Over at Letters of Note is a letter from the school librarian at Lone Star School in Fresno, California that petitions Francis Ford Coppola to make a movie of the students’ favorite book, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.
Lone Star is a small school in Fresno County. We have a student body of 324 students. It is a kindergarten through eighth grade school. I feel our students are representative of the youth of America. Everyone who has read the book, regardless of ethnic or economical background, has enthusiastically endorsed this project. This plea comes from our seventh and eighth grade students.
Letters of Note also has some of the correspondence that followed between the librarian and Coppola’s producer Fred Roos who, eventually, began cc’ing Coppola himself on the communications. The Outsiders was released in 1983 and starred Diane Lane, Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez.
Here’s a Fresh Air interview with Coppola.
And for good measure, interviews with Matt Dillon and Diane Lane.
