Trivia / Rumble Fish

• All-Star Cast: Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane, Dennis Hopper, Nicolas Cage, Laurence Fishburne.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $10 million. Box office, $2,494,480.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Francis Ford Coppola named this as one of his favourite films of his own.
• Deleted Role: Heather Langenkamp played an extra in this movie but her scene was cut as was done in The Outsiders.
• Genre-Killer: Whatever remaining remnants of the New Hollywood era that wasn't killed by Heaven's Gate were killed by the failure of this.
• Production Nickname: The sound technicians on the film had a hard time hearing Mickey Rourke's dialogue on set, often asking him to speak louder. As a result, the sound crew referred to the production as "Mumble Fish".
• Promoted Fanboy: Matt Dillon had read the book a few years before doing the movie, and in an interview with S.E. Hinton, said that it was his favorite book. Hinton said that when someone told her that "Rumble Fish" was their favorite book, usually "they were in a reformatory".
• Real-Life Relative: Sofia Coppola plays Diane Lane's younger sister.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Tom Cruise had told Francis Ford Coppola that he wanted to work for him and take any role, so Coppola invited him to workshops and rehearsals for this movie which starred Matt Dillon but left after he was offered the lead in Risky Business.
  • Jack Nicholson turned down the role of Father, because he didn't like the script.
  • Coppola invited film director Chris Marker to shoot second unit footage in Tulsa for the film. Marker ducked out because he found it that visually unappealing.

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