Ponyboy is attracted to a Soc girl named Sherri Valance (Diane Lane), igniting a conflict that culminates in the stabbing death of a Soc boy. Local authorities continually threaten to break up their poverty-level family, mainly because all three boys are prominent members of the Greasers, a gang of lower class Tulsa kids that fights often with the Socs, boys from the right side of the tracks who have real prospects in life. With both of his parents dead, he's being raised by his older brothers Darry (Patrick Swayze) and Sodapop (Rob Lowe). Thomas Howell) is a promising student in a bad situation. As if sensing the over-emotionalism of the original cut, Coppola also jettisons some of his own father's music score in favor of period radio rock 'n roll, in the tradition of American Graffiti. The additions lend greater depth and breadth to the story and characters while changing the overall look of the picture – both the beginning and conclusion are now different. This new DVD reinstates over two reels of footage cut for the original theatrical release. The resulting movie retains all the problems of earlier delinquency movies underneath its overproduced melodramatics.

Coppola boosts the book's modest graces up to the level of a mini-epic, hyping the drama into the 'Gone With the Wind' of teen gang tales. His first post-genius movie is The Outsiders, from an intimate and sensitive novel about displaced teens struggling in a gang environment in Oklahoma. The director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now found himself in the same commercial riptide other directors had to endure, having to come up with a hit to stay solvent. Francis' Coppola's currency as a great filmmaker has dwindled in recent years, but the fallout began a quarter of a century ago when his Zoetrope empire crumbled with the box office failure of One from the Heart.

The outsider complete novel