I'm restless. Might have to go for a walk or something. I've watched two Astaire/Rogers pictures, and was just watching The Outsiders and comparing the original version (which I have on DVD but have never watched) with Mr. Coppola's "rethought" version all these years later, which I got an early copy of. He's added twenty-two minutes to his film, which originally ran a crisp ninety-one minutes, and which now runs a not so crisp 113 minutes. Almost ten of those minutes are a new opening to the film. It's very interesting watching both versions. The original just bangs you into the film, but the new opening (which was the way the film was shot), starts with a fight (which explains C. Thomas Howell's neck wound in subsequent scenes - it went unexplained in the original version) and sets up the rivalry between the greasers and the socs, as well as introducing in fuller form Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, and Ralph Macchio. However, you basically get all the same information in the drive-in scene which opens the film, so I understand why Coppola took it out. I do wish they had both versions on the new DVD - I really detest these "rethought" versions when the original is not included. Mr. Coppola made the film he wanted to make - at that point, he didn't have people telling him what he could and couldn't do, and so to suddenly, twenty-three years later, decide to rethink it would be like some painter going back to his painting and redoing it just because he "rethought" it. It's something else if he paints a new version but the original is there at the same time. But, if you don't go out and buy the original DVD of The Outsiders (who knows if it will still be available) then you don't have the film that was shown in theaters. Mr. Coppola has also added a bunch of Elvis Presley songs over scenes which played in glorious silence before, thereby pandering to today's ADD kiddie audiences who can't go five seconds without music. And, what has classic Elvis to do with a film set in 1966?
