Tommy C. Appreciation Club: The Outsiders
Written by Kathleen Rowell (screenplay) and S.E. Hinton (novel)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Starring C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze and appearance by Tommy C.
Running Time: 1 hour and 31 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
by Hunter Bush, Nikk Nelson, Ryan Smillie and Liz Locke
The Tommy C. Appreciation Club, or TCAC, solemnly swears to watch and appreciate all theatrical performances by Tom Cruise then recap them, round-table style. In this edition, the Moviejawn crew chats about the minor role Tommy C. plays in Coppola’s 1983 flick, The Outsiders.
Hunter Bush (Doc) - Oh boy, I’m starting this one? I’ve never done one of these before… I guess we should all just make clear for anyone who hasn’t seen this picture that Tommy is really only peeking in around the edges of this one. He plays Steve Randle who works at a garage in town (with Patrick Swayze’s Darrell, perhaps?) but he’s not a core member of the Greasers.
The one thing that sticks in my mind about him in this - if you want to psychoanalyze Cruise through his performance - is the scene where they’re leaving Darry & Ponyboy’s house to head to the rumble, I believe. The six or so guys all pile out the front door and Swayze, utilizing that ballet background, just does a handstand on the front fence. Effortless. Graceful. Not to be shown up, once through the gate, Cruise hops up on the hood of a parked car and does a backflip! He’s obscured from view, so I can only speculate at the landing but he immediately pops up grinning, hooting and hollering with the rest of the boys.
I read this as Cruise, who I think we’d all agree is a somewhat shrewd observer of people, seeing Swayze’s undeniable charm, effortless physicality and star power and refusing to be left in the dust: “Oh. You did a handstand with the relaxed elegance of some kind of muscular, denim-clad swan? Well watch this!”
Thoughts?
Nikk Nelson - Piggybacking on Doc, much like Tommy C did with Patrick Swayze in that scene, I absolutely agree. I think Tommy, with his screen time so limited in this one, knew he needed to be memorable. Me, I’m a diehard Emilo Estevez fan, and I’d almost bet money that Tommy C auditioned for Estevez’s part of Two-Bit and got the ol’, “We like you. But not for this part. How about for this smaller part, though?” And Tommy C, again, not one to be outdone, more or less puts his audition for Two-Bit on the screen right next to Estevez any chance he gets. They’re both high-energy chuckleheads and the film really can hold only one of them overall, which is why I think you see Tommy C more or less bookend the film. Another theory is that his performance is a holdover from Taps (1981) and Tommy suddenly started getting cast for his manic intensity, a problem he immediately solved with cooler, more subdued performances in Risky Business (1983) and All the Right Moves (1983), leading to a breakout role that was a little bit of both, manic and subdued, in Top Gun (1986). I CANNOT WAIT FOR TOP GUN: MAVERICK (2021).
Ryan Smillie - I do wonder if we’d be talking about Cruise’s memorability in the same way if we didn’t know how his career takes off just months after The Outsiders’ release. Cruise’s limited screentime sees him building off of (and attempting to one-up) the energy of the other Greasers, but if it wasn’t Tom Cruise as Steve Randall, we might be seeing it as just another showboating Greaser adding to the atmosphere. For our purposes, I think The Outsiders is more interesting in a historical sense - here’s Tommy C. just before he became a star - than as a particularly notable Tommy C. performance. If I can imagine myself back in 1983, I don’t think I would’ve walked out of The Outsiders thinking that Tom Cruise was bound for decades and decades of success. However, seeing him amid this cast full of rising stars of his generation, I can’t imagine Cruise with any of their careers, and I can’t picture any of them with a career as massive as Cruise’s (the thought of Rob Lowe headlining Mission: Impossible is too much for me to bear). This almost aggressive energy and physicality that Hunter and Nikk brought up, then, isn’t just part of Cruise’s character as a Greaser, it’s a thesis statement for Cruise’s “go big or go home” career.
Liz Locke of CinemaSips - Guys, I think we’re all missing the essential piece to the Cruise origin story this film provides, which is… his teeth. Look close in The Outsiders and you’ll see that these are not the teeth of a movie star who can afford orthodontia and veneers. These are the teeth of one Thomas Cruise Mapother, that young Hollywood hopeful who wants to make it in spite of his crooked incisor. At one point he covers it in chocolate cake crumbs, almost daring us to look. All the whoops and hollers and backflips Hunter pointed out might serve to distract us, but when you step back and start to analyze, it’s obvious that Cruise is the biggest outsider of the whole cast. Because of the teeth, he can’t compete with eye candy of Rob Lowe or Patrick Swayze, and because it’s such a small part, he can’t claim the emotional depth of Ralph Macchio or C. Thomas Howell. So instead, he unbuttons his shirt, throws some amateur gymnastics moves at us, and screams, “YEEEAAAAHHH!!!” It’s a scream that announces, “Yeah I have fucked up teeth, yeah I have basically no lines in this, but you still can’t take your eyes off me! You’ll never be able to take your eyes off me.” Indeed, we haven’t for the last thirty-seven years.
The Tommy C. Report Card was completed by Hunter Bush and Nikk Nelson. The final score reflects an average of all report cards completed by TCAC and is taken extremely seriously...which is to be expected.
Come back next month when the Tommy C. Club discusses a flick perfect for your holiday watch list, Eyes Wide Shut.
Read more from the MJ Gang in the Fall 2020 PRINT issue of Moviejawn, available to order here.