FILM · 1983 · USA
The Outsiders
24 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
24 Interesting Facts About The Outsiders
Interesting Facts (16)
- #001
Dallas falling off his chair as he gets into the car was a complete accident, and Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell) glances at the camera for a moment while laughing.
- #002
Dallas harasses Cherry and the two argue. The scene was shot early on, and years later Matt Dillon and Diane Lane recalled that it got them off on the wrong foot and created real tension between them, which is why their irritation looks so real. When the cast reunited in 2003 for the 20th anniversary, Lane brought it up; the guys laughed, and everyone remembered the running feud between her and Dillon. Lane blames her teenage insecurities for being so touchy about Dillon's teasing, but she also fondly remembers how protective he and the other boys were of her. Dillon and Lane went on to play love interests in two more films and became good friends.
- #003
The nurse Dally argues with at the hospital about the whereabouts of his hospital gown is played by S. E. Hinton, author of "The Outsiders."
- #004
In the scene where the boys get worked up by the noise in the street, Tom Cruise does a backflip off the top of a truck, which Patrick Swayze had coached him through. Just before shooting, a nervous Cruise told author S. E. Hinton he didn't think he could do it because he felt sick from eating too much lunch. Hinton asked if he'd feel better if he threw up, and when he said yes, she took him to the catering truck and had him drink raw eggs until he vomited. Cruise felt much better and did the stunt without a hitch.
- #005
Francis Ford Coppola wanted Matt Dillon to spend a night in jail to "understand" Dallas Winston better. Dillon refused: "No way, Francis, how about you spend a night in jail?"
- #006
The first punch of the rumble lands on Ponyboy, and C. Thomas Howell (Ponyboy) remembers that it was real and knocked him out cold.
- #007
The actors pulled pranks at the hotel where they stayed during filming. Years later, Tom Cruise met someone who said he'd worked at that hotel, and Cruise's first words were "I'm sorry."
- #008
The film is based on a book popular with middle and high school students, and a class in Fresno, California, is the reason Francis Ford Coppola made it: the class picked him as the director they most wanted to film the book and sent him a letter and a copy. Coppola was so impressed that he made both this film and Rumble Fish (1983). He threw out Kathleen Rowell's screenplay and shot his own, but a Writers Guild ruling meant he couldn't take credit for it.
- #009
According to S. E. Hinton, the boys caused big trouble at the hotel during the three months of filming. One night she recalled was when they shot the fountain scene, where Bob (Leif Garrett) tries to drown Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell): afterward, the other six boys pretended to drown each other in the hotel lobby fountain, mocking the scene. Hinton says the hotel removed the fountain within weeks.
- #010
Francis Ford Coppola first noticed Emilio Estevez when he came along with his father, Martin Sheen, to the set of Apocalypse Now (1979), where he had a small role as a messenger boy that was cut. Coppola remembered him and gave him a bigger part here.
- #011
In the drive-in scene, Ponyboy shivers several times and the actors' breath is visible, because it was only about thirty-four degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) and wardrobe insisted on a sleeveless shirt.
- #012
Tom Cruise took an accidental blow to the chin during the rumble and needed dental work the next day; the Tulsa dentist's office displays a photo of the dentist with the young actor.
- #013
Ralph Macchio read The Outsiders in seventh grade, and he says Johnny Cade is one of his favorite characters he's played.
- #014
Francis Ford Coppola had the boys spend a night in the house used as the Curtis home. He wanted the three "brothers" (Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe and C. Thomas Howell) to cook a meal together (none of them had ever cooked) and grow as close as real brothers, and the boys stayed in character for hours.
- #015
It rained on one day of shooting the fight scene but not the next, so Francis Ford Coppola brought in rain towers and fire trucks to fake it, and worse, the temperature was only about 32° Fahrenheit (0° Celsius). The actors were freezing.
- #016
Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze did their own gymnastics in the scene where the rumble starts.
Behind the Scenes (4)
- #017
During filming, Rob Lowe asked S. E. Hinton what happens to Sodapop Curtis; she told him Sodapop was sent to Vietnam and died there.
- #018
Because director Francis Ford Coppola wanted tension between the two groups, the actors playing the Socs got leather-bound scripts and luxury rooms, while the "Greasers" got tattered paperback scripts and rooms on the hotel's ground floor.
- #019
S. E. Hinton was involved in every stage of the shoot and has said many times how much she loved the young men who played the greaser gang. With almost all of them young and away from home with no adults around, she says she became a mother figure to them on and off set, and she fondly remembers them calling her "Mom."
- #020
Rob Lowe turned eighteen during filming, and he says the other boys spent his whole birthday pulling cruel pranks on him, like wrapping him in toilet paper and filling his hotel room with fire-extinguisher foam.
Characters & Cast (3)
- #021
It was Rob Lowe's first film. He also auditioned for Randy Adderson but didn't want that part at all, having no wish to play a Soc in a film about Greasers; he even thought about deliberately doing worse in Randy's audition so he'd seem better suited to Sodapop.
- #022
To help the cast bond and avoid losing time on set, Francis Ford Coppola spent two weeks taping the entire film on video before he started shooting on film, thought to be one of the first times a production did this. That footage has rarely surfaced, but Ralph Macchio had a similar experience in 1984, when John G. Avildsen taped rehearsals for The Karate Kid (1984) at home on a video camera.
- #023
Nicolas Cage auditioned for Darry or Dallas. He shut himself in a room for two weeks, drinking beer and staring at a photo of Charles Bronson, hoping a thug's attitude would rub off on him. Director Francis Ford Coppola, his uncle, turned him down and told him to read for Two-Bit instead, and Cage, sick of seeing all his effort wasted, walked away from the project.
Life & Family (1)
- #024
In the restored dinner scene that Sodapop storms out of, there's a sheet of paper on his table: according to the novel, it's a "Dear John" letter from his girlfriend Sandy, whom he'd said he wanted to marry. Sandy had cheated on Soda and got pregnant, so she moved to Florida to live with her grandmother.
Related pages
- Val Kilmer — The Outsiders comes up in the facts on that page
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
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