That Was Then... This Is Now

In English class, we read S.E. Hinton's saga of teenage angst. The students were enthralled with the story. While the setting was from years past, the ethical questions raised and the teenage situations were quite apropos. The story generated a great deal of quality discussion in class...education at it's finest.

The movie, however, was a bit of a disappointment for us. Taken by itself, it was a fine example of 80's brat-packish fluff. It was formulamatic, but entertaining. One could hardly say that the movie was based on the book, though. Bryon's personal growth journey and coming of age, so well illustrated in the novel, was sacrificed to car chases and Hollywood's penchant for tidy endings, in the movie.

While I would recommend both, I would caution that they are two separate stories, sharing the same character names. Perhaps there is the lesson: You cannot watch the movie to get out of reading the book! .

That Was Then, This Is Now is the story of two working class youths who look like they are on a street to nowhere in their lives.

After his parents killed themselves, Emilio Estevez is taken in by his best friend Craig Sheffer and his mom Barbara Babcock. The two of them get in all kinds of trouble. But Sheffer is starting to think that may be if I grow up their just might be a future for him.

Estevez is carrying a lot around, many of us do and we react to it in different ways. Estevez is on the road to career criminality. He gets involved in deeper and deeper and threatens to bring Sheffer in with him if Sheffer does not heed the better angels of his nature.

The key scene is when we learn as Estevez confides to Scheffer just what it is he's carrying inside. Some of the best acting in both their careers.

Hollywood has done very well with S.E. Hinton novels. That Was Then This Is Now is right up there with Tex, Rumblefish. and The Outsiders. This one managed to get done without Matt Dillon.

I recommend it highly.

I always loved S.E. Hinton's novels as a kid: The Outsiders, Rumble Fish (which in my opinion, is the greatest film adaptation in the series despite everyone's fascination with The Outsiders), Tex, and That Was Then This is Now.

'That Was Then, This is Now' was the last film adaptation (although the TV series for 'The Outsiders' follows five years later after the release of this movie). I would've attribute the mediocrity of the movie, or at least the inability to really put forth all that the novel did, was because it was not directed by Francis Ford Coppola (who directs 'The Outsiders,' and does a fabulous job with 'Rumble Fish'), except 'Tex,' which was a pretty good movie, was likewise not directed by Coppola.

I think it is in part the chemistry among the characters. The whole mood looks like something out of a music video, with Craig Scheffer coming off more like a guy who broke off a long relationship with a girlfriend rather than dealing with a rambunctious brother (in addition to other things). Plus, as another viewer already mentioned, they shifted the focus on characters so that superstar Emilio Esteves becomes the center of attention. Most of S.E. Hinton's novel always portrayed a struggle from the brother who is looking out at things that, by his perception, have become (or always were) seriously out of control. (See 'Tex' and 'Rumble Fish'). And yes, they unfortunately acquiesced to the Hollywood happy ending, and in the sappiest way, despite all of the problems that the characters endure.

Unlike previous adaptations of Hinton's novels, even those not directed by Coppola, they really fail to portray the struggles that the characters realize in the book. And, lack of developing the story on this point really makes you only half appreciate the characters and their conflicts (and in this case, not even their resolution).

That Was Then... This Is Now is one of the best early performances of Emilo Estvez as a writer and actor. Estevz brings Mark to life they way S.E.Hinton intened by being brutal and cut throat in his performace. All of the actors in the film give equally good performacnes in particular Morgan Freemen and Craig Sheffer. A underlooked gem.

Only thing wrong with this movie-- the decision to "update" the story to make it contemporary. Some novels lend themselves to that kind of reinterpretation easily, but S.E. Hinton's early works aren't among them. The book, set in the late 60s, was essentially a follow-up to "The Outsiders," picking up a few months after its TV Series left off. The character of Ponyboy was taken out of this film for obvious reasons (why would he still be 16 in 1985?), but other Outsiders (most notably Tim Shepard) remained intact without aging a day-- effectively destroying any continuity it might have had with the film it was undoubtedly cashing in on. As result of this questionable rewrite, the novel's focus on the greaser/soc conflict dying off is completely absent, as are other time period-specific subplots. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted this to stand on its own from Coppola's then-recent "Outsiders" adaptation, but this likely hurt "That Was Then...This Is Now" in more ways than it helped it.