Rumble Fish
Short description
Rumble Fish centres on Rusty James, a young man in a small American town who drifts through petty crime and street fights while trying to match the reputation his older brother once held. Known as the Motorcycle Boy, the brother has been away from home; Rusty James awaits his return and longs for the days when rival gangs settled their differences in the streets. When the Motorcycle Boy comes back, the relationship between the brothers and their troubled home life with their alcoholic father become the film's focus.
Francis Ford Coppola directed and co-wrote the screenplay with S. E. Hinton, whose novel provides the source. It followed The Outsiders among Coppola's features and preceded The Cotton Club. Matt Dillon plays Rusty James, with Mickey Rourke as the Motorcycle Boy, Diane Lane as Patty, Dennis Hopper as the father and Vincent Spano among the supporting cast. The production had a budget of about 10 million dollars and returned roughly 2 million worldwide, a poor result at the box office.
On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.1 from more than 36,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7 from 785 votes. A critics' rating of 6.3 from 37 reviews places it somewhat below those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The punk rock band Green Day released a song «Rusty James» dedicated to the film's main character.
- For the scene in which the characters played by Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke—shot on black-and-white film—examine colorful betta fish in a pet store, cinematographer Stephen H. Burum filmed the actors on black-and-white stock, then projected the resulting image onto a screen, and placed an aquarium with tropical fish in front of that screen. Burum then filmed the entire composite on color film.
- In the dream scene where the character played by Matt Dillon leaves his own body, the actor wore a special corset that was suspended by cables.
- Francis Ford Coppola filmed in abandoned areas on the outskirts of Tulsa, often using a handheld camera. To make the surroundings look as menacing as possible, he ordered shadows to be painted directly onto the set walls.
- Tom Cruise was offered the role of Rusty James, but he declined in favor of the film 'Risky Business' (1983).
- The author of the book, S.E. Hinton, played an episodic role as a prostitute in the film.
- To help Mickey Rourke better understand the character he was to play, Francis Ford Coppola instructed him to read the works of Albert Camus and a biography of Napoleon. The appearance of Rourke's character was based on Camus himself, specifically a photograph featuring a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, which the actor studied frequently.
- Before filming began, director and screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola organized regular screenings of old films for the crew and cast, including 'Decision Before Dawn' (Anatole Litvak, 1951), 'The Last Laugh' (F.W. Murnau, 1924), and 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' (Robert Wiene, 1920). Much of Coppola's film borrows from German Expressionism, a movement that dominated German cinema in the first half of the 1920s. When animating the sky in the film, Coppola drew inspiration from Godfrey Reggio's documentary 'Koyaanisqatsi' (1983).
- The sound engineers on set struggled to hear Mickey Rourke and frequently asked him to repeat lines or speak louder. For this reason, they privately referred to the entire project as 'Mumbling Fish'.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
