, in the case of anomie and alienation, the Motorcycle Boy distances himself from heroism. As a 21 year old man who has seen it all, the Motorcycle Boy rejects himself as a “Robin Hood” or a “Pied Piper”. In the sequence where both brothers are exchanging dialogue in the drug store, authority cannot even weaken the anomie that exists within the Motorcycle Boy. He wants to become detached from the limelight that has invaded his consciousness. His notoriety of being the old-school gangster and a stereotype of present youth strengthens the alienation which he shares with society. Yet, in contrast to the Jim Stark character in Rebel Without A Cause, the Motorcycle Boy is like a wise old man masked underneath teenage skin. As a mature individual, he only seeks a person to put him out of his misery, since his life really ended when the gangs left. As an analogy, he is a lone snake in exile on a snake-less planet, roaming from shore to shore to find a worthy opponent (or snake), but instead withering away in boredom, consuming rodents along his routes. “Unlike Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause, who is so conflicted he desperately wants someone to tell him what to do, the Motorcycle Boy is so bored as he just wants someone to take him out” (Lewis 147). As Rusty James implores the Motorcycle Boy on why he should be considered an authoritative leader, the imagery in this sequence reveals both characters’ heads interconnected by a single row of ceiling lights. Authority has found a portal between both of their minds, and this connection is only broken when the Motorcycle Boy retorts: “They’d all follow me to the river...and jump in”. Moments later, as the Motorcycle Boy walks out of the store, he concludes: “You know, if you’re gonna lead people, you have to have somewhere to go”. In this one shot where he says these 14 words, three motorcycles can be seen driving down on the street in the background. Ironically, these bikers are also driving in a southwesterly direction (from the right side to the lower left side of the frame).
In terms of a “soft-nosed” jd film, the weapons used consist of switchblade knives, crowbars, jagged slices of glass, and in subtle situations, pool cues and sword blades. For the latter object, in a specific shot that lasts 7 seconds, B.J. (Chris Penn) waves this blade sardonically in front of Rusty James, suggesting that he should act more secure in future gang-related incidents. In the opening rumble that took place between Rusty and Biff, the pieces of glass which Biff acquired was in an accidental fashion, while in the alleyway fight sequence, the sharp crowbar used was intentional. However, in the sequence where Smokey (Nicholas Cage) is confronted by Rusty pointing a pool cue at him, the latter drops the weapon, his phallic tool of authority. Yet, this occurs only after both characters glance at themselves in front of the mirror-like storefront window (of Benny’s Billiards) that is framed by swift moving clouds. In essence, they are both rumble fish trying to evade their reflections and swim off into the fast moving current (of clouds) that is heading in a southwesterly direction. Rusty James affirms the viewer that they are indeed rumble fish when he implies: “I guess you’re right...nobody wants to get killed”. These are individuals that belong in the open, away from boxed-in confinements, and where even personal reflections can cause insanity and self-induced suicide.
The Motorcycle Boy is the supreme Samurai fighting fish, the survivor of rumbles and gang pastime. As a fish, he has sensory limitations, being color-blind and partially deaf. For him, linear time moves faster as clouds in the sky race against clocks. As his time wastes away, the Motorcycle Boy is fixated upon water, currents (or clouds), showers of water spraying from fire hydrants, the river, and the ocean. When his school of fish (or gangs) had left, he journeyed to the southwest, the coast of California Yet, as he said “California got in the way”, it was the bright lights of that society which distracted him from reaching the ocean, his freedom and salvation. His brother, Rusty James, who seeks authority and leadership, is also distracted from the materialism of society. When he says “I can’t stand being left alone”, he too must be redeemed in the open seas. In the sequence that lasts 4 minutes and 7 seconds, Rusty James and Steve (Vincent Spano) are recovering from injuries under a bridge by a river. The dominant Motorcycle Boy who sits perched high on top of a concrete ledge, has assumed complete authority. He then points his hand toward the river and states “the gangs are gonna come back” (or in other words, the school of fish). In all this time, where does the Motorcycle Boy command authority? Along the junkyard shores of a river. The water is the thinking and breathing place, and for the Motorcycle Boy, a home of sanity. Furthermore, Jon Lewis agrees with the Motorcycle Boy that “youth itself got boring when the gangs disappeared” (147). The Motorcycle Boy, the last of the fish, has become crazy, as he is trapped in a tank, a watery grave, fighting off boredom and the staleness of society. It is the father (Dennis Hopper) who asseverates the viewer that the Motorcycle Boy is not crazy, but “merely miscast in a play...born in the wrong era...on the wrong side of the river”.
Police officer Patterson is successful in gaining fleeting moments of authority throughout the film. In the sequence where Rusty James, the Motorcycle Boy and the cop are standing in front of a non-functioning clock, Patterson disapproves of the Motorcycle Boy representing a hero. As Lewis states that a hero is “the dominant structure of authority”, the police officer himself strives for heroism, unlike the Motorcycle Boy. The police officer, the true authority of society, is the epitome of everything that teenagers oppose: supremacy, law, limitations and death. The Motorcycle Boy strives to be just another “neighborhood novelty” or a fish in a shoal. Even more, time itself has no dimension, just as in this sequence. The clock has no hands, but rather a round black void which sits idle in the middle of the clock face, separating both characters. Furthermore, both men are wearing sunglasses, so they cannot even see each other’s eyes. They are peering through blackness, one seeking revenge, the other forfeit. One being the shark, the other the tuna. One challenging, the other cowering. Thus, such two characters are unable to seize control over authority, and channel such authority so that justice is served. The Motorcycle Boy’s authority belongs in the ocean, while the cop’s authority doesn’t belong anywhere. Patterson’s authority is his own, not some higher institutions’. How can justice be implemented if authority is corrupt? In the case of the Motorcycle Boy, how can authority be implemented if justice does not exist? The oceans contain nothing but authoritative fish and mammals that consume each other. If such “killings” are crime-less, there would be no justice, but only warm-blooded rumble fish authority. Since time does not exist between officer Patterson and the Motorcycle Boy, these two characters may never have even existed on this planet. Instead, just like their visions, “at the core of it all is a profound emptiness” (Lewis 145).
The co-existence of authority between Rusty James and his brother is not set in opposition, but in stark contrast. As Matt Dillon’s juvenile character lacks philosophy and “word-smart” intelligence, Rourke plays a prince of peace, a brother of man, a spiritual leader who speaks in parables. Though they are brothers, they are not Cain and Abel. Rather, Cain and Abel exist as two strangers played by officer Patterson and the Motorcycle Boy. In this unrealistic and superficial society, Cain (Patterson) is eternally jealous of his rival, Abel (Motorcycle Boy). One is physically and mentally strong, while the other is wise, weak and withered away. In one of the final sequences in Rumble Fish, Abel carries his species (the Samurai fighting fish) down to the river to set them free. In the dark shadows, Cain waits for his opportunity and strikes him down with a single bullet. Afterwards, the Motorcycle Man’s murderer utters, “I took care of the main problem”. Yet, in an awkward twist, the Abel in this story sought closure and death, and expected it. These two “brothers of authority”, obsessed with time (or the lack thereof), symbolize slightly altered rivals such as Cain and Abel. “By the end of the film, the strong and silent, anomic hero not only appears to be suicidal, he accomplishes his goal (pointedly, and anticlimactically, offscreen). The benevolent cop of Rebel Without A Cause is transformed into the imposing, authoritarian officer Patterson, whose role it seems is to help the Motorcycle Boy realize his death wish” (Lewis 149).
In the final conversation between Rusty James and the Motorcycle Boy, the latter passes on the torch (or the motorcycle) to his brother. As authority passes on to Rusty James, the Motorcycle Boy admits “I wish I were the big brother you always wanted...but I can’t be what I want any more than you can”. As we already know that the Motorcycle Boy desires to transmogrify into a rumble fish, what finally instigates Rusty to become his brother? In the several shots where Rusty James is held up against the police car, the transformation occurs when he sees the flashing police lights. He looks down at his reflection, and with wrath, he punches the window, attempting to kill his image (like a rumble fish). Suddenly, the lights are emblazoned with red, rusty red. Rusty Red James has now discovered himself and his color. As the new Motorcycle Boy walks past the fallen body of his former life, the transition from one authority to another has now been completed.
In conclusion, Rumble Fish is a story about social alienation and physical imagination, due to the nonexistence of linear time between Rusty James, the Motorcycle Boy and officer Patterson. It is because of this lack of a realistic time continuum, that authority and supremacy constantly shift between these three characters. Where heroism does find its way into a person’s soul, it is short-lived and futile. Perhaps, in the end, these Samurai fighting fish-like humans are nothing more than dead bait floating aimlessly down a river, that circles in an infinite loop, in a timeless vacuum of space. Jon Lewis casts his interpretation: “Though the film presents the decadence of institutional authority and the subsequent search for a viable and traditional alternative, such a search is thwarted at every turn. The film ends unambiguously in boredom, suicide, hopelessness” (149). Thus, life is but a black and white dream.
In 1982, Francis Ford Coppola invested his own money in an adaptation of a teenage-themed novel by S.E. Hinton, called Rumble Fish. As this was Coppola’s eleventh film as a director (following such films as The Godfather I & II and Apocalypse Now), it was also his second film based upon a book by S.E. Hinton, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Coppola. When both met prior to the production of the film, Hinton personally believed that he was the only human being who fully understood her novel, from beginning to end. Hinton quotes Coppola: “He said it was an adult story, not for kids, and he’s right...he sensed adventurous moviemaking”. Actual filming began in Tulsa and Sapulpa, Oklahoma, in late summer-fall of 1982. Coppola shot the film in black and white and only used hints of color “because it would allow greater freedom” (DVD). However, prior to the making of Rumble Fish, Coppola had been influenced by director Nicholas Roeg, who made a film called Don’t Look Now (1973). This gripping film dealt with a married couple living in Venice, mourning over the accidental death of their young daughter. Though the film was not shot in black and white, certain colors such as red, were highly symbolic in foreshadowing the moments of horror. As in Rumble Fish, the color red was symbolic in identifying Rusty James as a rumble fish. Thus, with an initial groundwork in place, director Coppola proceeded in bringing together a group of highly artistic and “iconoclastic” individuals, to begin “a process of stylistic experimentation” (DVD). The major players in the production included the cinematographer Stephen H. Burum, choreographer Michael Smuin, production designer Dean Tavoularis, and musician and rhythmatist Stewart Copeland. Burum quotes: “More abstract presentations of emotion are needed, and Rumble Fish is a first attempt to try to break through realism and use images in a more abstract, feeling sort of way”. Furthermore, Coppola incorporated German Expressionism into the picture, a style rarely used since the German films of the silent era. Such expressionist films as The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, Siegfried, The Golem, Sunrise, and The Last Laugh influenced Burum, Tavoularis, and Coppola during the making of Rumble Fish. The production notes from the DVD state that “there is a sense of characters feeling trapped like rats in a maze”. The graphic designer Dennis Gassner quotes: “We wanted to be abstract and heighten reality...to freeze moments in time”. On the aspect of time, Coppola states that the “music essentially represents the elapsing time of Rusty James. He has got to wake up and see the truth, or be lost. The style, structure and music are inextricably linked”. Smuin, the choreographer states: “Francis had seen fight scenes I staged for Romeo and Juliet and Medea, and he said my violence was beautiful”. Moreover, for the rumble sequences, between Rusty James and Biff, stuntman and stunt coordinator Buddy Joe Hooker was responsible for strengthening the actors’ physical energy and endurance. Finally, ex-Police member Stewart Copeland provided a stirring soundtrack, full of thumping percussion and Reggae saturated, jangly, garbage-cans-being-dragged-on-concrete musical renditions. The following is a direct quote from the DVD Production Notes:
To achieve sustained emotion, Coppola and Burum used intricate camera moves, incorporating as much as possible of the scene in one take. “You want to give everybody the right size and the right value in the frame emotionally, and to see the interrelationship between them,” said Burum. “Maybe you want to see one person take a cue off the other; perhaps one speaks but you want to look at the other. It’s somewhat like live theater, which Francis likes. He and the actors create the feeling rather than an editor doing it from myriad pieces of film.
On a final note, Rumble Fish was produced by Doug Claybourne and Fred Roos, with Francis Ford Coppola as executive producer. The Production Companies included Hotweather Films and American Zoetrope Studios, an independent film production company based in San Francisco, and established in 1969 by Coppola and George Lucas. The film was distributed by MCA (laserdisc) and Universal Pictures (Universal Studios Home Video/DVD).
In terms of reception of the film, Rumble Fish has garnered mixed reviews. At the time of the film’s release, many critics accused Coppola’s pretentious film as being over-stylistic, focusing on form rather than content. In addition to the negativity at the time, the film failed to be screened in the majority of cinemas, and ended up becoming a massive box office failure. As the film grossed only $2.5 million dollars in total earnings ($4.2 million in box office receipts as adjusted for inflation), for certain promising young actors such as Matt Dillon, this was not his breakout movie. Even today, Rumble Fish is ranked 12 for this celebrity, in order of highest box office grossings. Though this was Dillon’s sixth film (as an actor), even a starring role in a hollywood film could not land him critical acclaim amongst the critics. Furthermore, the negative criticism surrounding the film was also due to the fact that Coppola’s movie could not be categorized as a certain “type” of film. Rather than committing itself to being a “gang film” or a “teenage rites-of-passage film”, the movie ended up succumbing to the popular status of “cult movie”. Rumble Fish contained a mixture of high and low culture, and the film itself refused to recognize the boundaries between them. As the film dealt with lower culture semantic material such as gangs, delinquent youth and motorcycles, it also revealed higher cultural 1920’s German expressionism in its production. Such expressionistic camera angles, painted shadows and disharmony in the lighting, combined with the former semantics (as stated above), resulted in a “cult” syntax that essentially alienated and angered many mainstream critics at the time of the film’s release. In the October 24, 1983 issue of Time Magazine, Richard Corliss wrote: “Rumble Fish is the messiest, most provocative inkblot of the year. On the naturalistic level, Francis Coppola’s film is a botch, a hoot” (90). Obviously being alienated from the cinematographic techniques used in the film, Corliss concluded his review with a subtle analogy that Coppola may be compared to an “out of control” youth himself:
“Rumble Fish may prove to be another kind of bomb. Coppola simply will not behave. Pressed to the wall by his failures with One From The Heart and Zoetrope Studios, prodded by a Hollywood that wants one of its pedigreed talents to make “a good picture,” the director keeps slipping away into stylistic eccentricity. 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” (91).
In another review from 1983, David Denby from New York Magazine wrote a more lenient introductory paragraph about his criticism of Rumble Fish. “Francis Coppola’s new movie, Rumble Fish, is an artistic fiasco and will doubtless fail at the box office too, but the picture is so weirdly, wildly overwrought that it exerts a peculiar fascination” (Denby 80). In a not so astonishing manner, Denby was prophetic enough to predict the film’s financial doom, however, in his conclusion, the critic ended up labeling Coppola’s film as oddly enough, “delusional”. Perhaps Mr. Denby misunderstood the fact that Rumble Fish was not intended to be a logical or rational story with dialogue, but a work of imagery, so sublime at times, that viewers could submerge themselves into the film. If this was what Coppola was aiming for, one has to wonder what was swimming around in Denby’s head when he wrote the following paragraph:
“The look of Rumble Fish is baroquely anti-realistic, a mixture of German Expressionism, Orson Welles, and three decades of naively ambitious experimental films. Now and then, as at the beginning of a rumble under a roadway near the tracks, when smoke rises from the ground, lightning flashes, and the boys swing into action, Coppola comes close to doing something savagely beautiful, but then a meaningless shot or a bit of insanely pretentious dialogue comes along and ruins the scene. In the end, all the scenes are ruined. One senses in Coppola an admirable disgust for the commonplace that has been amplified and distorted by megalomania into the defeating conviction that movies can be made without logic, story, or dialogue - just with
“genius.” Rumble Fish is a sad testament to that delusion” (81).
In the October 12, 1983 issue of Variety Magazine, the review staff blamed Coppola of being inconsistent with the narrative. They also blamed the director of packing too much symbolism into the story, mainly due to the Siamese fighting fish. “Rumble Fish is another Francis Coppola picture that’s overwrought and overthought with camera and characters that never quite come together in anything beyond consistently interesting. Beautifully photographed in black and white by Stephen H. Burum, the picture really doesn’t need all the excessive symbolism Coppola tries to cram into it” (internet).
Fascinatingly, many of the reviews written in recent years (the 1990’s for example) have been increasingly more positive and praiseworthy. In the 1994 EUFS Programme, Iain Harral from the Edinburgh University Film Society praised the film for being “extremely good looking” and for “making up for in style what it lacks in plot” (internet). He also wrote: “The director’s flair for the coordination of movement is shown to great effect in the gorgeously choreographed warehouse scenes of gang warfare: areas of bright light and deep shadow combining with arcing chains and switchblades in a savagely beautiful passage of aesthetic violence” (internet). Fortunately, Harral was quick to point out that violence is indeed “aestheticized”, and that elements were made to look beautiful in the film.
Noel O’Shea rated Rumble Fish an A+ in his December 12, 1998 review on the Reel Site webpage (http://www.thereelsite.com). Just as Iain Harral gave praise to the early fight sequence in the film, so did Mr. O’Shea. “It is in Coppola’s brilliant direction that Rumble Fish attains the artistic level of the best of Eighties’ cinema. He films an early street fight in stark black and white tones, and gives the scene a superbly strange “look”, while the soundtrack startles the ear with heightened sound” (internet). Interestingly, O’Shea goes on to conclude that this film was one of the greatest of the decade, sitting right next to films from directors such as Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders. “Not usually mentioned when discussing Coppola’s genius as a film-maker, Rumble Fish is a magnificent work of art, a bold experiment that pays off in spades, and ranks with Scorsese’s Raging Bull and Wender’s Paris, Texas as the best films of the Eighties” (internet).
In Dennis Schwartz’s B+ review from January 16, 1999, he stated that the Motorcycle Boy was a “gigantic adult figure as compared to the others seen in the film, such as his alcoholic father and the neighborhood cop”. On the “adult figure” theme, he went on to say that most teenagers were repelled from viewing this more sophisticated type of teen film. “I’m on the side of those who liked this emotionally wrought, stylized film, adapted from a novel by S.E. Hinton, warts and all. It brought a higher quality to this teen genre film than usually seen in such films, even if, I doubt if it would reach the troubled kids the film was about, who in all probability, would not choose to see such an arresting film” (internet).
Leonard Maltin appropriately summed up his convenient three sentence review with the following:
Ambitious mood piece from S.E. Hinton’s young adult novel about alienated teenager who lives in the shadow of his older brother.
Emotionally intense but muddled and aloof; highly stylized, in looks (filmed mostly in black & white) and sounds (with impressionistic music score by Stewart Copeland). Dillon’s third Hinton film, Coppola’s second (following The Outsiders). **
The website, Eonline, ranked Rumble Fish as the 4th top film on their list of the Top Ten Teen Angst Films. In their brief review, in this comparison between Rumble Fish and The Outsiders, they believed “1983’s Rumble Fish kicked its butt” (internet). They also described Rusty James as “the kid with the outlaw name and the messed up head”, “too plain stupid to be cool”, and “a loser”.
In the 18 years the film has been in existence, Rumble Fish has both attracted and repelled critics and writers of all ages and backgrounds. Yet, it is is the “uniqueness” of the film’s complexity and art that Rumble Fish is able to induce such a diverse reaction amongst film critics, “buffs”, and the masses in general. What it all comes down to is the following question: Is or was the film successful? Financially, it was not. Artistically, without doubt, yes. Thus, it is the art that survives in the long term existence of humanity, not the lucre or profit. In the end, whatever is left are the natural elements of humankind, not the artificial and superficial building blocks of materialism.
Works Cited:
Corliss, Richard. “Rumble Fish.” Time 24 Oct. 1983: 90-91.
Denby, David. “Rumble Fish.” New York 31 Oct. 1983: 80-81.
E! Online, “Top Ten Teen Angst Films: Rumble Fish.” E! Online (2001): 1p.
Online. Internet. 19 Apr. 2001.
Harral, Iain, “Rumble Fish.” Edinburgh University Film Society (1994): 1p.
Online. Internet. 19 Apr. 2001.
Hollywood.com, “Leonard Maltin’s 1999 Movie & Video Guide: Rumble
Fish.” Hollywood.com (1983): 1p. Online. Internet. 19 Apr. 2001. Lewis, Jon. The Road to Romance and Ruin: Teen Films and Youth Culture.
New York: Routledge, 1992.
O’Shea, Noel, “Up For Review: Rumble Fish.” The Reel Site (12 Dec. 1998):
1p. Online. Internet. 19 Apr. 2001.
Rumble Fish. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Perf. Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke,
Vincent Spano, Diane Lane, and Dennis Hopper. Universal Studios
Home Video, 1983.
Schwartz, Dennis, “Rumble Fish: 1983.” Ozus’ World Movie Reviews (16
Jan. 1999): 1p. Online. Internet. 19 Apr. 2001.
Variety, “Rumble Fish.” Variety (1983): 1p. Online. Internet. 19 Apr. 2001.
Okay, this is how I'd rank Tom Waits in cinema (from the films that I've seen of him in!):
Keep in mind, that most of his roles have been in the supporting category. He's never really been a primary in films.
1. Down by Law(starring role)
2. Ironweed(supporting role)
3. Short Cuts(supporting role)
4. Coffee & Cigarettes(supporting role)
5. Bram Stoker's Dracula(supporting role)
6. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus(supporting role)
7. The Fisher King(supporting role)
8. Rumble Fish(supporting role)
9. Fishing with John(starring role)
10. The Book of Eli(supporting role)
11. At Play in the Fields of the Lord(supporting role)
12. The Outsiders(supporting role)
Here are films of him I haven't seen him in:
There is also one other film he's starred in, Cold Feet(starring role).
He's also been in Candy Mountain(supporting role) too.
A movie called Queens Logic(supporting role) is another movie he's been in.
Haven't seen Rumble Fish, but it looks more like a clue for that (based on title and synopsis alone) than Knife in the Water, although it could be a double clue. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Do they ever actually do a double clue? If so give an example
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