Francis Ford Coppola had already directed undeniable film classics such as The Godfather (1972), The Conversation (1974), The Godfather: Part II (1974), and Apocalypse Now (1979). However, the failure of a single film, the genre-bending romance One From the Heart, in 1982, took a disastrously heavy toll.
During a rare interview promoting the new 4K Ultra HD release of his 1983 coming-of-age favorite The Outsiders, the 82-year-old movie titan tells Yahoo Movies, “I was very depressed at the time [after One From the Heart], which was a heartbreak to me and involved some stupidity on my part, …“And I was very despondent about the terrible reaction.”
One From the Heart, starring Frederic Forest and Teri Garr focuses on a couple whose relationship falls apart during an anniversary trip to Las Vegas, is Coppola’s biggest flop by far, generating barely $600,000 against a $26 million budget. The filmmaker claims he pulled the film from cinemas after only a week, thinking it would get a larger release later – not realizing that such a decision would condemn it to home video.
“So it was stupid of me to do, but nonetheless I was depressed and I had lost everything and I was facing a bankruptcy,” he explains. That’s when a large envelope arrived in the mail for him from the library class of Lone Star Elementary School in Fresno, Calif.
“These children had voted that I should take their favorite book and make it into a film,” Coppola recalls of the package, which came with about 10-15 pages of signatures from seventh and eighth graders, courtesy of their librarian Jo Ellen Misakian. “And the fact that these kids had voted for me to do their film meant for sure I was going to [at least] read the book. … And I read it, and I was very touched by the book because it showed how young people really have such strong feelings. I was very moved by it.”
S.E. Hinton’s 1967 gang drama The Outsiders was that book, which the Tulsa, Okla., native had started writing when she was just 15 years old.
After that, the rest is history. In March of 1982, Coppola began shooting The Outsiders, film, in Tulsa. C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Diane Lane, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, and Tom Cruise were among the most successful young actors of the 1980s thanks in great part to the success of the film, which follows the exploits of working-class “greasers” and their wealthy opponents “The Socs.”
It was a huge comeback for Coppola, with positive reviews (Gene Siskel comparing it to Rebel Without a Cause and American Graffiti) and a $33 million box office take (on a $10 million budget).
The film’s legacy has only increased with time, and children have remained an important part of it. Coppola released his director’s cut, dubbed The Complete Novel, in 2005 after encountering young readers in his granddaughter’s classroom who inquired why some sequences from Hinton’s source material weren’t included in his translation. With the new hi-def 4K release, the director restores that version with the additional scenes.
“Once again, I listened to the advice and the opinion of the young people,” Coppola says. “Which is what we should be doing in the world today, in my opinion.”
The Outsiders: The Complete Novel is now available on 4K Ultra HD.