See Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, and Others Read the Same Role for ‘The Outsiders’ Casting

Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola has made an Instagram post about the unique way he cast his adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. The movie, which came out in 1983, starred several notable actors — Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Patrick Swayze, and Ralph Macchio, among others — but they didn’t necessarily audition for the roles they got; they auditioned for all the roles.

“Forty-two years ago we cast The Outsiders in a unique way,” Coppola wrote in the caption for his post. “We had all the actors together on a soundstage and would alternate different actors reading for different roles. It was interesting because each of them was watching their competition, so while it could’ve been a volatile situation, it turned into a very positive one. There emerged the natural respect and sense of colleagueship among them. The result worked beautifully and reminded me of my days as a camp counselor.”

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Coppola’s post includes video for screen tests with Dillon, Macchio, Lane, and others — all teenagers at the time. When a casting director asks Lane (who says her name two different ways) if she’s ever been in love, the actress who was then 17 or 18 giggled and said yes. “The most important thing is that was the first time I fell in love — or at least I thought I was in love,” she says. The clip also shows Anthony Michael Hall, who did not make it into the movie, reading for Ponyboy Curtis, the role that went to Howell. And it features different permutations of the actors grouped together as they ran lines from the script. The best part is a succession of actors all reading about hopping “the 3:15 freight to Windrixville.”

Longer clips of the footage, which originally came out as bonus material on home-video releases, has leaked online in recent decades.

The movie depicts the rivalry between two Oklahoma gangs, the Greasers and the Socs, in 1964. As in Hinton’s book, which came out in 1967, the tension mounts after one gang member is killed by a rival gang member.

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