Deviation

I've been sick this week, chest cold akin to bronchitis, so I haven't been running.  What I have been doing is reading books.  Mostly the same old books I always read when I feel like running away to a different world, but I did read Rob Lowe's autobiography as well.  It was interesting though it felt a little short.  What I really liked about it was his in depth account of making The Outsiders, beginning with casting all the way up until the premiere. Turns out, he was pretty disappointed with the original cut of the movie as well.
Now, if you've never read The Outsiders, or seen the movie, stop right here, go buy the book, and come back to me in two days.  Seriously.  It's a short read and it's fantastic.  Don't worry, I'll wait............................................................................................................................................
Alright, if you didn't bother to do that, then get ready for some serious spoilers. As in, I'm telling you basically the whole story line start to finish, deal with it.  Well, the book begins with Ponyboy Curtis walking home from the movies alone and getting jumped by the Socs, only to have his neighborhood greaser gang come and rescue him.  The greasers include his brothers (and only family he has left,) Sodapop and Darrel, as well as Two-bit, Steve, Johnny, and Dallas.  As the story goes on, Pony and Johnny commit manslaughter, go on the run, save some children from a burning church and get rushed to the hospital.  Johnny dies, Pony and the gang rumble with the Socs, Dallas dies, Pony falls down sick due to exhaustion, shock, and a minor concussion.  Pony wakes up, goes to juvenile court to testify and try to stay in custody of Darry.  Pony gets acquitted, finds out he's flunking English, gets in a fight with Darry, both chase down Sodapop who can't stand the fighting anymore, agree to be a big happy family, decides to write about his previous few weeks to pass English, story begins all over again.
There you go.  30 second rundown of The Outsiders.  All the important information, none of the back story.  But seriously, the book is amazing, so this 2 second tale doesn't do it justice.  When I was a teenager, I was pretty interested in the fact that they had made a movie about the book, even though my mom always said it wasn't as good.  This was back in the days before On-Demand and Netflix, and we didn't have a Blockbuster card, so there was really no way to see the movie unless it happened to be on t.v.  Which it actually was, more frequently than I thought it would be.  Turns out, my mom was right.  Where the book spent so much time developing characters and setting up the reason for the trouble with the Socs, the movie skipped right over it.  If you watched the original cut of the movie, it doesn't begin with Pony being jumped, but at the next chapter, where Pony and Johnny meet Dallas for a night out at the drive-in.  While that might not seem like a big deal, it really is.  The first chapter, with all the introductions, is key to the plot line.  Plus, without seeing Pony jumped, you would never have known that the Socs cut his neck with a switchblade, leaving him with a scab.  In fact, for a long time, it always bugged me that there was something on Pony's neck that was there half the movie and then suddenly disappeared.  It looked like a birthmark gone missing.  It wasn't until years later that I finally realized it was a scab from the jumping.  (In the book, he cuts his head, not his neck, so the only way I put the two together was with the first scene of the movie in place.) It was actually a huge relief to find out what that spot was.... The story goes on, pretty much follows the book up until after the rumble, when Dallas is running to meet the gang after holding up a gas station.  In the book, Dallas goes down, Pony passes out, and then the rest of the story unfolds.  In the original cut, Dallas goes down, Pony begins his English assignment, movie over.  Seriously.  I don't know who thought it was a good idea to cut out the entire beginning and the entire end of the story, but it was a terrible one.  Part of the reason I love the story so much is the back story of the three Curtis brothers and all that they go through to stay together as a family.  The movie took all the emotional feeling out of the movie and basically made it about some teen thugs who can't handle life.
Until 2006.  Finally, Francis Ford Coppola wised up and decided that perhaps he needed those original scenes back in the movie.  When The Outsiders: The Complete Novel came out on DVD I knew I had to have it.  I always wanted to see that end part with the Curtis brothers and I hoped the movie would actually touch upon it this time.  Thankfully, it did, and it definitely made the entire movie so much better than it was before.
Rob Lowe was a bit disappointed with the final cut  not only because it didn't follow the book, but also because his major scene got cut out.  (I don't know the guy, but I'm betting that cutting his scene weighed more heavily on his mind than the fact that the movie didn't follow the book, but I could be wrong.)  So, after years of being angry at FFC for destroying a wonderful book, I was finally able to find out why.  (Thanks Rob!)  The reason was pretty lame, they just felt like the movie didn't need those scenes to be a success. WRONG!  Ok, not wrong for the most part, but to me, WRONG!  I still have some issues with the casting; for instance, Matt Dillon as Dallas and Tom Cruise as Steve, but hey, you can't win them all right?  Plus, Rob Lowe and C.Thomas Howell made a perfect Sodapop and Ponyboy respectively, so that kind of cancels it out.
The title of this post was chosen for a reason so I hope you aren't to thrown off by my side story.  I'm sure I'll go back to running posts soon enough, but in the meantime, now you know a little bit more about me.  Or at least, more about the kind of books I read.

The Curtis brothers.  I'm sure the biggest swoon-fest of '83. I wouldn't know. I wasn't there.
(This picture isn't mine, I found it online, please don't take me to court, I'm a teacher, I have no money anyways!)