Some of Tim's Stories by S. E. Hinton Page B

walked in, waving the book, going, “I love this book—it’s so weird; we’ll make it weirder. We’ll shoot it in black and white; the fish will be in color. And we’ve already got a cast here.” During the shooting of
Tex
, Matt had told me that
Rumble Fish
was his favorite of my books, one of his dream roles, and if he wasn’t too old when it got off the ground, he wanted to play Motorcycle Boy. He said if he was really old—like twenty-seven—he’d direct.
    You actually wrote the script for
Rumble Fish
while you were finishing up
The Outsiders?
    Yes, we were still shooting
The Outsiders
, sometimes putting in sixteen- to eighteen-hour days. Francis and I wrote
Rumble Fish
on Sundays, and we got the first draft done in two weekends.
Tex
was coming out. So at one point in my life, I was shooting a movie, advertising a movie, writing a movie. But
Rumble Fish
was not a fun shoot. It was hot, and we shot all of it at night. I’d made a vow that I was not going to get close to any of the actors on the new shoot. Except, of course, Matt. I just wanted to stick with my screenwriting job at that point, and I did.
Rumble Fish
is Francis’s movie. He did everything else.
    You yourself have said that
Rumble Fish
was a different sort of story. Were you concerned at all in the early stages about how it would translate to the screen
?
    I wasn’t concerned, because Francis was one of the few people I’ve ever talked to who understood the book. It was about myth-making. The movie’s much more visual, much stronger than the book, actually. It was an amazing experience for me as a writer to see Francis’s interpretation, because it was just what I was thinking.
    After your first movie appearance in
Tex,
you also had cameo roles in
The Outsiders
and
Rumble Fish.
What parts did you play
?
    In
The Outsiders
, I played the nurse in Dallas’s room, which was so easy, because I was so used to being hassled by Matt at that point. I was really kind of proud of myself, because I had to walk in, hit my marks, say my lines, set props down, and bump into Emilio and Tommy, who were coming to visit Matt’s character.
    What about your role in
Rumble Fish?
    I played a hooker. When Francis asked me, I didn’t think about the fact that we’d be working with the same crew from
The Outsiders
. There were thirty guys on the set and two women, and I was sitting around in that hooker outfit for days, because we’d get behind on the shooting. That was not fun, though it’s funny now that I look back at it. In the scene, I end up grabbing Vincent Spano, who played Steve, and start unbuttoning his shirt. Did I do that? Oh, my God! When I watch all these movies now, they’re more like home movies. I’m thinking, that’s the day we were all sunburned, or that was the day I made Tom Cruise throw up because he ate too much.
    Were you uneasy at all about being directed by Coppola? That put your relationship on a whole different footing; after all, he’d directed Pacino, Brando, the all-time greats
.
    Francis was always really sweet to me. I’ve kept my SAG [Screen Actors Guild] card all these years in case he ever calls again. I’m ready.
    Do you believe that working so closely with Coppola in the films also made you a better novelist
?
    It certainly gave me a different take on my writing. I started thinking in terms of scenes.
    Earlier you spoke of the new 2006 DVD release of
The Outsiders,
subtitled
The Complete Novel.
Is the movie even better now
?
    I think so, because we shot the whole book. Francis was very adamant about that, but there was a lot of studio pressure before it was first released, and he cut the heck out of it. I was shocked the first time I saw it in the theater. So much of it was missing. I didn’t say anything; I’m not a movie director or a movie editor. But it was chopped up into one action, one action, one action.