Criminal: Rumble Fish
August 21, 2019
Hours are like diamonds, don't let them waste
Time waits for no one; no favors has he
Time waits for no one, and he won't wait for me – The Rolling Stones
Time. Once you hit the teen mark in life – what a beautiful horrible time that is. Dreamy and crazy and banal and violent – in action or in mind – melodramatic and real and hormonally addled. In the case of Rusty James – sometimes not so smart, but oftentimes intensely poetic – in movement, in words, in the way you look at your surroundings – be it your drunken dad’s apartment, your girlfriend’s intelligent beautiful face, your older brother’s odd, sad, sleepwalking swagger, and listening to that older brother even if you don’t understand half of what he says. And then there’s those brightly colored rumble fish in the pet store… they need to be free. And they have very little time.
Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish presents and ponders these dreamlike feelings of teen-hood as an expressionistic mood piece – a reverie that feels of this world and out of this world but so rooted in an emotional truth that the picture, at times, feels Shakespearean.
The start of my piece on Francis Ford Coppola's masterful, beautiful "Rumble Fish" -- in Ed Brubaker's next Criminal -- read the rest in the newest issue -- look for it today.