Rumble Fish (1983) on Netflix
Rusty James, a teenage hoodlum in Tulsa, wants to be as feared as his older brother. The Motorcycle Boy, who brokered peace between the gangs, has been missing for two months.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.1/1041,686 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes74%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Tulsa, the gangs are breaking up as heroin takes over the streets. Rusty James, a teenage hoodlum, still measures himself against his older brother, the Motorcycle Boy, who brokered peace between the gangs and has been gone for two months. Rusty James takes on Biff Wilcox, a rival gang leader, and seems to be winning until his brother's sudden return distracts him and he is badly hurt. The Motorcycle Boy nurses him back to health, and Rusty James's awkward friend Steve helps, though he keeps his distance, wary of talk that the Motorcycle Boy is insane. The brothers visit their father, who is poor and drinks.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Rumble Fish (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For the pet-store scene where the Siamese fighting fish are the only color in an otherwise black-and-white film, cinematographer Stephen H. Burum shot the actors in black and white, projected that footage onto a rear-projection screen, then put the real fish tank in front of it and reshot the whole thing in color.
- Coppola asked Stewart Copeland, drummer of The Police, only to improvise a rhythm track, then decided Copeland was a far better composer and let him take over the score; Copeland mixed Tulsa street sounds into it using Musync, a tempo-editing system invented by Robert Randles.
- Coppola shot in deserted areas on the edge of Tulsa, using hand-held cameras so audiences would feel uneasy, and had shadows painted onto the walls of the sets to make them look more ominous.
- Coppola hired Michael Smuin, a choreographer and co-director of the San Francisco Ballet, to stage the fight between Rusty James and Biff Wilcox, asking for a motorcycle, broken glass, knives, gushing water and blood; Smuin spent a week designing the sequence.
- Halfway through shooting The Outsiders, Coppola decided to keep the same production team in Tulsa and shoot Rumble Fish right after it, and wrote the Rumble Fish screenplay with novelist S. E. Hinton on Sundays, their day off from The Outsiders.
- With Warner Bros. having passed on distributing Rumble Fish and no financing in place, Coppola recorded the entire film on video during two weeks of rehearsals in a former school gymnasium, then showed the cast and crew a rough draft.
- For the dream sequence in which Rusty James floats outside his own body, Matt Dillon wore a body mold that was moved by an articulated arm and was also flown on wires.
