Mysterious Upstart
Rumble Fish (1983)
Francis Ford Coppola once said that he made Rumble Fish as “an art film for teenagers”.
Though it garnered mixed reviews – and continues to divide audiences between those who think it’s a masterpiece, and those who consider it a cluttered, clichéd mess – it’s still one of the director’s more fascinating early films.
And what of Rourke? He’s the Motorcycle Boy, weary but iconic rebel, patterned after Albert Camus and Napoleon (the two men Coppola ordered him to study) and played by Rourke as "an actor who no longer finds his work interesting".
Scrapping teens, motorcycle gangs and the fantasies the characters wrap around themselves are all punctured by the gang leader.
“The legend they all created was a bunch of bulls**t,” he said during an on-set interview. “He sees everything like that now.”
Which is how Rourke himself was beginning to view Hollywood…
Next: Sex Symbol
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