Rob Lowe Thought He and Tom Cruise Might Not Make It Through One Particular Night While Filming 1983’s The Outsiders

Rob Lowe and Francis Ford Coppola are sharing fond memories of making the 85-year-old director’s 1983 film The Outsiders — including the interesting ways Coppola helped his young cast get into character.

The film, set in 1965, revolves around the conflict between two teenage gangs: the poorer greasers and the wealthier “Socs.” It also boasted a stellar cast of young actors destined to become Hollywood stars, including Lowe in his first feature film role, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez and Ralph Macchio.

“You were all young guys who loved acting,” Coppola recalled on the most recent episode of Lowe’s SiriusXM podcast Literally!. “And you applauded each other, even your competition. It was wonderful. I’ll never forget how positive those casting sessions were and how supportive you were of your own competition.”

Lowe said that the young cast supported each other even in small ways, like helping each other with their hair and makeup.

At the same time, Coppola apparently wanted to make the class dynamic between the greasers and Socs as real as possible for the young actors.  

“I remember that we gave the greasers less per diem and they had crummier transportation and accommodations than the Socs,” the director said. “The Socs got nice hotels and stuff like that. But the greasers had to live in basement rooms that we found.”

For his part, Lowe said that while he understood that Coppola was trying to make him, Macchio, Swayze and the other actors playing greasers feel their characters’ struggle, he remembers thinking that “every actor who’s playing a Soc, who’s got more per diem, all they really want to do is be a greaser anyway.”

Lowe also remembered Coppola sending some of the cast to stay the night with real former greasers. “We all had to go to their houses,” he said. “And I remember so vividly being on a couch near a furnace, in a basement of these people I did not know, and me and Tom Cruise looking at each other going, ‘They could — they might come down and kill us tonight.’ ”

New episodes of SiriusXM’s Literally! With Rob Lowe are available every Thursday on the SiriusXM app and wherever podcasts are available.