The early 80’s had found director Coppola emerging from his brilliant cinematic run from the previous decade – that glorious time of those daring New Hollywood filmmakers (a period which Coppola himself would provide one of the showiest of codas for, with his tripped-out, maniacal war movie, the 1979 Apocalypse Now) – and now floundering a bit, not quite reconnecting, either commercially or critically, or sometimes both, with the audience and critics, both who had adored him previously.

Why along with giving me a little downtime to assess lots of things in my life (such as do I really need so many easily-frightened-into-conformity-and-shaming-others friends?), it’s even granted me some extra time to catch up on some off-the-grid books and movies I’ve always had in my mind to get to, but not sure would have ever made the list… such as, in this case, The Outsiders.

This whole coronavirus thing might have made a muck of things, but - putting aside for the moment the 40 million plus now unemployed in the States, the continuing massive small business closures leading to the gobbling up of every last bit of independent wealth left by the greedy elites in one of the most far-reaching and devastating ‘shock doctrine’ grabs in world history, and the panic-peddling mainstream media momentarily sidetracking Cold War-style red-baiting Russia hysteria to push virus terror from every conceivable angle, including the horrors of covid toes and asymptomatic carriers possibly being everywhere (just like old school commies were in the 50’s!) – on the plus side? What can I say? It hasn’t been so bad. The Outsiders: The Complete Novel (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983/2005)

The outsider complete novel